Item--one egg. Other items--one onion, two slices of dry bread, one green pepper, rather small, one dozen crackers. Item--one case of imported Italian Vin d'Oro Spumanti. Item--six hearty appetites to be appeased.
The gentleman who saw our light saw another, and rushed off to a barber shop, and got four more eggs. Barbers use eggs, and they must be fresh ones, in shampooing, and our friend remembered it.
The two young ladies and the young man prepared the table, and the other lady and the two gentlemen set about getting a meal. One of us made an omelet of the five eggs, the onion and the green pepper, with crumbs of bread, and this is the recipe:
Omelet a la Peruquier
Take five eggs and beat until very light. Roll two slices of dried bread to crumbs and mix with the beaten eggs. Chop fine one onion and one green pepper, season with salt and pepper. Pour a tablespoonful of olive oil in an omelet pan and in this fry the peppers and onion to a light brown. When ready turn into this the beaten eggs, and cook until done. Follow the rule of never disturbing a cooking egg or a sleeping child. Serve on a hot dish.
Take two cans of Chinese reed birds, open them and take therefrom the two dozen birds contained therein. In a hot frying pan place the birds in the grease that comes around them and heat them through. Toast twelve square crackers and on each place two reed birds, and serve two on each of six hot plates. With both the omelet and the reed birds serve Vin d'Oro.
Paste Makes Waste
In an Italian grocery store we noticed a great variety of pastes in boxes arranged along the counter and began counting them. The proprietor noticed us and, with a characteristic shrug of his shoulders, said: "That is but a few of them. We have not room to show them all." In response to our inquiry regarding the number of kinds of paste made by Italians he said there were more than seventy-five. Ordinarily we think of one--spaghetti--or possibly two, including macaroni. If our knowledge goes a little farther we think also of tagliarini, which is the Italian equivalent of noodles, as it is made with eggs.
In New York we were much impressed with the stress they laid on the serving of spaghetti, and one restaurant went so far as to advertise dinners given "under the spaghetti vine." It appears that this is the only paste they know anything about.
After one eats tagliarini or ravioli one feels like paraphrasing the darkey and saying, "go way spaghetti, yo done los' yo tase."
Then comes tortelini which, like ravioli, combines paste with meat and spinach. These may be considered the most prominent of the pastes, the others being variants in the making and cutting, each serving a special purpose in cooking, some being for soups, others for sauces and others for dressing for meats. It is more than probable that the great variety comes from individual tastes in cutting or rolling.
All Italian restaurants serve the paste as a releve rather than as an entree, which it usually follows, preceding the roast in the dinner. As a separate and distinct dish it can well be made to serve as a full meal, especially when tagliarini is prepared after the following recipe:
Tagliarini Des Beaux Arts
Cook one pound of tagliarini in boiling water twenty-five minutes, then draw off the water. To the tagliarini add a handful of mushrooms which have been sliced and fried in butter. Then add three chicken livers which have been chopped small and fried, one sliced truffle, one red pepper chopped fine and a little Parmesan cheese. Make a brown sauce of one-third beef broth thickened with melted butter and flour and two-thirds tomato sauce, and pour this over the tagliarini. Sprinkle with the Parmesan cheese and serve very hot from a chafing dish. (By Oliver, chef of the Restaurant des Beaux Arts, Paris.)
In San Francisco one finds both the imported and the domestic paste, and frequently one hears the assertion that the imported is the better. This idea is born of the thought that all things from Europe are better than the same made in America.