BS: Recipes - what are we eating?

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: JennieG
Date: 27 Jun 20 - 05:34 PM

It makes perfect sense, leeneia, but I don't like the taste of tomatoes at all......which is probably the reason I didn't want to eat them in the first place!

We probably all have foods which we like, and foods which we don't. I don't like tomaties, but apricots now......oh my goodness, I just lurve them.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Jun 20 - 04:12 PM

It's time to have a few things handy for assembling what in the US is called a "Chef Salad" - it is an ample bed of lettuce topped with shredded or small sticks of cheese, then some kind of meat, at least one. Chicken, ham, turkey, are all good. Halved hard boiled eggs to edge the plate, alternated with whole or halved tomatoes, depending on their size. I usually use an Italian dressing, usually one of the fresh ones from the grocery store, but I have some bottles in the pantry also. Mmmmmm!

Meanwhile, I'm also preparing to make enough marinara sauce plus some kind of meat (sausage, but I have also been known to add cut up chicken) for a couple of days' meals. And make extra pasta. I keep it in a container in the fridge and reheat by pouring boiling water over it in a bowl. Purists may not like this, but it works when its so hot and humid and you don't want to cook every day.

I'm going to make a batch of hummus soon, starting by soaking the garbanzos, not using canned peas.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: leeneia
Date: 27 Jun 20 - 02:55 PM

Jennie, you are angry with your mother, so you punish yourself by not eating the many delicious dishes with tomato in them. Does that make sense?
========
Last night we had our Double Goop Dinner. A restaurant called Paradise Cafe used to mix chicken-breast bits with cream cheese and ancho peppers and serve it with chips. I modified it to make Goop of Paradise.

Cook chicken breast any way you like. Chop it fine.
Mix together: cream cheese, lemon or lime juice, tarragon, black pepper. If cheese is too stiff, it's easiest to soften it with milk yogurt or sour cream. Otherwise you have to use elbow grease.

Serve with corn chips (we like no-salt chips.)
======
In addition make guacamole and eat that with chips too.

It's cool to serve these with blue corn chips, but I can't find them without salt.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: JennieG
Date: 26 Jun 20 - 12:51 AM

No tomatoes - no. Just no.

One of my earliest childhood memories is of my mother holding me down with one hand and trying to force-feed me tomatoes with the other. Is it any wonder that, even at my advanced age, I still don't eat tomatoes?

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Jun 20 - 08:37 PM

Try repeating that in plain English.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Donuel
Date: 25 Jun 20 - 07:56 PM

YELLOW CHERRIES stay at the peak of sweet ripeness for weeks.
Just like we don't get Spanish produce, I bet you don't these.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Jun 20 - 07:54 PM

I've recently discovered that cherry tomatoes (it's imperative that they are flavoursome to begin with, otherwise don't bother) are amazingly good if you thread them on soaked flat wooden skewers (I mean, whoever thought that round skewers were any good...) and barbecued for a max of five minutes. No messing around with marinades or added flavours. A bit of rocket on your burger and some of those tomatoes with your sausages or chicken wings gives you the veg you need to stay healthy. Substitute barbecued corn on the cob for spuds and you eating so healthily that the two bottles of wine each/crate of ice-cold lager (non-American) per person will do you no harm at all. Just stay in bed and accidentally skip 24 hours.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Jun 20 - 03:22 PM

A sandwich on whole wheat bread with mayonnaise, fresh cucumber pickles, home grown tomato, and sliced baked chicken. The more places I can find to use those tomatoes and other garden crops, the happier I am!

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Jun 20 - 03:12 PM

My very favourite summer fruit is picota cherries. They're the little ones with no stalks from Extremadura in Spain and you only get them for a few weeks, starting soon. They're as cheap as chips too.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: EBarnacle
Date: 25 Jun 20 - 02:06 PM

In this season, I have cooked less than usual but sometimes make a meal of blueberries, cut up strawberries [use 'em before they go soft], pitted cherries and yoghurt. The yoghurt seems to make everything taste sweeter.
And yes, I agree about the ripeness of fruit, especially melons. I truly miss the sweetness of properly ripened cantaloupe. In that respect melons are getting more like avocados--you buy them hard and watch for that moment of ripeness before they go downhill.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion
Date: 25 Jun 20 - 10:13 AM

I know Steve is enough of a gardener to have ready access to parsley and similar greenstuff any ol' time he wants it. I suffer badly from envy.

Ripeness is critical to the flavour of strawberries. I have been making strawberry jam and related preserves since the age of 12, and I can say with authority that the best results come with fruit that has achieved the condition we Canadians call "dead ripe" -- on the cusp of collapsing into red mush. You know it's there when you pull on the hull and the leaves pop off with no loss of flesh. Or you could eat one, but market traders tend to frown on that practice; customers swooning with bliss clutter up access to the stand.

Size is also a factor, and that depends on the cultivar. "Jam berries" are smaller than the Bobdignagian items that come from Mexico in plastic boxes, and they don't travel well. I wish the growers would indicate the cultivar on their packaging, but only the "tree fruit" growers do that, and only because their customers insist; apples, for example, vary widely in sweetness and cellulose content, so their culinary potential varies just as widely. don't think the berry business is quite there yet.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Donuel
Date: 25 Jun 20 - 07:32 AM

Steve, since one of your formost expert talents is botany, do you find flavour has suffered because of breeding mono culture? strains?
I find ripeness is critical in strawberry flavour.

Do you own a Hortus?

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Jun 20 - 06:57 AM

Strawberries like wot I recall from my youth are, sadly, very elusive these days. It seems that the dreaded Elsanta and, latterly, Malling Centenary have cornered the market. I mean, where's the flavour! I grew my own for years but I was constanly afflicted by millipedes and grey mould. Finally, a pair of badgers rolled around in my beds and trashed them. At least we have Rodda's clotted cream...

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 24 Jun 20 - 11:55 AM

Ooh yum. Had a bacon butty the other day.

Need inspiration for a recipe swap this weekend...

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 24 Jun 20 - 10:10 AM

Tonight I'll be mostly eating a chip butty.

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion
Date: 24 Jun 20 - 09:49 AM

The date square is an essential Canadian food item, right up there with the butter tart. I'm so glad to know that it is now infesting Oz; in my chauvinistic opinion, it's one of our better exports.

The thing about the date square (and the butter tart) is that it could be made in the dead of winter by people who did not own a refrigerator or a freezer, and could not afford fresh fruit out of season.

It's approaching the height of summer in Ontario, and I think we have reached surfeit with respect to strawberries and asparagus; my heart no longer leaps up, as it did in late May, when I see them at the market. Now, I'm longing for raspberries, corn and peaches.

I can't believe that I'm actually a wee bit tired of strawberries. That's just wrong.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: JennieG
Date: 23 Jun 20 - 09:19 PM

Soups, stews and cold weather comfort food here right now, being winter. Am getting in the mood to bake a batch of date squares because Himself is The Date Conoisseur Of The Universe, but it might wait for a day or two until the mood builds up to the point where it can no longer be ignored.

I use my Canadian friend Lois' mother's recipe for Matrimonial Cake; Lois grew up in eastern B.C. The same or very similar recipe is called Matrimonial Cake in western Canada and Date Squares elsewhere. Himself has really enjoyed his date squares while visiting Toronto, and elsewhere in Ontario.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 Jun 20 - 08:58 PM

I have been known to run out and buy a beer when the mood strikes, usually at one of the nearly convenience stores. But the store I used to prefer (that has my favorite brand of beer) is so flagrant in their disregard of social distancing and protecting their staff, let alone their customers, that I have to plan ahead and shop elsewhere. I'll be picking up a case of my favorite beer at a store that does a good job of protecting people, but since stores have been closing earlier to disinfect everything, I can't just run out to that grocery store.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 21 Jun 20 - 01:27 PM

Firm believer in hot [temp and spice] soup in summer...

Ground lamb, last half onion, garlic, tail end of cabbage, white wine, chicken better than bouillon, Berbere seasoning marjoram oregano, and at the end some marvy market spinach and leftover green beans from supporting local restaurant. Sour cream. Yum.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: leeneia
Date: 21 Jun 20 - 11:06 AM

We had a traditional meal last night. Pork chops, corn on the cob, salad, fruit.

Though our salad was new-fangled - a wedge of iceberg lettuce with saladacious toppings such as diced cucumber, cherry tomatoes, green onion. In restaurants they always include bacon. Blue cheese dressing is usual. (I'd given up on iceberg lettuce till I encountered the wedge.)

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 19 Jun 20 - 12:24 PM

I made banana bread as a birthday gift/party favor combo yesterday, but this time of year you won't often find me heating the big oven. This is when the counter-top toaster oven comes into it's own. For larger meals the portable convection oven or even the roaster oven can be placed on a table outside the kitchen door so the heat is dissipated out-of-doors. I have a small terracotta charcoal grill I sometimes set up for making enough chicken or sausage or burgers to use for a couple of meals. The big gas grill needs work (I suspect mud dauber wasps or other nesting-in-skinny-places wasps plugged a gas line). Then there is the metal barrel charcoal grill tucked into the garage that comes out sometimes for large orders, like when I buy a case of Hatch chili peppers and need to roast them. That'll come up in August or September (and I usually let the store roast them now since it doesn't cost me any extra and it's a lot of work).

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Gallus Moll
Date: 19 Jun 20 - 08:41 AM

It is June so - Herring!!!
My favourites are:
Herring dipped in oatmeal (fried in butter)
Soused Herring made into a roll then slowly/gently baked in seasoned vinegar and water, then eaten cold, with salad. (i do not like the consistency if raw fish!)

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 18 Jun 20 - 02:22 PM

Those are radiatore, chez nous.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 16 Jun 20 - 12:30 PM

Me three on the bacon suggestion, Mrrzy.

Fruit flies are trying to take over the kitchen so I have a couple of attempts at traps (water with sweet stuff sitting on the counter under an under-cupboard light to attract them). And a sticky sheet for the garden pegged to a shelf.

I haven't baked for about three weeks, and while I miss the bread, the house is so hot (I don't keep the AC on real low) it will rise super fast so I need to really pay attention if I bake this time of year.

I've decided that making a batch of paste e fagiole every month or so is a good way to 1) use up stuff in the freezer and fridge and 2) have a solid meal that even in summer will work. A small bowl with a salad will set me up and I don't need to cook anything else for days at a time.

Lately, though, I've been using some of the pasta that I kind of loaded up on at the beginning of the pandemic (I bought three bags). I have some of that fancy ruffled-looking armoniche (link clipped from a Reddit post where the person is asking how to use it. Silly person! It's pasta!) that I'm pairing with Rao's "homemade" artichoke pasta sauce and slice up some baked chicken breast with it.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 16 Jun 20 - 12:17 PM

Thanks. And on a rack, too. Good idea.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion
Date: 16 Jun 20 - 08:50 AM

Today I am enduring a bout of gut misery, the third in ten days, so I'm eating very little and all of it bland and soft. Never have I been so glad of a humble boiled egg.

Himself is baking -- I can hear the rattle and bang of mixing bowls downstairs. White bread, this time, appropriate for a convalescent digestion.

Mrrzy, you'll never get crisp bacon in a muffin cup, however hot the oven, because the rendered fat can't drain away. Thompson's method will probably work.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Thompson
Date: 16 Jun 20 - 07:48 AM

Would you not do those 'muffins' on a baking sheet, and put a toothpick through the rasher to hold it in its circle around the mince?

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 15 Jun 20 - 03:22 PM

Or was it that silicone cups don't get as hot as the tin itself?

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 15 Jun 20 - 11:41 AM

I am going to try smashed potatoes soon.

In the meantime I tried those muffin-sized burgers in bacon, where you line a muffin tin hole with bacon and put burger meat with whatever inside, and the burger past was yummy but the bacon never crisped. Advice? Hotter oven, maybe?

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 14 Jun 20 - 11:36 AM

Now at $mas we have rocket crumple and gulyás. Rocket crumple how we pronounced rakott krumpli, which is yummy:

Cold leftover sliced boiled potatoes, prettiest slices reserved
Cold sliced hard-boiled eggs
Kolbász or other spicy sausage, casings removed, sliced
Butter and lots of it
Sour cream ditto

Butter a deep baking dish. Bottom layer potatoes, dot (like a slice per tater) generously with butter, slather with sour cream, layer of egg, layer of sausage, another layer of potatoes. Push down hard and everywhere on potato layer. Add more butter and sour cream, repeat, not forgetting the pressing. Finish with top layer of the pretty potato slices, butter top generously. This dish takes more butter and sour cream than you'd think. Use smaller dish with more layers rather than bigger dish with fewer layers.
Bake at 350F for an hour at least, till top layer is a deep brown. When serving make sure you serve vertically, so each serving has some of the top crunchy taters and some of the bottom layer of taters that have soaked in the juices of sausage etc. The butter and sour cream cannot be stinted or no juice will form to carry the egg and sausage flavors through the potatoes. So, so delicious.
One sister makes a meatless version with mushrooms instead of the sausage. That is also good and some hot paprika around the mushroom layers gives the sauce some spice the way the kolbász does.
There is no edible vegan version. We have tried.
Heart attack on a plate, sure, but you'd die happy!

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion
Date: 14 Jun 20 - 10:54 AM

So I notice, Jos. Maybe the issue was the prodigal use of cream, and not the potatoes. Back in those days, we were all supposed to shun milk fat -- what a mistake that was!

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Jos
Date: 14 Jun 20 - 06:47 AM

The recipe in Donuel's link doesn't involve left-over boiled potatoes, though if you wanted to use them it should be easy enough to arrange.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion
Date: 13 Jun 20 - 12:17 PM

The chestnut mousse I remember was flavoured with chocolate -- not a lot of chocolate, just enough -- and blended with whipped cream. I rather suspect that the restaurant had perfected a production technique that reduced the nuisance quotient to a workable commercial level.

I think of any dish containing chestnuts as a monument to our ancestors' skill at making the best of a very unforgiving agricultural economy. In France and Italy, chestnuts were roasted and ground to eke out supplies of expensive wheat flour; they were free for the gathering in the forests where peasants were not allowed to hunt.

But yeah, major nuisance. And if your diet normally includes foodstuffs that are easier to make delectable, why bother?

I love Jansson's Temptation, and for the life of me I can't think why I have yet to introduce it to Himself, for whom I have been cooking lo! these many years. Possibly because I was introduced to it by Mr Wrong, my Norwegian first husband? More likely because the leftover boiled potato is unknown in our house.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 13 Jun 20 - 12:04 PM

For me it was both the turkey stuffing and tomato aspic. Can't be bothered to eat either of them when there are much more tempting dishes on the table.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 13 Jun 20 - 11:26 AM

It took me years, nay, decades, to admit to mom that I hated chestnut mousse and would she please stop making me make it every $mas. Gesztenyepire, in Hungarian. Aka Chestenyet Myush, in our house. Burning fingers, the ricer, and then that inedible ugly-colored glop to show for it.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Thompson
Date: 12 Jun 20 - 02:36 PM

Ohh yes, Jansson's Temptation; I don't know who Jansson was, but his temptation is well worth the tempting.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Donuel
Date: 11 Jun 20 - 03:45 PM

anjovis=sprats https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/janssons_frestelse_24036

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Thompson
Date: 11 Jun 20 - 03:01 PM

I normally buy a massive jar of anchovies in oil every year or so at Christmas, when the local Italian shop sells it for gift purposes, and use them up gradually. I suppose I'll do the same with these, but I'll have to try to keep them covered in their salt.
Already thinking about a recipe for spaghetti with anchovies and black olives, involving a good handful of parsley and some parmesan.
And of course there's always Jonsson's Temptation.
And the lamb stew and lentil soup they normally go into. And the odd lot of scrambled eggs.

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.