CARDOON 23 



To COOK CARDOONS 



The best way to cook Cardoons is to follow Mrs 

 RoundelPs advice and to cut them into four or five inch 

 lengths, and throw them into boiling water into which a 

 little lemon-juice has been squeezed. Keep the 

 Cardoons boiling till their outer woolly skin will rub off 

 in a cloth. Drain them, and throw them into cold water. 

 When the Cardoons have cooled, scrape them, and pull 

 off the stringy skin. Fill a crockery stewpan with boil- 

 ing water flavoured with pepper and salt, lay a good- 

 sized piece of raw bacon at the bottom, cutting the rind 

 in strips, add a bunch of herbs, and then the Cardoons. 

 Simmer gently till the Cardoons are tender, which may 

 take two hours or more, according to their age and size. 

 Drain the Cardoons and warm them up in good brown 

 sauce. Or they can be served with white, sauce. 

 Wyvern advises that Cardoons should be placed on 

 slices of fat bacon at the bottom of a stewpan, with 

 more bacon above them, and only just enough blanc to 

 cover all. Then add slices of lemon, a little mignonette, 

 pepper, and salt, cover the pan, and let the Cardoons 

 simmer very gently till done. The blanc is a sort of 

 stock which is used in boiling celery or any white vege- 

 table to preserve the colour. To make blanc, cut up as 

 small as possible a quarter of a pound of beef suet, and 

 put it with a tablespoonful of flour into three and a half 

 pints of cold water in a stewpan. Boil up and add eight 

 ounces of onion cut up small, a bunch of curly parsley, 

 a tablespoonful of dried thyme or marjoram, the rind of 

 a lemon, a teaspoonful of sugar and one of salt. Stir 

 well over a brisk fire for half an hour, strain, but do not 

 take off the fat as the blanc cooks. When the Cardoons 

 or other vegetables are cooked in blanc, put in with 

 them two or three slices of lemon freed from pips, to 

 improve the colour. 



