SALADS MAKE EASY MEALS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 556, 17 February 1950, Page 22

SALADS MAKE EASY MEALS

N summer the harassed housewife need not worry about what to have for dinner. She can always fall back upon a salad. This can be a real mixture, or it can be very special and delicate. It may contain left-over fish, corned beef or ham, or crayfish, sardines, hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes, onion, cucumber, radishes, carrots, all raw, besides potato, green peas, green and broad beans, asparagus and cauliflower flowerets, all cooked. Fruits should have a place with the vegetables. Slices of apples, peaches, oranges and bananas all combine well with them, and many people like a few cooked and stoned prunes. Cheese should always find a place, sliced or shredded. In any case, the foundation of a salad should be lettuce or water--eress, or the tender heart of raw cabbage, chopped. Coleslaw ; Three cups finely-shredded white cabbage, a little grated onion, 1 tablespoon minced parsley. Combine with French dressing and serve very cold. An interesting colour-touch is to serve this white cabbage coleslaw in crisp red cabbage leaves, or use red cabbage instead of white. Dressing for Slaw : : {wo and a-half tablespoons butter, 14 teaspoon dry mustard, 1-3rd teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon each sugar and flour, 1 egg, % cup top milk (sweet or sour), 14 cup vinegar. Melt butter in double saucepan, stir in seasonings and flour, add egg well-beaten, then cream. Cook and stir over hot water until beginning to thicken. Gradually add vinegar and stir till creamy. Cottage Cheese As well as generous slices of pasteur-. ised cheese, or shredded ordinary cheese, make a point of using a lot of cottage cheese this summer., It is excellent in every way, and most people like it, or soon learn to like it. In individual salad plates, use small curled separate lettuce leaves, fill one with a generous spoonful of cottage cheese, another with chopped cucumber, another with tomato slices or cold cooked peas, and another with chopped cold cooked new potato. Put wedges of tomato in between. The cottage cheese gives the solid, protein touch. Most families can make their own every day with any sour milk left. Just" put the sour curds in a bag or piece of muslin, tie and hang to drain all night over a basin. The whey goes into making scones. Scrape out curds, add salt to taste and press into a basin or cup, according to quantity. If you have enough, put a plate on top and a weight. Then they turn out solid. Or you can use them freshly chopped. Sardine Salad Dice 4 medium cooked cold new potatoes, slice. 2 big apples. Flake 1 or 2 tins sardines, Mix all well. Put on lettuce leaves, or shredded lettuce, with your favourite mayonnaise. Crayfish Salad Line crayfish shell with a lettuce leaf, not hiding the outside red colour, fill with finely-chopped crayfish meat, put

grated cheese on top, then slices of harde boiled egg, chopped apples and diced celery. Finish with dabs of mayonnaise, and serve with extra mayonnaise if liked. Salad Dressing : Beat 2 eggs, add 6 teaspoons sugar, 1 tablespoon butter, 8 tablespoons vinegar, 1 teaspoon mustard, pepper and salt to taste. Add lastly, slowly, 1 small cup: milk. Mix, well. Stand in jug in boiling water. Boil till it thickens, stirring occasionally. Italian Dressing Measure 3 parts best salad oil to 1 part vinegar. Drop oil slowly into vinegar, beating well. Add salt and pepper

to taste. A few drops onion juice may be added. Popular Dressing Mix in basin 1 teaspoon dry mustard, 42 teaspoon pepper, and 1 teaspoon salt. Pour slowly on to these, stirring all the time, 1 tin sweetehed condensed milk. When beaten thoroughly with a fork, add gradually sufficient vinegar to make dressing sharp enough for your liking. If too thick, add water, Taste, and add more salt and pepper if liked. For the average taste use empty milk-tin three parts full of vinegar and then filled with water. This makes a lot of mayonnaise, which keeps almost indefinitely. ' Continental Dressing Well mix 1 teaspoon each mustard and salt and 14 teaspoon pepper with 1 raw egg yolk and 112 tablespoons vinegar. Then stir in gradually 2-3 tableyns best salad oil. Finally blend in 2 tablespoons cream. Salt and mustard can be varied according to taste. Cream Dressing This is especially good with any salad which has potato as an ingredient. Pound finely 2 hard-boiled egg yolks, mix in 44

teaspoon each of salt and castor sugar, gradually stir in one tablespoon vinegar, then add % cup fresh or sour cream. Tomato Mayohntise Use ¥2 cup any good thick mayonnaise, and work in % cup of cléar tomato juicé with a wooden spdor. Chill for ¥2 hour. Especially good with mixéd salad, Or a fish dish,