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CHAPTER XI: Rice
RICE, SOUTHERN STYLE Put half a cup of rice over a quick fire in a quart of cold water and stir while heating the water to the boiling point; let boil rapidly three minutes, then turn the whole into a sieve and pour cold water through the rice, left on the sieve, and return it to the kettle. The rice is now "blanched" or cleaned. Add to the rice a quart of boiling water and a teaspoonful of salt and let cook rapidly until the grains are tender. Drain the rice from the liquid and dry in a hot oven, shaking the dish occasionally, to separate the grains. A little salt sprinkled over the top of the rice will absorb any water remaining on the rice and help to make it flaky. Use the rice water for a soup. Add it to lamb or chicken broth.
RICE COOKED IN DOUBLE BOILER Following the general rule a pint of water would be called for when half a cup of rice is to be cooked in a double boiler. If the rice be from a fresh or late gathered crop -- thus not very dry -- this may be a generous measure. If the cooking is to be done in stock or tomato puree, the above proportions will be about right. Rice cooked with tomato and cheese is given under cheese dishes. To cook in the double boiler, blanch the rice as in the first recipe; add the milk, stock or puree, preferably hot, in the upper part of the boiler, half a teaspoonful of salt and let cook until the liquid is absorbed. Do not stir during the cooking.
MACARONI Break half a cup of macaroni into pieces about an inch long. Have ready over the fire a saucepan containing a quart or more of rapidly boiling water; add a teaspoonful of salt and when the water reboils, sprinkle in the macaroni. Do not cover. If at first any of the macaroni sticks to the bottom of the saucepan, stir with a fork. Keep the saucepan boiling, adding boiling water to replenish the supply when needed, and the pieces of macaroni will not stick to the pan or to each other. When the macaroni is tender, turn it into a colander, to drain off the water, then let cold water run through it, to rinse off the pasty exterior. The macaroni is now ready to be finished after any formula desired; but no matter how the macaroni (and other similar preparations) is to be served, the initial cooking is always as above. For recipes for cooking macaroni with cheese, see chapter on Cheese. In any of the recipes in which macaroni is combined with cheese, the cheese may be omitted. SWEET POTATOES AND SQUASH In sweet potatoes and squash, besides much starch, we have sugar to deal with. The sugar is best retained if both be cooked without paring. BOILED AND BAKED SWEET POTATOES Scrub the potatoes with a brush, cover with boiling water, bring quickly to the boiling point and let boil gently until they are just cooked through, and are not in the least soft. Drain off the water and set them into the oven. Take them out, one by one, to peel, returning them to the oven as soon as peeled. Bake sweet potatoes in the same manner as white. BROILED SWEET POTATOES Cut boiled or baked sweet potatoes in halves, lengthwise, spread the flat sides with butter and set to cook in a well-oiled broiler (bars rubbed with a buttered paper) over hot coals or under a gas burner. Do not set too near the heat, and turn during the cooking, to avoid burning. When hot throughout set onto a hot dish. Spread with butter, sprinkle with salt or salt and sugar. SQUASH Squash is better when baked or steamed than when boiled. When boiled set to cook without removing the skin, but carefully remove the seeds and strings connected with them. One fourth a squash, often much less, is all that should be cooked at one time. Let boil until tender, then drain off the water and set the squash, on a tin plate, skin side up, in the oven, to dry off. Scrape the pulp from the shell, and press it through a ricer into a saucepan; add half a teaspoonful (for a pint) of salt and two or three tablespoonfuls of butter, also a little black pepper if approved. Stir the squash over the fire until well mixed, then turn into a hot dish.
A chapter of starch cookery from the era before the absorption method took over. The techniques are sound but several of the instructions reflect a rice and pasta supply quite different from what is on shelves now.
- The blanching stepThe three-minute boil, cold rinse and second cooking was standard when rice often arrived dusty and, in this period, was sometimes coated with talc or glucose. Modern packaged rice needs no more than a rinse in a sieve until the water runs clear; enriched rice is usually labelled not to be rinsed, since the added vitamins sit on the surface of the grain.
- QuantitiesHalf a cup of raw rice is the working unit throughout, yielding roughly a cup and a half cooked — two modest side servings, which is the point of the book. The quart of water in the first recipe is a cooking medium to be drained, not an absorption ratio.
- "A quick fire"High heat on a coal or gas range. On an electric hob, high until the boil, then whatever setting holds a rapid boil without the pan climbing the sides.
- Drying in a hot ovenNo temperature is given. A hot oven for a few minutes, shaking the dish once or twice, is enough; the aim is to drive off surface moisture, not to colour the grains.
- Double boiler proportionsA pint of liquid to half a cup of rice is generous by modern standards; the recipe says as much itself, noting that rice from a fresh or late-gathered crop is less dry. Double-boiler cooking is slow, so expect it to take considerably longer than cooking over direct heat; the instruction not to stir is the hinge, since stirring releases starch and the grains go sticky.
- Rinsing the macaroniRinsing washes away the surface starch that helps sauce cling, so skip it unless the pasta is going into a cold salad or will be held before baking. Cooking uncovered in plenty of well-salted water, on the other hand, is still exactly right.
- Macaroni timingNo time is given; dried pasta of the period was generally cooked a good deal longer than today's. Start tasting at the lower end of the package range, and stop short if the dish is to be baked with cheese afterwards.
- Sweet potatoes, boiled then peeledCooking in the skin limits what leaches into the water, and the skins slip off easily while hot. Keep them just short of soft if they are going on to be broiled or baked, or they will collapse when halved.
- Squash"One fourth a squash" assumes a large hard winter squash such as Hubbard, not a summer squash. A ricer gives a drier, fluffier pulp than a food processor, which tends to make it wet and gluey.
Cooking for Two belongs to a wave of turn-of-the-century American cookbooks written for small households — young couples, boarders, the childless — at a time when most recipes assumed a family table. The rice method here, blanched and then boiled in abundant salted water and dried in the oven, is headed "Southern Style", the long-grain rice of the tidal fields of South Carolina and Georgia. By the time this book appeared that industry was in steep decline, undone by hurricanes and the shift of rice growing to Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas, though the name and the technique stayed put. The instruction to save the rice water for soup, and the note that cheese may be omitted from any macaroni dish, are quiet reminders that thrift was assumed rather than argued for.