BS: Recipes - what are we eating?

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 11 Jun 20 - 12:19 PM

Thompson, I'm watching with interest for any reports of how you manage to use that many anchovies!

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Jos
Date: 11 Jun 20 - 11:53 AM

I'm going to search for a recipe for chestnut mousse. It sounds wonderful, and I have some preserved chestnuts left over from Christmas.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion
Date: 11 Jun 20 - 10:49 AM

The fruit soup with which I am most familiar is made with morello cherries, the light red sour kind also best in pies and jam. Indeed, it is a Hungarian delicacy, and the cream in question is the ever-popular garnish blob of sour in the middle of the bowl.

In Ottawa, where I used to live, there was once a lovely Hungarian restaurant with servers in embroidered blouses and a dark-haired gent playing the zymbalom -- very exotic in Ontario in 1970. I'm sure everyone involved in the business was a refugee from the other side of the Iron Curtain. Their menu had all the eastern European staples, for a wonder not adapted to Canadian tastes numbed by too many years of Kraft cheese and baloney, including cherry soup and chestnut mousse ... Oh, Lord, the chestnut mousse!

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 11 Jun 20 - 10:36 AM

Hungarians like cold fruit soups. Also cold wine soup. Cream tends to be decorative rather than ingrediential. I made that word up but I like it.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Thompson
Date: 11 Jun 20 - 10:21 AM

Another of Elisabeth Luard's books. The Princess and the Pheasant, has a soup called Ajo Blanco:

3oz blanched almonds
4 cloves garlic
2 tbs olive oil
2 pints cold water
salt
1 tbs white wine vinegar
handful of white grapes

Liquidise oil, garlic, almonds and 1pt water. Add the other pint of water. Season with salt and vinegar. Leave to infuse in the fridge for an hour. Peel & pip grapes. Before serving, add grapes and a piece of ice per serving.
(I've shortened her language a bit)

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Thompson
Date: 11 Jun 20 - 03:58 AM

No luck with European Peasant Cookery, Carla Emery or Mrs Beeton. But the internet offers this Hungarian fruit soup, made with plums and peaches. I'm a little suspicious of the "optional" cream - cream would completely change it so… say what?

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Thompson
Date: 11 Jun 20 - 03:09 AM

For fruit soup, maybe try one of Elisabeth Luard's books? Maybe European Peasant Cookery? I can take a look after breakfast, see if I find it.
As for the overripeness, I make banana bread with overripe bananas. It's not a bit nice with fresh bananas, but if the bananas are black, it's just right.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: EBarnacle
Date: 11 Jun 20 - 12:42 AM

Was talking with an older cousin. On several occasions she accompanied her mother to market to get fruit for fruit soup. i had never heard of this but it sounds good. The only hint she recalled was that her mother made it a point to get fruit that was slightly overripe. That could have also been because of a reduction in price.

I have never had it but Lady Hillary says it's very good. Says that she had it as a cold soup.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 10 Jun 20 - 10:10 PM

Broiled for the first time ever. Small flames.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: EBarnacle
Date: 10 Jun 20 - 03:49 PM

Well, I wanted a snack so I opened one of the sealed jars of pickled shad. As expected, the bones had completely dissolved. So had the meat. The smell was fine, with the slight foulness that was present in the beginning completely gone. I spread it on a slice of plain matzoh and the taste was really luscious.
I might use a bit less vinegar if I ever do this again, though. As mentioned, the meat just does not stand up to pickling.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Thompson
Date: 10 Jun 20 - 02:19 PM

Advice, please. Desperate for anchovies, a couple of which I throw into all kinds of dishes but especially into lamb stew, I turned to Amazon.
Reader, I bought a kilo.
They just arrived, and to my horror, turned out to be preserved in salt, rather than oil - well, they said preserved in salt, but I assumed this meant salt and then oil.
But… opening them in horror, to take out a few to be going on with and reseal the big jar, I discovered - they're absolutely fecking delicious. I can't stop licking my fingers. So sweet and gently salty. Oh. My. God. Now I know why the Romans wanted garum in everything. I'll be hard put to it not to put them in everything from ice cream to porridge.
But what are they normally used in? Italian people and Italianite cooks, help, please!

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion
Date: 10 Jun 20 - 10:55 AM

It's over 30 degrees Celsius and steamy, so last night we had spatchcocked chicken and grilled asparagus off the barbie. The kitchen stove is staying off until the weather breaks.

Grilled asparagus is supposed to be easy, but it's tricky. The websites with advice on such matters say two to three minutes, turn once, two to three minutes more, but the shoots were still rather too solid to the tooth. Next time, I think I'll turn again and give it about another two minutes.

Roast chicken should rest before carving anyway, and grilling the veg gives me something to do while I wait. Something besides drooling, that is.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 08 Jun 20 - 07:57 PM

Nothing on my plate tonight as the zoom sing thing lasted all the way to my neighborhood assoc meeting going on now.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Jun 20 - 07:56 PM

Its a one of a kind and as such I proposed marrige at Giordanos, as well as my father did 28 years before me.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 08 Jun 20 - 04:37 PM

If that's a quiche, it's a bit garish. As a real man I eat quiche in secret only. But I can't see me eating that one. A side view of a wedge of it might reveal more. But one thing's for sure: it's no pizza.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Raggytash
Date: 08 Jun 20 - 04:17 PM

That looks like a quiche to me and as we say on this side of the pond "real men don't eat quiche"

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 08 Jun 20 - 11:53 AM

To return to an old thread of mine, broccoli cornbread is good with a meal, or sometimes a small piece by itself as a meal when you don't feel like eating much (hot weather).

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion
Date: 08 Jun 20 - 10:26 AM

That is not pizza as you know it, Steve, but it is indeed pizza as it is made and sold in great heaps on this side of the Herring Pond.

I wouldn't eat it, either.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Jun 20 - 02:24 PM

That is not a pizza.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Jun 20 - 01:50 PM

https://giordanos.com/our-story/

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Jun 20 - 01:42 PM

At about 2 inches thick of incredible ingredients in the deep dish this is the best pizza I have ever had. the crust is heavenly

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Thompson
Date: 07 Jun 20 - 12:36 PM

Mizuna (correctly pronounced MEEzoona) is a Japanese vegetable. Easy peasy to grow.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 07 Jun 20 - 11:36 AM

Take away Pizza - because we had a full loyalty card it was free, so naturally we had a large!! Ingredients were chorizo sausage, tomato, various other unrecognisable bits and of course cheese!

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Jun 20 - 11:29 AM

Well I'm up for trying anything, but the spicy flavour of wild rocket is an integral part of that dish. It's a Jamie Oliver one, by the way, if you want to google it. Frozen prawns work well (thawed out first!) but you want the larger ones, not cocktail prawns.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Jos
Date: 07 Jun 20 - 11:17 AM

I've never heard of mizuna - is it a herb?

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Thompson
Date: 07 Jun 20 - 10:07 AM

Hm, I wonder would that spaghetti recipe work with mizuna, which is coming on in the garden.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Jun 20 - 06:20 AM

Stevia turns my stomach into a cement mixer. .

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 06 Jun 20 - 09:42 PM

In hot weather involved cooking is less appealing, and we're in the high 90s now (I think that translates to mid-30s Canada and UK). A cheese omelette with salsa and a side of steamed broccoli, followed by a bowl of vanilla yogurt was plenty. The house iced tea is made of green tea bags and several generous sprigs of lemon balm brewed in a 1/2 gallon jar. Sweetened with a little stevia, this is wonderful over ice.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Jun 20 - 04:09 PM

Well I've made soup with rocket and it was very good. Also, we have it wilted into our spaghetti with lemon, chilli, prawns and rocket, with a bit more chopped-up rocket sprinkled on top. Very nice. We had that last night. Our favourite thing do with rocket is to have it in a toasted bun with a barbecued burger along with caramelised onion chutney. I make the burgers with pure minced steak, no seasoning, no onions, no nothing. The great thing about rocket is that, once you've sown it, you never have to sow it again.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Thompson
Date: 06 Jun 20 - 02:57 PM

I'm with Charmion on rocket. A nice salad, but what's it doing in my hot dinner? And I'm with Steve on gluey thick-crust pizza. Pizza should be delicate and crunchy.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 06 Jun 20 - 12:42 PM

One of the advantages to living alone is having whatever you want on your pizza.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Jun 20 - 12:02 PM

If it's a real pizza, greater than the sum of its parts is what it is.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion
Date: 06 Jun 20 - 11:49 AM

Well, Steve, when all is said and done, what is pizza but bread and cheese with trimmings?

I’ll get me coat ...

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Jun 20 - 01:10 PM

I buy Iraqi tandoor bread (a large thin round piece that is stuck to the inside of the tandoor oven for a few minutes) and put what I'm not going to use right away into the freezer. It serves as a wonderful thin pizza crust in a hurry. The modern Middle-Eastern bakeries have a metal oven, top-loading free-standing or built in, and the flattened dough is transferred from the work surface to the side of the barrel-shaped oven via a really gnarly looking fuzzy pillow thing.

When I make my own pizza crust I used to use a modified bread (loaf) recipe, but now use one I found in Martha Stewart Living that is simply the best. Biancho's pizza dough.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Jun 20 - 11:13 AM

To me, a thick crust pizza is not a pizza. It's cheese on toast embellished with (usually cheap and shitty) sparse toppings. Bits of stale ham or little discs of "pepperoni" or slimy bits of blackened, soft mushrooms. Or processed chicken.   Even worse are those stuffed crust ones. A pizza base should be very thin in the centre and have a narrow rim that has a nice bit of crunch. And spare me from wedges of cold "pizza" served at buffets...Nearly as bad as those horrid little pots of "pasta salad" consisting of doughy little pasta tubes bathed in something congealed that used to be tomatoes... Italy should wage war on us!

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion
Date: 05 Jun 20 - 10:55 AM

The best pizza I have ever eaten we made at home, on a sourdough crust. If I start making pizza again, I would have to pop down to the sourdough bakery and bum some starter -- yes, we live near a sourdough bakery and the boss gives away starter if you ask nicely. We are blessed.

One of the local good restaurants (we are further blessed by the presence of several) is an Italian-style joint with a pizzeria downstairs and a white-tablecloth dining-room upstairs. Their pizza is about the best I've ever had in a restaurant (no, I've never been to Italy), with crisp crust, a variety of sauces, and an even wider choice of dressings that they don't pile higher and deeper. If you're a "house special with the works" kind of diner, they will do you an Ontario-style thick crust with tomato sauce and a load of cheese, but not if they can help it.

I don't know where the load of rocket fad came from, but it's here, too. Rocket has its place, but heaped higgledy-piggledy on a perfectly innocent pizza is not it.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Jun 20 - 06:32 AM

I have never bought a pizza in any shop, frozen or not, that had any more flavour than the cardboard box it came in. We have a takeaway pizzeria of high repute in Bude called La Bocca which we are intending to try shortly. We also have an "Italian" restaurant that's quite nice though thoroughly inauthentic. Last time I went, the wines-by-the-glass were all non-Italian and they clearly considered that a pizza wasn't a pizza unless it was decorated with those silly little mozzarella balls (uncooked) and unless the top was festooned with huge amounts of rocket. Edible but odd. The best pizzas we ever had were in a grubby little pizzeria in Napoli. We were the only non-Italians in there (always a good sign). We had a margherita and a pizza fritta, both huge and both wonderful. A terrible rainstorm raged outside and we sat close to their wood-fired oven. I'd choose a margherita every time, always dressed with the finest extra virgin olive oil. A good pizza isn't convenience food. It's heaven on Earth, and what red wine was invented for. In Rome we found a superb restaurant that served pinza pizzas (they wouldn't like my calling them pizzas...). The base, made from long-fermented dough, is far lighter and fluffier than a normal pizza base and there's just the right amount of lovely crunch. Now that was FOOD!

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 04 Jun 20 - 04:19 PM

The verdict is in - the frozen pizza is much more satisfactory than the takeout or delivery one from Dominoes. It wasn't salty, the crust was a nice texture, and two slices was plenty for a meal. I've wrapped up the rest and will reheat in the toaster over over the next couple of days.

I did sprinkle some herbs over the top, and after having it otherwise in it's original form, in future I might add some thin sliced extra onion or peppers or black olives. As a child I was all about the extra cheese and as much greasy pepperoni as possible; now I really love the thin-sliced vegetables and a little meat goes a long way.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 04 Jun 20 - 03:36 PM

I visited the discount gourmet warehouse grocery store today and came back with a couple of months-worth groceries to go in the freezer and to hand off to a couple of friends. I still have to go out regularly to buy the produce I'm not growing, but I'm reaching a point where I'm using my own peppers, garlic, onions, and tomatoes. I'm also trying one of their frozen pizzas; after the bad experience with the cold salty delivery pizza from Dominoes I am following the advice (probably from this thread several months ago) to do a frozen one. I make my own pizzas often enough, but sometimes it's nice if someone else made it for you.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 04 Jun 20 - 02:39 PM

The only oils allowed in our kitchen are two qualities of extra virgin olive oil (one for cooking, the other for sprinkling over pasta dishes, pizzas or as salad dressing) and groundnut, for all very hot frying. Roasties are done in the meat fat from the roast, or, failing that, either goose fat or beef dripping.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Jos
Date: 04 Jun 20 - 01:18 PM

On choosing the best/healthiest oil for frying, this BBC News item from about five years ago, regarding the programme "Trust Me, I'm a Doctor", comes down in favour of olive oil (though they seem not to have tested peanut/groundnut oil. They do not recommend sunflower oil or corn oil.
They also recommend butter, goose fat and lard, and say that saturated fats can be good for you.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Thompson
Date: 04 Jun 20 - 04:59 AM

Aaah, thanks, Mrrzy.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 03 Jun 20 - 11:12 PM

They are brussels sprouts sliced really really thinly.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Thompson
Date: 03 Jun 20 - 05:11 PM

Thanks, leeneia!

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Jun 20 - 03:27 PM

You can heat extra virgin olive oil for cooking almost anything. If you need to heat the oil on its own before adding anything that might cool it down a touch and dilute the oil with other liquid, onion or tomatoes for example, just be careful not to let it smoke. I start many a dish by sauteeing sliced garlic and crushed chillis in extra virgin olive oil. The olive oil, the garlic and the chilli all benefit from gentle sauteeing with just a bit of sizzle. If your garlic colours, you've overdone it and you'll have to start again. And a soffritto is easily done with extra virgin olive oil. I don't use refined olive oil, ever. That belongs in my diesel car's fuel tank. If I want to use really high heat, for example to sear a steak or cook my oven chips, I'll use groundnut oil instead.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: leeneia
Date: 03 Jun 20 - 12:45 PM

Here's one, but it has raw egg in it. I would never eat raw egg.

https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/easy-homemade-caesar-dressing
======================
Last night I made a delicious easy dinner.

Ingredients:

1 Tbsp veg oil
one half of a rotisserie chicken from the deli
pasta for two people, cooked (penne pasta is good)
one-half of a can of sliced black olives, drained
1/4 to 1/2 cup yellow onion, chopped
olive oil
pinch of oregano - to taste

Amounts are approximate and can vary acc. to your taste.

Heat the veg oil in a large skillet, saute the onion till tender. You could even brown it if you'd like. Meanwhile, remove the meat from the half of a chicken and cut it into bite-size pieces. Kitchen shears are helpful here. Be sure to include the skin, which is flavorful.

When the onions are done, add the chicken and pasta and heat through. Just before eating, add the olives and oregano. Splash on some olive oil to taste so the batch is not too dry and stir gently. Serve.
============
This recipe is based on a favorite of mine from a restaurant now out of business. The original included some kind of mild, smooth cheese which acted as a binder, but I don't know what kind of cheese it was. It's good without it, anyhow.

I read somewhere that you shouldn't heat olive oil too high, so that's why I use veg oil for the onion.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Thompson
Date: 03 Jun 20 - 12:26 PM

What on earth are shaved brussels sprouts?

And has anyone - Steve? - got a reliable Caesar dressing recipe that doesn't involve ladling in shop-bought mayo?

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Jos
Date: 03 Jun 20 - 10:27 AM

For butter or cheese, if you know how much the slab or packet weighs you can just cut off an appropriate sized piece.
The trouble with 'spoonful' measures is that they can be level, rounded, generous and/or heaped. My grandmother used to measure the teaspoon of salt she needed, when breadmaking, in the hollowed palm of her hand.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 03 Jun 20 - 10:18 AM

On a different topic, I bought a bag of shaved brussels sprouts, which I adore, but to my shame did not cook them (waaaasteful, I know) and now the bag is distended to the bursting point. If I leave it alone will it explode? Are fermenting [I think] brussels sprouts edible?

I *am* working on not getting more food than I eat while still only rarely going to a store.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion
Date: 03 Jun 20 - 10:11 AM

Good question, Steve.

As a Canadian, I have been cooking with weird measures my whole damn life. Old Canadian cookbooks use British measures, gills, pints and quarts, and modern cooks have to be alert to the fact that the pint in question is 20 fl oz Imperial and the quart is 40. You know you have one of these books when you notice that it does not call for cup measures, but half a pint.

Pounds and dry ounces are blessedly consistent, and professional recipes, especially for bread, are written that way. When the metric system hit us in 1978, we just converted, and Canadians of a certain age are very good at multiplying and dividing by 2.2.

But sometime in the 1930s the American cup, at 8 fl oz, invaded Canada, and the schizophrenia started. I particularly dislike bread recipes that use volume measures for flour; flour is quite variable enough without faffing about with filling your measuring cup JUST SO and then realizing that it's wrong anyway. Weighing out two pounds (or a kilo) of flour is far easier. Also, you don't have half a dozen measuring cups to wash after.

Butter is another ingredient often called for in volume measures when a weight measure is both easier and neater. One tablespoon of butter is half an ounce. How hard can this be?