BS: Recipes - what are we eating?

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Jos
Date: 21 Oct 20 - 09:34 AM

I don't know how people can bear to put vinegar on their chips, with or without the fish. It destroys the delicate flavour.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 21 Oct 20 - 09:52 AM

Spot on Jos.

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 21 Oct 20 - 10:21 AM

Sorry about your mum, Steve Shaw.

I love poutine.

Chips are fries over here and crisps are chips so I was misreading a lot if this but once the penny dropped I went back.

I actually like crisps in my sandwiches. Adds crunch and salt and grease. No flavored crisps, though, and certainly not vinegar. I do not get the vinegar on potato products thing.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion
Date: 21 Oct 20 - 10:42 AM

Raggy, your fruitcake recipe looks almost, if not precisely, identical to mine. Where did you get it? My recipe came from a leaflet attached to a tin of black treacle.

I might make one batch (three loaf-shaped cakes) this year for my rellies and my old college buddy in Toronto. And myself, of course. I'm not sure I could face February with no fruitcake in the house.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Jeri
Date: 21 Oct 20 - 10:42 AM

Mrrzy, it's malt vinegar, and it's glorious. It's milder than other forms of vinegar. I got into the habit of dumping it on fish and chips, along with too much salt, but the salt crystals were smaller, more powdery, than the usual ones over here. ("Salt Sense" is close.)

One thing that I think I discovered about the chip was they had a slightly sweet tast. I figure out how that happened when I cooked a potato that had been around a little while. Apparently, some of the starch had converted to sugar. I've found it's nearly impossible to do it on purpose, and I may be wrong about it all, but English chips were SO much better than what I get over here.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Raggytash
Date: 21 Oct 20 - 11:19 AM

It's more or less something I cobbled together from vague memories, a tad a common sense and a good deal of experience.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 Oct 20 - 01:09 PM

Jeri, if you store your potatoes in the refrigerator instead of a pantry or dark cool area they'll over time take on a sweeter flavor. I don't care for it, that's why I try to only buy as many as I'll use in a few weeks and keep them in a dark area of the pantry shelves.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: sciencegeek
Date: 21 Oct 20 - 01:32 PM

must admit that I do love malt vinegar and putting it on fries/chips adds flavor that I enjoy... add adding apple cider vinegar at the table when having boiled dinner - ham or corned beef- makes the cabbage easier to digest... we also use a good mustard or mustard sauce with wild abandon lol

vinegar is a prime ingredient in both mustard and ketchup/catsup... so not sure where the objection to straight vinegar comes from... but to each their own

and while I do salt my food, I've cut back on how much I use because I want the enhance not overwhelm the food's flavor... and processed food is mix of salt, sweet and grease far too often

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Jeri
Date: 21 Oct 20 - 01:38 PM

Stilly, that's what I figured. I just never could keep them that long. I supposed pubs can do it. because they buy a LOT of potatoes.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Donuel
Date: 21 Oct 20 - 02:12 PM

Condolences you ol garlic tyrant.
You have gone a long way in dispeling the American myth that English cuisine is world famous for being bad.
It may have been started by GIs in WWII.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: leeneia
Date: 21 Oct 20 - 02:42 PM

Thanks for the memories, Steve.

I keep my onions and potatoes dark by wrapping them in a piece of dark cotton cloth and putting them in a basket. The baskets are on top of the fridge. (This saves cupboard space.)

Lately, however, the DH has been on a no-white-food campaign. No ordinary pasta, no white rice, no white bread, no potatoes. Bummer!
===========
Steve, thanks for sharing the memories.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 21 Oct 20 - 02:48 PM

Au contraire, I am the Garlic Protector! I protect garlic from being cruelly minced or comminuted in one of those horrendous presses, and I rail against the brutal practices of turning it into a ghastly paste inside a squeezy tube or dessicating and atomising it so that some deluded soul can somehow think they're "improving" their chicken by rubbing it into its skin. I am vehemently opposed to violence against the noble clove! Always remember that garlic thins the blood, gives you that good-time feeling and adds ten years to your life - but not if you release it's beauteous charms all in one go, for it will punish you with bad breath and acrid notes for ever!

Cheers for all the good wishes. My mum did very well in her 91 years, she always kept her mind, her passing was peaceful and far from untimely and there's no misery here. Thank you all.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Raggytash
Date: 21 Oct 20 - 03:28 PM

Oh no, don't slay that potato
let us be merciful please
don't dice it or flake
for god's sake don't bake it
don't shed the poor blood
of that poor helpless stud
it's the worse thing
that you'll ever do
oh no don't slay that potato
what never done nothing to you

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Jos
Date: 21 Oct 20 - 03:50 PM

Regarding "vinegar is a prime ingredient in both mustard and ketchup"

Not if you make up your own mustard with mustard powder, it isn't.
And I loathe ketchup.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 21 Oct 20 - 05:23 PM

Mash'm ta-dum something stick'm in a stew [Samwise on the potato].

Malt vinegar is still vinegar and must be kept away from my spuds.

Garlic is wonderful whether mangled or not.

Tonight will be yak and cabbage curry, I think. Something North African instead of Indian is another possibility.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 Oct 20 - 11:35 PM

I love French fries dipped in tartar sauce. Something I learned in the Pacific Northwest and my kids got from me. I don't see people do that very often down here in Texas.

Steve, I missed your remarks earlier about your mother's passing. I'm glad it was peaceful, and you had her for as long as you did. I think we are of-an-age and my mother died more than 20 years ago. I'd have loved to have had time to spend more adult years with her, and have her see all of the wonderful things my children have learned that hark back to things I learned from her when I was a child.

Tonight I took some flat bread out of the freezer - tandoori bread (the flat bread baked in a tandoori oven) to make a blond pizza (no tomatoes or tomato sauce) with alfredo sauce, mozzarella, chicken, bacon, onions, peppers, and basil.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 22 Oct 20 - 02:25 AM

When I was a young soldier serving in [ then ] West Germany we used to buy chips [ French fries ] from a Schnell Imbiss or an imbiss stube and they were always served with mayonaise, loved it.

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: BobL
Date: 22 Oct 20 - 04:50 AM

Not wishing to be in competition with Raggytash, but this seems like a good opportunity to post my own fruit cake recipe, which has acquired a favourable reputation locally.

Ingredients in order of appearance:
175ml tea
30ml Sailor Jerry or Captain Morgan Spiced Gold rum
100g glacé cherries, quartered
200g unsulphured (which usually means organic) dried apricots, cut into raisin-sized pieces
550g cake fruit (mixed vine fruits + candied peel)

200g each butter, Demerara sugar, plain flour
¾tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
3 large or 4 small eggs (total 200g in shell)
65g flaked almonds

Additional rum.

For U.S. readers 200g = 7oz, 175ml = 3/4 cup, 30ml = 1 fl. oz.

Put the tea and the rum into a 1 litre / 2 pint sealable bowl. Add the cherries, then the apricots, and finally the cake fruit (i.e. stickiest first). Stir as you go, to make sure the fruit is all separated.
Put the lid on the bowl, give it a good shake, and invert it. Shake & turn at intervals until the liquid has all been absorbed by the fruit and no puddle remains at the bottom. This will take a while.

Set oven to 150°C / 300°F / Gas 2. While it heats up, line an 18cm / 7" square cake tin with buttered greaseproof paper, place on newspaper folded into 4 on a baking tray, also wrap newspaper folded into 4 around the tin. Tie with string or use metal paperclips.

Cream the butter and sugar. Whisk in the eggs, one at a time. Sift and fold in the flour + baking powder + salt. Finally, stir in the soaked fruit and the flaked almonds.

Pile the mixture into the cake tin. Smooth off, leaving a saucer-sized depression in the top. Bake in mid-oven until a meat thermometer stuck into the middle reads 92°C / 198°F - about 2¾ hours (Your Oven May Vary).

When cool, remove from tin and peel off the greaseproof. Turn the cake over and distribute 1tbsp rum over the base. Wrap in foil and leave for a week. Unwrap, pour another tbsp rum over the base, rewrap and leave for another week. The cake is now ready to enjoy.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Raggytash
Date: 22 Oct 20 - 06:19 AM

Always interested to hear other recipes BobL

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: sciencegeek
Date: 22 Oct 20 - 06:43 AM

one area of research has been the genetic basis of taste and how it influences food preferences ...

vinegar is one food item that is influenced by your genes... so there's no point in arguing merits when it's hardwired in to either like or dislike a specific taste

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Jos
Date: 22 Oct 20 - 07:04 AM

In my case not wanting vinegar on my chips isn't genetic. I just don't like vinegar on my chips.
I will happily use vinegar (or fresh lime or lemon juice) in a salad dressing, and I do like pickled onions. I don't know how, or why, one would attempt to pickle onions without vinegar.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Raggytash
Date: 22 Oct 20 - 07:22 AM

Jos, try thinly slicing onions, add a good splash of lemon juice and sprinkle with salt. Leave aside for 15-30 minutes and then eat.

It makes a passable "pickled onion"

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Jos
Date: 22 Oct 20 - 08:01 AM

I'll try that Raggytash, though for myself I don't need an alternative to pickled onions as I really like them (in malt vinegar, of course).

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 22 Oct 20 - 09:33 AM

My dislike for cilantro is genetic.

I went with vaguely North Africa - berbere spice, browned yak in duck fat, added oregano-marjoram-savory, cabbage and my last fresh tomatoes. Yum.

My grandmother was Quaker so did not add booze to her fruitcake. She was also Russian so she made it in January and let it ferment all year. Great stuff, that.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Jeri
Date: 22 Oct 20 - 09:51 AM

I can't see how not liking vinegar is genetic. You don't need the genes, you can simply not like it.

Cilantro, on the other hand, is. I think some people (like me) just taste it differently. I know when somebody's put it in food (even just a tiny bit), and while I don't like it, it's not usually enough to get me to not eat whatever it is.

Dried vs. fresh: oregano is better dried, garlic tastes the same to me, thyme is a little different, and rosemary is completely different. It's all based on personal taste.

I wonder who sells yak around here.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion
Date: 22 Oct 20 - 09:52 AM

Dave Hanson, I am another NATO veteran who first encountered mayonnaise on chips at a Schnell Imbiss. That's one of the few applications in which mayonnaise from a jar (preferably Hellman's in this part of the world) actually works better than the real, genuine, home-made article.

My husband and I both served in Germany, some ten years apart. Our private conversation was speckled with Soldatendeutsch -- stuck in a Stau on the way to the Schnell Imbiss kind of thing. The late 20th-century version of ex-Raj people whose shot of whisky was always a chota peg.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 22 Oct 20 - 10:17 AM

Love It Charmion, one of the other great delights of German Cuisine was the schinkenbrot, raw bacon sandwhich which I also loved.

I feel very nostalgic for my time in Germany now.


Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion
Date: 22 Oct 20 - 02:26 PM

You must have been up North, with BAOR. (Or were you with Riff-Raff Air lines?) In the Baden area, where I was, the great treat was schnecken (snails), served with lashings of garlic butter and cheese on top, or spargeln (asparagus), served with Hollandaise and pfannkuchen with a couple of slices of Westphalian ham on the side.

No wonder lots of us got fat.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 22 Oct 20 - 03:24 PM

BAOR in Osnabruck. Not many places you can send men with tanks.

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion
Date: 22 Oct 20 - 05:59 PM

What — no one offered you the famous all-expenses-paid visit to CFB Suffield, home of the British Army Training Unit? It’s just a few (dozen) klicks down the road from Medicine Hat, Alberta. Delightful in January and even better in mud season!

The Wehrmacht used to hang out at CFB Shilo in western Manitoba. They had more tanks in Canada than Canada had anywhere.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Jeri
Date: 22 Oct 20 - 06:25 PM

There's an asparagus soup recipe I got from Tom (curmudgeon) with bleu cheese that's great. The more condensed version works great as a sauce on the sparagus.

I got my Misfits box a little while ago. Apples and limes out the wazoo, and the biggest beet (I'm guessing it's a beet) I've ever seen. It's just a bit smaller than the acorn squash that was in there. I cooked the fingerling potatoes (Amazing Hulk-sized) I got 12 days ago, and they were so sweet they could've been dipped in chocolate.

Mayonnaise on chips is wonderful. We used to get a brand of crisps that were fried in lard, and they were really good. I noticed they weren't in the store the last time I looked.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Thompson
Date: 23 Oct 20 - 07:58 AM

My condolences, Steve.

Thing about chips is that in their homelands, they're made with particular breeds of potatoes which are floury rather than waxy. (My own favourites are Golden Wonder, which lead to the conceit of Ireland being called Golden Wonderland.)

Once you've got hold of the right spuds, to make your chips you either boil/steam them in their jackets and peel them, or if you're lazy you peel them then boil/steam them (sweeter if you steam them), them you chop them up while hot, and plunge them straight into the boiling oil in a basket, and take them out when golden. Real purists then put them back in for a second frying, but I've never gone that far.

To be really good they should be deep fried in animal fat over a charcoal flame. To be really, really good they should be accompanied by battered ray wings and a wedge of lemon, but there's only one place in Dublin (in Meath Street) where you can get ray wings now.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion
Date: 23 Oct 20 - 08:18 AM

In eastern Canada, the perfect potato for chips comes from Prince Edward Island or New Brunswick; unfortunately, I do not know the cultivar. The "right" way to obtain chips is from a chip wagon, which is a small truck with a deep-fryer installed in the bed and a serving hatch in the side of the box body. Chip wagons may also offer poutine, a confection that I do not dare attempt to digest for fear of bad things happening.

The Canadian chip order is traditionally delivered in a small pressed-paper tray or a "toot" (cone) of stiff brown paper, slathered with ketchup (not by me; hate the stuff, and fortunately vinegar is also available), and eaten with a toothpick. The traditional habitat of the chip wagon is outside hockey arenas and curling clubs.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Jos
Date: 23 Oct 20 - 09:01 AM

Thompson, when you say that the potatoes are "sweeter if you steam them", do you mean that you think being sweeter is better?
A couple of days ago the discussion was about potatoes being sweet, concluding that it was caused by keeping them too long - I got the impression that at least some people, like me, don't want potatoes to taste sweet. If mine are sweet I assume they are going off, and throw them away.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 Oct 20 - 09:47 AM

I still use them if they're sweet, but now I know better than to keep them in the fridge unless it's really necessary (because they're starting to sprout and I'm going to use them very soon).

Throw them out in the garden and grow some more.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Thompson
Date: 23 Oct 20 - 12:13 PM

It may be an urban legend, but I have heard that potatoes in Ireland are so sweet that diabetics are advised to avoid them.
They're not sweet like sugar, but there's an underlying sweetness that's part of their deliciousness.
The first potatoes in Ireland were called "An Spáinneach Geal", or "The Bright Spaniard"; we have always grown them in the same style as the Peruvians - the duplicitously-named lazy-beds formed by making a ridge a metre wide, putting the potatoes in rows along it and folding and earthing up on top, continuing to do so as the leaves grow, to make a long stem that produces many tubers along its length.
Some recipes here.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Thompson
Date: 23 Oct 20 - 12:17 PM

Here's Teagasc (agricultural avisors) advice on growing potatoes, with favourite cultivars. I don't like Roosters much myself, but love Records - but I think that's mainly because Roosters are kind of industrially grown.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 23 Oct 20 - 04:58 PM

Poutine is arriving on menus here in Charlottesville, but it is usually adulterated with something like parmesan. Ugh.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: JennieG
Date: 23 Oct 20 - 05:34 PM

Charmion - I tried poutine once on one of our Canadian visits. It was very delicious and I could have eaten it more frequently, but I think of it as a heart attack on a plate.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Oct 20 - 08:23 PM

Well Mrs Steve is 70 on Sunday (she doesn't look it, and don't tell her I said it), and we're having me daughter and her feller and our bubble friend round. I'm doing Elizabeth David's boeuf en daube. It's been a winner before and I'm sure it'll work again. I'll cook it tomorrow and we'll eat it on Sunday. I've never known any daube, stew or casserole that isn't ten times better the day after it's been made. We'll be having it with mashed potatoes (for which I always use at least three different varieties, which irons out any weaknesses) and a stack of tenderstem. A class act, I hope.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion
Date: 23 Oct 20 - 10:19 PM

I’ve made that daube, Steve. It are deeelicious.

What’s “tenderstem”?

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 24 Oct 20 - 03:11 AM

Tenderstem is a variety of broccolli.



Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: BobL
Date: 24 Oct 20 - 03:23 AM

Thompson what do you mean, PEEL THEM? The skin is the tastiest part!

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Jos
Date: 24 Oct 20 - 04:08 AM

BobL - If you cook the potatoes in their skins then take the skin off and make the potatoes into chips, you can fry the skins until they are crisp and eat them all yourself. (A selfish greedy pig? Me?)

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Oct 20 - 05:48 AM

Tenderstem is more akin to sprouting broccoli than to calabrese (the most boring vegetable on the planet). Its green spears are atop long green stems which cook nicely along with the spears. I find that steaming doesn't work too well, so I pack the tenderstem snugly in a lidded pan with the stems mostly in the water and the spears mostly sticking above. Very unforgiving if overcooked. Pinch of salt.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Thompson
Date: 24 Oct 20 - 07:03 AM

Yes, yes, of course the peel is the best part of the potato, but there are those who peel potatoes before chipping them. I don't know why, myself.
I have the last of a present of hard green apples and the whole of a present of hard green pears from two neighbours; I'm dithering about what to do with them, but… probably a ginger jam…

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 24 Oct 20 - 12:13 PM

Potato skins make potatoes worth eating.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Oct 20 - 06:17 PM

This afternoon I turned on a movie and spent the two hours listening to it in the background while assembling the chopped ingredients (including cucumbers, pepper, and garlic from the garden) for a more-or-less dill relish. I had two recipes I couldn't decide between so merged them a little bit. Added mustard seed and one hot pepper to the mix that called for red bell pepper. And the dill recipe didn't have any onion or garlic like the other one did (but the other second recipe was full of sugar and had cornstarch as a thickener.) We'll see how it turns out. The proportions of vege to apple cider vinegar was good, though there was a lot of liquid left over at the end, since cucumbers are so wet to begin with.

The jars processed for 15 minutes and are now cooling, with some leftover in a jar in the fridge to sample once it's had a little time to sit and merge flavors. Yield: three pint jars and six half-pint jars.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Oct 20 - 08:18 PM

I've made my own version of ribollita today. I start with a fairly coarse soffritto of carrot, onion and celery (I like texture in me grub). Best olive oil of course. Once that's done (at least half an hour if not longer) I throw in a tin and a half of plum tomatoes, a teaspoon of sugar, a small pinch of chilli, a few cloves of fist-smashed garlic, two cans of cannellini beans and about 800 ml home-made veg stock. Seasoning of course. Simmer that lot for half an hour then add a big bunch of cavolo nero, torn up with coarse stems discarded. After about fifteen minutes it's done. But don't eat that until at least tomorrow or the next day. My amount does two of us twice. To serve it, you need two big slices (one each) of toasted bread that you've rubbed with olive oil and garlic. Put the toast in the bottom of the bowl and spoon the thick soup on top. Drizzle with your best olive oil and shave some Parmesan on top. You need chianti.

I don't use herbs or red wine in this recipe and I won't use the fennel seeds that some recipes recommend. There are herby flavours in my veg stock but I never want herbs to dominate.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 25 Oct 20 - 09:15 AM

I can never not eat till the next day, I have to make enough for there to BE a next day's worth. Kudos.