Virginia Cookery-book

Rice being a South Carolina staple, to South Carolinians we are indebted for the best modes of preparing it. In Virginia they used generally to cook it into a mushy paste that was anything but appetizing. The following recipe may be depended upon for cooking the rice so that each grain shall be distinct, white, and tender : Wash it clean ; then put two cups of it into two and a half cups of cold water; add a teaspoonful of salt; cover the pan close, and set it on a brisk fire; let it boil ten minutes; then pour off most of the water, and let it remain a quarter of an hour to soak and dry near the fire, but not over it. A Chinese Cook Tells How to dress Rick "Wash well; much wash in cold water — the rice flour make him stick; water boil — all ready — very fast. Throw him in — rice can't burn, water shake him too much. Boil quarter of an hour or little more 5 rub one rice in thumb and finger ; if all rub away, him quite done. Put rice in colander, hot water run away ; pour cup of cold water on him. Put back rice in saucepan ; keep him covered near the fire, then rice all ready. Eat him up." This being interpreted means that rice must be well picked and washed through several waters, and put on to boil in plenty — that is to say, two quarts — of water to one pint of rice. After boiling for fifteen minutes, if you pour the contents of the saucepan into a colander the water will pour off looking very much like starch. Now give the rice a bath of cold water, and return to the saucepan with just what adheres, and, setting the rice on the back of the stove, let it steam itself dry there. It is well to stir it up with a fork once or twice while it is thus waiting, to prevent its sticking to the sides of the pan. Moreover, when rice is served never let the butter be seen in little pools on top. If hot meats with gravy are to be eaten at the same time, better have no butter at all ; but if butter you must have, let it be mixed through and through the whole dish as equally as may be. Salt to be added at table. Baked Rick. Boil half a pint of rice by either of the recipes given above, put it in a quart baking-dish, with a dessert-spoonful of butter, a pint of milk, and a beaten eg^y with a teaspoonful of salt. Bake for half an hour, and you have an excellent winter vegetable. Some persons fry rice, but, to our mind, it is too delicate in flavor to bear this mode of cooking. To Fry Salsify. Scrape the roots well; boil and mash them up fine; make a batter of two table-spoonfuls of flour and an egg ; make the salsify up into little cakes, dip them in the bat^ ter, and fry nicely, seasoning previously with pepper and salt. To Stew Salsify, Boil your salsify, the evening before you wish it for dinner, in water to Which a spoonful of vinegar has been added; after boiling till half done cut across into small pieces, and returning to the kettle let them simmer until they are soft; take them off, and leave them in the water, covered up in a china bowl or dish, until you use them. Put a lump of butter in a saucepan, and when it is nearly dissolved flour it well; throw in the yolk of an egg, or, omitting the egg, a gill of sweet cream ; stir it well on the fire. Just before you pour this sauce on the salsify add pepper, salt, and (for those who like it) a little vinegar. To Bake Salsify. Boil until the skin comes off easily; slice them; put them into a vegetable-dish — a layer of salsify, a layer of bread-crumbs, a little sprinkling of salt and pepper, with a covering of butter, in slices as thin as you can cut it ; repeat until full, having bread-crumbs as the last layer ; then pour on as much milk as the dish will hold and bake it brown. Allow half an hour or three-quarters for the baking. To Stew Spinach.