The home cook book

TO BROIL MUTTON CHOPS Choose thick chops, or have them cut thick — an inch or, better still, an inch and a half thick. Meat dealers will french chops for you if you wish ; that is, they trim off the narrow meat from the rib, cut off the rib-bone so that only a part of it remains, and the large muscle rounding and nestling in the double-bone forms the chop. With your chop frenched or in ordinary form, proceed as in the directions for broiling beefsteak on page 89. In serving omit the butter, because the chop carries natural fat with it. LAMB CHOPS BROILED Trim from six lamb chops the fat and membrane on the edge — it is apt to impart a disagreeably woolly taste to the meat. Melt some butter in a pie plate and dip the chops in it, covering every bit of the meat with the butter, dredge with flour, salt and pepper, lay in the broiler, and keep turning over a clear hot fire until the meat is done. Set the chops on their ends about a bouquet of parsley and serve immediately. [See illustration, Plate 11. ] BROILED CHOPS FOR AN INVALID French a rib chop by scraping the long part of the bone until all fat is removed. Lay on a clean buttered paper the shape of the chop and cut double. Fold the edges of the paper over and together, thus forming a case. Place on a gridiron, broil six minutes, transfer from the case to a hot platter, and serve at once. TO SERVE COLD MUTTON While you are frying in a saucepan some hashed potatoes, cut large, thin slices from a piece of cold mutton. Lay the mutton round the centre of a platter, letting the pieces overlap one another, and upon each piece drop a teaspoon of currant jelly. Tip the hot hashed potatoes in the centre of the platter and serve. MUTTON AND LAMB 113 A good variation from the plain currant jelly is to whip half a glass of currant jelly with a teaspoon of made mustard until all is a froth, and drop this from a spoon upon the pieces of mutton. Easier than a fork for the beating is a regular egg-beater, MUTTON CROMESKIES Mince cold mutton and season it to your taste with minced onion, salt and pepper. On thin slices of bacon lay as much of the minced mutton as each slice will hold, in other words wrap spoonfuls of the mutton with thin slices of bacon. Fasten the bacon by using wooden toothpicks as skewers, thus forming cromeskies. Dip each of the cromeskies in a frying batter, or in a saucer of raw egg, and then into powdered cracker, drop in deep hot fat, and fry a delicate brown. Serve hot with mashed potato or with plain boiled rice. CROWN ROAST OF MUTTON The rack of mutton or lamb is used for this, and the roast is cut from a loin, curled, and tied in the form of a crown. Or the crown form is obtained from corresponding ribs on either side of the animal being tied together and curled outward. The ribs are chopped apart at the backbone. The chops are frenched — that is, freed from meat toward the sharp end of the rib. The meat at this point may be cut off or scraped to fall over into the centrepiece of the crown. In the centre of the round roast lay chopped mutton or lamb well seasoned and mixed with breadcrumbs in the proportion of one-third crumbs to two-thirds meat. Salt the roast and bake, basting often and allowing an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half. Serve with green peas and mashed potatoes. ROAST LAMB