Press on to steaks. Fry them to your taste. Remove steaks, déglacer pan.
BLENDER SWEETS
Egg Custard is especially simple with a blender. Blend sugar, hot milk, cream and eggs (at least 3 eggs per pint of milk). Bake 45 mins. in a water-jacket at Regulo 2 (325° F.). Egg custard as a sauce has the same ingredients, but is made over a low flame, stirring all the time. For further instructions, see the Crème Caramel pages 276-7.
Various Desserts. Fruit Fool is made by putting almost any soft fruit with sugar and thick cream in the blender; chill; serve. The Fruit Fool recipe will give you ice cream if you put it in the freezing compartment. Instead of soft fruit, use chocolate or very strong coffee to make coffee or chocolate ice cream.
The greatest source of confusion in cookery measurements is the American cup. Most English measurements are in weight, but now and again we hear of the English cup. In each case ‘a cup’ is half a pint, but the English pint is 20 oz. and the American pint is 16 oz.
Buy any sort of measure that is marked in ounces. A 10-oz. measure is a convenient size for the average kitchen. Once you have a measure of this sort, the American recipes are easy to understand.
Here are five items showing what one English pound equals in American cups:
| Butter | 1 lb. = 2 cups |
| Flour | 1 lb. = 41/2 cups |
| Sugar | 1 lb. = 2+ cups |
| (brown moist sugar 21/2 cups) | |
| Raw Rice | 1 lb. = 2 cups |
| Crumbs | 1 lb. = 4 cups |
Another baffling word in recipes is gill. In standard recipe use it means a quarter of a British pint.
French recipes use litres. One litre is 13/4 British pints. A demi-litre is half a litre. A deci-litre is a tenth of a litre.
French recipes measure weight in grammes.
100 grammes = 31/2 oz.
1 litre = 500 grammes = 1 lb. 11/2 oz.
1 kilogramme = 1,000 grammes = 2 lb. 3 oz.
BUYING FOOD
Buying food can be confusing. Spinach, for instance, will shrink to almost nothing, while rice can be around the house for days because of miscalculation.
Meat. Buy 8 oz. per head if there is bone in it, and 6 oz. per head if it is without bone. Very lean meat in a rich sauce (e.g. Beef Strogonoff) can have less. Allow 12 oz. per head of the gross weight of chicken, and 4 oz. per head for any liver dish. Fish, as an entrée 6 oz., as a main course 8 oz.
Root Vegetables like carrots and potatoes should be calculated at 6 oz. per head. Double this amount for peas, and for spinach allow 14 oz. per head.
Dried Vegetables (beans, lentils, peas, rice). Allow 2 oz. per head, and the same for pasta, unless it is to be the main course, in which case double it.
Soup. Allowing 8 oz. of soup per person should leave a dribble for some greedy guest to get a second helping.
Dried Fruit. One pound of dried fruit is equal to four pounds of fresh.
SALT
Add half a teaspoon salt to half a pound of meat or to one pint of soup or sauce. For dough put half a teaspoon salt to one pound of flour. Always adjust seasoning before serving.
HEAT
The following figures are most important, especially to cooks using a thermostat control.
| Water: | Fast boil 212° F. (Salt water boils at 224° F.) |
| Simmer 205° F. | |
| Slow simmer 180-190° F. | |
| Milk: | Boils at 196° F. |
Burning Temperature
| Butter | 278° F. |
| Beef Suet | 356° F. |
| Lard | 392° F. |
| Veg. Oil | 480-520° F. |
| Olive Oil | 554° F. |
Keep temperature below this level when cooking in these fats.
My kitchen is full of useless junk—gadgets that looked like a good idea at the time. Here is my list of the items that I still use, in the hope that it will save your money and temper. When you decide what you need, buy the very best quality there is. Sometimes you will do best to go to the shops that sell to the catering trade, where the equipment may lack bright colours and fancy decoration but will be of better and more enduring quality.
Stainless-steel knives are not much good to any cook. Buy three good-quality steel ones varying from the tiny vegetable knife to the large heavy one that has enough weight to be used as a chopper; it should curve upwards to the point, so that you roll it as you cut.
Use this one for dicing onion. It will also divide a chicken into pieces. Or use the back
