The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1906-07-01
An INTERVIEW WITH !
FRENCH Chef
BY V. D. ROBBIE.

dinner coffee cup on hearing what my
isalary is. You shall know:
| 1T is because I can make better
dinner out of the things you give to the
cat than your cooks can out of five
shillings' worth of prime material. i
feed very well and save. You feed your
selves badly. and waste. In my coun-
try we have a proverb which says,
The dustbins of England would fill the
souptureens of France
| ''It is true to the letter. Here are
some of the things I saw in an ordin-
would have put them to. First, the
outside leaves of four cabbages, some
/ lemon rind, a handful of bread crusts,
two veal bones, the scraped knuckie of
| a leg of mutt on, a lump of very hard,
| dry cheese, some odds and ends of
carrots. a broken sprig of parsley and
an extract of meat bottle with some of
| the extract sticking to the inside That
collection from a household whose al
! lowance was limited went to the dust
! heaps. I would have shredded the
coarser fiber of the cabbage leaves, sim
mered them, cut the tender portions
into little squares, reduced the liquid
/ by boiling it, stewed the mutton and
veal bones in it for three hours, strain
ed the whole through a collander. add
ed the carrot bits and when soft forced
them through wire sieve back into the
soup, scalded the parsley, minced it and !
stirred it in, poured little boiling
water into the extract bottle and add
eel it, suspended the lemon peel by a
thread in the soup, toasted the crusts
and cut them into dice, served them !
and served that on separate dish, |
then would have served the whole thing |
up. At any hotel you would have paid |
a shilling or eighteen pence for it as
Soupe Berniche au Parmesan, and
would have said, 'Jove! what an artist /
the cook is!
"Cost-nothing. The things in the
first place would never have gone near
the dust-bin, but been stored in clean
earthenware pans till wanted. Why do |
sole? It is because appearances are
everything, even to hungry man, and
the even-colored. light golden-grown
fish you get at the Frenchman's hands
is totally different from the English
fried article, which generally has a
flake of bare skin showing here, a patch
Il ,1,Ssf nd
an almost white patch yonder. Yet
ours is the cheaper way. If I We're a
woman I should make the sweet eyes
at the baker, and he wound supply NE,
for nothing, with a bag of breadrasp-t
ings' which, though mere waste mat
ter at the bakery, are of a lovely gold
en- brown color. I fry the fish in those,
dust a little more over when cooked.
and there you are! AS man ] should
give the baker cigar and ask him
how his amiable wife did.
Again, if you often have fried fish
at your home you have used many Shll-
Iings' worth of dripping from time to
time to fry it in. The fish fried, you
tip the dripping into the waste pot.
What horror! I tip mine into a pan
of boiling water. The crumbs and bits
of fish sink to the bottom, and when
cold I lift perfectly pure cake of
clarified dripping from the top of the
water, and put it back in a big pot
labeled for fish, 1t is as good the
hundredth time as the first. There is
more waste in the cottage than in the
palace.
"a year or two ago I was chef in
gentleman's household. The
morning after my arrival / looked
around the kitchen garden and IN the
dust-bin that stood in the back yard
I saw a mixture of food that could have
been made into a first-class dinner. In
about four quarts of milk that had
turned sour were swimming stale half
loaves drumsticks of fowls, old ham
bones cold boiled potatoes, trimmings
of dough made for pie crusts. cracked
eggs some old Goldfish and some spoil
ed macaroni. Next day I found a sec
ond consignment. very similar about to ,
be carried away and thrown out.
this lot, sorted it out. and,
with the help of little stock, half
dozen eggs and a hare that had been
shot on the estate, served seven
course dinner for a family of ten that ,
night and the master of the house call j.,
ed me up and complimented me before
the whole family on the best dinner
they had had for year.
afterwards his wife sent for me and
told me that though pleased with the
dinner she feared I had been too eX-
and said that her rule was t
not to allow more than seven shillings :
per head in housekeeping. 1t was
severe shock to her to hear / had fed
the family on the sins of the cook that
had left the day before. the cost being
not over ninepence per head Why is
l French-cooked shoulder of mutton :
more Juicy and tender than an English
one?' :
Because you place your joint away =
rom the fire at first and increase the
aeat later; consequently you draw the
moisture out of the meat, and when 1t
s cut you see the grain of the fibers.
We put ours into an oven too hot for c
he hand to bear for minute. This C
,ardens a brown coating the thickness II