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Dinners for Self and Friends
We shall have to admit that the business woman is at a disadvantage when it comes to cooking dinners - for there is no gainsaying the fact that a dinner really worthy the name is hard to prepare when it is known to be intended for but one - so when the mood for real dinners is on, the business woman is apt to search for victims among her friends.
A kitchenette dinner, even when the victim is secured, is a type all its own.
There is the necessary informality of service, too, that adds to rather than detracts from the charm of a kitchenette dinner party. My guests have usually counted it great fun to arrive in time to watch a part of the play of preparation - and as the WHEN A DINNER IS SERVED THE BIG DOORS CAN BE CLOSED TO HIDE THE KITCHENETTE.
Dinners for Self and Friends kitchenette opens right into the living and dining room, it is impossible for the cook lady to hide.
As the dessert and salad - when the latter is to be served as a separate course - are prepared, they are placed on the tea wagon with the sugar bowl and cream pitcher. The tea wagon is then pulled to the left of the hostess's place so that she can change the courses without getting up from the table.
A LUSCIOUS ROAST BEEF For this dinner I secured a three and three-quarter pound porterhouse roast — that is the first cut of rib roast - which that day was twenty-two cents a pound. It came rolled and tied, as I had asked the butcher to prepare it. Lighting the gas under the oven that it might have ten minutes or so in which to become very hot, I wiped off the meat with a piece of paper toweling dipped in water, and placed the meat on a wire rack in my large aluminum pan (to be used as a roaster) with the skin side up. This was put in a hot oven and the meat turned once during the first fifteen minutes, then dredged with flour, salted with a teaspoonful of salt, peppered with a shake of the pepper shaker, and basted with the fat that had melted out. The flame was then turned down, as after the first searing in a hot oven, to make the meat retain all its juices, a roast or a steak should continue its cooking slowly.
No water was added to the pan, as it changes the flavor, and we wanted a truly roast this time. Every ten or fifteen minutes the meat was basted and dredged with flour and in just an hour and a half was ready to serve - not roasted to death but cooked through. Sometimes, for the last half-hour's cooking, I invert the other aluminum pan over the meat, Dinners for Self and Friends making a roaster, although when not too busy to baste the meat I prefer the flavor of a basted roast.
As this was to be an oven dinner, the potatoes were sliced and allowed to stand in cold water while the biscuits were mixed and set into the ice box until the meat was ready to come out of the oven. The biscuits, cut with a very small cutter, were then placed in the oven where they would be baked by the time the other things were on the table. The dish of escalloped potatoes was ready to go into the oven when the heat of the oven was turned down for the meat. This gave them time to be thoroughly cooked.
The Menu as Served Roast Beef Escalloped Potatoes String Bean Salad Hot Tea Biscuits Celery Strawberries and Cream Snowdrift Angel Cake Coffee 4 potatoes cupful milk Escalloped Potatoes teaspoonful salt 1 tablespoonful butter 1 tablespoonful flour Pare and slice the potatoes and drop them into cold water; drain and place half of them in a baking dish of earthenware or glass; add half the flour and salt, then the rest of the potatoes with the remainder of the flour, salt, and the butter. Add the milk, which has been heated, and set into a slow oven to cook until the potatoes are soft. Serve in the dish in which cooked.
Hot Tea Biscuits 1 cupful flour cupful of milk teaspoonful salt 2 teaspoonfuls baking powder 1 tablespoonful shortening Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt and cut into it the shortening; add the milk gradually, mixing with a knife to a soft Dinners for Self and Friends dough. Turn on to a floured board, give two or three turns on the board, and roll out to half an inch in thickness. Cut in rounds, place in pan, and bake in a hot oven ten to twelve minutes.
Snowdrift Angel Cake cupful egg whites (about 5 eggs) cupful sugar tar 1 teaspoonful cream tar- 4 tablespoonfuls wheat flour 4 tablespoonfuls potato flour ½ teaspoonful vanilla extract Beat the whites of the eggs until light and foamy, add the cream of tartar, and beat until dry. Sift both sugar and flour at least five times and fold in the sugar first and then the flour with a spoon or a spatula. Add the vanilla and pour into the small-tube pan, size number five, which has not been buttered, and bake forty minutes in a moderately slow oven. The cake should rise but not brown during the first fifteen minutes and is ready to come from the oven as soon as it begins to shrink from the edge of the pan. Take out and turn upside down on a wire rack to allow it to hang from the pan for at least half an hour.
Remove from the pan and dust with powdered sugar.
A CHICKEN À LA KING DINNER As dinners are built around the meat dish, and for the informal service of a kitchenette apartment must necessarily consist of but two or at most three courses, the combination dishes of meat, fish, or fowl with vegetables, such as chicken à la king, casserole of veal, or creamed salmon in rice, are especially adapted to our purpose. For the dish of chicken à la king the thighs, legs, and part of the breast were steamed for ten minutes under ten pounds of pressure in the pressure cooker and cut up into small pieces.
Dinners for Self and Friends Menu Chicken à la King Potato Chips Clover Leaf Rolls Beet Salad Fruit Cup Coffee Chicken à la King for Two 1 cupful cubed chicken cupful chicken stock 1 cupful mushrooms green pepper (or canned chicken soup) 2 tablespoonfuls butter 1 tablespoonful flour 1 yolk of egg teaspoonful salt teaspoonful paprika cupful thin cream 1 teaspoonful lemon or kumquat juice Skin the mushroom caps and cut the green pepper into strips; cook together in one tablespoonful of butter until slightly browned. While these are cooking, in another saucepan melt a tablespoonful of butter and stir into it the flour, salt, and paprika. Add the chicken stock and cream, stirring constantly, and add the peppers and mushrooms. When it has boiled for three minutes, add the lemon or kumquat juice and chicken. As it boils up again, stir in the well-beaten yolk of egg until evenly blended and serve on toast points at once.
For the beet salad cut the beets into small balls and place them on a bed of shredded lettuce. To shred the lettuce, wash thoroughly to remove grit, dry on a paper towel, and cut into strips with the kitchen scissors. Lettuce for salads is much crisper if it has lain in a piece of cheesecloth on ice for an hour or more before serving. Pour over this a French dressing.
Clover Leaf Rolls 3 cupfuls flour cake of compressed 1 cupful scalded milk yeast 1 tablespoonful sugar White of one egg teaspoonful salt 2 tablespoonfuls butter Dissolve the sugar, and salt, and melt the butter in the hot milk. Cool until it becomes lukewarm, then add the stiffly beaten Dinners for Self and Friends white of egg, and the yeast, which has been dissolved in two tablespoonfuls of lukewarm water. Add flour and beat thoroughly.
Add the rest of the flour, turn out on a bread board, and knead until smooth and elastic to the touch. Let rise in a warm place until double in bulk, cut down into tiny rolls. Place three balls together to form the clover leaf and set to rise until twice as large. Brush the tops with milk and bake in a quick oven.