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

never tried making ice cream

Hufu.

Shop-bought avoids all those tedious questions down at the Police Station.

>As for Snails and Frog legs, it's easy and tasty to catch and prepare your own ones.< toybox

In terms of snails, I would say it is most definitely *not* easy to prepare your own. (I can't speak for frogs legs).

Most years I have vast numbers of Helix aspera, snails, in my garden. Last year I saw a Gordon Ramsay thing about preparing and cooking snails. He made the point that they have to be 'purged' for a few days once you've collected them, to get rid of the bitter taste they have because of what they eat in the wild. He explained that they need to be kept for a few days in a container, and fed on things like carrot and flour or bread. I did this a few times last year. And it was an absolute faff, because every night I had to clean them out, and replace the food.

After three or four days I cooked them for a few minutes in boiling water and then put them back in their shells and leave overnight in garlic butter and ground parsley. I then grilled them under a hot grill for ten minutes or so. It was technically almost food for free, but certainly not in terms of time, and a bit revolting. But it was fun, and I do, like the French, have a thing for snails in garlic butter. And they were delicious, but no better than ones I once bought preprepared in a Calais supermarket.

I couldn't be bothered this year. Not worth the trouble, certainly. But maybe next year...?

Nut butters, alas, can't really be made at home, though they're expensive.

It kind of depends on how good the shops near you are. When living outside Coventry I found it worthwhile to make my own bread, but living in Paris just near places like this http://www.leboulangerdemonge.com/ make it completely pointless to even think about making my own bread (it's literally on my walk back from work to my apartment). I also tried making confit de canard when I was living outside Coventry (a process that takes several weeks), but that's definitely not worth it here either because it's everywhere.

I made pizza once, but never again - too much effort for too little reward. The thing about pizza is that it is food for when you can't be bothered to think about what you want to eat. "What shall we have tonight?" "Oh I don't care, shall we go for a pizza?"

I would make pasta if I had a pasta machine, but with a rolling pin... never again.

Pastry, definitely worth it for shortcrust but I have to say in the rare instances I want puff pastry I'd go for frozen. (Of course in Paris, who needs to make their own pastry? boast boast boast.)

Ice cream can definitely be worth it unless you have a particularly good place near you that makes their own. Home made is so much nicer than sickly Haagen Dazs and Ben and Jerry's. I went through a phase of making it a lot, but time and belly size issues made me cut down. Hazelnut ice cream and fresh cherry sorbet though - how often do you see those in the shops and they are let me tell you!

One thing I'm thinking about doing myself though is making clotted cream and scones. France is great and all, but having gone more than a year without cream tea... In England though you have the luxury of buying Rhodda's clotted cream at most big supermarkets - lucky you! A lot of the Americans here get friends to bring over Philadelphia cream cheese when they visit so they can make cheesecake. Apparently there is no substitute. Not my thing though.

It's also nice to make things like pizza and bread occasionally just for fun, but only if you have lots of time on your hands (or maybe if you have interested children as an excuse ).

Pizza I nearly always make myself - it's my usual food for when I have a lot of small amounts of random veggies left over, and don't feel like making soup.

Puff pastry?

My favourite, but vastly expensive, compared to shop bought, Christmas cake (£18.00 lat time I made it... 1990) and Christmas pud (£6.00 for a 1 pint pud in 1990), if done properly.

MMF

We have a very good bakery in Bristol who sell pizza dough fresh or frozen. Defrost if frozen, knead lightly and leave to prove then duff it up (as I like to call it) and roll it out.

Blend tomatoes with herbs for your sauce, stick your toppings on, bake for half an hour, job didded!

>> I also tried making confit de canard when I was living outside Coventry (a process that takes several weeks), but that's definitely not worth it here either because it's everywhere. <<

I make my own confit de canard as well - largely becuase I don't live in Paris

>> Home made is so much nicer than sickly Haagen Dazs and Ben and Jerry's <<

One thing about making home-made ice cream is definitely that you can control the amount of sugar - I find most commercial ice creams far too sweet these days.

Whilst we're talking about ice cream (shameless plug ): A2339534

RF

Ugh, coconut!

Mmm - I was going to ask if you had a recipe, if you can do it at home successfully, RF. My problem is that it never freezes, despite having an ice-cream maker which LIVES in the freezer and is therefore theoretically always ready for use.

Cheese.

Surprisingly easy to make (http://www.electricscotland.com/food/recipes/crowdie.htm) but you get a bigger variety in Waitrose.

Prawn Jalfrezi, large pilau, extra papadoms, and large cucumber raita.

Thai food

It is actually very easy to cook, I did regularly when I lived in London, but very cheap here, and even in a very small city, always available.

Mincemeat - the kind for mince pies at Christmas. I have made it, once, but what a lot of fuss!

It's a matter of degree, isn't it? At some point in the processing chain, you're buying from a shop. It's just a trade-off between:
- the amount of effort you want to put in, against
- you control of the quality of the produce the food's made from.

Or alternatively:

Milk and butter

Honestly, this is a real pain and I wish I'd never started. The neighbours won't talk to me, the cow's unhappy and the garden's a write-off.

I haven't got a degree in making mincemeat , but I once found a recipe for it which was brilliant.

It wasn't made months in advance, but simply all stirred together and used immediately. It tasted really nice and tangy and fresh. It involved no more work than weighing the ingredients, grating some apple(s) into them and stirring around a bit. Unfortunately I haven't been able to the find the magazine I read it in. I keep meaning just to try without a recipe.

Basically it seems to revolve around a basic mixture of equal amounts of raisins, sultanas and currants. But you can probably simplify that and just use two of the three. Brown sugar and grated apple came into it somewhere. A little extra apple juice for moisture, mixed peel, spices, lemon juice. I think there was some margarine replacing the suet, but I'm not sure.

We do have a vine in the garden, so theoretically I could make my own dried fruit - which might satisfy some of Pinniped's criteria! - but the blackbirds always get the grapes jut before we do.

Anyway in my case, it's not a case of making the foodstuff (mincemeat) at home as opposed to going out and buying it - you can't buy it in the shops in Germany anyway.

pizza is worth the effort

we have a macho thing going...how hot a pizza can we eat

so far i'm the winner with "el bastardo" five different types of chili as toppings

the following day everyone suffers "johnny cash"

minemeat without suet

It's a family tradition in our house, even if I just pop round for half an hour, everyone in the family has to have a stir, you see...

Equal amounts of currants, sultanas and raisins. finely grated lemon peel (and the juice), grated cooking apples (two, usually in ours, but we make loads) loads of brown sugar and suet and lots and lots of brandy. Everyone has a stir (and makes a wish) and then it gets covered and left to settle for a month or so (depends how early we get it together to do it!)

It's simpler than making flapjack! (not pancakes!!!)

can I come to yours this Christmas?