OLD ENGLISH SAVOURY DISHES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 259, 9 June 1944, Page 23

OLD ENGLISH SAVOURY DISHES

E are all interested in working out tasty and nourishing dinners without using much meat; and also in finding fresh ways to serve the less expensive, but no less useful meats, so that they do not become monotonous. I have found some good ideas of this kind among the old English farmhouse recipes; for meat was expensive in olden days, and the frugal farmer’s wife proved the truth of the proverb that "necessity is the mother of invention." Faggot Loaves (This is a favourite Hampshire dish) Half a pound raw liver, 2 medium onions, 2 rashers of bacon, 2 or 3 slices of bread, 2 eggs, 2 tablespoons ‘flour, milk, seaSoning, herbs if liked. Beat eggs and make into batter with flour and milk, adding seasoning and herbs. Mince liver, onion and bacon, catching juice; soak bread in milk. Mix all, blend with batter. Put into greased tins with covers, or in covered piedish. Cook in oven in pan of water. Serve hot or cold in slices. Ribston Pie (A Yorkshire Savoury Dinner) Line a deep piedish with slices of bacon. Cover with slices of onion; sprinkle with a teaspoonful of finelychopped sage, and a little pepper; then cover with a thick layer of apple-slices, and sprinkle with sugar, a little more sage, pepper and salt to taste. Pour in a teacupful of water, and finally put on a crust of good short pastry. Bake for about an hour and a quarter. If preferred, the onion could be par-boiled. Whitby Poloney (Another Yorkshire Recipe) Put 1lb. of lean fresh beef and Ib, of lean ham through the mincer. Prepare Y%lb. of breadcrumbs-have them fine and even. Mix these with the mince, season with salt, pepper, a little ground mace, nutmeg, and a pinch of cayenne. Have a straight-sided jam jar well greased with butter; press in the mixture, cover the top firmly with 2 or 3 layers of greaseproof paper securely tied down. Put into a saucepan of boiling water and for 3 or 4 hours. When cold, turn out carefully. This is delicious cut in slices, for lunch or breakfast or as a sandwich filling. Castleford Toad in the Hole Four nice chops, 42 pint milk, 1 tablespoon flour, 2 eggs, 1 cupful breadcrumbs, 1 teaspoon mixed parsley and thyme, pepper and salt. Trim skin and most fat from chops. Grease a deep piedish, sprinkle with breadcrumbs and minced herbs, well seasoned. Lay the chops on breadcrumbs. Make batter with milk and flour, the 2 eggs well beaten, and pinch of salt. Pour batter over chops, and bake in moderate oven for 1 hour. Should you need more chops, then add a little more milk and flour to batter. Serve with brown gravy and cabbage. Friday's Pie Grease a large piedish with butter, and put in a layer of sliced raw potatoes. Cover with a layer of sliced onions, sprinkling each layer with pepper and salt, and spreading a thin smear

of butter over. Continue the alternate layers of potatoes and onions until the piedish is filled. Pour milk over all (1 pint milk to 2lb. potatoes and 1lb. onions), then put into good oven and cook for 20 minutes or so. Then take out and cover pie with a good short pastry; bake again for 4 hour. Lancashire Liver Puffs This quantity makes a dozen goodsized delicious puffs.,[t takes only %lb. liver, 30z. macaroni, 1 tablespoon flour, Yaoz. butter, 2 eggs, 1 gill milk, 1 tablespoon chopped parsley. Parboil the. liver and boil macaroni in salted water for 20 minutes. Then mince or chop both finely. Make a sauce by melting butter, stir in flour, and when brown, add milk, stirring till it thickens. Then add liver and macaroni, and parsley. When heated through, add eggs well beaten. Then drop large spoonfuls of. mixture into boiling fat. They will puff up and be very light. Mock Goose (Buckinghamshire) Well wash a bullock’s heart, and put it into a saucepan with enough water to cover; add a few cloves and 2 bay leaves. Simmer very gently for 4 or 5 hours; leave in water till next day. Then skim fat off stock. Make a good stuffing with 4 large grated onions, 10 large sage leaves finely chopped, lb. chopped bacon or suet, and %41b. breadcrumbs; and bind with beaten egg. Make this stuffing into forcemeat balls-except for what is needed to stuff the heart. Put the stuffed heart in a baking tin with the forcemeat balls round it, and plenty of dripping. Bake’ in a hot oven for 4 hour. Make a good gravy with part of the stock in which the heart was boiled, strained and thickened. The remainder of the stock can be used for soup with all kinds of vegetables added to it. Cloved Apples Four pounds sound apples, 314Ib. sugar, 2 cups water, 1 dozen cloves. Wipe apples carefully, peel, core, and divide into quarters. Boil sugar, cloves and water to a syrup, add apples, bring to boil, simmer gently till apples are cooked but not broken, Lift out carefully, and drain syrup back into saucepan. Put apples into. small hot glass jars, boil up syrup for 5 minutes longer and use to cover apples. Seal immediately. Clove apples keep really well and are delicious with cold meat, cheese or salad,