BS: Recipes - what are we eating?

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Sep 19 - 07:34 PM

Here's Gino's amazing soup. Apologies for the fact that it's not exactly a pure tomato soup, but it's so good...

For four people, you need half a pound of pancetta (not smoked, and it can be little cubes or, as I prefer, snipped-up thin slices), a pound and a half of finely-sliced onions (he sez white, but I use banana shallots), peeled weight, two and a half pints of chicken stock (feel free to use organic stock cubes), and a 400g can of good-quality tomatoes (or use your own) and a big glug of extra virgin olive oil.

Gently fry the onions and bacon in the oil for a good fifteen minutes until all is soft and squishy. Throw in the tomatoes and stock. Season, bearing in mind the saltiness of the pancetta. Simmer for a good half-hour. At the end, check the seasoning again.

Serve this with some parmesan shavings on top together with a few torn basil leaves. Keep the EV olive oil bottle to hand. Given a huge hunk of crusty bread with abundant butter and you have a meal, not just a starter. If there's a better soup, I've yet to meet it.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Sep 19 - 02:40 PM

Admittedly not a pure tomato soup, but Gino D'Acampo's tomato, onion and pancetta soup is as good as soup gets. I could give the recipe but I'm in a bit of a hurry right now. Then, for a different take, there's pappa al pomodoro, a lovely thick Tuscan tomato soup made with stale bread.

Just one thing: if you use good quality canned Italian plum tomatoes, your soup will be as good or better than soup made with fresh. "Good quality" is paramount. Here in the UK I've used Cirio, Napolina and Waitrose own-brand to good advantage. No canned tomatoes should contain salt or herbs or garlic. If you want any of that, use plain canned tomatoes and add the other stuff yourself. A half-teaspoon of sugar added to ANY tomato sauce or soup is a touch of magic. All right, don't believe me...

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion
Date: 13 Sep 19 - 12:54 PM

Tomato soup is surprisingly challenging, Jon Freeman, largely because its success depends entirely on the quality of the tomatoes. (Fresh, ripe Romas are the best.) Do too much to a tomato soup, and it fails because it's not actually tomato soup; it's a something-else soup with tomatoes in it. But if you do too little, the taste is off unless you're very lucky. Tomatoes need salt and sometimes a touch of sugar to get the flavour right.

It's cream of tomato soup that I loathe. Even when made lovingly from scratch by a kitchen expert, its flavour often has an undernote of library paste, and the texture is awful unless you purée it perfectly and strain out every seed, which is way more work than it's worth. In restaurants, the "home-made" tomato soup never is.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 13 Sep 19 - 10:37 AM

Well our plumb tomatoes have gone to tomato soup, some for freezing. Not tasted yet as mum is still working on it but feel confident will come out nice.

I’m not sure what it is with me and tomato soup but I’d go as far as to say that I've had some (including the Heinz tins) that I either don’t think much of or actively dislike. The simple Delia recipe (or the combination of that and the fresh ripe Roma?) she’s using is however one I’ve enjoyed in the past.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 12 Sep 19 - 06:11 PM

Tonight I cooked Mrs Steve and me a simple steak dinner. The steak was thin-cut sirloin, which I trimmed of most of its rim of fat and carefully removed the veinings of that translucent connective tissue that doesn't render with flash-frying. I don't understand that stuff on a rare-to-medium-rare steak. It doesn't render at all in that short cooking time and I'm not up for chewing rubber. Anyway, I put the fatty trimmings in a small saucepan, heated it gently for half an hour and ended up with enough lovely beef fat to cook the steaks in my best frying pan. No flavour of the fat lost, and a decent cook's nibble for me... Don't tell her...

Before I cooked the steak I got my accompaniments sorted out. First, the chips. I had some lovely salad potatoes which I cut into chips (skin on). They were par-boiled in well-salted water for seven minutes, drained, roughed up then coated in hot groundnut oil on a baking tray. They went into a very hot oven for about 20 minutes. The veg was tenderstem broccoli, which was boiled for about six minutes in salted water (I don't believe in steaming). I also chopped up a big handful of my home-grown cherry tomatoes, adding a tablespoon of capers, seasoning and a good pinch of dried oregano. Stand by...

The steaks were fried in a very hot pan (my best one) in a smearing of that beef fat I mentioned. 60 seconds per side, then on to a hot plate which I covered up and then put into a warm oven to rest. The tomato mix went straight into the frying pan with the meaty juices, and the broccoli went on.

Six minutes later, chips went on warm plates, then the steak, then the broccoli then the tomato sauce. Bejaysus, we ate well tonight...

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 12 Sep 19 - 02:45 PM

I suspect the naming extends beyond supermarkets. I’d doubt that Buttercup Farm (from whom we got some quite reasonable outdoor furniture), Farbrook Farms (sometimes used for bird food) or Wiltshire Farms (frozen meals, probably targeted at the less able) have much to do with farming.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 12 Sep 19 - 11:48 AM

That sounds amazing, Charmion! I had to pull up a conversion table to figure the proportion of the veg to the eggs (we don't do grams down here very often.)

We also had eggs last night. I made a modified Quiche Lorraine for friends - no crust, baked in a Bundt pan. And I decided I wanted to increase it from 2 cups of milk to three, adding an extra egg. I realized I had only 2 1/4 cups of milk after I'd added the extra egg, so I scooped some whole milk yogurt into the cup, thinned with a little water, and mixed it all into the milk. Onions had been sauteed and small florets of broccoli added (I have a vegetarian friend so no bacon). The Swiss cheese was in a stack of slices so I ran them over the slicing edge of the grater and ended up with long thin strips that I spread around.

The resulting quiche was delicious, and interesting, but probably not typical. The cheese wasn't really mixed around much so there was a stringy layer in there, so we had to pull each serving loose from the rest like a stingy piece of pizza or lasagna.

I winged it for the rest of the meal - I'd picked up some small (but not new) red lasoda potatoes and simmered them to the point where I could easily pierce with a knife, then cooled. When it was close to time to eat I put a couple of tablespoons of butter (and kept adding as needed) into a skillet, took each potato and leaned on it just enough until the skin was split and it was a bit smashed but not broken apart. They were lowered into the butter and sauteed on both sides, and ground pepper and salt over the top. These went so nicely beside the quiche, and the rest was a fruit salad a friend bought. Various types of iced tea (we are in Texas!) accompanied it.

Dessert was cranberry bars that I have probably describe before in this thread. Weeks ago I used my steam juicer to get the juice from several pounds of frozen cranberries and kept the pulp sweet/tart complement to the meal.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 12 Sep 19 - 10:56 AM

You can also slip the frittata on to a large plate, then invert it back into the pan to cook the top. Most times when I've tried that I've failed abysmally. So I resort to your grilling-the-top method. I always worry about how "done" the underneath is. Good grub though, even if you've managed to wreck it!

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion
Date: 12 Sep 19 - 09:55 AM

We have that same "farms" branding in Canada and the U.S. I assume that the corporate behemoths behind most of the cheese we see in supermarkets (such as Kraft in this country) want us to be so distracted by nostalgic visions of milkmaids and farm wives meditatively turning cheeses in breezy creameries that we don't ever bother to look at, let alone think about, their real production methods.

This summer I added frittate, learned from the famous Marcella Hazan, to our rotation of supper dishes. It's not exactly low-cal, but what really good dish is?

Frittata is an Italian egg dish that includes grated Parmesan or Pecorino Romano cheese and rather a lot of cooked veg. For two people, four to six eggs (depending on appetite and what else is to be served), 20 to 30 grams of cheese, and a substantial heap (250 to 300 grams) of steamed broccoli, blanched haricots verts, blanched asparagus or what you will, as long as it's not what I think of as a wet veg -- i.e., not tomatoes. (I often use a mix we call "veg haché", which includes cauliflower, broccoli, zucchini (aka courgette) and red onion, all sliced fairly fine and sautéed fast with olive oil and garlic.)

First, turn on the broiler so it's good and hot when you want it.

Then beat the eggs in a large bowl, add the grated cheese and then the cooked veg. If the veg has cooled, good for you for thinking ahead. If not, add it gradually while beating so the egg doesn't curdle.

Use a skillet than can go under the broiler. Put it on the hob, add a substantial knob of butter, and let the butter foam and get a bit brown, as for omelette. Add the egg-and-veg mixture and cook as for omelette.

When the sides are cooked but the top is still runny, pop the skillet under the hot broiler and leave it there until the entire top of the frittata is brown and puffy.

Frittate can be served either hot or at room temperature, as the main dish with bread, or cut in wedges as part of a selection of antipasti.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 12 Sep 19 - 04:31 AM

And I know that there IS an Oakham, but the M&S chickens bearing that name come from nowhere near the real Oakham.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 12 Sep 19 - 04:23 AM

Supermarkets here invent suitably rustic-sounding fake names to make it sound like their produce comes from rural idylls. In truth, much produce comes from dozens or hundreds of farms. There are names like Willow Farms, Ashfield Farm, Oakham Chickens, Birchwood Farm, Farm Stores, Lochmuir Salmon. These places simply don't exist, and the names are used to fool us into thinking that their produce ISN'T produced on an industrial scale in locations they'd rather we didn't see. Cathedral City cheese is produced not far from us, an hour's drive from the nearest cathedral city, and its milk comes from around 300 farms, arriving in massive articulated tankers. A few years ago its advertising included lovely photos of the Cornish coast at Bedruthan Steps and made great play of the association with the wild Atlantic Ocean. Well it would take you a good hour to drive from the cheese factory to Bedruthan Steps, and the extremely ugly factory, owned by Dairy Crest, is close to a disused airfield miles from the nearest seaside and certainly not within sight of it.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stanron
Date: 12 Sep 19 - 03:13 AM

Stilly River Sage wrote: Is that Mt. St. Helens in Washington State? )

This is a UK cheese. There's a place called St Helens, note no apostrophe, near Liverpool UK but this product is labelled made in York. YO42 4NP. Nice cheese, soft and crumbly, a bit like Cheshire cheese.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 Sep 19 - 01:05 AM

if god had intended us to follow recipes, He wouldn't have given us Fanny Craddock.”

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 11 Sep 19 - 11:42 PM

Is that Mt. St. Helens in Washington State? We seem to be having a lot of cross-pollination of our cooking cheeses in this thread. (I grew up near there, even climbed that one before it blew it's top.)

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stanron
Date: 11 Sep 19 - 06:16 PM

St Helen's Farm mild goats milk cheese, as sold by Tesco, melts nicely for cheese on toast and makes a very good cheese sauce for cauliflower cheese. I'll be nibbling thin slices with a glass or two of port tomorrow night.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 11 Sep 19 - 05:49 PM

"I don't object to goat cheese, I just don't have much experience with it. It comes in things and I eat it, but I haven't learned enough about it to really know what to do with it other than crumble on salad."

It could have been me saying that. In my case I wouldn't even crumble it on salad, but I wouldn't crumble any cheese on salad...

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: BobL
Date: 11 Sep 19 - 02:07 AM

Try it (goat cheese) melted it on mushrooms - big flat ones - under the grill.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 10 Sep 19 - 09:44 PM

I have a casserole thing I make with zucchini or yellow squash or calabash, any of the type where you don't seed or peel them; onions, peppers (bell peppers of whatever color is available - there are some beautiful jewel colors, not just green any more), a cut up link of Italian sausage, tomatoes (usually home canned or a store-bought can), cut up squash, some cheese (provolone, mozzarella, etc.) melted into the mix, a little wine if I have it, and at the end add a little water if I need so I can add some pasta to simmer. Parmesan cheese is good added also, at the end. Today I had a little container of crumbled goat cheese a friend had left here on her last visit and she's coming again tomorrow so I figured I ought to use it up. It's different, it melted into the juices and it's creamy; I wouldn't do it again intentionally but I'm not throwing it away either.

I don't object to goat cheese, I just don't have much experience with it. It comes in things and I eat it, but I haven't learned enough about it to really know what to do with it other than crumble on salad.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 10 Sep 19 - 09:16 PM

I never overcook my fish, Stilly...

We had my somewhat unconventional chicken arrabbiata on Sunday. For two of us I used about 300g of skinless, boneless free-range chicken breast cut into bite size, a can and a half of Italian plum tomatoes (or skin your own ripe ones), two cloves of garlic, sliced (not minced, not ever!), a good pinch of chilli flakes, or chopped up chillis, to taste (I like it hot), four tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and some chopped fresh parsley. The pasta we had was bronze-die pennone (big tubes). I don't care for those slippery little penne pasta tubes. I want more bite. 200g is more than enough.

Sauté the chilli and garlic gently in the oil in a big heavy frying pan for a couple of minutes. Turn the heat up a bit and add the tomatoes, parsley and some seasoning. At this point, put on the pasta in loads of salted boiling water and set the timer for what it says on the packet. No self-respecting Italian cook EVER adds oil to the pasta water. Keep stirring that sauce to break up the tomatoes and simmer it gently uncovered. When the pasta has about seven or eight minutes to go, stir-fry the chicken in a bit of hot oil in a separate pan (don't let olive oil smoke though). When the chicken is nicely coloured all over (two minutes) stir it into the tomato sauce. Let that simmer gently for a few minutes until the pasta is ready. Drain the pasta, retaining a mug full of pasta water just in case (I usually need a little bit for this). Throw the pasta into the sauce and turn off the heat. Mix thoroughly: you want the sauce to coat the tubes inside and out. Add a splash of pasta water if you think it's a bit too dry. Serve on warm bowls, sit on the sofa, lean over your bowl and devour with a fork whilst watching Strictly Come Dancing.

I got the idea of adding something proteinaceous to arrabbiata from Gino D'Acampo. He uses raw skinless salmon, cut up into small cubes, instead of the chicken. You just throw the fish into the sauce at the end, one minute before adding the pasta. The salmon cooks perfectly in the hot mix in less than two minutes. Trust me!

No cheese needed either. I suppose you could add Parmesan or pecorino to the chicken version, but in Italy it's a mortal sin to put Parmesan anywhere near fish.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: open mike
Date: 09 Sep 19 - 02:21 PM

For pizza i like the various vegetarian pepperoni options avaialable.
the weather is turning cchilly....nearly frost time....and the house could use a warming from the oven being on...I plan todo a Mock Mince Meat pie with green tomatoes, apples and raisins today. A traditional fall recipe....my mom often made it for her uncle.

Also i will be making a sauce from strawberries and rhubarb...maybe even a pie from that too.

A couple of days ago i made a cheese cake....to take to a memorial for a friend who has passed away. It was a Kentucky Derby Cheese cake with graham cracker crust, and a topping of caramel with nuts and bourbon.    i added cocoanut to the topping, too. sort of llike german cake frosting.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 09 Sep 19 - 12:12 PM

Friends are coming over for an informal dinner this week (we alternately talk about everything in the world and bitch about our old employer) so the challenge of making things that a vegetarian can eat that doesn't make him feel like an afterthought. The quiche will be made without bacon (he is okay with eggs and milk) and other things will have meat options (if we have pizza we make them each ourselves and the toppings are various.) Usually this time of year I would be using the copious tomatoes and eggplants from the garden, but the garden just never took off this year. I'm lucky I have herbs.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 08 Sep 19 - 03:02 PM

That "white stuff" is some of the fat from the salmon and is very healthy for you if you eat it, but there should be plenty more in the meat. Depending on how thick that fillet is, you may be cooking it a bit too long. Let it be flaky but it doesn't need to turn completely solid pink from being well-done.

Quiche isn't a whole bunch of ingredients, just a few. I saute and crumble bacon that is combined with chopped and sauteed onions, add it to the pan, then it's the usual custard mix of eggs and milk. I usually sink some kind of vegetable in there, like small florets of broccoli. You could make them with all sorts of stuff, but those are the basics. You could make a crust and bake it like a tart or a pie, but I make it in a non-stick bundt pan.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 08 Sep 19 - 12:47 PM

Not cooking yet but might be tomorrow. Dad said he a got me a nice birthday cake yesterday. I didn’t feel like the cake, perhaps as I’d eaten too much chocolate, but took a look at the cake today. What he thought was a cake is a packet of “Betty Crocker Supermoist Triple Chocolate Fudge cake mix” he must have found on Amazon!

I’m not 100% sure I fancy something that says “Partially Produced with Genetic Engineering” but I’ll give it a whirl and should be able to persuade mum to make some chocolate butter icing to go with it (possibly easy but I’ve never made it).

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion
Date: 07 Sep 19 - 07:11 PM

Last night, we had a Russian friend in for dinner and gave him a completely American meal — the ribs I wrote about a few days ago with corn on the cob, a big green salad and cornbread (which is indissoluble from barbecue), followed by mixed berry cobbler.

Himself and our guest, who is young and therefore sturdy of digestion, ate themselves into a shared food coma.

It’s been a while since I fed a man in the prime of his life, and it ain’t half amazing to watch the groceries vanish.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Sep 19 - 07:05 PM

Quiche??

I can only do simple cooking. I can't do stuff with big lists of ingredients. If I have a piece of fish, or a steak, I need to know how long it needs, not what esoteric additives might enhance it (unless I can do them in advance). That doesn't mean I'm timid. Far from it. I always try to get the best quality ingredients and I want to keep the cooking simple.

Tonight we had some thick skin-on fillets of wild Alaskan sockeye salmon. It isn't river salmon, the preserve of the hooray Henrys this end, but it's pretty good. For me, it's gentle pan-frying in butter for ten minutes, with a quick flip with two minutes to go. I don't know what that white stuff is, but it's easy enough to gently scrape it off.

We had that with tenderstem broccoli and a tangy tomato sauce made from my own Sungold tomatoes. And salad potatoes (the bigger ones cut in half) baked for half an hour with extra virgin olive oil and seasoning in a hot oven.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 06 Sep 19 - 12:56 PM

I think others might call that meal a tart but it is a (savoury) flan at home.

Today’s was a bit of a “use up” job. Shallots had hung in the porch for months, mushrooms needed using and the number of ripe tomatoes in the kitchen has been increasing.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion
Date: 06 Sep 19 - 12:27 PM

Jon Freeman, you will have soggy-bottom problems any time you put raw tomatoes -- or, indeed, any other fruit -- into a pastry case without something to either absorb or thicken the juice. Tapioca does the job nicely with berries, stone fruit, apples or pears, but I've never tried to put tomatoes in a pie (other than pizza) so that one's a bit of a poser for me. Perhaps a tablespoon of seasoned flour would work ... or just live with the sog, since it tastes good.

Major kudos for extempore cookery, though.

Can something be a flan if it doesn't involve custard? Colour me Canadian, and consequently ignorant.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 06 Sep 19 - 12:24 PM

Over the last couple of years I've been making quiche in a non-stick bundt pan instead of a pie pan with a crust. It comes out great, was gluten free when I was avoiding such things, and looks really pretty. (We dish it out of the pan, we don't turn it out.)

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 06 Sep 19 - 12:08 PM

I got today’s tea, an attempt at a flan, a bit wrong. I don’t think I baked the case I made first from frozen pastry long enough and perhaps my filling (sliced shallots and mushrooms softened in the pan, a bit of lemon thyme, some of our salad tomatoes sliced added uncooked and topped with a cheese sauce) was a bit wet. It looked good coming out of the oven and tasted nice but was spoiled a bit by the pastry having a soggy bottom.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Sep 19 - 04:58 PM

Today my daughter was describing a grilled or fried cauliflower with tahini sauce that she's enjoyed recently. That sounds like a great way to eat it, and I have a recipe to test. I will report back.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 05 Sep 19 - 02:39 PM

Remember Charmion, growing OLD is compusory, growing up is optional.

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion
Date: 05 Sep 19 - 11:47 AM

Unfortunately, Steve, that oven method works only with sticky sauce. Dry-rub technique means barbecue all the way, with all the nuisance pertinent thereto, but the results are GREAT.

I have also heard of pre-cooking ribs in an electric pressure-cooker, such as the Instant Pot, and finishing them under the broiler with a coating of the aforementioned sticky sauce. I'm not sure it's worth the trouble -- the photographs posted on Facebook by fanatic Ipotheads look kinda grim to me -- but there is a large segment of the North American population that considers pork ribs just one step short of ambrosia. I'll leave the pressure-cooked version to them.

Last night we dined out at one of Stratford's better eateries to celebrate my birthday (I turned 65 yesterday and am still slightly stunned at the very thought). For the first time in recorded history, I turned down not only the six-course tasting menu but also the port and the post-prandial brandy in favour of a clear head and co-operative digestive system in the morning. (It worked.) Himself was gobsmacked, and was still shaking his head when we got home. Sad to say, I might finally be growing up a little.

Tonight's supper is baked fish with wax beans and sliced tomatoes. Earth has not anything to show more fair than an Ontario tomato in the last couple of weeks before the first frost.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 04 Sep 19 - 05:46 AM

I think tightly-wrapped in foil and very slow-cooked is well worth a try. I've only done it the once and we had lovely, tender meat falling off the bone: just a few minutes on the barbie at the end. You can do the oven-cooking part well in advance too, then all your mates at the barbecue will think you're a genius.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 03 Sep 19 - 09:35 PM

I have found oven-cooked ribs have a preferable texture to me if cooked dry then slathered at the end, say, last 15-20 mn.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 03 Sep 19 - 09:32 PM

My parents had an oven version of ribs that was very good, it was a specialty Dad cooked for some of the Song Circle meetings held at his house. I wonder if I have a copy of that recipe somewhere? (They were divorced in 1970 but had joint custody of that recipe.) Now I'll have to go poke around in the cook books and boxed files I have from their houses.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Sep 19 - 07:02 PM

Heartily agreed. I have this strange historical agreement, lost in the mists of time, whereby I have TWO propane cylinders at any one time within my contract, therefore I can't run out of gas.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion
Date: 03 Sep 19 - 04:20 PM

Our barbecue uses gas from the house supply, by way of an outside tap. It is an almost unspeakably better arrangement than the bottled kind, which always gives out at the most inconvenient time.

The sticky sauce version of pork ribs is most common in Canada, but once I had tried the dry rub technique I could never go back. It’s less messy, and far less likely to scorch.

That said, I never turn up my nose at barbecued ribs, however they’re dressed. That would be beyond foolish.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Sep 19 - 01:18 PM

I cooked my last lot of ribs, in their marinade (which must have something in it that will go sweet and sticky), wrapped tightly in foil in a very low oven for about two and a half hours, then barbecued them fairly gently for a few minutes, with a bit of baste that I'd reserved. They were grand, and I saved money by not using all that barbecue gas! They do need long, slow cooking, whatever you do.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Charmion
Date: 03 Sep 19 - 10:10 AM

I think I'm due a change in dietary tone, and the postings about South Asian-style grub are giving me ideas.

The other day I did pork ribs, and my digestion is still a little stunned from the experience. Himself asserts that my ribs are "the best", but if we ate them more often bad things would happen.

But they are very delicious.

This recipe requires an entire pig's worth of back ribs and a barbecue. I have a gas-fired one.

Lay out the racks of ribs on a large platter or tray, and pat them dry. Using a shaker and the back of a spoon, rub into every surface the following mixture:

1/4 cup sweet red paprika
1 1/2 tablespoons freshly ground black pepper (this is tiresome)
1 1/2 tablespoons packed dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons celery salt
1 1/2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 1/2 teaspoons dry mustard
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin

Let the ribs sit for a while: an hour or two on the counter, or up to eight hours in the refrigerator. (Who has that much space in their refrigerator? Not I.)

When it's time to cook, set up the barbecue with a large pan under the grill, laid on the tiles that cover the burners. Edge the pan over to one side and fill it with water. In the space beside the pan set a smoker, which in my case is a half-open packet of aluminum foil containing wet wood chips. Light the barbecue, close the lid, and heat it until the first puffs of smoke appear.

Then lay the racks of ribs on the grill and turn down the gas as low as it will go. Depending on the efficiency of your barbecue, you may choose to turn off one burner completely -- not the one under your smoker. Go away and leave it be.

At this point, make the vinegar-based "mop sauce" that is essential to this style of barbecue. This sauce consists of either a large spoonful of American-style ballpark mustard and about a teaspoon of salt, or a spoonful of the spice mix, dissolved in about half a cup of cider vinegar.

When the ribs have been cooking for about an hour, take a small mop or pastry brush (I have a silicone one that does the job perfectly) and slop the mop sauce over the ribs. Cook for about half an hour longer, until you see the meat pulled away from the ends of the bones.

To serve, lift the racks off the barbecue and lay them on a platter or board. You can bring them to the table whole, for maximum effect, or cut the racks in half. I prefer to cut all the bones free so the diners can eat as many or as few as they want.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Raggytash
Date: 02 Sep 19 - 01:59 PM

Murghi Badami tonight. Just need to add a touch of cream and a tad of butter, served with various accompniaments, flat bread, lime pickle, mango chutney etc .............

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 02 Sep 19 - 11:28 AM

Porridge, for which Flahavan’s is chosen, is a quite popular winter breakfast food for my parents. At the moment though, dad is on Weetabix and mum on Mini Shreddies. Jordans Original Crunchy was once a favourite of mine but I don’t have the teeth for the stuff or the breakfast appetite at least not usually – if I was (almost never) away and someone offered me a cooked bacon and sausage meal I’d likely jump at it...

–
Made another aubergine mess the other day. This time a bit of stock and basil together with sweet pepper and courgette..

–
I’ve got (and it’s probably my lot) about a guess of 3lb of Roma plumb tomatoes coming up to ripe. Not sure yet whether they will become a soup or a ketchup.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 01 Sep 19 - 11:43 PM

As close as I get to rabbit food is cooking oatmeal for breakfast. Slow cooking, in a small crockpot so it's creamy. I use Old Fashioned rolled oats or steel cut (Irish) oats. And add raisins or cut up figs or cut up dates.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Sep 19 - 02:42 PM

How odd that, despite the planetary gulf between us, we both relish cheddar cheese from the same dairy. Also, for the record Mrs Steve makes banana loaves all the time, and we freeze them too. I'll pass on the tip for breakfast but I fear we'll be sticking to that "healthy" rabbit food with wood dust in the bottom of every box that goes by the name "muesli..." :-(

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 01 Sep 19 - 02:24 PM

They only deliver to England and Wales, but I think the fact that they show the Coastal cheese in the wrapper means they load it up and send it abroad. That's the same wrapper we get here. That producer has some very nice varieties - I hope you all enjoy sampling them! That ballcap looks nice, but it is a bit pricey, though they say they ship free.

Costco buys things in bulk to sell in their warehouse clubs and they don't buy every brand that's out there, they try to get the best value for what they charge and this cheese is (so far) always in stock. That can't be said about everything they carry.

Two small loaves of banana bread are in the oven since I had three very large bananas one step away from the compost and I already have at least three pints of frozen bananas already. I'll freeze one of these and use the other for breakfast for a couple of days. A slightly warmed up slice of banana nut bread with a cuppa tea is a very nice way to start the day.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 01 Sep 19 - 10:58 AM

It's available from their online shop

It's one I'd considered trying if (not yet done...) also ordering a bit of the Cave Aged Cheddar.

(A small order of 2 or 3 online makes more sense to me with our transport limitations than say trying to get to Aylsham M&S).

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Sep 19 - 10:27 AM

Well whaddya know, SRS: your Rugged Coastal is made at the same dairy, Ford Farm, as our very favourite cheddar, Wookey Hole cave-aged. I don't recall seeing it anywhere but I'll be looking out for it from now on.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 01 Sep 19 - 10:06 AM

Steve and Jon, my favorite sharp cheddar is a UK import they sell in the Costco warehouse club here. Coastal Rugged Mature English Cheddar Cheese. Even better than this is one of the aged blond cheddars that comes out of the Ag school at Washington State University. Cougar Gold is my favorite. Since it's so hot here right now they let you know they won't ship until it's cooler weather.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 01 Sep 19 - 09:57 AM

There is a long-lived cooking show on Public Television here in the US called Cooks Country and it's companion America Test Kitchen. They ditched the host who established the program a few years ago; too bad. But they still make some pretty interesting dishes, and on a repeat program yesterday they did a pretty interesting Eastern North Carolina Fish Stew.

I logged in to the free part of the site but this recipe isn't appearing. The description is:

Locals have loved this hearty, tomatoey, bacon-infused stew for decades. For our version, we staggered the cooking of the onions and potatoes instead of dumping them both in at once. In a handful of tests we found that any mild, firm whitefish worked as long as it was cut into chunks of equal size and added toward the end of cooking. An oddball addition to this dish is poached eggs, which are layered atop the stew and cooked in a covered pot over medium-low heat until silky in texture.

You can set up a free account, and once you're in, try navigating to the recipe via the search box. I couldn't get to the video or recipe I first landed on, I had to log on and search again to get to it, and with a free account I can only see the video. Take notes if you want to try cooking it.

This is the video if you already have an account.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 01 Sep 19 - 08:15 AM

Here’s a link to the BBC article.

Drifting a little… Cheese came in briefly in conversation with brother in oz (a bit NE of Brisbane) on his last visit. Apparently he can find some very nice cheese but he’s never managed to find something along the lines of a simple Cheshire.

Subject: RE: BS: Recipes - what are we eating?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 31 Aug 19 - 12:26 PM

Dunno whether you Americans can get the BBC News website (not the TV one), but there's an interesting item on there today entitled "American cheese: does it deserve its bad reputation?"

Because of tariffs it's unlikely that we'll be tasting each other's cheeses any time soon, but I'd be interested to hear your comments about the item and the cheeses mentioned, or not mentioned, therein. Don't worry, it's quite sympathetic!