O.Chat > Food, cooking, wine, eating in, eating out, happiness on a plate...
Posh - You've got my mouth watering and my stomach growling! Mr. Tater is one lucky guy! How could anyone be thin with you cooking for them? You have so much energy, and imagination. Brown sauce with a rhubarb base? Sounds interesting and yummy.
Despite the tempting menu, I'm not going to join you out at the Festival of
Speed, since I cannot handle that kind of noise. I'll wait until you're back on your home turf, for our fantasy lunch. :-> I want to see your patio garden hanging from every possible hook in it's quirky containers, your chickens, your garden, etc.
I'm curious to know what herbs and spices you choose most frequently to bring your soups to life, like the four you mentioned above? You mentioned cumin and rosemary for the pork.
I'd also like to know more about how to work with Indian seasonings -- from anyone with suggestions. (Not that I have much energy for cooking, but once in a while I actually make something serious.) I love Indian seasonings and Thai seasonings.
Have a great trip out to the Festival. I'm looking forward to people sharing recipes here. It may even inspire me to try something new. We would both enjoy that.
Willow
Hey ladies,
As far as cooking goes, I am an amateur. I can cook everyday things, but I can't cook big holiday meals (well, I haven't tried to cook big dinners). My biggest feat lately was making gravy. I actually called my mom at work and asked how to make it. Guess what? It was actually good, my mom even said so and she told my aunt how good it was. My aunt is the best cook and she usually cooks most of our holiday dinners (mom cooks too, but my aunt is very passionate about it. She starts like days before) Anyway, every year I say I am going to go in the kitchen with her and learn her recipes, but every year I end up sitting on my butt. The most I do is grate some cheese or chop the vegetables. She always says "I don't know who I'm going to pass my recipes down to" because she has 1 son and he definitely is not into cooking. Eventually, I will learn and hopefully be half the cook my aunt is. Who knows, maybe you guys' recipes will inspire me to cook.
Nyon
Given that I read about Posh's 8 course luncheon for 23 right after I'd purchased a bag of already-grated Quattro Formaggio to use on a pizza last night, I felt a little out of my element. I rallied a bit when I remembered at least I was making my own pizza and not getting take away!
I think one of life's great pleasures is the lunch parties that happen in Britain, complete with a joint of pork that it takes 2 people to carry to the table. But I've tried roasts and such for Saturday or Sunday lunch, and found that if you invite Americans - or at least San Franciscans - for food at mid-day, they look completely baffled if there are no eggs or muffins in sight.
So I mostly keep to small dinner parties. I keep it simple so I can avoid the kitchen once everyone arrives. Last time around was a fresh pea soup with creme fraiche: loin lamb chops with kalamata olives and red chilies for garnish; roasted potatoes a la OperaFanatic ; fresh asparagus; and lemon tart. (The tart was store-bought. In the Bay Area all you really need for a great dinner party is a good parking place.) Lots of candles, flowers, sparkly crystal and good conversation around the table. It was a great evening.
We recently moved from a big house to an apartment in a highrise. I have boxes of cookbooks in storage for the next couple of years, but a few came with me. I adore Nigella Lawson - her recipes are straightforward and delicious (though not always healthy). She's also smart and funny; I can sit up all night just reading her books. The lamb chops were from her "Nigella Express" book; the fabulous potatoes from her "How to Eat" book. A third book I'd recommend is "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone" by Deborah Madison. She was the founding chef of Greens restaurant in San Francisco, and is a genius with herbs and spices, especially in soups. Might be a good bet for you, Willow. (BTW: 2 magic words for roast pork: juniper berries!) I cherish a book that belonged to my mother, "Cross Creek Cookery" by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Hands down, it has the best gingerbread recipe ever! It's probably out of print (or costs a fortune), so if anyone wants the recipe, just ask.
Now I have a question: I'm having friends over for the 4th of July. I thought about a classic chocolate cake for dessert, but I'm flirting with tiramisu instead. Anyone have a great recipe or tip??
Posh - I swear, if you start with "three days before serving assemble your ingredients for the lady fingers" I will go bonkers!
operafanatic
Operafanatic - Thanks much for the cookbook suggestions. I'm definitely going to look for them.
Willow
Hi OPERAFANATIC,
I have a friend that makes a wonderful Tiramisu. It's from www.cookinglight.com
It's fantastic and she says easy. Honestly, I've never worked up the courage to try it.
Also, marthastewart.com has cute little tiramisu cupcakes! That might be fun for your party.
I go on martha a lot for ideas. Some of her things are complicated. You have women on her blog bickering over butter vs margarine!! Good Luck!
ann#1
Hi Operafanatic
Would love to have the gingerbread recipe! Gingerbread is my absolute favorite dessert.
I checked on Amazon.com and the Cross Creek Cookery cookbook by Marjorie Rawlings is still available. Since there are different publication years listed and you thought it might be no longer published, would expect you are referring to the 1960 edition.??
Thanks in advance for the recipe!
Jazz
Operafanatic,
My favorite tiramisu recipe is one I found online. It's called David Rosengarten's Basic Tiramisu. Here's the link to it:
http://www.heavenlytiramisu.com/rcp-101.htm
It makes a very large bowl, and it's really elegant and yummy!
Please do post that gingerbread recipe. I've been wanting for years to find a good one.
Also, if anyone has a really good chili recipe, please share. I've been on an almost 30-year quest to find the perfect one--ever since I had some at a professor's house in graduate school--but so far all have fallen short of his, which is my standard of perfection. I never got the chance to ask him, so I'm asking if anyone else has a great one.
All this talk of food is making me hungry! Time for lunch!
BarbG
Thanks to everyone for the tiramisu advice, which I will check out later today!
Below is the gingerbread recipe.
I should have mentioned that this gingerbread is delicious because it's probably the most unhealthy thing you've ever baked. But once or twice a year probably won't kill us, right?
Evadne’s Gingerbread
from "Cross Creek Cookery" by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 cup molasses
1 teaspoon each of powdered clove, giner and cinnamon
1 cup Wesson oil
Combine all the above in a large bowl and beat well (hand mixer is fine).
Dissolve 2 level teaspoons soda in 1/8-cup hot water.
Add to beaten mixture and stir.
Sift in 2 cups flour and beat well.
Add 1 cup boiling water.
Beat lightly and quickly.
Pour into pan (see below) and bake 45 minutes at 350.
This batter will seem incredibly thin. Do not make the mistake of adding more flour. It bakes into a delicate, moist gingerbread.
Serve warm if possible.
Recipe calls for generous mounds of unsweetened whipped cream. I often use crème fraiche and sit each serving on a little applesauce from a jar.
I have baked this in square and rectangular pans, but it’s most dramatic in a tube or bundt pan, and then dusted with powdered sugar at the last minute (if it’s warm, it melts quickly, but still looks pretty when you bring it to the table.
Jazz: My book is from 1942. Just my luck if it's a first edition, as it's completely batter-spattered - the sure sign of a well-loved cookbook.
Happy baking all!
operafanatic
Oh lordy no. I wouldn't do that to you! I never cook anything that isn't straightforward so I wouldn't make anyone else do it!!!! All I do is make up a massive buffet and then leave everyone to it and get stuck into the sauvignon blanc! The minute guests arrive, I'm outta that kitchen and I-grew-up-in-a-restaurant husband takes over.
I'm curious to know what roast potatoes a la OperaFanatique might be?? Is it a dusting of paprika after fluffing them up?? Is it?? Is it?????! Ahh, go on.
OperaFanatic if you've got Nigella books then you might try the almond cake from Domestic Goddess for your 4th July. The one in a ring tin. Standard cake ingredients plus a pack of marzipan, warmed. When it's cooked, you dust it with icing sugar and fill it with raspberries. It looks amazing. It also freezes really well. The other one that's amazing in there is the chocolate and chestnut cake. if I'm ever stupid enough to ask Will if he wants to make one cake in particular, he'll always ask for it.
The pudding that looks extraordinary and is dead easy is one passed on to me by an older friend, years ago.
Large pot of double cream. Whip till thick and solid. Crush a boxes worth of (store bought) meringue into tiny pieces and flollop into the cream. Mix thoroughly. You can throw in as many as you like or as few as you like. Just keep tasting it till you like the balance. I generally find that one large pot of cream means one box of 12 individual meringues but I don't know what amounts you have to buy in the US. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Cream
Get a cake board or a chopping board covered in foil. Wodge the cream and meringue mixture onto the Board in whatever shape you like. (I've done hearts, numbers for birthdays, initials for an engagement, square and round.) Coat with chopped roast hazlenuts. Put in the freezer overnight. (See?!) Get raspberries. These can be tinned, frozen or fresh. Liquidise or mash or bash the raspberries till you have a puree. Squoosh through a seive to remove pips. (If you can't be bothered that's fine, but it is nicer.) Add a dash of orange juice and normal white sugar to taste. It needs to have bite, but not to actually attack people at the table.
(If your supermarket does really good gloopy orange juice with raspberries, this is often perfect. But you can add more if you want.)
To serve: Remove pudding from freezer early enough so that you can cut it without a chainsaw at the table! Pour the raspberry coulis onto the plate, then place a slice of the cream thing on it. It looks extraORDinary and tastes out of this world.
Posh Tater
Nyon: Never be afraid of food. If it turns out weird, there's always pizza!
I started cooking when I left home, by offering to cook a surprise leaving dinner for my landlord (who was moving to Germany). My first ever dinner party was quails eggs, Beef Wellington, and the pudding I described above. Beginners luck got me through it, although I learned afterwards that the beef was a tad blue!!! No-one ever taught me, not at home, or once I left. All good cooks have found brillaint things out by accident and by seeing what's available when they go out!
I was taken out for dinner once and had this starter. Quite simple: thick slice of granary bread, lightly toasted. Mushrooms sliced and fried until they are in a thick mushroom gravy. Thin slices of Stilton melted on the top of that. The whole lot loaded onto the toast, topped with a scattering of toasted pine nuts. I went home and cooked that every day for a week, till I'd worked out how to do it! And I've turned it into a pasta dish (drop the toast, add to pasta) and I've done BIG mushrooms stuffed with stilton and pine nuts. So, you know, ideas are everywhere and you can make them do what you want. Even sandwich fillings in good sandwich bars can give me an idea for a salad or a soup.
Willow: the seasonings on the pork were: 4 tbsp olive oil, 3 tbsp dark brown muscovado sugar, 1/2 tbsp paprika, 1 tsp garlic salt, 1 tsp cumin, 2 tsp ground allspice, rosemary leaves, sea salt. We left the pork joint in 225ml bourbon overnight (and we cut the fat all over so that the flavour could get right up into the meat). In the morning we discarded most of the bourbon. Mashed the above ingredients together and encrusted the pork with it and roasted the pork for two hours. Then we used the sugary crust and a bit of the bourbon to make gravy! Not for the fainhearted, I might add!!
For Indian food, my favourite to cook at home is aaku shaak with poori, and moog. Full recipes available if wanted. Perfect for a warming Sunday lunch.
Oh, another pudding idea: make shortcrust pastry as if for a pie. Add 4 drops of vanilla essence to the pastry while mixing. Line a flan dish. Peel, core and roughly chop apples into a cm of water and cook down to a puree (takes minutes). Fill pastry with puree. Peel, core and slice a few apples and arrange the slices in those piddly little concentric circles that you see in smart delicatessens. Bake for 35 mins. Freeze for a week in advance if you like!
Posh Tater
Oh, my God, I love this thread!
Posh: I am definitely going to try the cream/meringue/berry pudding. It sounds divine, and just like something my London grandmother made. My Domestic Goddess book went to storage, so thanks for the cake recipe. I will try it!
OperaFanatic potatoes are actually Nigella's from the "How to Cook" book. The recipe is in the text for The Traditional British Sunday Lunch (pg. 253 in my copy). Basically, you peel potatoes (I like White Rose for this). Cut them into large chunks, put them in cold salted water, bring to a boil, and parboil for no more than 4-5 minutes. Drain, put back in the pan, put on the lid, and shake the daylights out of the pan - back and forth, up and down. You want the edges roughened up. Add about 1 T of SEMOLINA (very important for the flavor) flour, put the lid back on, and shake again. At this point, you can set them aside for a few hours.
About an hour before serving, put 5-6 T fat or oil (I use good olive oil; Nigella suggests good fat)in a roasting pan that will eventually hold the potatoes in one layer. Put the pan in a really hot oven (450-475) and heat it until the oil ripples (10 minutes or so). It must be hot hot hot before you put the potatoes in - which you must do very carefully as it will splatter like crazy. About 30 minutes in, the potatoes are beautifully tanned on the bottom. Flip them over (I've done it one by one to get the most surface in the oil) and roast until they are uniformly browned. Plate, salt a bit, and serve immediately. They are crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside. We love 'em.
Muscovado sugar is the nectar of the gods. Try it on top of a Dutch Baby with a few apples in it for brunch sometime. Crunch, crunch, crunch!
operafanatic
Hey Posh, I'm not afraid of food. Matter of fact, I really really really love it. The truth is that I am lazy. I want to gain the rewards without having to do any of the work. So, basically it is my laziness that has kept me out of the kitchen.
Nyon
I go away for 5 days and you ladies have written half a cookbook!
More from me later!!
Bevi
Oh - Nyon, I got that you weren't afraid of it from the consumer end!!!! Hehehehe. It's also hard to get excited about cooking when there are people who are really good at it in the kitchen.
Good luck OpFan!
Here's the proper cake recipe because you don't have the book:
250g soft unsalted butter
250g softened marzipan
150g caster sugar
1/4 teaspoon almond essence
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 large eggs
150g self raising flour
25cm springform tube pan or patterned ring mould, buttered and floured
Gas mark 3 or 170
Chop butter and marzipan into little cubes. (Use microwave if they aren't soft.)
Add sugar and whizz with double bladed knife in food processor.
Process till smooth.
Add vanilla and almond, process again.
Add eggs one at a time, processing each time
Add flour and process till smooth.
Pour mixture into the cake tin.
Bake for 50 minutes but check from 40. (I've never gone over 43 but we have a hot oven.)
Test with skewer.
Leave to cool in tin before turning out.
Dust with icing sugar. Fill with raspberries, or not.
See if you can leave it alone till guests arrive. (Tricky.)
This afternoon I am making gooseberry fool because a neighbour bought a bag of them round. Free pudding!
Posh Tater
Hi OperaFanatic -
Made the "Evadne's Gingerbread" this weekend for some family/friends houseguests. For a new recipe, I usually try it out first before making for guests. One of my friends mentioned gingerbread and I mentioned your recipe and we decided to make it. We ended up with a kitchen full of cooks and observers laughing and talking while making the gingerbread then while waiting for the baking time to be done. We nearly devoured the entire gingerbread hot, first with everyone doing their own favorite topping, then having to all have seconds to try each other's recommended topping. We all loved it. Everytime I make it in the future, I am going to also remember the family fun, joking and laughter associated with this first time. Thanks again for sharing the recipe.
Jazz
Jazz - I was laughing as I read your message. I'm so glad you loved it! Everytime I make it in the future, I'm going to remember YOUR story.
You wouldn't have had nearly as much fun, but something I often do is pop it in the oven about 15 minutes before guests arrive. Your house will smell like heaven when they walk thru the door. Of course, then you have to deal with people ignoring your hors d'oeuvres and devouring the dessert . . .
operafanatic
Posh - thanks for the recipe on the pork. That may be a bit much for us.
I am curious about the Indian recipes, though. I don't even know what they are. Well, this is curious! I just Googled "aaku shaak with poori" and the first hit was right back here to your message above!
Could you tell me briefly what that is? Also, moog. Based on a general description, I'll let you know if I'd like to accept your offer to post the recipes. Thanks so much for the offer.
Willow
Aaku shaak is a potato curry and moog is a wonderful soup that you serve with rice. You can make both as spicy or as mild as you like, simply by altering the levels of the spices when you prepare them. Poori or puri are unleavened accompaniements fried in oil - I think it's easier to order those in until you've got someone to show you how to make them. It's hard to describe!
Posh Tater
Bevi - were you looking for this thread?
Posh Tater
Does anyone here make Mark Bittman's no knead bread that appeared a few years ago in the NYTimes? It has become a staple at our house--and I will share the recipe if anyone is interested.
susan2
YES PLEASE!!!
Posh Tater
I was in need of a chocolate fix this afternoon after my realisation on the Race discussions thread. So I made up The Most Dangerous Cake Recipe In The World.
Would anyone like it???
Posh Tater
Posh Tater,
I'm on my way out the door right now--but later this afternoon I'll post the wonderful Bittman no knead recipe--and yes, I would also like your dangerous Cake recipe! Sounds like fun.
I have a couple of other recipes that I have made lately that I will share.
susan2
Right then!
5 Minute Chocolate Mug Cake
4 tablesp flour
4 tablesp sugar
2 tablesp cocoa
1 egg
3 tablesp milk
3 tablesp oil
3 tablesp chocolate chips (optional)
dash of vanilla extract
1 large coffee mug (or pint jug)
Mix dry ingredients in mug
Add egg and mix well
Add milk & oil, mix well
Add chocolate chips & vanilla extract, mix again
Microwave for 3 minutes (I think this is too much, we do 2.85mins in an 850 microwave)
Cake will rise over the top of a mug but don't be alarmed!
Allow to cool. Well, you know, don't ram it into your face while it's still burning. At least.
Eat out of mug or tip onto plate if you prefer. Ha, as if.
Eat!
Why is this the most dangerous cake recipe in the world?
Because we are all now only five minutes away from chocolate cake at any time of the day or night.
Eep.
Posh Tater
Hey there fellow gourmands. Bevi and I were tossing up who would be first to create a food related thread.... sadly, it's me.
OK first off Bevi wanted to know what kind of thing I cook when I'm doing one of my mammoth lunch parties. The one for 23 people was a mixture of things:
Garlic and celeriac soup
Leek & potato soup
Vegetarian moussaka
Shepherds pie (potato liquidised with celeriac to make it really creamy)
Huge roasted pork joint marinated in bourbon, allspice, muscovado sugar, cumin and rosemary.
Lemon soaked sponge with vanilla cream and raspberries (2 - one was alcoholic, one wasn't)
Almond cake
Apple tart (in vanilla pastry)
Another time, for 16:
Sweet potato and pumpkin soup
Parsnip and apple soup
Red lentil and peanut butter bake topped with Red Leicester cheese
Lasagne
Rosemary loaf cake
Ginger cake
Almond Cake
Really it's whatever is in season and whatever can go in the freezer if it isn't finished!
Willow wanted to know what we'll be eating next Friday. Well, we're out at the Goodwood Festival of Speed so I'll take three different meals. Firstly I'll take a one burner stove and make The Full Crumpha, one of our favourite breakfasts. You beat eggs and add crushed dried chillies (just enough for a little glow). You toast crumpets then put them in the pan and pour the beaten egg into the crumpet holes. Allow to cook until golden brown. Serve with bacon and my home-made brown sauce (it's got a rhubarb base and is quite sparky!).
Lunch will be green salad (rocket, lambs lettuce, spinach, chopped courgette, cucumber, apple, kiwi fruit, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds) and sliced chicken breast with strips of mango and a bit of dressing.
Tea will be scones and honey. I'm also taking a flask of coffee, a bottle of Bucks Fizz and a flask of tea (in that order)!!
OK, so, this is also for the sharing of recipe ideas, favourite foods, dishes you've come across in restaurants and made at home, great recipes online, cookbooks you live by.... etc!