Prepare a rich "Chicken Fricassee" (recipe for which you will find among poultry recipes), but have a little more gravy than usual. Boil some noodles or macaroni in salted water, drain, let cold water run through them, shake them well and boil up once with chicken. Serve together on a large platter.
Cut a three and one-half pound fat chicken in pieces to serve, salt it and let stand several hours. Heat one-fourth cup of fat in an iron kettle, add one medium-sized onion, minced; fry golden brown and set aside. Fry the chicken in the fat and when nicely browned, add paprika to taste and boiling water to cover, and let simmer one hour. Soak one cup of rice in cold water, drain, add the fried onion and one teaspoon of salt and gradually three cups of chicken broth, more if necessary. When nearly done add the chicken and finish cooking in a slow oven, one-half hour.
Place one pound Russian peas in granite kettle, add one tablespoon of salt and hot water to more than cover and let soak twelve hours or more. Drain, return to the kettle, cover with boiling water, let cook fifteen minutes, add one-quarter teaspoon of soda and one pound of brisket of beef or back or neck of fat chicken and let cook slowly until peas are tender. Melt two tablespoons of fat, add two tablespoons of flour and two tablespoons of brown sugar, let brown, add one cup of the liquid from the peas, cook until thick and smooth. Pour over the peas, cook thoroughly, then place in casserole and bake in a moderate oven one- half hour.
For shortening; use drippings and mix with goose, duck or chicken fat. In the fall and winter, when poultry is plentiful and fat, save all drippings of poultry fat for pie-crust. If you have neither, use rendered beef fat. Take one-half cup of shortening, one and one-half cups of flour. Sifted pastry flour is best. If you have none at hand take two tablespoons of flour off each cup after sifting; add a pinch of salt. With two knives cut the fat into the sifted flour until the shortening is in pieces as small as peas. Then pour in six or eight tablespoons of cold water; in summer use ice-water; work with the knife until well mixed (never use the hand). Flour a board or marble slab, roll the dough out thin, sprinkle with a little flour and put dabs of soft drippings here and there, fold the dough over and roll out thin again and spread with fat and sprinkle with flour, repeat this and then roll out not too thin and line a pie-plate with this dough. Always cut dough for lower crust a little larger than the upper dough and do not stretch the dough when lining pie-pan or plate. If fruit is to be used for the filling, brush over top of the dough with white of egg slightly beaten, or sprinkle with one tablespoon of bread crumbs to prevent the dough from becoming soggy. Put in the filling, brush over the edge of pastry with cold water, lay the second round of paste loosely over the filling; press the edges together lightly, and trim, if needed. Cut several slits in the top crust or prick it with a fork before putting it in place. Bake from thirty-five to forty-five minutes until crust is a nice brown. A gas stove is more satisfactory for baking pies than a coal stove as pies require the greatest heat at the bottom. The recipe given above makes two crusts. Bake pies having a cooked filling in a quick oven and those with an uncooked filling in a moderate oven. Let pies cool upon plates on which they were made because slipping them onto cold plates develops moisture which always destroys the crispness of the lower crust.
Soak one cup of rice in cold water for one hour. Pour off the water, and put the rice with two cups of soup stock and one-quarter of a white onion on to boil. Stew until the rice absorbs all the stock. Stew one-half can of tomatoes thoroughly and season with olive oil or chicken-fat, salt and pepper. Mix it with the rice. Sauté in chicken-fat to a light color, a jointed chicken slightly parboiled, or slices of cold cooked chicken or turkey. Make a depression in the rice and tomato, put in the chicken and two tablespoons of olive oil or chicken-fat, and stew all together for twenty minutes. Serve on a platter in a smooth mound, the red rice surrounding the fowl.
Stuff and truss a chicken, season with pepper and salt and dredge with flour. Put in a roasting-pan with two or three tablespoons of chicken-fat if the chicken is not especially fat. When heated add hot water and baste frequently. The oven should be hot and the time necessary for a large chicken will be about an hour and a half. When done, remove the chicken, pour off the grease and make a brown sauce in the pan.
Heart, liver and gizzard constitute the giblets, and to these the neck is usually added. Wash them; put them in cold water and cook until tender. This will take several hours. Serve with the chicken; or mash the liver, mince the heart and gizzard and add them to the brown sauce. Save the stock in which they are cooked for making the sauce.
Shell and blanch two cups of chestnuts. Cook in boiling salted water until tender. Drain and force through a colander or a potato ricer. Add one-fourth cup of melted chicken fat, one-fourth teaspoon of pepper, three-fourths of a teaspoon of salt, one cup of grated bread crumbs, and enough soup stock to moisten.
Chop one yellow onion very fine, add four tablespoons of chicken fat (melted), salt to taste. Serve on slices of rye bread. If desired, a hard-boiled egg chopped very fine may be mixed with the onions.
To two pounds of chopped beef take three egg yolks, three tablespoons of parsley, three tablespoons of melted chicken-fat, four heaping tablespoons of soft bread crumbs, one-half teaspoon of kitchen bouquet, two teaspoons of lemon juice, grated peel of one lemon, one teaspoon of salt, one-half teaspoon of onion-juice and one teaspoon of pepper. Mix and bake twenty-five minutes in a quick oven with one-fourth cup of melted chicken-fat, and one-half cup of boiling water. Baste often.
