Part 27

=Stewed Salsify.=--Scrape about twenty heads of salsify, and cut them into pieces about two inches long. Sprinkle them with salt, and steep in water and milk. Cut a small onion, half a carrot, half a turnip, and half a head of celery into small pieces; put these in a stewpan, cook for twenty minutes. Mix one ounce of flour with a little milk and stir in, fill up with one quart of water, stir and bring to boil. Put in the salsify, and let it simmer gently until tender. Add one tablespoonful of cream, one of chopped parsley, and a little lemon juice. Season with pepper, grated nutmeg, and caster sugar. Reheat and arrange the salsify neatly on a dish. Garnish with fried button mushrooms, pour over the sauce, and serve hot.

=Escalloped Salsify.=--Press boiled salsify through a sieve, season with salt, cayenne, butter, and celery salt, and moisten with milk. Put into a buttered baking dish, cover with crumbs, dot with butter, and bake, standing the dish in a pan of hot water until the salsify is brown, or use sliced, boiled salsify alternately with cream, or drawn-butter sauce and seasoning, and buttered crumbs; have sauce on the top. Cover with crumbs wetted with cream, and bake brown.

=Escalloped Salsify and Celery.=--Put slices of cooked salsify in layers into a buttered baking dish, season each layer with chopped celery and cover with white sauce. Cover with butter and crumbs, and bake for twenty minutes.

=Fried Salsify.=--Prepare according to directions given for boiled salsify. Drain, press through a sieve, and add the yolks of three eggs well beaten, and salt and pepper to season. Drop by spoonfuls on a buttered griddle, fry brown, and serve with tomato sauce, or ketchup.

=Filleted Salsify.=--Cook some salsify until tender, slice it into quarters, lengthways, and cut it into three-inch lengths. Dip in egg and bread-crumbs, and fry crisp. Serve with parsley sauce and garnish with slices of lemon and parsley.--SIDNEY H. BEARD, Guide-book of The Golden Age.

=Salsify Cakes.=--Prepare according to directions given for boiled salsify; drain and mash, shape into small flat cakes, and fry brown in butter or dripping.

=Salsify Fritters.=--Make a batter of two eggs, half a cupful of milk, a pinch of salt, and enough sifted flour to make it of a proper consistency. Grate the roots of a bunch of salsify into the batter, and fry by spoonfuls in deep fat, or mix mashed, cooked salsify with milk, and add one or two beaten eggs; add flour if necessary to make a stiff paste, and shape into small flat cakes. Fry brown in fat to cover.

=Salsify Sauté.=--Prepare a bunch of salsify according to directions given for boiled salsify. Drain, cut into small pieces and sauté in butter, with one tablespoonful of chopped mushrooms. Season with salt, pepper, and minced chives, parsley, and a few drops of vinegar.

=Salsify à la Poulette.=--Prepare according to directions given for boiled salsify, adding one tablespoonful each of salt and vinegar to the water. Cook until tender. Drain, serve with poulette sauce. Béchamel sauce may be used instead, or saucette cream mixed with melted butter.

SAVOY CABBAGE. See under Cabbage.

SCORZONERA (Scorzonero hispanica. Compositæ).

The culture of this vegetable is exactly the same as salsify; it has perhaps the advantage of being rather hardier than the latter, but it is not of such a fine flavour. Where one is grown the other is scarcely required, and we ourselves now only grow salsify. It might perhaps be used in Northern England if salsify does not do well.

Scorzonera is a Spanish variety of salsify, and the recipes under the heading of Salsify apply equally to it.

SEAKALE (Crambe maritima. Cruciferæ).

This is a most valuable permanent crop, and in the opinion of some ranks equal with asparagus on the table. In addition its magnificent foliage makes it an object of beauty through the summer, and a plantation of seakale may well mark the transition of the flower garden to the vegetable ground.

Seakale may be grown from seed, but it is more expeditious to obtain two-year-old plants from a nurseryman, or else early in March to propagate plants by means of root cuttings. By the latter method pieces of root four inches long are cut with a sharp knife. It is usual to cut the top end level, and the lower end slanting, to obviate the inconvenience of planting upside down. The root cuttings are then planted where they are to stand, and will give a slight crop of kale the following spring, as the first, or flowering, shoots must be removed in any case.

The ground can hardly be too deeply dug or richly prepared for this fine permanent crop. In March the plants should be put out either in rows three feet apart, the plants six inches distant in the rows, or else in clumps of five plants, a plant at each corner of a nine-inch square, and one in the centre; the clumps should be thirty inches to two feet apart. By “doubling” them, that is, arranging the clumps =W= fashion, the rows thirty inches apart, and the clumps three feet in the rows, ground will be economised. These are the best arrangements for the small garden; but they are in the nature of a compromise, as eighteen inches distance between the crowns will give much heavier individual heads of seakale.

The after cultivation consists in keeping the ground clear of weeds, giving a mulch in summer, and occasional dressings of salt or nitrate in showery weather, say salt once, and nitrate three times in the summer, and salt again in November and nitrate early in the year, when the crowns are set to blanch. In the autumn the ground should be cleared up, and all rotten leaves removed.

If it be desired to bring on seakale quickly, manure may be used to force it into growth. This method does not improve the flavour, but it is not such utter ruin as in the case of rhubarb. Boxes or pots are laid over the crowns to be forced, and hot manure heaped around and over to the depth of a good foot. But the cleanest and best way to blanch seakale is to cover the crowns with clean dry ash from the grates--not ash, be it understood, which has a careless cook’s admixture of all sorts of rotting fish bones and other filth. A large body of ashes will be required, so their accumulation must be set about a long time previously. At first the depth of ash must be slight, say six inches; then as the buds show signs of growth, it may be gradually increased to fifteen inches at least. Seakale grown in rows should be blanched in this way, or with a layer of ash six inches deep; then when this is beginning to crack with the growing shoots, earth laid on after the manner of earthing up celery. Whatever the method pursued, seakale must be blanched in absolute darkness, or it will be bitter and worthless for the table.

When the crop has been cut, a sprinkling of loose litter should be shaken over the stems, which should be cut level with the ground, in order to protect them from a too sudden acquaintance with our genial English spring. Conical, flower-bearing buds must be removed from the stocks, as the plants must not be allowed to flower. In May the shoots must be thinned, one or at the most two stout shoots left on each stem, all the rest rubbed out. This method will leave good fat buds in autumn, whence will come correspondingly stout growth to be cut for use next year.

DISHES.

=Boiled Seakale.=--Boil in salted water and vinegar for twenty minutes to half an hour, drain, and arrange neatly, lengthwise, on a drainer; pour over a good white sauce, and serve very hot.

Another Method of boiling Seakale.--Soak for half an hour in cold water, and cook for twenty-five minutes in boiling water. Drain, press out the liquid, chop finely, and reheat. Season with salt and pepper, and pour over good melted butter.

Cooked seakale can also be served as a salad. Cut it into short pieces, season with salt, pepper, oil, and vinegar, or lemon juice. Mix carefully. Dish up, garnish to taste, and serve.

=Creamed Seakale.=--Tie some seakale up in bundles, and put them in boiling salted water; boil till quite tender, about thirty minutes, drain well, take the string off. Put some slices of toast in a dish, arrange the seakale on them, and pour over a good Béchamel sauce, made with a little double cream.

For other ways of cooking seakale, adapt those recipes dealing with celery and asparagus.

SHALLOT (Allium Ascalonicum. Liliaceæ).

Shallots enjoy a rich soil, somewhat similar to that given to onions; they follow celery well, the old manure and well-broken-up ground being exactly what they like. They are propagated by division of the offsets. These cloves, as they are usually called, are planted in rows nine inches to a foot apart, the cloves four inches asunder in the row. Any good day in February these may be planted, and they should not be too deeply buried.