"It is tolerably sure to be tough, but long cooking corrects that. Try
this sometimes: instead of simmering it, cut it up and fry each piece a
little; as you do so, put them in a kettle and add a very little water.
When all are in see that the water just covers them; put a cover on and
put this away in the tireless stove, or simmer it very slowly on the
back of the range for four or five hours. It will come out brown and
tender."
"And put all left-over gravy and bones in the stock pot," Dolly muttered
to herself as she wrote this down. "Now, before I forget it, tell me why
the drumsticks are to be served 'on toast?' I see I have that expression
down over and over. Are you so awfully fond of toast as all that?"
"Toast, my dear child, is the way of making a small dish larger. When
things are scanty it conceals the fact as nothing else does. Don't you
know how often the cook-books say, 'serve with sippets of toast?'"
"Now you mention it, I do seem to recall the phrase, though I thought it
said 'snippets' of toast. I supposed they were a sort of garnish, like
parsley."
"They are a garnish, but at the same time they are one of the small
economies of cooking. They get rid of bits of bread, and at the same
time give an air to a dish while they help eke it out.
"And now for the left-overs of meat. I have spoken of some of those as
we have gone along, but there are heaps and heaps more. If you have a
good deal of meat left over you can have English rissoles, for one
thing; generally you make them out of beef, but not necessarily. You
chop the meat, mix it with gravy and a raw egg to bind it, add a few
crumbs and some seasoning, and roll the whole into balls. Dip each one
in flour and fry it in a wire basket. Beef olives are thin slices of
beef with a spoonful of crumbs put on each slice, and these rolled over
once and pinned in place with a tiny wooden skewer--in other words, a
wooden toothpick. Any other meat can be used in the same way. Mutton can
be served a la marquise; that is, mince it, mix it with boiled rice and
curry-powder and a tiny bit of onion, and a raw egg to bind it all; make
into balls and fry them. Sliced mutton is nice dipped in French dressing
and broiled. Cottage loaf is good, especially for an extra busy day. For
that, line a dish with mashed potato, put the minced and seasoned meat
in the centre and cover with more potato; bake this and turn out in a
mould. Tomato sauce goes well with this dish by way of gravy. Baked hash
is just minced meat mixed with gravy, pressed into a mould and baked in
the oven till it will turn out.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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