22 NOVEMBER 1957, Page 34

CZ -Gilt

By ROBIN McDOUALL

4/A A MONG other needless waste, due to lack of

forethought, he [R. L. Stevenson] threw away a cold leg of mutton, a loaf of white bread, a milk bottle and an egg-whisk !' writes Mr. Aldington. It takes courage to travel from the Cevennes to Scotland in warm weather with a cold leg of mutton, a loaf of white bread, a milk bottle—was it full or empty?—and an egg-whisk. An egg-whisk, particularly, exposes one to ridi- cule.

A woman's magazine once asked me to do an article on What to do with Left-overs. I wired back : 'Buy a Great Dane.' A Great Dane would have solved 50 per cent. of Stevenson's problem —and might have cost less than the donkey for which, Mr. Aldington complains, Stevenson paid too much. The problem of `left-overs'—or `remains,' as they used still more discouragingly to be called—nevertheless remains. The solution is, surely, not to have any. The avocado-chop- pot-de-creme type of meal leaves no left-over problem except for the washer-up. Alternatively, buy no more than you and your guests can com- fortably eat. If they still look hungry at the end of the meal, give them fruit and cheese. This, you may say, creates a left-over-cheese problem. The solution for large households is to have a Stilton; for small, to have a piece of English cheddar which can become cooking cheese.

`Night starvation' is a great help with remains and vice versa. Apart from such obvious things as bread-and-dripping, it is surprising how good the most unexpected things taste in the middle of the night : Thame tart, curry, steak-and-kidney pudding, fish soup. They are better—as, indeed, nearly everything is—from a cold larder than from a refrigerator. If food still remains the next day, it is usually better to eat it as it is than to try to disguise it. If the Sunday joint was good hot, it will be even better cold—much better than hash or rissoles. Ring the changes with rowan jelly, mint jelly, Cumberland, cranberry, horse- radish sauce, baked or cold potatoes, take your choice of salads and go on eating down to the bone. (Most cold vegetables, by the way, are better as a salad with vinaigrette than tossed into a stockpot and forgotten.) It is worth doing something with a ham before you reach the bone, as potted ham is so good and so easy to make. You just mince it (with not too much fat), add mustard, mace, nutmeg and melted butter and bake it in a bain-marie for half an hour.

For those of us who like what Mrs. Beeton called 'cold meat cookery,' it is sometimes neces- sary to cheat and create remains. If.you like hash, the secret is not to re-cook the cold meat but to heat it by pouring an absolutely boiling sauce over it. 'Sauces d'accompagnement des eminces' suggested by Montagne et Salles are : 'Bordelaise; chasseur; diable; hachee; piquante; poivrade; romaine; 'ornate.' Yes, hash is eminces; mince is hachis (like endive and endive). For mince to be good, all the fat, gristle and tendons must be cut off, the meat chopped fine, tossed in butter and quickly heated in an onion-impregnated cream or gravy sauce. The proportions of meat to sauce must be so nicely adjusted that the mince is neither runny nor dry. (A creamy chicken mince, using only the breast, with poached eggs on it, is not to be sniffed at.)

Our hearts sink when we see 'ragout' or `fricassee' on an English hotel menu. Here, they are regarded as ways of using remains: in France,

they are made with fresh, uncooked meat. The conventional receipts are in Escoffier and Tante Marie (among others). Montagne et Salles give the following garnitures for fricassee de volaille: 'concombres (en gousses) ituves au beurre; celeris-raves en quartiers, pares, cults au beurre: petites carottes glacees; morilles; pointes d'as- perges; fonds d'artichauts; printaniere, truffes. et chant pignons.'

' "All millionaires love a baked apple," Lady George murmured' in Vainglory. Similarly, all duchesses love cottage pie. But it must be made with fresh steak. Remove all the fat. Chop the meat fine. Chop some onion fine and fry it gently in a little butter. Add the beef and colour it.

Add a little beef gravy (not something unmen- tionable out of a bottle or cube), salt, pepper, Worcester sauce—nutmeg, if you like. Put this in a soufflé dish and cover it with freshly-made mashed potato, made with lots of butter and milk. Brown in the oven.

What about collops? 'Take,' says Charles Carter (1730), 'a Rump, or the Inside of a Sur- loin, and cut it in small thin Slices, and hack them well; then season with Pepper and Salt, and a little minc'd Shallot; then fry them oil very quick, and take the Fat from them; put in a Dash of Flower and a little Gravy, some Capers and Cucumbers; toss them up quick, and so serve them away.'

This is not far from the hamburger—in polite American society 'chopped beef.' I quote The Gourmet Cookbook : `Trim six slices of bread and soak it for ten minutes in one cup red wine and one cup water. Add four tablespoons finely chopped onion, four teaspoons salt and a generous dash of freshly ground black pepper. Mix well and add two pounds 'ground beef, not too lean; Form the mix- ture into twelve flat cakes and roll the cakes in fine breadcrumbs. Let the coating set. Fry quickly in hot fat in a skillet until the cakes are brown and crusty on both sides. Serve with hot mustard.'

But it is a long way from the boarding-house rissole.

I should like to write in an American magazine : 'Roast a turkey and throw away everything except the cuisses.' An American publisher turned down my cookery book because I had made disparag- ing remarks about the national bird. (I was nearly boycotted in some quarters here for a disparag- ing remark about plaice.) The best part of a turkey is a devilled leg. Remains of fish can be made into fish-cakes, not into fish soup and not into a good fish-pie. Remains of salmon make wonderful kedgeree —so does lobster—but remains of white fish do not. Smoked haddock makes the best kedgeree, but, if you must cook it beforehand, don't make it hard by keeping it, flaked, in a refrigerator for forty-eight hours. Similarly, the rice for

kedgeree must not be old, hard and frozen. (This applies, too, to rice for rice salad—a dish for the imaginative cook.)

The problem of left-over caviare I have only once had to solve. As an undergraduate, I ordered some from Jackson's for a smart lun- cheon party. I had no idea how much was needed for eight.* I had the remains for breakfast the next day. I ate it like porridge. With a spoon. Standing up.

* 1 lb. (now 12 gns.) was then 37s. 6d.