BS: The other recipe thread is too long

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Mrrzy
Date: 28 Oct 23 - 10:27 AM

I am ashamed (in the voice of the lobster from finding Nemo): I am loving the pre-peeled garlic cloves. Lazy, lazy.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Mrrzy
Date: 28 Oct 23 - 10:25 AM

They aren't cornish or game, indeed, but really chicken-y.

In my inventions of foods that cook for an hour during my massage, I put a lot of butter in an oven-proof dish with hot pepper, smoked paprika, and the cloves from several heads of garlic, melted for 10 secs in microwave. On top I put a lot of broccolini, sprikle of salt, marjoram. Did not stir. Into cold oven, lidded. Turned oven to 250 when massage therapist arrived. At the end of the massage, checked the broccolini which was *perfect* - crunchy still, and when stirred up with the garlic, yum. Never used that low an oven before. Am going to try it with mushrooms next.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Oct 23 - 12:47 PM

I had to look up "Cornish game hen." They don't come from Cornwall and they are not gamey! I can't think that such a titchy and fast-grown thing could develop much flavour, but I see that you add a lot of flavourings anyway. I cook two sizes of chicken: big five-pounders that I roast for about 110 minutes at 190C, seasoned and buttered all over, a lemon, knob of butter and shallot in the cavity, covered with foil that's removed for the last 30 minutes, and smaller ones, about 3.5 pounds, that I cook "Marcella's way," well-seasoned, no added fat, just two small, pierced lemons in the cavity, half an hour breast down at 180C, same again breast up for half an hour, then with the heat whacked up to 200C for a final 20 minutes. I get the chicken-for-one idea of the mini-hen, but who doesn't love a stack of leftover cold chicken in the fridge for two or three days?

The two of us get three hearty lots of chicken from the big one and a possible bonus sandwich, and two lots from Marcella's. Scraps go in the freezer for a future risotto, or the cat might get a little treat...

I don't put stuffing in the cavity. Instead, I make it into portion-sized balls and bake it on greaseproof paper for 25 minutes while the parsnips and roasties are cooking and the chicken's having a rest. We both devour the skin, but, luckily for me, Mrs Steve always fails to spot that the parson's nose has mysteriously vanished...

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Mrrzy
Date: 25 Oct 23 - 08:35 PM

Ok, cause, ew.

Stuffed cloves from 2 heads of garlic up the butt of a cornish game hen, sprinkled inside and out with onion powder salt hot pepper. Butter under skin with more garlic. Started in very hot oven, turned down after 20mn. On grill over pie dish. While hen was resting, put asparagus spears in the drippings with all the garlic from inside the bird, roasted 15 mn. Still crunchy. Ate the skin first, of course. Meat juicy juicy.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Oct 23 - 11:29 PM

The house smells wonderful this evening after making a batch of yeast dinner rolls. I often add a generous sprinkle of granulated garlic and grind a tablespoon of oregano into the ingredients when the bread machine starts. I use the machine to do the mixing and kneading, but when it is on the manual setting it stops before baking so I take it out and shape into rolls or put bread dough in a loaf pan. I can use potassium salt for making the bread, but find unsalted butter disappointing to spread on them. I suppose I could add my Nu Salt to the butter, but I think I'll just use the sweet butter and know it's adding a measurable amount of sodium to my intake for the day.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 22 Oct 23 - 10:42 AM

I'm a half-pint shy of two quarts of homemade Italian-style tomato sauce; onions, bell peppers, and homegrown garlic (through the press), oregano and basil finely chopped. Non-sodium salt, freshly ground black pepper (the only kind I use these days), and a little red wine. This batch also had some reconstituted mushrooms, soaked for a long time then cut quite small. Good for flavor, won't be recognizable because I used the stick blender to reduce the size of any chunks to quite small. I added some commercial low-salt tomato paste for a richer color and flavor and to thicken it. Much of this is with purchased tomatoes since my garden produced so little. Divided into three pint and one half-pint jars, all of the sauce is in the freezer.

When I make sauce from my homegrown tomatoes it's a day-long process of picking the perfect tomatoes, washing then cutting in half and setting them into the steam juicer. They steam for up to an hour and in the process release upwards of a gallon of clear yellowish juice. Then the steamed solids are run through a food mill that separates the skin and seeds to one bowl and the sauce solids to another. That is simmered down and either canned plain, or it is made into the Italian style sauce (Ball Blue Book recipe) and any of this output is processed in the hot water bath and stored in the pantry. It is possible to can the juice also, but I usually freeze it in quart jars.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Oct 23 - 10:13 AM

Confection is a word that refers to something confected—that is, put together—from several different ingredients or elements. Often confections are sweet and edible, but confection can also be used to refer to a finely worked piece of craftsmanship. In other words, the lacy box containing chocolate confections can be a confection itself. Tracing back to the Latin verb conficere (“to carry out, perform, make, bring about, collect, bring to completion”), confection entered Middle English as the word confeccioun, meaning “preparation by mixing ingredients; something prepared by mixing, such as a medicine or dish of food...

from Merriam-Webster

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Mrrzy
Date: 22 Oct 23 - 09:37 AM

Wait, a *sweet* prawn sandwich?

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 21 Oct 23 - 06:26 AM

It isn't often that a shop-bought confection can match home-made, but the M&S "Best Ever" prawn sandwich, under a fiver, comes pretty damn close!

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Thompson
Date: 21 Oct 23 - 02:40 AM

Sounds like one to make at home: Harrods' £32 (gawp) sambo has fresh sourdough, truffle butter, “gold” mustard mayo, mushrooms, seared wagyu steak from Japan, with beer-braised onions and rocket on the side.

"The second-best mouthful came when the beef, mustard mayo and rocket collided with the beer-braised onions, creating a quartet of contrasting textures and tastes: jammy, peppery, savoury and hot.

"Then the truffle and porcini butter arrived, and a grilled, but chilled, portobello mushroom, and everything slid downhill on a tidal wave of umami."

Tell me this, how do you beer-braise an onion, and how do you make truffle butter?

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Mrrzy
Date: 20 Oct 23 - 05:33 PM

Ah, and it occurred to me it wasn't clear that the seared steak had been removed, but some of the peppercorns had hung around to play deglazing...

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Oct 23 - 05:09 PM

Ah, you and your garlic press! ;-)

I don't use garlic with steaks, but hey ho. Just a drop of groundnut oil (or, as you say, use the fat from the steak trimmings) and salt and pepper, then a couple of minutes on each side with high heat. I also cook braising steak, cheap cuts that take slow cooking. I might do the whole slabs on top in a covered pan on top my mum's way, or I might cut them into chunks, brown them, simmer in red wine for a bit then add whatever to make a stew over about three hours. Satisfies the folks who don't like the sight of blood... ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 20 Oct 23 - 04:53 PM

Steak au Poivre is something I've never heard of, but it is certainly not a stew. I usually use a little olive oil and mostly the drippings from the steak to saute onions and/or sliced mushrooms, add a splash of red wine, and have that with a rare tender steak. Lots of ground pepper and some granulated garlic (time saver versus using the garlic press). It ends up with a little "pan sauce" to go over the meat.

The "no nutrition" view of mushrooms was a long held view but is dated.WebMD on Mushrooms: Mushrooms are a low-calorie food and pack a nutritional punch. Loaded with many health-boosting vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, they’ve long been recognized as an important part of any diet.

This afternoon I have corralled all of the tomatoes around here, many of them getting to the point they have to be used. They were blanched and peeled, cut into large chunks, and they simmered a while. This included some purchased roma tomatoes and some grape tomatoes and a few small ones from the garden. I'll run them through the food mill and remove a lot of the seeds (I don't mind if there are seeds) and I'll use them to make some Italian style sauce (according to the Ball Blue Book recipes) to freeze. Chop onion, garlic (yes the press for this), bell peppers, herbs, and then freeze in pint jars.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Oct 23 - 01:01 PM

Gosh, I'd have thought that expressing your own taste in a food thread is valid even if it doesn't always concur with other people's. If I told you that basil, oregano and garlic just seems wrong in bolognese sauce, you disagree and told me I was insulting you, I'd think you were very strange. No insult intended. A good steak with its beautiful beefy flavour is not something I'd want to, er, cover with a sauce, that's all. I'm sure your sauce is perfectly delicious.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Mrrzy
Date: 20 Oct 23 - 07:51 AM

What you would have done does not make steak au poivre a stew.

My sauce is delicious. Please stop insulting people, me in particular, for having different taste than you. "Drowning" is an insulting term, before you ask.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Oct 23 - 05:31 AM

I would have some sautéed mushrooms with a rare steak. If you have a good-quality steak (gimme ribeye), why drown it in a sauce? Just a spot of seasoning, applied immediately before frying. I want some chips and a few lightly-cooked cherry tomatoes with a good steak, maybe some peas or broad beans.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Mrrzy
Date: 19 Oct 23 - 09:44 PM

Steak au poivre is not a stew!

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Oct 23 - 07:26 PM

Well I think that mushrooms, as long as they are not button or from a jar, are highly nutritious and highly delicious. We eat them as a side veg at least four times a week, and, in the rare circumstance that we have some that urgently need using up, I have them for breakfast on a slab of buttered toast. I like the big flat ones stuffed with this, that or the other, but just-opening chestnut ones, either sautéed in butter or done in the oven if it's on anyway, are my particular nirvana. Just make sure the water has all gone then add another four minutes.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Thompson
Date: 19 Oct 23 - 03:27 PM

Ach, that's what nutritionists say about different things at different times. I remember when seaweed was considered a nutritionless eccentricity.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Donuel
Date: 19 Oct 23 - 03:07 PM

Mushrooms are for flavor or texture but not nutrition.
It takes as much energy to digest mushrooms as they have food value.
The butter or other additives are more nutritious than the mushrooms.
Minerals are another exception.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Thompson
Date: 19 Oct 23 - 02:01 PM

I recently introduced a vegan friend to flats (button mushrooms that have been allowed to grow up, and are about 15cm across) cooked slowly with a little olive oil under them till the cup fills with juice. The expression of astonished pleasure…
Soaked dried mushrooms are ok; I use them in risotto; but I soak them in hot water and when it's cooled to warm I chop the formerly dried mushrooms into little slivers.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Oct 23 - 06:10 AM

One thing a good few recipes suggest is to soak dried porcini and use the soaking water (mind the grit!) then chop the fungi and throw them in. This latter step I will never do. The soaking water adds a lot, but the mushrooms have a horrid texture in m'humble.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Oct 23 - 05:51 AM

Baked beans are a revolting addition to the full English, and I ask for an extra egg instead. A slice of Macsween's black pudding (available at M&S) is, however, a thing of great beauty. Those nasty little rubbery mushrooms oft included, slimy things, are very unpleasant. I love mushrooms cooked in butter and well-seasoned, then sautéed or done in the oven until all the water has gone from them. But I think they're pretty ruinous in stews. Each to his own. One man's fish is another man's poisson...

I won't buy button mushrooms. Pointless wee things.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: BobL
Date: 19 Oct 23 - 03:09 AM

Quartered flat mushers plus a dollop of anchovy sauce added to a beef casserole used to work very well for me. A passable mock steak-and-oyster stew.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Thompson
Date: 19 Oct 23 - 01:10 AM

Mushrooms in stews are or were an Irish thing: you throw in a handful of mushrooms about 20 minutes before the finish.
But if we can agree that the English can have baked beans as part of breakfast, while shuddering delicately away at the idea, we can agree to differ on the misheroons.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Oct 23 - 06:10 PM

No pineapple on pizza. No cream in carbonara. No bloody mushrooms in stews.

(Though a bit of porcini soaking water can be a thing of beauty...)

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Mrrzy
Date: 18 Oct 23 - 02:57 PM

Ok, this was funny, and à propos for the time of year.

Made a kind of steak au poivre with a yak steak. Used black, white and green peppercorns, some lightly crushed, most whole.

There were mushrooms, and cherry tomatoes, in the sauce.

At one point I saw the freakiest thing: several little things were LOOKING at me.

Turns out if you sear steak au poivre with whole white peppercorns, they acquire little black spots...

And if they show up, spots up, in *pairs* --- they look like tiny eyeballs.

A mushroom slice in the sauce immediately turned into a tiny, bloody, face, looking right at me.

I jumped about a mile, saw several other "eyeballs" and then laughed hysterically.

New Halloween idea!

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Thompson
Date: 18 Oct 23 - 05:28 AM

The French, incidentally, have a much nicer take on the sandwich. They lay out the fillings on a tray behind glass; you choose the filling of your desire, and they slice a section of baguette lengthways, butter it and lay the filling in. Fresher and tastier than the anglo sandwich.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Thompson
Date: 18 Oct 23 - 05:27 AM

I had duck bacon in a salad from a hospital canteen while a relative was in a French hospital - razor-thin slices of delicate salted duck meat laid into a multi-leaf salad with a package of thick dressing provided. Absolute comfort food.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Mrrzy
Date: 17 Oct 23 - 08:36 PM

So. Very. Good. Thick, marvy. And yields duck fat! Not that bacon grease isn't the bomb.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 Oct 23 - 06:19 PM

"Duck bacon" ???

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Mrrzy
Date: 17 Oct 23 - 09:08 AM

Toaster-oven breakfast: duck bacon on a (missing the word- grill-thing you put things on so the fat drips down) but under it, for the grease to drip onto, lots of cherry tomatoes.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Thompson
Date: 17 Oct 23 - 02:44 AM

Oh, I forgot that in that gourd stuffing I added a handful each of quinoa and amaranth to give it heft.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Thompson
Date: 17 Oct 23 - 02:37 AM

If you're looking for non-salty stock, Kallo do a cube called "Very low salt vegetable cube" - we use it here (usually in combination with homemade stock and one of those chicken gloops called stock pods) to bring down the salt level.
Cheese: I'm a traditionalist, and like an occasional gorgonzola on peppered toast, as beloved of Sam Beckett. I'm looking sideways at a little Milleens cheese the last few days, and it's looking back at me; the makers say it's so individual and delicious because their cows graze in herby fields where the grass and herbs grow naturally - particular cows have particular favourite spots and their milk tastes of the herbs in those spots.
Last night I found I had a longing for a paradisal stuffed courgette dish I used to get on visits to Paris from a particular market stall - apparently the shop belonging to the stall burned down a few years back (with dramatic rescue of the two people sleeping upstairs by the people from the shop opposite, who were also sleeping upstairs in their shop when they were woken by crackling and burning). This dish involved those sliotar-sized, or slightly larger than cricket-ball-sized, courgettes, stuffed with a tomatoey fish and rice stuffing, and cooked in stock, all of which flavours mixed… oh, heaven!
I'd bought a gourd, a long yellow thing, more rugby-ball-sized, maybe hoping for the Irish team (sob). I went to cut it in half, but it was tough as old (rugby) boots, so I started softening it in the oven. This went on for, literally, a couple of hours before I could halve it; meanwhile I took 450g of mince (ground beef to Americans) and cooked it up with chopped onion, a tin of Italian tomatoes and a chopped pepper, a good dose of oregano and a dash of dry vermouth to loosen it out, then when the rugby ball finally softened enough to be cut, scooped out the seeds and filled in with the mincy mixture, and poured in some home chicken stock.
It was good, but nothing like the fish-stuffed courgettes.
Unfortunately, for any fish dishes other than fairly plain ones, I've lost my favourite ally, the sauce from heaven, XO Sauce. While this was shocking dear (about €15 for a jamjar of it), it gave a distinctive underlying loveliness to any fish soup or stuffed fish dish. It's disappeared off the market here - none of the oriental shops have it, they say they can't get it any more and have no explanation. If anyone knows what happened and why, it would mend at least a small crack in an old person's heart.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Thompson
Date: 06 Oct 23 - 02:02 AM

I love the Ikea plant "meatballs" - very nice with a tomato sauce and served on rice.
However, I also used to love their "seaweed pearls" - really delicious imitation caviare made of seaweed, so nice on buttery toast with lemon juice. And I loved their "Kalles Kaviar", a tube of sweet and savoury pink paste, based on salted cod's roe with this and that - really nice with a fried egg. And their "Knäckebröd" - big wheels of rye crispbread.
But there seems to be a worldwide policy in Ikea to stop stocking these foods. Ikea has always had a policy, too, that food will not be listed when available in the shops' online sites. It's a mad policy in these days of automatic, internet-based restocking…
Now, I don't know what the story is about these particular foods - the "seaweed pearls" seem to have simply disappeared; Knäckebröd is now sold in small packets; the Kalles Kaviar may be no longer stocked because, madly, cod, the fish that fuelled the great European expansion, the fish that was once the reliable food of the world, the fish that was once normally two metres long and 1.5 metres around the centre, is now an endangered species. Perhaps Kalles Kaviar is simply no longer made?
Ikea's policies on food are deeply odd. You'd imagine that Scandinavian foods would be a loss leader - on my trips to the shop to buy these, I'd often spend a few quid on a duvet cover or some glasses or, indeed, a kitchen trolley or table.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 30 Sep 23 - 04:29 PM

I had a fair bit of leftover sauce from the dish I posted on the 24th. I'm on my own this weekend (nothing sinister to read into that! ) and I had some meatballs that came with an order from a really good online butcher that I use - I hadn't really wanted them, but adding them to my order got me over the threshold to save £5 postage!

Anyway, following the instructions on the pack, I browned the meatballs for a few minutes then simmered them for about twenty minutes in the leftover sauce. They were very nice, but two things: they were quite dense in texture, and they, well, just lacked a bit of character.

Sometimes you need to use bought ready-made things in your recipes so that you can bolster your opinion on your own cooking (as well as saving time in emergencies). I've made Marcella's meatballs a good few times, and you do sometimes wonder (if you're highly self-critical) whether you've done a good job. Well, though tonight's meatballs were fine, give me Marcella's any day. Cheered me up, it did!

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Mrrzy
Date: 29 Sep 23 - 11:42 AM

Going to try plain yogurt instead of sour cream. Opinions? For calming the too-hot, not qua yogurt.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Thompson
Date: 27 Sep 23 - 11:53 PM

Stilly, I was fed a version of that when I was recovering from Covid and it was wonderful. In our case:
Greek yogurt, unflavoured, with chopped mango, blueberries and strawberries, topped with muesli and some rich Irish organic milk. I think there may have been a dash of honey in there too.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 26 Sep 23 - 11:11 AM

I've had a summer of breakfasts with blanched peaches or nectarines (I love the flavor of the white ones if you can find them) cut into slim slices, microwaved for a minute, then sprinkled with a teaspoon of cinnamon sugar. A half-cup of vanilla yogurt on top of that, followed by a half-cup of my homemade granola. Great for fruit, dairy, and fiber and it's like eating a bowl of cobbler for breakfast. The season for those fruits has passed so I'm back to a 50/50 mix of boxed raisin bran and my homemade granola. Occasionally I peel and slice an apple, cook it until it is soft and add a little cinnamon and sugar then use it the same way.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Sep 23 - 09:56 PM

I found myself wishing I'd assembled tonight's dinner in a Pyrex container because it would have been perfect baked in the toaster oven. I had ~5 ounces of thick slices of baked chicken breast topped with homemade Italian tomato sauce, and that was topped with provolone. A poor man's quick chicken Parm. The microwave was ok, but it didn't come out the way I was imagining when I assembled it.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Sep 23 - 08:29 PM

This for two people. I happened to have a scant pound of braising steak so I decided to loosely follow an online recipe for Italian beef stew (cheers, Vincenzo!).

Make a soffritto with carrots, onions and celery (as ever) with extra virgin olive oil. Don't cut the veg up too small. You want texture in the stew. Ten minutes' cooking.

Cut your beef (about 400g) into bite size pieces. Stir-fry it with the soffritto for a few minutes, to brown all round.

Add a tablespoon of plain flour and stir for a couple of minutes.

Whack up the heat and add a glass of red wine - keep stirring.

Add about 350 ml of passata or your own tomato sauce. Keep stirring.

Season, then add about 350ml veg stock. I always make my own with onions, celery, carrots, peppercorns, thyme and bay. Simmer for at least two and a half hours. Add a small stick of fresh rosemary.

After one hour, peel a pound or more of spuds, cut into quite big chunks and add to the broth. Discard the rosemary.

Apart from checking the seasoning, you're done. I made this the day before and it was delicious. I did think it wasn't going to work out as a stew because it seemed to be too tomatoey and full of rosemary needles. Ut, begod, it was a triumph, and what a winter dish!

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Mrrzy
Date: 24 Sep 23 - 02:14 PM

Made brussels sprouts chips again. Great application for mania.

For each sprout, cut the tough bottom, discard. Remove loose leaves, to a bowl. If sprout is still dark green, or much bigger than the others, slice another bit off the bottom, remove newly-loosened outer leaves. Put tip and leaves in bowl. When you have a small pale-green sprout, stop, go onto the next sprout.

This takes hours but is oddly satisfying.

You end up, from the bigger bag of sprouts, with a huge bowl of leaves and a small pile of similarly-sized, pale green, sprouts. Or, just keep going. You end up with an immense bowl of leaves. Takes forever. So satisfying.

For the leaves, in the bowl I sprinkled garlic powder, lots of fresh-ground green and white pepper, and a lot of salt. Added some avocado oil, and with gloves, spent a long time massaging oil and all into individual leaves. (I told you it took mania.) Heat broiler and sheet pan, broil 1-2 mn at a time. Eat the crunchy ones, stir the rest around, repeat. By the time the last ones are dark and crunchy you will have eaten the while bag of sprouts.

It has to be garlic powder. Garlic is too wet.

Or, put the dark ones in the serving bowl, and share.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Thompson
Date: 23 Sep 23 - 03:52 AM

It would be old-fashioned, Mrr, it's a recipe from the 1940s! Verray good.
Has anyone tried bean pie? Sounds like such a bizarre idea, but I'm thinking of trying it; I suppose cannelini would be the nearest beans I could get here to navy beans?

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 22 Sep 23 - 10:50 AM

Thompson that's an old fashioned, I might say obsolete, way of proofing yeast. The quick fast-acting yeasts have been around for many years. Many are called Instant, and are simply mixed into the flour. No proofing necessary.

The garden is kind of empty after the heat, but the eggplant plants have a couple of small orbs and I'm getting a few okra. Tomatoes later. So nothing homegrown and homemade for right now. I'm starting zucchini and cucumber to hopefully get a small crop next month. I do have a lot of herbs in the yard that survived; I wonder how one would make their own Zatar mix. Maybe some homemade pita bread with Zatar spices on top would be nice.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Mrrzy
Date: 22 Sep 23 - 09:39 AM

I get a spoon, or just drnk the un-soppable-with-bread delicious ain't-gonna-miss-these juices and sauces like soup. Because so right about needing to consume the liquid. But nah, bread is not the only vehicle. It is the best. I miss it. But not necessary.

En parlant de bread, I'm not finding cooking time this morning for my masseur, so am providing sandwich bar: French ham, Hungarian salami; kaiser and Vienna roll (not for me); lettuce tomato cuke; mayo mustard horseradish hot sauces; Swiss and Havarti [Oxford semicolon?], and will quick-fry green beans and broccolini with garlic, cumin and hot paprika in olive oil for my main. I'll have sandwich fixings for my salad (my dressing, not condiments).

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Thompson
Date: 22 Sep 23 - 02:40 AM

Been thinking about trying Grant Loaf again after gobbling up many slices of what tasted very like what I used to make in Connemara a couple of weeks ago.

Here's one of the many versions online (I've tightened it up a bit:

Add 1 ½ level tablespoons of dried yeast to 1 ½ rounded teaspoons of dark Barbados sugar (you can use honey, but I like burnt liquorice taste you get off molasses)
whisk in 1 ½ tablespoons of blood-heat water in a small bowl.
Leave yeast to activatee and foam, which takes 20-30 minutes. I found that placing the bowl in a larger one filled with warm water sped the whole process up.
Weigh out 1 ½ pounds of stone-ground wholemeal flour into a large bowl and mix in a teaspoon of salt. If you don’t have somewhere warm like an airing-cupboard, put the flour in an oven at the lowest temperature possible and let it warm through.
When the yeast is ready, make a well in the flour, pour in the frothy mixture and slowly pour in one pint of blood-heat water, mixing thoroughly with your hands. The dough should be quite sticky, though you may find you don’t need all the water.
Split the mixture between a large and a small greased loaf tin and allow the dough to rise for about 45 minutes (I put it back in the still-warm oven).
Bake for 40 minutes at 200°C.

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 22 Sep 23 - 12:32 AM

That Aldi/Buffalo cheese video ad sounds like it's narrated by Ardal O'Hanlon. Anything he does brings a smile!

Shifting from topics pescatorial and camarónes, it's time to think about baking something to celebrate the autumnal equinox. Anyone have any suggestions? Do you have a celebratory meal or particular dish?

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Sep 23 - 06:24 AM

I looked up some recipes for your Catalan prawns and I found one similar to the pil pil recipe on the website food.com (GAMBAS AL AJILLO (SHRIMP W/ GARLIC) CATALONIA). Some other recipes over-egged things a bit too much but that one looks good. Not sure that you need butter, but hey, when is butter ever bad?   One difference is that, in the three places in Andalucía I had the dish, the garlic was not minced but was cut into quite large pieces, maybe each clove cut into about four or five, and plenty of it. We almost wrestled each other to get at those lovely, sweet chunks of garlic. I've said it before and I'll say it again: throw your garlic crusher in the bin! All you need is a sharp little knife. I have one of those cheapie silicone tubes which you put a clove into and roll on the worktop - and out comes a perfectly peeled clove!

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Sep 23 - 06:09 AM

Nah, the prawns are cooked in the recipe and the dish is traditionally brought to the table still sizzling in one of those little brown tapas bowls. Just a thought, though: half the joy of the dish is mopping up the juices as well as eating the prawns. That really needs bread, which is carbs. You'd have to do a deal with your friend: you get the prawns, they get the juices. In fact, in Spain that did kind of happen, as my sis can't stand prawns in her mouth but was more than happy to snaffle up the juices! The downside is that she got more than her share of the juices....

Subject: RE: BS: The other recipe thread is too long
From: Mrrzy
Date: 18 Sep 23 - 10:24 PM

I am interested in those prawns. My tapas place does something they call Catalan that sounds like that, but the prawns do not stay raw.