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Skewer Combinations (Place ingredients on skewer)
Place ingredients on skewer in order given, allowing 1 or 2 skewers to each serving. Season each with salt and pepper, brush with butter or oil if you wish, and grill. Lamb: 1. A lamb cube, 1 slice unpeeled tomato, 1 cube parboiled eggplant, another slice unpeeled tomato-then repeat until skewer is filled, finishing with a lamb cube. 2. 11/2-inch square lamb steak, 11/2-inch square sliced canned pineapple. Repeat until skewer is full, finishing with lamb. Dash with lemon juice before grilling. 3. Alternate hearts of rib lamb chops with thin slices preserved or fresh ginger. Mix a little chili powder with salt and pepper for seasoning. 4. Parboil summer squash or zucchini, leaving skin on if young. Cut it to fit pieces of lamb, dip in melted butter or olive oil, and spike on skewers alternately with lamb, slipping a sliver of garlic between each piece. 5. Slip a slice of lamb fat on the skewer, then a cube of lamb, alternating until skewer is full, and finishing with fat. Grill before the coals. Don't eat the fat-just the lamb. And dunk each sizzling bite of it into a sauce of imported chutney.
Beef: 1. Cube of tender steak, mushroom cap, cube of steak, mushroom cap, and lastly a cube of steak. Brush well with butter before broiling. 2. Square of bacon, square of tender beef, onion ring, tomato wedge, onion ring, square of tender beef, square of bacon. When the end pieces of bacon scorch, flip them off-but not into the fire. 3. Marinate cubes of round or chuck steak 4-5 hours in the marinating mixture prescribed above for a lamb grill. Wipe steak pieces dry, spike them onto the skewer and tuck a bit of garlic and another of onion between the pieces. Daub with mustard, and grill. Or pipe down on your favorite barbecue sauce so it is not too hot for such small morsels, and marinate your steak chunks in some of it, afterward using the rest of your sauce for both basting and dunking. 4. Season 1 pound hamburger with 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon pepper, 2 teaspoons paprika and 1 tablespoon minced parsley. Work in 1 slightly beaten egg and 2 tablespoons cream or evaporated milk. Form into 8 small, very thick, hamburgers. Encircle each hamburger with a slice of bacon, and let stand 1/2 hour. Using 2 skewers, spear crosswise through hamburgers and bacon wrappings, for a pair of skewers will hold things steady until meat solidifies. Seal quickly close to coals, then move them farther away from heat and grill slowly.
Frankfurters and Sausages: 1. Split halves of small cocktail frankfurters, alternating with thin slices unpeeled greening apple. Be sure to brush with butter. 2. Split larger frankfurters. Lay ribbons of sauerkraut on half slices of bacon, fold lengthwise, and sandwich between frankfurter halves. Use 2 skewers, running them parallel through about 3 of these sandwiches, holding all together firmly for grilling. Have the mustard jar handy. 3. Heat frankfurters in boiling water, split them, sandwich strips of store cheese between the halves, secure a number of these sandwiches with a pair of skewers, and grill on both sides until the cheese begins to run out. 4. Alternate small smoked breakfast sausages with samesized pieces of firm banana, using a pair of skewers to secure each lot, and having a sausage at each end of the line.
Ham and Eggs:
Shell hard-cooked eggs and clip off the ends. Alternate eggs and cubes of cooked ham until skewers are full. Dust all with curry powder, salt the eggs but not the ham, and brush with butter before grilling.
Lamb Kidneys:
Split kidneys, remove hard core and skin them. Cut squares of bacon approximately the same size. Start and finish the skewer with bacon squares, and alternate kidneys and bacon in between. Grill only 5 minutes or so, for kidneys harden quickly.
Mutton Kidneys:
Veal Kidneys:
See under Come and Get It Split, remove core and skin. Cut in convenient pieces and skewer between small bits of bacon. Broil 4-5 minutes. Liver:
Whole chicken livers (or 1-inch cubes of calves' or lambs' liver), alternating with bacon squares.
Sweetbreads:
Soak sweetbreads in cold water 2 hours, parboil 15 minutes in salted boiling water, plunge into cold water, and remove skin and veins. Cut into convenient cubes for skewering. 1. Square of bacon, cube of sweetbread, 1/2 chicken liver (or cube of other liver); repeat and finish with a bacon square. 2. Bacon, sweetbread, mushroom; repeat, finishing with bacon. 3. Bacon, oyster, sweetbread; repeat, finishing with bacon. Broil 5 minutes.
Fish and Seafood: 1. Soak 1-inch slices small fish in French dressing 1 hour. Skewer with small bay leaves between slices; or, skewer with thin slices unpeeled tomatoes between. 2. Cut 1-inch cubes well-soaked salt codfish, or use slices of canned smoked herring, or pieces of kippered herring. Skewer with slices of unpeeled tomatoes between pieces of fish. Season heavily with paprika-but no salt. 3. Alternate chunks of cooked lobster with slices of mushrooms that have been tossed 3 minutes in hot butter. 4. Bacon, cooked shrimp, cube of cooked lobster; repeat, finishing with bacon. Or merely skewer cooked shrimps with bits of bacon between.
This is a reference list rather than a single recipe: a table of skewer loadings meant to be worked over charcoal. A few of the ingredient names and one of the cross-references need translating.
- The fractionsThe lamb-and-pineapple entry calls for pieces 1½ inches square. Read every "11/2" in the text as one and a half.
- Heat, not "the grill"These were written for a fire burned down to coals; the text says "grill before the coals" and "close to coals." Small cubes want a hot bed and constant attention; the hamburger entry is explicit about the two-stage approach, searing close to the coals then finishing further away.
- The marinade referred toBeef combination 3 points back to a marinade "prescribed above" for a lamb grill, which is not reproduced here. Any standard oil-and-acid marinade of the period will do the job: oil, lemon juice or vinegar, sliced onion, garlic, bay, pepper. Four to five hours in the refrigerator, not on the counter.
- Greening appleA greening is a firm, tart green cooking apple such as the Rhode Island Greening. Granny Smith is the closest thing on a supermarket shelf and holds its shape the same way.
- Store cheeseMid-century American shorthand for the plain yellow cheddar sold in bulk from a wheel at the grocery. Ordinary medium cheddar is the substitute.
- Two skewers, always, for anything softThe instruction to run a pair of skewers in parallel through the bacon-wrapped hamburgers, the frankfurter sandwiches and the banana-and-sausage line is the single most useful thing on this page. One skewer lets a soft item spin as you turn it; two lock everything flat. Flat metal skewers do the same job.
- Ground beefThe bacon-wrapped hamburger patties are formed "very thick" and grilled slowly, which is exactly where ground meat gets pink centres. Cook them to 160F internal. The half hour of standing after wrapping should be in the refrigerator.
- Timings that are already rightThe 4-5 minutes for kidneys and 5 minutes for sweetbreads and oysters are not typographical caution. Kidney turns to rubber past about five minutes, and an oyster on a skewer is done as soon as the edges ruffle. Parboiling the eggplant and squash first is what lets the vegetables finish in the same time as the meat.
- Lamb fat skewerCombination 5 uses slices of lamb fat purely as basting and as a barrier between cubes; the text says plainly not to eat it. Ask a butcher for fat trimmings, and expect flare-ups as it renders.
- YieldOne or two loaded skewers per person, as stated at the top. The hamburger entry makes eight small patties; the page does not say how many of them make a serving.