EGGS AND RICE
Six ounces of rice, 1 pint highly-seasoned vegetable stock, 3 ozs. butter, 3 or 4 hard-boiled eggs, fried onion, chopped parsley, minced olives or pickled gherkin, seasoning, 1 tablespoonful tomato conserve.
Method.—Put the rice into cold salted water, bring it gradually to boiling point, and let it boil for ten minutes, then rinse it in cold water; drain it and put it into a saucepan containing a pint of colourless vegetable stock, and let it boil rapidly until the rice is cooked, stirring it occasionally. As soon as the grains are quite soft, turn the rice on to a sieve and let the stock drain from it. Melt two ounces of the butter in a stewpan, and add the rice, turning it gently with a fork over a moderate fire. When hot, season with salt, black pepper, and nutmeg, and pile upon a hot dish; arrange the halves of some eggs, prepared according to the recipe given below, at intervals round the rice, but not quite at the edge, and between them scatter some minced olives (or gherkins) which have been carefully heated in a little butter, and below them make a line with some minced fried onion, which has been dried, until crisp, in the oven. The top of the rice should be sprinkled either with chopped parsley or ground sweet almonds, which have been coloured a golden brown in the oven. The hard-boiled eggs should be cut in half, the yolks carefully removed and passed through a sieve (the whites should be kept hot over a saucepan of boiling water); a tablespoonful of butter should then be added which has been heated with a tablespoonful of tomato conserve (or sauce); the mixture must be seasoned with celery salt, pepper, and a little curry powder, and quickly and neatly put into the whites and moulded into pyramid form. The eggs should be placed in the oven for a few moments to ensure their being hot.