Cookery for every household

1494. Vegetable Pie, 2 2 cupfuls cooked macaroni. Seasoning. 1 cupful cooked celery. 1 cooked cauliflower. 3 or 4 tomatoes. 2 oz. grated cheese. 2 table-sps. chopped onion. 1 oz. butter or dripping. 1 tea -cupful brown sauce or gravy. Potato pastry. Melt the butter or dripping in a saucepan, put in the chopped onion and fry it a golden brown. Then pour in the sauce or gravy, simmer a few minutes, and season rather highly with pepper and salt. Have the macaroni cut in small pieces and mix it with the grated cheese. Cut the celery and cauliflower also in small pieces, and peel and slice the tomatoes. Now take a greased pie dish and arrange in it the different ingredients in layers, pouring the sauce with the onions over all. Allow the contents of the dish to become cold, and then cover with potato pastry or any other plain pastry, and according to directions given on p. 337. 1495. Vol-au-vent A vol-au-Vont is one of the most recherche dishes of French cuisine, and one which the English cook is somewhat afraid of attempting. However, if once the making of puff pastry has been thoroughly mastered, the making of the pastry case itself should not present much difficulty. In fact, this can very often be bought ready made from the pastrycook’s, although, of course, this will make it more expensive. The filling is the most importaht part of the vol-au-vent. The foundation of this is a rich sauce of some kind, either white or brown, with a variety of different garnishes, such as small quenelles, mushrooms, truffles, cockscombs, small pieces of sweetbread, chicken, brains, &c., or if it is a fish vol-au-vent, quenelles of fish, small fillets of fish, pieces of lobster, oyster, mussels, &c. The garnish must always be prepared and cooked beforehand and then made thoroughly hot in the sauce before being put into the pastry case. The filling may be made more or less elaborate according to fancy, but the small quenelles are a very favourite ingredient in all French vol-au-vent ; cooked macaroni, too, cut in small pieces, is often mixed with the other ingredients. A vol-au-vent can also be made sweet by filling it with a good compote or puree of fruit and whipped cream. This is delicious. To Make a Vol-au-vent Case. — The very lightest form of puff pastry must be used for this, and it should only have had six turns (Recipe 1447). Roll out the pastry very evenly to about £ inch in thickness, and let it rest for a few minutes before cutting, to allow for shrinking. Then take an oval or round cutter the size required, and lay it on the top of the pastry, keeping it quite £ inch from the edge in order to have a perfectly even piece of paste. Then cut round with a sharp-pointed knife, holding the knife slanting outwards from the cutter so as to make the lower edge of the pastry slightly wider in circumference than the upper. Now remove the cutter, and place the cut piece of pastry on a wetted baking tin with the under side uppermost. During the baking the upper part of the vol-au-vent will shrink in width and become the same size as that which rests on the tin. Now brush over the top of the vol-auvent with beaten egg, and with a knife or cutter mark a smaller round on the top, which can be removed afterwards to form the lid. Score the top across lightly with the knife, and pierce the pastry through to the tin two or three times.