BS: Recipes - what are we eating?

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Raggytash
Date: 18 Nov 20 - 03:06 PM

Tell you what Thompson if you PM me your address I will vacuum seal some and post them to you. If the mail in Ireland will carry them, they should do the mail in the UK does.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 Nov 20 - 02:26 PM

I like the canned kippered snacks (Brunswick kippered boneless herring fillets) but you can't eat them just anywhere. If I ate them at work at lunch I had to stand over the sink at the back of the room (our cavernous office in the basement used to be where various arts were performed to repair books, etc., so there was an industrial steel sink). Pull the ring and open the lid carefully (no splashing of oil!) then eat out of the can with a fork (don't get it on your face, fingers, or clothes). A hefty squirt of dish soap went into the empty can and it was washed in order break down the oil and remove it from the can and wash completely down the drain. Also wash the lid with dish soap, then take the whole can out and discard the recyclable tin in the recycling container on the next floor up in a large open area.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Raggytash
Date: 18 Nov 20 - 01:51 PM

Fortune's kippers are a thing of beauty, no plastic bags or lumps of second rate butter get near them.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Nov 20 - 12:52 PM

Sounds good to me. If I have a kipper I'll have a real one open like a big butterfly, not one of those pathetic jobs in a plastic bag with a knob of butter that you boil in the bag. That is not food. Due to the aroma (me)/stink (Mrs Steve) of the cooking fish, I'm obliged to cook and eat it outdoors. I have a big old frying pan and one of those ten-quid camping stoves that uses a butane canister. The kipper is done in butter for five minutes, then, all alone, I eat the lot, skin, bones, fins, the lot. My ancestors were probably seals. I even have to bring a bowl of washing-up water outside to clear up.

I have another recipe somewhere for a slightly posher version of mackerel pate that uses those fillets of smoked mackerel you can buy and some chopped-up gherkins, great for a starter if you get people round. I'll see if I can find it.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Thompson
Date: 18 Nov 20 - 12:39 PM

Kipper version sounds good too. Especially if you serve it while humming The Rustical Farmer.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Raggytash
Date: 18 Nov 20 - 12:25 PM

Nah ............... far better is to nip up the road to Fortune's Kipper House buy two or three kipper fillets. Put these into a food processor add a generous teaspoon of English mustard and a generous teaspoon of Horseradish sauce, a good grind of black pepper and a generous squeeze of lime juice and blend until smooth. Just before you remove it from the blender add a little cream to bind it. Chill before use!! :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Nov 20 - 11:58 AM

Drain the mackerel well (two cans) and put into the jug of a hand-blender (or whatever you do to blend). Add one teaspoon of English mustard, one tablespoon of full-fat creme fraiche, a grinding of black pepper, the juice of a generous half a lemon and a *little* splash of Tabasco (or leave it out). Blitz well and whack it in the fridge. I find it tastes much better the day after I've made it. An option is to zest the lemon on top once you've put it into a nice bowl. More than enough there for two. We have it with buttered toast.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Jos
Date: 18 Nov 20 - 10:41 AM

Are there any other ingredients, as well as the mackerel and lemon juice?

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Thompson
Date: 18 Nov 20 - 10:37 AM

Ah, great, that's the sardiney size.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Nov 20 - 06:52 AM

I use Morrison's (nearest supermarket) mackerel fillets in olive oil which are 125g. Two of them, well-drained. Definitely just plain mackerel in oil, no fancy tomatoey/chillified jobs! The easiest thing to get wrong is the lemon, usually by adding too much of it. I never add extra salt.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Thompson
Date: 18 Nov 20 - 03:59 AM

Steve Shaw - what size are those tins of mackerel in oil that you use for mackerel pate? Lidl sell sardine-tin-sized tins, but do you mean those or the hand-length ones?

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 17 Nov 20 - 05:20 PM

Ordered a burger. Ate half and hit the wall. But boy was it good!

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: JennieG
Date: 16 Nov 20 - 11:50 PM

Oh my......that "lettuce alone" honeymoon salad was around when I was a Sweet Young Thing back in the 1960s! Thanks for the memory.

We would sometimes say "lettuce alone and honey on top".

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 16 Nov 20 - 03:54 PM

Lots of "honeymoon* salad" but the blood work is done so BURGER tonight! I have been craving something very American since the election.

*Honeymoon salad: lettuce alone.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 12 Nov 20 - 09:09 AM

Quick diet this week, got a physical coming up and I like to game the system.

Yesterday lunch was some cuke slices with hummous. Dinner was a swordfish steak with butter and almonds. Day before dinner was broccoli and asparagus in chicken broth. Lunch was salad with tomato cuke crab almonds artichoke hearts. Today lunch will be a duck egg. Not sure about dinner, probably crab and asparagus soup, or a salad with a tin of smoked trout. Yeah, that. That will be lunch, actually, now that I have thought of it. And down to only 3 chocolate-covered almonds, or one dark chocolate almond butter cup, after the meal, from my usual handful. And I should really ramp up the Wii bowling.

Also today a new batch of snail butter will happen. Some will help in the crab and asparagus soup, in which I will skip the corn this time.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 11 Nov 20 - 11:00 PM

Kroger's Private Selection products are, as far as I have tested so far, very good, and quite reasonably priced. I'll have to look into that pizza. If you're dealing with clogged arteries you don't want to go exploring their ice cream selections, but some of those are (literally) to die for.

That lemon-steamed-baked thing does sound pretty awful.

I made a batch of oatmeal cookies last night that came out as good as they ever have. I like the crispy, not soft, and these were crunchy as ever. I added pecans (baked before adding to the mix) and raisins. They are very sweet, but what an amazing flavor. I gave some to the neighbors next door and I'll take some across the street tomorrow.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 11 Nov 20 - 01:46 PM

I do like crème anglaise but ewww.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Raggytash
Date: 11 Nov 20 - 06:12 AM

Today is the one day of the year when I make a dish with Pumpkin in it.

It is a Lamb Stew with Black Eyed Beans using the pumpkin normally left over from making a bonfire lantern.

It is very unusual for me in as much as I simmer the Lamb for an hour before adding anything else to skim off any fat or foam.

So simmer the lamb for an hour, skim add the Black eyed beans and continue cooking, add onion, garlic, tomato puree, thyme, a small splash of oil, mixed spice, black pepper, salt and hot pepper sauce, continue cooking and then add the diced Pumpkin.

I an led to believe this is an Africa dish in origin that in truth should use Mutton which is very difficult to obtain where I live. It has also worked very well with Goat but again I cannot source that were I live.

The pumkin makes a great carrier for the flavours of the other ingredients.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Thompson
Date: 11 Nov 20 - 05:26 AM

They were making a strange object on Great British Bake-Off last night called a pond pudding, which involved steaming a whole lemon in sweet stuff inside a suet pastry crust, and then pouring on crème anglaise. Nobody got it right. It looked entirely revolting. Has anyone eaten or made this?

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Nov 20 - 08:16 PM

What we had for dinner this evening. But there are recipes for fresh on the WWW.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 10 Nov 20 - 02:27 PM

More steaming, this time using the Mehu-Liisa Finnish steam juicer to reduce 7 quarts of frozen strawberries to 3/4 gallon of clear juice and a quart of remaining solids. The house smells wonderful! Freezing the berries before steaming assures the most juice because the cells in the fruit are already ruptured from the cold. Jelly-making is on the schedule this week. I use some of it for gifts and send some to my children who love this.

I started making jelly when my teen-aged son complained about the "lumps" in the preserves I was buying. I made him help me that first time so he could see how jelly is achieved; we did both the steam juicing and the jelly making. He is in his late 20s now, and often surprises me in the things he was paying attention to in the kitchen, such as when he contacted me about how to roast a Thanksgiving turkey when he was 21 and living with friends in a house (after two years in a dorm). I wouldn't be surprised if he's making jelly for himself in his Seattle home. (Despite his protests that he didn't need to know how, just before he left for college I made him participate a couple of times in the making of "real" popped corn, oil in a pan with butter-flavor salt and learning how to let it pop just enough before taking off the heat. The constant jiggling and lifting of the pot is essential to prevent burning. This turns out to have been a wildly popular skill with his housemates over the years.)

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 08 Nov 20 - 05:27 PM

I've steamed the second pie pumpkin (cut up into chunks first) and once this one is peeled and mashed I'll keep some of it in the fridge for baking this week. The remainder goes into the freezer.

I have a sweet potato to boil and I'll keep some of that mashed in the fridge also. My pumpkin bread recipe went from great to fabulous when I started adding some sweet potato to the pumpkin. I also use melted butter in stead of oil. I have a bunch of very small baking pans and these loaves are frozen for use later, but with the first batch I'll share with friends and neighbors. I was baking last spring and sharing, but then it got too hot. Now we're back to baking season and this bread with pecans and cut up dates is a great start.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Raggytash
Date: 08 Nov 20 - 04:38 PM

On the rare occasions I make them I use a small muffin tin to shape them. Most of the time I just use the tubular kind as they are and plonk them into the Cranachan (like a flake in a 99!)

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

But how do you weave them into a basket?

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Raggytash
Date: 08 Nov 20 - 02:43 PM

Let's put it this way Thompson ............. it's a lot easier to buy them!!

Brandysnap biscuits that are normally tubular will do nice nicely.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Thompson
Date: 08 Nov 20 - 12:18 PM

Raspberries, eh?
And this brandy basket - do you make it or buy it made?

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 08 Nov 20 - 12:00 PM

That was my fear too, Raggytash, but they were marvy. About an hour on low, skin side up mostly, then 10mn on higher to crisp. Yum, yum, yum.

My only regret is not having all that marvy duck fat in a jar. Going back to oven for next time, for that reason.

This was also my first time with fresh, never frozen duck legs. Frankly I did not notice any difference...

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion
Date: 08 Nov 20 - 06:53 AM

I like to roast duck legs in the oven, on a bed of hunked potatoes. For one or two, do it in an iron skillet.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Raggytash
Date: 07 Nov 20 - 11:51 AM

DON'T !!!!


The amount of fat in the duck legs will probably cause a fire!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 07 Nov 20 - 11:10 AM

Am gonna try duck legs on the grill today. I will report back. Advice welcome en attendant.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Raggytash
Date: 07 Nov 20 - 09:25 AM

Cranachan Thompson ! :-)

My method is to use a brandy basket (a basket made out of Brandysnap biscuit) Whip the cream till stiff add a little plain yogurt, honey and the whisky soaked oatmeal and whip a little more. Add copious amounts of Raspberries and spoon these through the mixture and spoon into the Brandy Baskets.

The raspberries are essential !!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 07 Nov 20 - 08:47 AM

Although I'd heard of kimshi[ Korean pickled cabbage ] I had not come accross it until today so I bought a tin, absolutely delicious.

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Thompson
Date: 07 Nov 20 - 08:34 AM

There's also a Scottish dessert that I used to make for dinner guests when killing people with your car was less disapproved of: soak oatmeal in honey and whisk(e)y for a few hours, then just before serving beat cream and mix it in. Call heart ambulance and serve.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Nov 20 - 12:28 PM

Charmion, I think making yourself a batch of chicken soup will be a wonderful ceremony to start to reclaim the kitchen and your appetite. I made enough that it will last for a few days, and this is the soup that I started by putting all of the cut up but unpeeled vegetables in the Dutch oven in the oven and let them roast. Once the veggies had been in for a while I added a couple of chicken breasts with skin and bones into the pot in the oven and let the meat bake and the chicken fat add to the vegetable flavor.

Once the pot was back on the stovetop I took out the chicken and let it finish baking in the oven and in the pot added water and let it simmer for a while. before discarding all of the solid vegetables. I added the chicken bones and skin to the pot and it simmered a little more and the finished meat cooled and went into the fridge. I bottled the stock with all of the fat and waited a couple of days until I made the soup with a new batch of vegetables (onion, carrots, celery, potatoes sautéed in a little olive oil and several dollops of the retained chicken fat for flavor), a large cube of chicken bouillon (a good brand for the "value added" flavor) and at the end added the cubed chicken and the egg noodles.

It is one of my better batches. It wasn't like making soup from an entire bird carcass, but it came out just as strong.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 05 Nov 20 - 10:11 AM

[Oops. Pesky E.]

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: BobL
Date: 05 Nov 20 - 03:03 AM

Irish whiskey is essential for that most enjoyable nightcap, whiskey-and-milk. Hot or cold.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 04 Nov 20 - 05:58 PM

No no no. It *has* to be Irish whisky.

I can drink again! Over Halloween I had 4 hot whiskies over the course of the evening.

Like whichever Clancy Brother it was said... You don't really need the cloves.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion
Date: 04 Nov 20 - 08:37 AM

Okay. Chicken soup. I can do that. And I have noodles.

BobL, your Dad's cure-all was my Dad's cure-all, too. He made it with Navy-style demerara rum; I sorta prefer Jameson's whiskey, but any booze'll do (except maybe gin).

I'm still not cooking properly. I really do have to get back at it or bad things will happen.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: BobL
Date: 04 Nov 20 - 03:33 AM

Dad's Cure All - hot water, lemon, honey - and a single measure of your preferred spirit. Dad's was rum, mine is either spiced rum or whisky. Plus Stones' Ginger Wine.
The hot water unblocks the sinuses, the lemon and honey sooth the throat, the consequent feeling of relief is boosted by the alcohol. After three you'll feel MARVELLOUS.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Thompson
Date: 03 Nov 20 - 09:12 PM

My sinuses too are tortured at the moment; one thing that helps them is hot lemon, honey and ginger; another is making chicken stock (we boil a few chicken carcases for two hours in the pressure cooker with carrots, onions, herbs and celery); the chicken vapour soothes the mucous membranes.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 03 Nov 20 - 08:34 PM

I made a batch of chicken soup and added egg noodles and it was perfect this evening. Especially since my sinuses are upset by humidity and allergy factors. The soup was soothing and the steam off of it therapeutic.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 03 Nov 20 - 10:17 AM

I pick up rice for a couple of family members when I'm shopping at the Halal market in the university town where I used to work. I bought a bag this time after carefully avoiding the parboiled ones, only to have the recipient look up "super sela" and find it's the same thing, kind of, as parboiling. It's a way to cook ahead in the hull. He would like to exchange, but I think I'll donate that bag to the food bank and try again. Returning items in this time of COVID-19 is difficult.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Thompson
Date: 03 Nov 20 - 08:50 AM

Someone sent me this useful guide to making fried rice. Though with a bit of a sick tummy (writhing and ouching), allied with a stuffed-up nose, but both of them nearly better) what I'm really longing for is some chicken, ginger and corn soup.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion's brother Andrew
Date: 03 Nov 20 - 08:43 AM

One word, Charmion: Kirschwasser!

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion
Date: 02 Nov 20 - 05:49 PM

You just reminded me, Stilly, of the several litres of pitted sour cherries in *my* freezer. I currently have enough jam in the pantry to last the rest of my life, so I have to think of something else to do with them.

No, pie is not the right answer.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: leeneia
Date: 02 Nov 20 - 12:13 AM

That sounds delicious, Stilly. I managed to grow some strawberries one year, and we made jam. Sad to say, I could never do it again.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 01 Nov 20 - 11:32 AM

I have seven quarts of strawberries (purchased at deep discount at my town's discount gourmet grocery warehouse) in the freezer, soon to be transferred to the steam juicer. The results will be perfectly clear strawberry juice and a nice dense pulp to use for jam or baking. I'll make strawberry jelly this week, something I haven't done for a while.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: leeneia
Date: 01 Nov 20 - 10:42 AM

Hi, Dave. Does your loved one dislike the texture of bones or merely the presence of them on the plate?

I ask because meat cooked with the bones in comes out different from meat cooked without them. The broth is thicker, for one thing. It's hard to describe. My dear husband, the DH, always prefers to have the bones left in.

With a slow cooker it's pretty easy to cook the food, take out of the meat, let it chill till it's safe to handle, and remove the bones. Put the meat back in, and you have the best of both worlds - boneless meat with rich gravy.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Joe_F
Date: 31 Oct 20 - 06:33 PM

Bacon, liver, & onions (a classic bachelor dish)

Cut a strip of bacon into squares. Saute with a coarsely chopped onion slice. Put chicken livers on top. When they are half done, turn them over & add mushroom slices.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 31 Oct 20 - 10:13 AM

Water to cover plus a couple of inches.