Twirled over a buttered fireproof dish, the dressing of grated or sliced cheese could now be put on and all grilled a golden brown.
Sometimes she grated orange peel to mingle with the cheese. Sometimes she boiled a chopped onion with the spaghetti, and a clove as well. Sometimes she covered it over with a cheese sauce which she made carefully, following these directions.
CHEESE SAUCE
A smallish saucepan will waste less, but a medium-sized one is easier to manipulate, even for a small amount. A flat-ended wooden spoon is a boon for mixing. The cheese must be grated ready, as everything happens quickly from now on. Ready-grated Parmesan cheese is most flavourful, and though less therefore is needed, it still is expensive. Good flavoured Cheddar or Cheshire is excellent if left to go hard before grating. Hang it up in a muslin cloth in a cold, airy place, or put it with its paper covering in a cardboard sugar carton in a refrigerator.
Melt a knob of margarine (the size of a large walnut) in the saucepan over moderate heat. Sift in, through the strainer, a heaped dessertspoonful of flour and let it sizzle. Draw it away from the heat and put in a spoonful of milk (hot or cold) and mix it all to a smooth paste. Add another spoonful of milk and mix again, keeping it absolutely smooth. Keep adding milk until the consistency is like moderately thin cream. Put the saucepan back over the heat and stir without stopping until it all comes to the boil, when it will thicken in half a moment. Again, draw it away from the heat, and that is the time, not before, when the grated cheese (an ounce or two) is to be stirred in. Don’t cook it, or it will become stringy. Mix in half a teaspoonful each of salt, pepper and dry mustard, and scoop it over any cooked food—fish, cauliflower, mixed root vegetables, or rice, etc. The golden-brown hue it will assume under the grill will demand another rich colour to go with it, dark green or red things, watercress, chives, tomatoes, pimientos, shredded in no time with a serrated knife.
RAVIOLI
This consists of little mounds of minced meat enclosed between sheets of macaroni paste and stamped out into squares—about an inch. They have to be immersed in water and brought to the boil, then simmered gently, so that they don’t disintegrate, until the macaroni is quite soft. This may take twenty minutes or so.
When the strips, or sheets of these little squares are lifted out of the saucepan, they should be put onto a very hot, buttered plate and, when possible, covered with a dressing of grated cheese, tomato ketchup, or perhaps butter and chopped watercress.
GNOCCHI
A simplified form of this savoury dish is made like this. Half a pint of milk and water is brought to the boil in a saucepan. A heaped tablespoonful of semolina with half a teaspoonful of salt is poured in, stirring all the time. When it begins to thicken, after five minutes of boiling, it is left to become cold and stiff. It is then easy to scoop out almond shapes with a large teaspoon, and set them on a buttered grilling-plate, leaving enough semolina to cover the plate for a similar dish on the following day. A cheese sauce is then poured over the “almonds”, some grated cheese shaken over that and toasted under the grill until it is a golden brown. The underneath has to be made equally hot by setting it for a few minutes over moderate heat.
THE SWEET COURSE
Having conquered the difficulties about providing herself with a meat or a savoury course which she could eat almost at once, the Career Woman began to devise the methods whereby she could prepare her sweet course in advance also. She kept an emergency stock of tinned fruits as well as sealed jars of cream, and she kept a wicker basket of fresh fruits which she sometimes mingled with the tinned fruits to make a salad. In this case, as in many others, she made enough to last for two or more days.
FRUIT SALAD
Into a stone jar she emptied a small tin of fruit—plums, grapes or cherries. Skinning a grapefruit free of the coarse outer and fine inner skin as well, she put in the sections; also the sections of a peeled orange or tangerine, a peeled, quartered pear and a tablespoonful of demerara sugar. If the orange was thin skinned, she sliced it, skin and all to put in.
CITRUS SKINS
She found that the coarser type of orange skin was very juicy and easy to grate, which she did before peeling the fruit, storing the grated peel covered with castor sugar in a covered jam jar.
In a separate jar she stored the grated rind of lemons. In this simple way she had, ready for her use, rich flavouring for mixing into cakes, biscuits, jellies and even savoury dishes.
ORANGE DRINKS
Whatever was left from the portion of orange, as well as all the peel and the pips, she put into a jug with a tablespoonful of sugar, covered it with cold water and left it several days to mature. This she could pour off to drink, and keep filling up with more sugar and water, and the strength remained in it for a week.
FRUIT JELLY
Because she didn’t care for synthetic flavours, she preferred to make jellies from natural fruit juices.
She made enough for two days, never for more, because jellies pick up bacteria and may therefore be unfit to eat after the second day. In fact, she usually made one at a time and left it overnight in a cold place to set, covered with cambric to keep the flies and the dust out but to let the air in to it.
Leaving a level teaspoonful of powdered gelatine to swell in a sundae glass with a dessertspoonful of cold fruit juice for five minutes, she then added a teacupful of the fruit juice, hot, and stirred it until the gelatine had quite dissolved, adding whatever sugar she pleased.
When the jelly had begun to set was the time to sink into it whatever slices or sections of fruit she had, so that they remained poised in it instead of sinking in a heap to the bottom.
LEMON, ORANGE AND GRAPEFRUIT JELLY
There was wisdom, she thought, in a suggestion that came from a friend, to keep a bottle of lemon squash, as well as the orange and the grapefruit squash with which to make jellies from these fruits. She diluted the juice slightly, added more sugar or mixed in any juices left from fruit salad or tinned fruits. At other times she might make the jelly into a “chiffon” (see the recipe for port wine chiffon jelly, p. 83) and set into it small pieces of sponge cake which softened and spread out in the jelly and made a fascinating sweet course, especially when there was some ice-cream to pile over it.
KEEPING ICE-CREAM FROZEN
It’s all very well to buy a block of ice-cream on your way home, but it will soon melt in the atmosphere if there is no refrigerator. But, if it is wrapped in a good thickness of newspaper and then placed between two cushions and left in the shade, it will keep its shape for about three hours.
SEMOLINA PUDDING
This can be made in a wink over a high heat. Half a pint of milk and a level dessertspoonful of sugar is stirred as it comes to the boil in a saucepan. When it is frothily boiling up, a heaped dessertspoonful of semolina is sprinkled in, the stirring continued for a few more minutes while it all thickens, and it is ready to eat.
The difficulties about getting an extra bottle of milk are eliminated if a third of a tin of sweetened condensed milk is diluted with half a pint of water (no extra sugar is needed), stirred until it boils, when the semolina is poured in and cooked as before. These quantities are doubled when one is hungry, or if the first course contains no rice, bread or potato.
GLAZED PEAR
She bought small quantities of unripe pears at intervals, so that she usually had one that was just right. Pressing it gently near the stem to prove that it was soft and therefore ripe, she then peeled it, cut it in half and cut out the core. Setting the half pears flat side down she covered them with fine sugar and left them to absorb it before eating them with cream. She decided before much experience that there is no substitute for real cream with pears or apples. So what she saved in cost with these plentiful, common fruits, she expended in creamy luxury.
When she had some bramble jelly, or crab-apple jelly, she warmed a large spoonful and poured it over the pears, letting it set again to form a glaze.
CHOCOLATE PEAR
/> At another time she would melt a bar of milk chocolate in a cup over gentle heat, pour it over the halved, peeled pear and leave it to become cold, by which time the chocolate had set firmly again.
STEWED PEARS
For this simple sweet she used the hard cooking pears which never ripen. As they are rather tasteless they need sugar, perhaps a spoonful of jam, or some lemon juice and honey in the teacupful of water in which they must be simmered in a closed saucepan to soften them; or, possibly, a few fine slices of grapefruit or orange and some golden syrup. The excess moisture can be evaporated away once the pears are softened, by continuing to cook them with the lid off.
APPLE CRUMBLE
After stewing a sliced apple on a shallow dish with a spoonful of water and sugar (or with a spoonful of golden syrup without water) a pleasant crunchy effect is made by covering the top with breadcrumbs and demerara sugar. Before the underneath of the stewing-plate, or dish, becomes cold (re-heat it if it has), put it under the hot grill to let the sugar melt and the breadcrumbs become brown. They will be partly fruit-sugar soaked, partly crisp, sweet and yet sharp.
CHOCOLATE MOUSSE
This is a special treat and yet, made in this way is simple. The white is drained out of an egg into a mixing basin. The yolk with a two-ounce bar of chocolate is put into a dish over a bowl of hot water and whipped up with a fork as the chocolate melts.
Separately, the white of the egg is whisked to a very stiff froth, then spooned into the chocolate, stirred gently with the mixing fork, and left in a cold place to set. It is ready to eat as soon as it is quite cold.
PORT WINE CHIFFON JELLY
This must be mixed in a strong basin. A level teaspoon ful of crystal jelly is left to swell in a spoonful of cold water for five minutes. A spoonful of hot water is then added, and the basin stood over hot water until the gelatine is quite dissolved. About a level teaspoonful of fine sugar is stirred in, and finally a good-sized wineglassful of port wine. When the jelly begins to set (it sticks to the sides of the basin but is wobbly in the middle), that is the moment when it should be whisked to a stiff froth. It should be left to set in the coldest place possible.
When it is set firm it is ready to eat.
EVAPORATED MILK MOUSSE
However nice a jelly is, fresh cream over it makes it nicer. If there is no fresh cream, evaporated milk must come to the rescue.
In fact, a pleasant cream mousse or whipped cream can be made with evaporated milk, by adding a teacupful of it to a teaspoonful of dissolved, slightly sweetened gelatine, and whisked to a froth when it begins to congeal, just as the port wine chiffon jelly was made.
Any flavouring must be added before the whisking begins, such as a teaspoonful of COCOA, half that amount of COFFEE powder, or a few drops of VANILLA or ALMOND essence, to make that kind of cream mousse.
EVAPORATED MILK
The remains of a tin of unsweetened evaporated milk will keep fresh for a day or two if put into a jug and left open to the air, covered with muslin only, to keep the flies out; or, tightly screwed down in a glass jar in a refrigerator it will keep for several days. But these are the purposes for which it may be used so that, though living alone, one is not inhibited about opening a tin:
For making a cream mousse, or whipped cream with gelatine.
As cream in black coffee.
As cream over fruit, ice-cream or jelly. (Mix a little sugar with it as it is sometimes slightly salty.) To dilute with water to make a cup of chocolate.
To mix with scrambled egg instead of milk.
To mix with cake dough instead of milk.
To mix with egg to make crême caramel.
To mix into mayonnaise as cream.
To mix with icing sugar to make a cake filling.
To mix with purée of spinach or brussels sprouts.
To mix with mashed potatoes instead of milk.
To add to a plate of hot soup as cream.
To mix with icing sugar and cocoa as a chocolate sauce.
For making cheese sauce or other masking sauce.
For making rich custard.
But it is not good with tea as a substitute for cream or milk. And it is useless to attempt to make a junket with it, though it makes a pleasant topping, once the junket is firmly clotted with fresh milk.
*
While she was round and about, or abroad, in pursuit of her career, she had acquired a fascinating collection of airtight and colourful tins. “So I must make biscuits to keep in them,” she said. “It will be so amusing to keep a different kind in each different tin, so that they will look distinguished, even if, at first, my biscuit making may be mediocre.”
Beginning with a simple shortcake, which she could nibble with her sherry, she followed, more successfully than she had hoped, these recipes:
SHORTCAKE
Put three ounces of butter or margarine into a mixing bowl and stand it in hot water to become soft with two ounces of caster sugar. Mix it with a strong fork until it looks as pale and soft as cream, adding a little milk.
Sift into a dry basin four ounces of white flour and a half teaspoonful of salt. Sift this into the cream, mixing it evenly until it becomes a stiff dough. Dredge flour on a tray or whitewood table-top; put the dough on that, flour the top of it, flour the rolling pin and roll it out—about an eighth of an inch thick or more—and lift it on to a greased and lightly floured baking tin. Cut it into biscuit shapes while it is on the tin, and bake it in a low to moderate oven, say 350° F. (Mark 4 Gas), until it becomes light yellow. Spread fine sugar on top before cooking, to make it shine.
The centre of the oven is the best place to put the baking tin, where the heat is even and where the hot air can circulate freely.
Biscuits should never be left until they become brown or they will be very overcooked.
They should be lifted off the baking tin, inverted over a wire mesh and left to become crisp as the moisture evaporates.
RICE BISCUITS
Leave three ounces of margarine with three ounces of sugar in a mixing basin over hot water to soften while you sift four ounces of flour, and half a teaspoonful of salt with an ounce of ground rice. The ground rice gives a very “short” (brittle) texture. Sift this into the margarine-sugar, which has been creamed as for the shortcakes, and mix it thoroughly. Roll out the dough thinly on to a floured board or table. Cut into squares or rounds with a pastry cutter dipped in flour and lift them on to a greased, floured, thin baking tin. Bake them at 400° F. (Mark 6) for 10 to 15 minutes in the middle of the oven.
RICH NUT BISCUITS
Make a cream with three ounces of butter, three ounces of sugar and three drops of vanilla essence. Drop into it a fresh egg and beat it with a lifting movement to keep it airy.
Sift five ounces of self-raising flour, with half a teaspoonful of salt, and sift this into the egg-cream, making a soft, malleable dough. Roll it out, a clump at a time on a floured board. Shake over the top some chopped nuts—brazil, walnuts or almonds, rolling them lightly into the dough. Lift this on to the baking tin and mark it into strips with a sharp-pointed knife before baking at a low to moderate heat for about twenty minutes. The greater the proportion of fat to flour, the lower should be the temperature of the oven.
Meantime, roll out another clump of dough and shake over it some desiccated coconut, rolling that in so that it sticks, and bake it in exactly the same way as the other nut biscuits.
When they are cooked, lift them on to an airy wire mesh nutty side up, to let them dry off.
ALMOND BISCUITS
Allow two ounces of butter and two ounces of sugar to melt in a basin with four drops of almond essence. Cream it with a fork; stir in two ounces of ground almonds and two tablespoonfuls of milk.
Drain the white out of an egg and whisk it stiff. Mix the yolk into the almond cream. Sift two ounces of self-raising flour with half a teaspoonful of salt. Sift it into the cream, lifting it gently until it is well assimilated. Spoon in the egg white and mix gently to
keep it frothy.
The oven should be at 350° F. (Mark 4 for Gas) before these are put in. Take a teaspoonful at a time and drop it on to a thin, greased baking tin. Let it spread, and allow room for that when placing the next teaspoonful.
Decorate them if you like with a snippet of whatever crystallized fruit you may have—angelica, cherry, pineapple or apricot—just one in the centre while the frothy dough is moist. Try baking them on edible rice paper.
Shake a little caster sugar over the biscuits before baking to give them a glistening effect when cooked.
In fifteen minutes or less they should be cooked, so lift them on to a wire grill with a flexible knife and leave them to evaporate and become crisp.
When they are quite cold, put the biscuits into an airtight tin, to store.
If they become limp through exposure to air, re-crisp them for a minute in a hot oven.
PASTRY IN ADVANCE
“I’m not going to start making pastry at this hour of the evening,” said the Career Woman.
Cooking Alone Page 6
