Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties Part 13

Cook the meats of English walnuts in well-seasoned chicken stock until tender; remove the brown skin and break in pieces; when cold mix with chicken and celery, and proceed as in preceding recipes. The walnuts give the salad a flavor similar to that produced in France by the use of truffles.

=Chicken-and-Fresh-Mushroom Salad.=

Peel mushroom caps, break in pieces, and saute in melted b.u.t.ter five or six minutes with a slice of onion; add chicken liquor or hot water and let simmer until tender. Remove from the liquor, cover, and set aside to cool. Add the liquor and the peelings and stalks of the mushrooms to the liquid in which the chicken is to be cooked. Use the chicken and mushrooms with celery or lettuce in any recipe for chicken salad.

=Chicken Salad, No. 3.=

Arrange the salad upon the centre of the dish and mask with mayonnaise; then with pastry bag and tube pipe the dressing in some fanciful design.

Surround with a border of aspic jelly, tinted a delicate green. The jelly may be cut in blocks or triangles, or into small cubes, and then ma.s.sed about the salad. Cut the aspic in a cold room; first dip the knife in hot water and wipe dry.

=Chicken Salad, No. 4.=

Cut one cuc.u.mber and one bunch of round radishes in thin slices, and add two-thirds a cup of shredded celery. Season with four tablespoonfuls of oil, two tablespoonfuls of vinegar or lemon juice, half a teaspoonful of salt and a dash of paprica. Put on a bed of shredded lettuce or on heart leaves of lettuce; cover with three cups of chicken cut in cubes and marinated an hour or more with four tablespoonfuls of oil, two tablespoonfuls of lemon juice or vinegar, half a teaspoonful of salt and a dash of white pepper. Mask with mayonnaise. Arrange some bits of celery, an inch and a half in length and curled on one end, about the salad, with a bit of yolk of egg in the centre of each. Or, instead of the celery and yolk of egg, use sliced radishes (do not remove the red skin), having the slices overlap one another. Finish the top with tuft of lettuce or curled celery and yolk of egg.

=Mushroom Salad with Medallions of Chicken.=

Bone a chicken, fill with forcemeat, and cook until tender in stock; then press between two dishes until cold. Cut in slices and stamp in rounds. Stamp out an equal number of rounds from cooked tongue. Spread these with "green b.u.t.ter" (see Green-b.u.t.ter Sandwiches) and place the rounds of chicken evenly on the tops. Coat these with white chaud-froid sauce and decorate in some design with truffles, ham or tongue. When the sauce has set, brush over the medallions with aspic jelly, cold but not set. When thoroughly cold stamp out with a round cutter. Drain and dry a can of white b.u.t.ton mushrooms; toss them about in cold aspic until they are well coated. When the jelly has become fixed about them, pile high in the centre of a serving-dish; arrange the medallions about them, resting on delicate leaves of lettuce. Serve mayonnaise or tartare sauce with the salad. Sweetbreads may be subst.i.tuted for the chicken, and fresh mushrooms for the canned.

=Mousse-de-Poulet Salad.=

Scald one cup of milk, cream or _well-reduced_ chicken stock (the last is preferable); beat the yolks of three eggs slightly, add one-fourth a teaspoonful, each, of common salt and celery salt, and a dash of paprica, and cook as a boiled custard. Remove from the fire and add one-fourth a package of gelatine (one tablespoonful of granulated gelatine), softened in one-fourth a cup of chicken liquor or water.

Strain over half a cup of cooked chicken (white meat), chopped and pounded in a mortar and pa.s.sed through a sieve. Stir over ice water until the mixture is perfectly smooth and begins to set, then fold into it one cup of whipped cream. Turn into a ring mould, and, when chilled and well set, turn on to a bed of lettuce and fill in the centre with equal parts of celery and English walnuts, blanched, sliced and mixed with a French dressing.

The half-cup of chicken, well pressed down, should weigh four ounces.

The chicken broth should be strong and well flavored. Either one cup of whipped cream, or one cup of cream, whipped, may be used. The latter gives a firmer mousse, more p.r.o.nounced in flavor; the former, a mousse of a lighter and more delicate consistency, and one more delicate in flavor.

=Mousse-de-Poulet, No. 2.=

Mould the mousse in small cups; turn out on to a slice of chilled tomato resting upon a lettuce leaf; garnish with mayonnaise dressing, decorating both the tomato and the mousse.

=Mousse-de-Poulet, No. 3.=

Mould the mousse in a ring mould and fill in the centre with equal parts of cuc.u.mber or asparagus tips and diced sweetbread; marinate the sweetbread with French dressing, and drain thoroughly before mixing with the cuc.u.mber or asparagus. Garnish with mayonnaise dressing.

=Mousse-de-Poulet, No. 4.=

Fill in the centre of the ring with diced cuc.u.mbers and sliced radishes, mixed with cream dressing. Garnish with cream dressing, using pastry bag and tube, and radishes cut to resemble roses.

=Mousse-de-Poulet, No. 5.=

Fill in the centre of the ring with mushrooms and sweetbread dressed with a French dressing. If the b.u.t.ton mushrooms (canned) are used, cut in quarters; if fresh mushrooms are at hand, remove the stems and peel the caps; break into pieces and saute in a little hot b.u.t.ter; then add hot water or stock and let simmer until tender (fifteen or twenty minutes). Drain and chill before using.

=Turkey-and-Chestnut Salad.=

Prepare the chestnuts as previously directed, using twice as much turkey meat, light or dark, cut into small cubes. Serve with lettuce and French, boiled or mayonnaise dressing, as desired. Marinate and drain the meat before adding the nuts.

=Duck-and-Olive Salad.=

Cut the meat from a duck in small pieces, and slice pim-olas very thin; use two tablespoonfuls of pim-olas to a cup of meat. Serve on a bed of cress with a French dressing.

=Duck-and-Orange Salad.=

Slice the oranges lengthwise; use twice as much flesh as fruit. Dress with oil, salt and paprica, and serve on lettuce leaves.

=Ham Salad.=

Soak half a tablespoonful of granulated gelatine in one tablespoonful and a half of cold water, and dissolve in three-fourths a cup of hot chicken liquor. Strain over one cup of chopped ham and stir until the mixture begins to thicken, then fold in one cup of _thick_ cream beaten stiff; add, also, a few grains of paprica and salt, if needed. Mould in a ring mould, and, when set and cold, turn from the mould; fill in the centre with lettuce arranged like a cup, and fill the cup with mayonnaise. Or, serve with French dressing.

=Bacon Salad.=

Cut six or eight slices of tender bacon into small squares and fry until they are delicately browned; then drain on soft paper. Heat six tablespoonfuls of the fat and two tablespoonfuls of vinegar or lemon juice; beat together the yolks of three eggs and one-fourth a teaspoonful, each, of paprica and mustard, and cook with the fat and vinegar over hot water until the mixture thickens slightly. When the dressing is cold cut a head of lettuce into narrow ribbons, toss the lettuce and bits of bacon together, and mix with the dressing. Serve at once.

=Italian Salad.=

(MISS COHEN.)

INGREDIENTS.

2 herrings, soaked in milk over night.

3 boiled potatoes, cut in very small dice.

2 tablespoonfuls of cuc.u.mber pickles, chopped fine.

1 tablespoonful of capers, chopped fine.

2 small boiled beets, cut fine.

1/2 a pound (1 cup) of cold roast chicken, cut fine.

1/2 a pound (1 cup) of boiled tongue, cut fine.

2 apples, pared and finely chopped.

2 carrots, cooked and finely chopped.

1 celery root, cooked and chopped.

1/2 a cup of pecan nuts, broken fine.

A little onion juice.

_Method._--Mix the ingredients together thoroughly; add mayonnaise to moisten well. Serve on a flat dish. Mask the top with mayonnaise, then divide into squares like a checker-board, using fine-shredded pimento or pickled beet to mark the divisions; fill in alternate squares with sifted yolk of hard-boiled egg and the remaining squares with chopped white of egg. Garnish the edge with parsley, and set in the centre half a hard-boiled egg cut lengthwise in points and filled with capers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Spinach and Egg Salad.