Ragoût aux gniocchi à la romaine.—Cut into neat pieces about a pound of the leg of mutton piece (this part is the juiciest for this purpose); then chop up about 2oz. each of onion and fat bacon (this is a capital way of using up the fat end of a ham or a piece of pork), and fry these together till nearly cooked; then add a good wineglassful of claret, and when this is all reduced to almost a glaze, put in about a pound of fresh tomatoes, or half a tin of the canned ones, half a pint of water, salt, black pepper, and the meat; just bring it to the boil, and then let it stew very gently for an hour and a half. Mean-while take about half a teacupful of semolina and mix it with a little cold milk; then bring to the boil a short pint of milk, and, when boiling, stir the mixed semolina very gently into it, and let it boil, stirring all the time till it will come away clean from the sides of the pan; now turn it out, and when cool lift it out in dessert-spoonfuls, and arrange a layer of these at the bottom of a pie dish, sprinkling these with grated Parmesan cheese, white pepper, and tiny morsels of butter or clarified dripping, and repeat these two layers till the dish is full; then cover it with some of the gravy from the meat, and set it in the oven till quite hot; dish the meat neatly on a hot dish with its gravy, and serve the gniocchi separately. If care-fully made, this is a delicious ragoût.
Pieces of the thick flank, or the veiny piece, or the leg of mutton piece, if carefully stewed as above, are excellent served whole with either the gniocchi or with macaroni alla romana or alla Milanese, or with rice pilau. Moreover, these dishes have the merit of being both succulent and uncommon.