DRESSED MACCARONI

After careful and repeated trial of different modes of dressing various kinds of maccaroni, we find that in preparing them with Parmesan cheese, unmixed with any of a more mellow nature, there is always a chance of failure, from its tendency to gather into lumps; we would therefore recommend the inexperienced reader to substitute for it in part, at least, any finely flavoured English cheese; and the better to ensure its blending smoothly with the other ingredients (when neither white, nor any other thickened sauce is used with it), to dissolve the butter, and to stir to it a small teaspoonful of flour, before any liquid is added, then carefully to mix with it the cream or gravy, as directed for _Sauce Tournée_, Chapter V., and to give this a boil before the maccaroni and cheese are added: if gently tossed as these become hot, the whole will be smooth, and the cheese will adhere properly to the paste. Four ounces of pipe maccaroni is sufficient for a small dish, but from six to eight should be prepared for a family party where it is liked. The common English mode of dressing it is with grated cheese, butter, and cream, or milk. French cooks substitute generally a spoonful or two of very strong rich jellied gravy for the cream; and the Italians, amongst their many other modes of serving it, toss it in rich brown gravy, with sufficient grated cheese to flavour the whole strongly; they send it to table also simply laid into a good _Espagnole_ or brown gravy (that drawn from the _stufato_,[140] for example), accompanied by a plate of grated cheese. Another, and an easy mode of dressing it is to boil and drain it well, and to put it into a deep dish, strewing grated cheese on every layer, and adding bits of fresh butter to it. The top, in this case, should be covered with a layer of fine bread-crumbs, mixed with grated cheese; these should be moistened plentifully with clarified butter, and colour given to them in the oven, or before the fire; the crumbs may be omitted, a

Footnote 140:

See Chapter of Foreign Cookery.

Maccaroni, 6 oz.; butter, 3 oz.; Parmesan (or other) cheese, 6 oz.; cream, 4 tablespoonsful.

_Obs._—Less of butter and cheese can be used by the strict economist.

MACCARONI À LA REINE.

This is a very excellent and delicate mode of dressing maccaroni. Boil eight ounces in the usual way, and by the time it is sufficiently tender, dissolve gently ten ounces of any rich, well flavoured white cheese in full three-quarters of a pint of good cream; add a little salt, a rather full seasoning of cayenne, from half to a whole saltspoonful of pounded mace, and a couple of ounces of sweet fresh butter. The cheese should, in the first instance, be sliced very thin, and taken quite free of the hard part adjoining the rind; it should be stirred in the cream without intermission until it is entirely dissolved, and the whole is perfectly smooth: the maccaroni, previously well drained, may then be tossed gently in it, or after it is dished, the cheese may be poured equally over the maccaroni. The whole, in either case, may be thickly covered before it is sent to table, with fine crumbs of bread fried of a pale gold colour, and dried perfectly, either before the fire or in an oven, when such an addition is considered an improvement. As a matter of precaution, it is better to boil the cream before the cheese is melted in it; rich white sauce, or _béchamel_, made not very thick, with an additional ounce or two of butter, may be used to vary and enrich this preparation. If Parmesan cheese be used for it, it must of course be grated; but, as we have said before, it will not easily blend with the other ingredients so as to be smooth. A portion of Stilton, free from the blue mould, would have a good effect in the present receipt. Half the quantity may be served.

Maccaroni, 1/2 lb.; cheese, 10 oz.; good cream, 3/4 pint (or rich white sauce); butter, 2 oz. (or more); little salt, _fine_ cayenne, and mace.

SEMOULINA AND POLENTA À L’ITALIENNE. (GOOD.)

(_To serve instead of Maccaroni._)

Throw into a quart of milk, when it is fast boiling, half a teaspoonful of salt, and then shake lightly into it five ounces of the _best_ semoulina; stir the milk as this is added, and continue to do so from eight to ten minutes, letting the mixture boil gently during the time. It should be very thick, and great care must be taken to prevent its sticking to the saucepan, which should be placed over a clear fire on a bar or trivet, but not _upon_ the coals. Pour the semoulina, when it is done, into a basin, or a plain mould which it will not fill by an inch or two, and let it remain some hours in a cool place, that it may become perfectly cold; it will then turn out quite solid, and like a pudding in appearance. Cut it with a large, sharp carving-knife, or a bit of thin wire, into half-inch slices; wash the basin into which it was poured at first, and butter it well; grate from six to eight ounces of good cheese (Parmesan, or any other), and mix with it a half-teaspoonful of cayenne, and twice as much pounded mace; clarify from two to three ounces of fresh butter, and put a small quantity into the basin, strew in a little of the cheese, and then lay in the first slice of the semoulina, on this put a thick layer of the cheese, moisten it with some drops of butter, and place the second slice upon it; then more cheese and butter, and continue thus until all the semoulina is replaced in the basin; put plenty of cheese upon the top, add the remainder of the clarified butter, and bake the mixture for about half an hour in a gentle oven. It should be of a fine golden colour when served. Turn it carefully into a dish, and send it instantly to table. A little rich brown gravy poured round might, to some tastes, improve it, but it is excellent without, and may be substituted for maccaroni, which it much resembles in flavour. It may be enriched by adding butter to the milk, or by mixing with it a portion of cream; and it may be browned in a Dutch oven, when no other is in use.

In Italy the flour of Indian corn, which is much grown there, and eaten by all ranks of people, is used for this dish; but the semoulina is perhaps rather better suited to English taste and habits of diet, from being somewhat lighter and more delicate. The maize-flour imported from Italy is sold at the foreign warehouses here under the name of _polenta_,[141] though that properly speaking is, we believe, a boiled or stewed preparation of it, which forms the most common food of the poorer classes of the inhabitants of many of the Italian states. It seems to us superior in quality to the Indian corn flour grown in America.

Footnote 141:

This was vended at a sufficiently high price in this country before the maize meal was so largely imported here from America.

New milk (or milk mixed with cream), 1 quart; salt, large 1/2 teaspoonful; semoulina, 5 oz.: 10 minutes. Grated cheese, 6 to 8 oz.; cayenne, 1/2 teaspoonful; mace, 1 small teaspoonful; butter, 2 to 3 oz.: baked 1/2 hour, gentle oven.

_Obs._—A plain mould can be used instead of the basin.