THE CUCUMBER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 January 1939, Page 8

THE CUCUMBER

SOME POPULAR DISHES. Cucumber ice Cream has become a popular sweet dish, and candied cucumber, prepared like grapefruit peel or waitermelon rind, make an intriguing and novel confection. Here is a cucumber dish from Naples. One cannot do better than make vegetables the staple diet during hot weather. There is the old phrase, “Cool as a cucumber.” They sbem to have heard of it in Naples, too, where they rnake this Neapolitan tart. Take a cucumber, peel, cut in thick rounds, cook for a few minutes in two ounces of butter. Take off, dust with flour, pepper and salt, a pinch of dried herbs, add a small cup of stock. Bring to the boil, and simmer till turning soft — about fifteen minutes. Remove- from heat, thicken with one dessertspoon of flour, and a little butter mixed to a smooth paste, add one egg yolk beaten up in half a cup of milk, and thicken without boiling over the heat. Have ready an open shell of cooked short postry, fill with cucumber mixture, and sprinkle with chopped hard-cooked egg.

Filled cucumber rings -made af delightful garnish to a roast of beef or a grilled steak. Cut cucumber rings one ■inch thick from two medium-sized cucumbers. Pare each slice downward in thin strips, producing a striped effect and parboil for ten minutes in salted water. Then scoop out as much of 'the pulp as possible and fill with a stuffing of a cupful of soft breadcrumbs and one cupful of chopped salted mushrooms or oysters, or tomatoes seasoned with a quarter of a teaspoonful of salt, pepper, and a tablespoonful of chopped parsley. Dot the rings with butler, and bake to a delicate brown in a moderate oven —350 degrees Fah. Serve each cucumber ring on a slice of tomato and sprinkle with chopped parsley.