A Little Cook Book for a Little Girl | Page 2

and another quart in the inside, and in this last mix the salt and cereal. Put the boiler on the back of the kitchen range, where it will be hardly cook at all, and let it stand all night. If the fire is to go out, put it on so that it will cook for two hours first. In the morning, if the water in the outside of the boiler is cold, fill it up hot, and boil hard for an hour without stirring the cereal. Then turn it out in a hot dish, and send it to the table with a pitcher of cream.
The rather soft, smooth cereals, such as farina and cream of rice, are to be measured in just the same way, but they need not be cooked overnight; only put on in a double boiler in the morning for an hour. Margaret's mother was very particular to have all cereals cooked a long time, because they are difficult to digest if they are only partly cooked, even though they look and taste as though they were done.
Corn-meal Mush
1 quart of boiling water.?1 teaspoon of salt.?4 tablespoons of corn-meal.
Be sure the water is boiling very hard when you are ready; then put in the salt, and pour slowly from your hand the corn-meal, stirring all the time till there is not one lump. Boil this half an hour, and serve with cream. Some like a handful of nice plump raisins stirred in, too. It is better to use yellow corn-meal in winter and white in summer.
Fried Corn-meal Mush
Make the corn-meal mush the day before you need it, and when it has cooked half an hour put it in a bread-tin and smooth it over; stand away overnight to harden. In the morning turn it out and slice it in pieces half an inch thick. Put two tablespoons of lard or nice drippings in the frying-pan, and make it very hot. Dip each piece of mush into a pan of flour, and shake off all except a coating of this. Put the pieces, a few at a time, into the hot fat, and cook till they are brown; have ready a heavy brown paper on a flat dish in the oven, and as you take out the mush lay it on this, so that the paper will absorb the grease. When all are cooked put the pieces on a hot platter, and have a pitcher of maple syrup ready to send to the table with them.
Another way to cook corn-meal mush is to have a kettle of hot fat ready, and after flouring the pieces drop them into the fat and cook like doughnuts. The pieces have to be rather smaller to cook in this way than in the other.
Boiled Rice
1 cup of rice.?2 cups of boiling water.?1 teaspoonful of salt.
Pick the rice over, taking out all the bits of brown husk; fill the outside of the double boiler with hot water, and put in the rice, salt, and water, and cook forty minutes, but do not stir it. Then take off the cover from the boiler, and very gently, without stirring, turn over the rice with a fork; put the dish in the oven without the cover, and let it stand and dry for ten minutes. Then turn it from the boiler into a hot dish, and cover. Have cream to eat on it. If any rice is left over from breakfast, use it the next morning as--
Fried Rice
Press it into a pan, just as you did the mush, and let it stand overnight; the next morning slice it, dip it in flour, and fry, either in the pan or in the deep fat in the kettle, just as you did the mush.
Farina Croquettes
When farina has been left from breakfast, take it while still warm and beat into a pint of it the beaten yolks of two eggs. Let it then get cold, and at luncheon-time make it into round balls; dip each one first into the beaten yolk of an egg mixed with a tablespoonful of cold water, and then into smooth, sifted bread-crumbs; have ready a kettle of very hot fat, and drop in three at a time, or, if you have a wire basket, put three in this and sink into the fat till they are brown. Serve in a pyramid, on a napkin, and pass scraped maple sugar with them.
Margaret's mother used to have no cereal at breakfast sometimes, and have these croquettes as a last course instead, and every one liked them very much.
Rice Croquettes
1 cup of milk.?Yolk of one egg.?1/4 cup of rice.?1 large tablespoonful of powdered sugar.?Small half-teaspoonful of salt.?1/2 cup of raisins and currants, mixed.?1/2 teaspoonful of vanilla.
Wash the rice and put in a double boiler with the milk,