Page:Australian enquiry book of household and general information.djvu/26

22 one teaspoonful of salt, one pint of groats or oatmeal, 1lb. pig’s fat, half a cup of bread crumbs, one tablespoonful of sage, dried and powdered, one teaspoonful dried thyme, allspice, pepper, one teacupful of cream or new milk.

Mode: These can only be made when killing a pig, as it is pig’s blood of which they are made. Put the salt into the blood while it is warm from the body, and keep stirring till it is cold. Simmer the groats or oatmeal in very little water till cooked. There must be no gruel. Chop up the fat, which must be from the inside of the pig, and add to it the sage, thyme, all-spice, pepper, and salt, and the cream or milk. When the blood is cold, strain, and add to it the other ingredients. When well mixed fill the skin, which has been cleansed and prepared for it, tie in lengths of about eight or nine inches, and then boil for half an hour, taking care to prick them, to prevent them bursting.

Ingredients: Oatmeal, beef suet, one onion, pepper and salt.

Mode: Brown some oatmeal in the oven or before a hot fire, and mix it with double its quantity of beef suet, chopped or minced fine. Boil the onion and chop it fine with pepper and salt, mix all together, put into the skins, and boil for one hour. They will keep some time in bran. Parboil when wanted, and grill on a grid-iron.

N many families the joint of beef or mutton has sufficient meat to last the household several days. Then the great thing is to know how to make it up, to disguise it in several ways, so that you may have several different dishes from the one foundation or joint. Stews, hashes, meat pies, and curries are all familiar to every cook, and the three first require no word from me, there being but the oueone [sic] way of making them. Curry, however, is a dish few cooks attempt with any great success. The usual mixture of meat, flour, and curry powder, one constantly meets with as an extra dish at a full table, is only called curry by courtesy, bearing but slight resemblance to what it should be.

It is wonderful what unpromising material can be curried to advantage. Many years ago, when living in the bush, I was called upon to provide breakfast for a large shooting party. Being only a young housekeeper I was in real distress when I looked into my bare larder. However, necessity is the mother of invention, and I invented some new dishes upon that occasion, which have been favorites with me ever since. I had some red herrings. I steeped half a dozen of them in hot water to remove some of the salt, then I removed all the skin and picked all the meat from the bones, and curried it in milk like egg curry. That was one dish. The next