=Stewed Eels, Hoboken Turtle Club Style.=--Cut into three-inch pieces two pounds of medium-sized cleaned eels. Rub the inside of each piece with salt. Let stand half an hour, then parboil them. Boil an onion in a quart of milk, and remove the onion. Drain the eels from the water, and add them to the milk. Season with half a teaspoonful of chopped parsley, salt and pepper, and the slightest suspicion of mace. Simmer until the flesh falls from the bones.
Fried eels should be slightly salted before cooking them. Do not cover them with batter, but dredge them with just flour enough to absorb all moisture, then cover them with boiling fat, as for doughnut cooking. Many New England families use corn-meal to dredge them with instead of flour.
Eels _en matelotte_, or sailor fashion, are appreciated by many. Cut them into three-inch pieces, and salt them. Fry an onion brown in a little dripping; add half a pint of broth to the brown onion, part of a bay leaf, six broken peppercorns, four whole cloves, and a gill of claret. Add the eels to this, and simmer until thoroughly cooked. Remove the eels, put them on a hot dish, add a teaspoonful of browned flour to the sauce, strain, and pour over the eels.
=Pan Bass, Anchovy Butter.=--During February, March, and the first part of April, there may be found in market a variety of bass which much resembles the Oswego bass. They come from the Carolinas and Virginia, and are excellent eating. Let them stand an hour in salt water, then drain and wipe dry, and fry them in tried-out salt-pork fat. Serve them with a butter made as follows: Mix together a teaspoonful of anchovy paste with a tablespoonful of sweet butter, and, if not objected to, add a few blades of chopped chives.
The chive has the flavor peculiar to the onion family, but in a mild form. It is cultivated by truck gardeners, and may be found on the New York vegetable stands as early as January. The retail price at the first of the season is ten cents a tuft; as it becomes more plentiful, it is offered at five cents.
Placed in the kitchen, it grows luxuriantly,--in fact, it grows faster than it can be used by a small family. This very useful herb should be in the kitchen window of every home where soups and salads are rightly appreciated.