The home cook book

Salt the slices of eggplant and lay them in a china dish. Cover with a cloth and lay a weight on the cloth to press out the bitter juice and make the vegetable tender. Let stand half an hour. Then wash off the salt and dry the slices in a fresh cloth. Dip them in white of egg and then in flour, and fry in a deep pan of boiling lard. STUFFED EGGPLANT Boil an eggplant half an hour. Then cut it in two hemispheres and scrape out the pulp. Mash with two tablespoons of butter, and salt and pepper to taste. Beat the seasoned pulp, put it back in the skins, sprinkle with breadcrumbs, and brown in the oven a few minutes before serving. GREENS Wash young spring dandelions, or beet tops, or purslane, or sourdock, in several waters before putting in boiling water. Cook for an hour or more — that is, cook till tender. The time varies with the condition of the greens. Add salt half an hour before they are done. When done, drain, press in bowl or mold, and serve with some such fat meat as boiled ham and a dash of vinegar. Cooked dandelions may also be made into a salad, served with a French dressing or mayonnaise. KALE Strip off the leaves and wash them thoroughly. Then cook till tender in boiling water. Drain, season with salt, butter, and pepper, and serve with hard-boiled egg cut in slices and laid over the pressed kale. A jowl of the pig or a ham end is sometimes cooked with the kale for the flavor it gives the vegetable and for a meat to eat with it. TO COOK KOHLRABI Follow rules for cooking turnips. STEWED MUSHROOMS Be sure you have the edible mushroom, not the poisonous toadstool. Scrape the stem and cut off the earthy part. Wash in cold water and take the skin from the top. Put them in a porcelain saucepan, half cover with water and stew till tender, which will be in about twenty minutes or half an hour. Salt, thicken, allowing a tablespoon of flour stirred in a tablespoon of butter to a pint of the mushrooms. Pepper may be added if wished. Canned mushrooms are stewed in the same way, requiring less cooking. MUSHROOMS STUFFED WITH CHICKEN Procure eight or ten good-sized fresh mushrooms of an even size, cut off the stems, remove the gills, peel neatly, drop them as soon as peeled in a bowl of cold water, to which one gill of lemon- juice has been added. Chop the mushroom stems fine and place a saucepan with a small fine-chopped white onion and one tablespoon of butter over the fire. Cook two minutes. Add the chopped mushroom stems. Cook slowly five minutes, season with one-quarter of a teaspoon of salt, a little pepper, and fine chopped parsley. Remove, and when cold divide this mixture among the well-drained mushrooms. Chop fine the breast of a chicken and rub it through a sieve, then weigh it; there should be four ounces, good weight. Put the meat in a bowl, add, in small portions, two and a half ounces of butter, stirring continually with a potato masher. When this is well mixed, add slowly the whites of two eggs and mix well. Season with half a teaspoon of salt, a little nutmeg, and cayenne pepper. Place for one hour on ice, then add half a pint of whipped cream. Fill the mushrooms with this forcemeat.