h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What's wrong with letting people have fun with food? Seriously?

Nothing wrong there. Teaching foreigners to smear strawberry jam onto a potato pancake is multiculturlaism. And yes - the Pickert is the national dish in my county.

>>Teaching foreigners to smear strawberry jam onto a potato pancake is multiculturlaism<<

Please, please make that QotD

I ordered scallops & chips in a small restaurant in Sydney.

A few minutes later, I was presented with a plate piled high with chips and several of these http://tinyurl.com/7hzv7ws

Naturally, I was too dumbstruck to complain.

The chips were great, but.

OK, looks nice - but I wouldn´t like my sister to marry one.

paulh:

No tomato sauce! Trust me. Change your preconceptions of what lasagne is.

Similarly, not all spaghetti sauces require tomatoes. (I make one with courgettes petits pois...and noting else)

Hear hear.

I never put tomatoes into a bolognese-type sauce. Perhaps a squeeze of tomato puree for richness, but never any tinned tomatoes. Just good quality mince, onions, garlic and celery, plenty of black pepper, and wine.

B

An Italian who joined us for lunch one day was horrified to see that I'd added courgettes to the above basic pasta sauce. I thought he was going to faint, though, when I suggested he sprinkle a little grated gruyere on top.

This is actually courgettes sweated in a little oil for about 1.5h until they go mushy and turn into a sauce. Add petis pois.

(It's in The Silver Spoon, therefore as authentic as it comes.)

If we're talking carbs, what about rice AND naan with a curry which has lentils in? With Bombay potatoes as a side? I couldn't have a dhansak without rice and some kind of bread to scoop it up with and millions of Indians would probably agree. It's healthier, cuts down on meat consumption and though it's not two kinds of the same carb, it's all still upping the carb consumption.

(About to tuck into homemade beef dhansak with pilau rice and supermarket pitta bread as I forgot to buy yoghurt to make naan)

"An Italian who joined us for lunch one day was horrified to see that I'd added courgettes to the above basic pasta sauce. I thought he was going to faint, though, when I suggested he sprinkle a little grated gruyere on top" [Rudest Elf]

Being too fussy about a recipe pretty much guarantees that you'll only make it when a blue moon is in the sky. Chefs -- even great ones -- have been arguing about the culinary rules since time immemorial. In the film "Julie and Julia," there's a scene where a contributor to "mastering the Art of French Cooking" argues that she deserves credit for putting peas in "Coq au vin." Some people -- possibly some of the people reading this -- would be horrified at the thought of peas in coq au vin.

I can go on Google and probably find a recipe for lentil and mushroom lasagna that *does* call for tomato sauce. There are other kinds of lasagna. I will probably try one of those now instead. I don't want anyone to be unhappy that I didn't follow a recipe exactly.

I have a friend who cooks brilliant meals. She has *never* followed a recipe in her life. Every time she cooks, she works from instinct, plus memory of what has worked for her in the past.

As for eating potatoes in some form along with lasagna, it's not really all that odd. Lasagna is made from wheat, which is a seed. Potatoes are roots that grow in the ground. Sure, both of them contain starch, but they aren't nutritionally identical. My father almost always eats bread when he eats stew -- there are potatoes in the stew.

A Kurdish friend used to make us a chicken stew with potatoes in - which he served over rice. We found it unusual, but if that's the way they do it on the slopes of Mt Ararat, who are we to judge?

I make curries almost every week. Many of the recipes call for rice and potatoes. The results taste good.

My wife can't abide the thought of a chicken omelette. She feels eating the same animal at each end of it's life cycle is somehow wrong.

Now, that's a philosophical approach to diet, if I ever heard one.

Ilike to have ham or bacon in my omelets, along with green peppers, and often mushrooms and cheese. I'm not fussy.

"I make curries almost every week. Many of the recipes call for rice and potatoes. The results taste good."

A couple of years ago, we ordered a snack in the crowded food court of a large shopping mall in Portugal. As we searched for a free table we noticed that most the diners were enjoying a variety of dishes, almost all of which included both rice and potatoes. Apparently, it's quite common over there.