Page:Australian enquiry book of household and general information.djvu/53

 quick oven, and bake from ten to twenty minutes, according to their size. Serve very hot on toast, with the juice from them poured over.

Stewed Mushrooms.—Trim and peel some large mushrooms. Put into a stew-pan one large tablespoonful of butter; let it melt, and then put in the mushrooms, some salt, pepper and a pinch of pounded mace. Stew till tender then add a tablespoonful of ketchup, or failing that, any sauce you have, and serve on a hot dish. Another way.—Treat them the same as the last recipe, but when nearly done pour in half a cup of good gravy or stock; roll a lump of butter in flour, and thicken with it.

Broiled Mushrooms.—When peeled and trimmed chop up some mushrooms. Make a small case with note-paper, rub the inside with butter, and fill it with the mushrooms. Season with pepper and salt, and stand on a tin plate, either over the fire or in the oven. When they are nearly dry serve on toast that has been well buttered. It was a Chinaman showed me how to do this. He sometimes used to make the cases of pastry, half-baking it before he put it in the mushrooms, and often he laid a poached egg on the top of each. Fried in butter, mushrooms are also very good, and, like tomatoes, they may be added to almost all made dishes with advantage. The pity is we cannot gather them all the year round.

Stewed Peas.—Put into a stewpan a quart of green peas, an onion sliced, and a lettuce shred fine, with very little water. Let it stew two hours, then beat up an egg with a little milk, and stir it in, with a spoonful of butter, pepper, salt, and a dust of flour to thicken it. Serve on buttered toast.

A Vegetarian's Dish.—Fry some snippets of bread; lay them on a dish, making four divisions, and put in each division the following vegetables—stewed cabbage in one, mashed potatoes in the next, mashed turnips in the third, and stewed onions in the fourth. The whole may be garnished with slices of fried carrot, and pieces of boiled cauliflower.

Fried Vegetables.

Ingredients: Cold vegetables, salt, pepper, two or three eggs, one cup of flour, milk.

Mode: Any kind of cold vegetables left from the last meal will do. Chop them up into dice, or better still, if possible, mash them and season with salt and pepper. Make a good stiff batter in a large basin; two or three eggs and the flour with milk to thin it. Now mix in the vegetables, stir all together, and when the fat in the pan is boiling drop a tablespoonful in at a time. Let them brown nicely on both sides and serve.

OTWITHSTANDING all that has been said and written about cookery, the lectures delivered by lady cooks, the lessons given and received, it is the exception, rather than the rule, to find a young lady who can really cook and serve a dinner that is eatable, let alone enjoyable; and strange to say, fewer still can make a loaf of bread. In these colonies, where