MENU V

{Febniaty.)

Filets de baxbue k la Bonnefoy.

Foulet k la Toscane.

FroflteroUes au chocolat.

(Eufs k la Russe.

1. Out of a small brill make six neat fillets. With the skin, bones, and trimmings make a nice broth, about three-quarters of a pint enough ;

turn this to a sauce, passing it through the ^fUlfiU^ts a hair sieve to get it smooth, add a table- spoonful of finely chopped parsley and a teaspoonful of minced gherkins. Keep this hot in the bain-marie while you bread-crumb and fry the fillets in boiling fat. Drain, and dry these, sprinkle salt over them, dish in a hot dish upon a paper garnished with parsley and lemon, and serve the sauce separately.

2. This is a useful dish, being negotiable with a cold roast fowl. Begin by cutting up the fowl and taking all the meat in as nice pieces as

you can from the bones. Put this in a Chicken or dish aside, while you chop up all the xoscane. bones, skin, and trimmings of the bird. Choose a stewpan, put the bones into it, cover them with milk and water, bring slowly to the boil, add four ounces of onion, one of celery, one of parsley.

22 FIFTY LUNCHES.

a bouquet, and the chopped stalks and peehngs of a quarter of a pound of fresh mushrooms ; add a seasoning of salt and pepper, and simmer for one hour, then strain ; turn the Hquid to a sauce, passing it through the hair sieve, and adding a tablespoonful of cream ; lay the pieces of fowl in this with the mushrooms which .yielded the trimmings, separately fried and cut into' squares, two ounces of cooked macaroni, cut into quarter inch-lengths, and a table- spoonful of coarsely chopped cooked ham. Heat all up gently, and at the last dust over the whole a fine layer of grated Parmesan. Serve as you would a fricassee in an entree-dish, puree de pommes de terre accompanying.

3. Make the same paste as that described for eclairs (No. 3, Menu iv.), squeeze it out in rounds

instead of oblongs about the size of a ProfiteroUes racquet ball. Bake in the same way, dry, chocolate. ^nd having made an incision in each fill

the cavities of the profiterolles with cream. Arrange on a silver dish and accompany them with chocolate sauce in a boat made in this manner : — Dissolve two ounces of unsweetened chocolate in half a pint of water, add half a stick of vanilla or

a teaspoonful of the essence, two ounces Chocolate gf gifted Sugar, and a squeeze of lemon-

juice ; stir together till creamy, and serve. If sweetened chocolai a la vanille is used neither sugar nor vanilla will be needed. A tablespoonful of cream is an improvement. Some serve the profiterolles in a dish in the sauce, but this has the effect of making

EGGS A LA RUSSE. 23

the former sodden. This dish may be served hot or cold.

4. Break four eggs, separating the yolks from the whites and putting each in separate basins ; mix well without beating, giving each a slight seasoning of salt and white pepper and ^^' f '" a tablespoonful of cream. Next choose a dozen little saucer-shaped bouchee-moulds an inch and a half in diameter, butter them, and three-parts iiU them with the white mixture. Put all the yellow mixture into a buttered shallow fireproof pan (one of the kind sold for small gratins will- do) ; the liquid should be not more than half an inch deep. Now steam each 'of the preparations very gently until set ; then put them aside in the moulds to get cold. To finish, take the small moulds first, and with a vegetable scoop remove enough of the white from the centre of each to form a cavity similar to that left in a hard-boiled egg after removing the yolk, turn the little cups thus formed out- of the moulds, and fill each cavity with a small teaspoonful of fresh caviar, which should be prepared before using with a few drops of lemon-juice and a dusting of Nepaul pepper ; arrange all the little cups of caviar in a circle on a dish, and then turn your attention to the yellow mixture. Out of this stamp as many rings as you have moulds, using two round cutters for the work, the larger one an inch and a half, the smaller an inch in diameter. Drop one of these gently upon the top of each cup, so as to leave the caviar visible in the centre, surrounded by the

24 FIFTY LUNCHES.

yellow ring. All the remnants of yellow should be finely granulated by being pressed through a wire sieve and used as a carpet in the dish containing the cups. Over all a fine lacewoi'k of garden cress care- fully dried may be scattered. By forming the cups of custard a la Royale blanche you insure uniformity of shape ; the cups formed by an ordinary hard- boiled egg, when cut in halves across, rarely have the cavity in the exact centre, one side being some- times so thin as to be quite brittle. Then the mixture with the cream and seasoning is more delicate than plain egg.