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

I did a Yottam Ottolenghi dish - beetroot and celeriac gratin. The recipe called for the celeriac to be cut in 2mm slices - how do you cut celeriac that thinly? Although I cooked the dish according to the recipe -in the oven for nearly an hour and a half - the celeriac was still tough. It would have been better to par-boil the cleriac for about twenty minutes and reduce the oven time.

That's what comes of using recipes by fancy who have all sorts of utensils at their disposal.

Celeriac cut that thin would do in a food processor?

I suspect in a kitchen they slice stuff like that with a Madolin

FB

Marmite is *always* golden.

We (ie husband) just bought a food processor last week, and I used it to make a coleslaw last night in a matter of seconds.

I bought a cheap (30 odd quid) mini food processor that is nearly good enough but not quite.

It is really annoying in that it is functional enough to mean I really don't feel like it makes sense to buy a better one, but rubbish enough so it is constantly annoying to use.

I keep hopinh the motor will burn out or something so it makes the decision easy for me but I suspect it will last for years just to spite me!

FB

I regret replacing my broken food processor with an old fashioned Kenwood-type mixer on a stand. The slicer broke within weeks, the liquidiser is useless, the whole thing is made up of fiddly bits and pieces which are a nightmare to wash up.

Coleslaw in the food processor OTOH - Handful of walnuts in for a very short spurt, tip them out. Eggs, oil and seasoning in the bottom - Zap - Mayonnaise! Pop the slicer attachment on - cabbage, carrots, apples, whatever, neatly sliced and grated, land on top of the mayonnaise. Tip it out into a bowl - the mayonnaise is already half mixed in. sprinkle the walnuts over the top.

Washing up? Just the bowl, the blades and the slicer attachments. Next one I get will have all dishwasher-proof attachments, too.

Before buying, try out the attachments - You should be able to attach them with just a flick of the wrist.

My grater attachment is crap, but I've no problem with making my own coleslaw by hand - doesn't take THAT much longer. The secret ingredient? Caraway seed.

Tonight it was my ten-minute carbonara, using local bacon and local free-range eggs. No cream, no parmesan, and you wouldn't want any with my carbonara.

B

Sunday is casserole day again, and it's pork this week.

Shoulder of pork slow-cooked in cider (Thatcher's Katy), flavoured with fennel and caraway seeds, plenty of thyme and some mustard. Er...found we'd run out of dijon mustard, so I used American burger mustard, but I'm sure it'll be fine.

B

Tried something like that soup I did before again last night - this time was much better but quite different. Put some leeks, squash, sweet potato, chestnuts and chicken stock. Thought that some hot spices would be good, like paprika, but my girlfriend has low tolerance for spicy food so left it as it was, which was really good!

I'm in the midst of making a deconstructed chicken pie, really.

Chicken breasts stuffed with shallots & garlic, wrapped in bacon and roasted in the oven. Being served with individual creamy leek puff pastry tarts (one extra slice of bacon chopped in the leeks) and carrot & neep mash. Chicken & tarts in the oven now and smell gorgeous.

Re food processers/blenders....

After years of never having one, I gave in, a year or two ago, and got the new (at the time), Kenwood triblade (think I got the one down from the top of the range; only differnce was the attachments, and it had those I defiantely wouldn't use...).
Anyhow, it came with a whole bunch of attachments and bits, including a wisk, which I refuse to use on principle that I'm not that* lazy anyhow, I rarely need to whisk, cept for batter for making tode in the hole
anyhow, one of the attachments was this 'potato masher' thing... Oh yes... I thinks, I'll leave that in the bottom of the drawer with the whisk, never to use it.
having now used it three or four times in the past few weeks, (having given into temptation), it makes the most fabulus mash (though its a faff if doing mash for only one person...)

One of the oather attachments is just perfect for making paste in, blitzing up onion ginger and garlic etc., and the 'bit' you wizz it in, then has a lid, so I can make up a ton of it to last a couple of days when I'm doing a lot of Indian cooking...
Its also got an attachment, basically like a 'stick' blender, which is great to just blende soups direct in the pan (especially leek potato and Stilton soup personally )

Err...

Talking of which, I used the potato masher attachment yesterday.

And today ate leftover Shepard's pie, which I made yesterday, err pretty standard recipe, bag of fresh lam mince, three carrots, one giant and one tiny onion, a minute amoutn of garlic a large amount of wostershire sauce, a pinch of mustard powder, beef stock, did all that for about an hour to thicken, then made up the mash and threw that on top, and put it in the oven until it'd got a chrisp crust

Got frozen through this weekend, and had a lot of complicated historically accurate food, so I kept dinner really simple today - potato wedges (oven baked) with satay sauce.

I bought some pesto stuffed gnocchi today for dinner tomorrow (gnocchi is just way to much effort to make from scratch). Normally I do plain gnocchi in a pesto type sauce but that would be a pesto overload. Anyone got a suggestion for a sauce or side that would complement?

Vesuvio sauce would be a good adaptation on the classic tricolore. Do a standard tomato sauce (use passata if you wish - nowt wrong with that), throw in your pasta once it starts to thicken (I assume it's fresh if it's full of pesto, yes?), and grate mozzarella through it at the last minute to create a sauce reminiscent of molten lava - hence the name.

Freshly ground black peppercorns balance basil really well.

Cooking Delia's lasagne again for my brother when he visits this weekend.

Making the ragu up tonight.

Saturday night, among a lot of other nice food, I cooked my special carrots.

Peel and chop two decent sized carrots for each person.

Put half a block of butter in a frying pan and melt it. Add the carrots. Fry/saute/whatever the carrots for ten minutes or so like that over a medium heat, stirring all the time.

Add about a tablespoon of sugar per person you're serving.

Heat carrots for another ten minutes or so until they're just about done in the now much thickened, caramelised butter.

Add a generous shot of Pernod to the pan.

Light, standing well back because the flame will be LARGE.

Allow the flame to die down, scoop the carrots out of the sauce with a slotted spoon, and serve immediately with fillet steak of horse, rare.

Absolutely marvellous.

Harking back to Post 301 ff, I was looking for a way of doing expat shopping online. I know I've seen some sites which do that. But none of them had peppermint essence. The only consolation I found was that expats in Dubai seem to have trouble finding it, too.


Then I checked out the English Shop in Cologne, and - joy of joys - they do mail order AND they have peppermint essence. and to Sho for introducing us to the shop at the Cologne meet. Of course, I ordered a few other things at the same time to make it worth the postage. So we may have peppermint creams for Christmas yet!

Actually, it wasn't peppermint essence, but peppermint flavouring. I am assuming peppermint flavouring won't have the advantages that peppermint essence does - e.g. for helping with colics and so on. Anyone know the exact difference?

Ironically, the stuff I ordered is made by Dr Oetker. Go figure.


(By the way - I did try some chemists, but they would have had to order it.)

Sorry to hijack the thread again with my problems.

To get it back on track:

I cooked calf's liver, lightly fried with chopped bananas and mushrooms last night. This was a recipe I learnt when I was first au pairing in Germany back in 1973. Served with boiled potatoes and some left over red cabbage.

Liver and other offal used to only be available at the beginning of the week, as they used to do the slaughtering on Mondays, and offal doesn't keep, apart from the question of the amount of liver one pig produces in comparison to the number of steaks, chops, legs, joints and schnitzel it has. I'm not sure if the system has changed, but liver is a Tuesday meal, just as fish is a Friday meal.

This week I have been mostly eating home made Laksa Curry.

http://lunchtimelegend.co.uk/2012/12/laksa-curry/



FB