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Heaven: 2022 Food, marvelous food! Recipes we enjoy...or not!

jedijudyjedijudy Heaven Host
edited January 2023 in Limbo
Here is the place for us to share about the food on our tables. This is a good place to put hints we've discovered while tweaking recipes and ingredients; or to share the tried and true recipes that are staples in our homes!
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Comments

  • I'd like to make a cooking -related New Year's Resolution. I used to enjoy cooking, back in the pre-Covid days when we had visitors regularly, and my everyday cooking would be interspersed with more interesting recipes.

    I've now had two years of cooking for just the three of us at the same level all the time and it has become a chore.

    Can anyone recommend a cooking challenge? We get a weekly veg box, and we have an excellent butcher. I cook seasonally. I'm a competent everyday cook. My husband likes "meat, potatoes and veg" type meals several times a week.
  • DoublethinkDoublethink Admin, 8th Day Host
    edited January 2022
    One dish you’ve never made before per week ? As a designated experiment day.
  • NEQ, back in the days when I didn’t work full time I used to have a Friday evening feast night where I would cook several dishes on a theme. As I like Indian cooking there was a lot of curries involved :) alas, this has gone by the wayside with full time work and my husband having Friday night dos (and lockdown has replaced it with a takeaway night) but I hope to revive it when I reduce my workload in October.
  • Someone tried, as part of checking her recipe books while decluttering, spending a week cooking from each of the recipe books on her shelf in turn. Would that work?

    Or you could try a recipe a week from the Riverford recipes?

    Or a recipe a week from the Guardian Food columns?
    * The reason I know as it came up in conversation when I said I'd decluttered all my Jamie Oliver books a while back as I never cooked from them. She had given up cooking for a week from the Jamie Oliver books part way through, couldn't even just focus on one. Those got decluttered.
  • CK, brilliant suggestion. I would LOVE to declutter my recipe books! The last attempt at decluttering them just resulted in protests from the NE family, and then the NE Loon squirrelled the decluttered books into his room.

    Your suggestion sounds like a win-win - stealth decluttering, one book a week, and the extra interest I've been looking for!
  • Sometime this week I really need to make a cheesecake. I bought the requisite Philadelphia when it was on offer and just need to get on with it. I modify this recipe:
    https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/new-york-cheesecake
    Being a household of chocoholics we add cocoa powder and balance the consistency by adding the whole egg rather than just the yolk. I tend to at least double up the base otherwise it tends to dissolve into nothing. I've also tried it with a flapjack-type base which I like but Mrs Feet doesn't. On this occasion I'll probably top it with some leftover chocolate topping (3:2 condensed milk to dark chocolate, heated until very thick) that I made for a recent take on millionaire's shortbread, using sticky toffee pudding sauce for the caramel which gave it a bit more flavour and less sickly-sweetness than the standard version.

    My other recent baking success was some sausage rolls. We'd bought sausage meat from CostCo which was excellent quality but 2kg was more than we needed for Christmas day. I consulted St Delia and used her flaky pastry method (short version: freeze butter, sieve flour into bowl at 4/3 amount of butter, dip frozen butter in flour and coarse grate. Mix with knife to cover butter with flour then bring together with a little water) and was able to just roll out the pastry, put the sausage meat in, seal, slice and glaze and they came out perfect. In the past the sausage meat has been too greasy and they've just ended up swimming.
  • CK, brilliant suggestion. I would LOVE to declutter my recipe books! The last attempt at decluttering them just resulted in protests from the NE family, and then the NE Loon squirrelled the decluttered books into his room.

    Your suggestion sounds like a win-win - stealth decluttering, one book a week, and the extra interest I've been looking for!

    @North East Quine - if they hate the food they've eaten that week, the North East household may even support the decluttering.
  • There is not a hope that the NE household will ever support any decluttering.

    This week's recipe book is a charity one sold in aid of a hospital in Malawi. All the recipes have been winners in the past, but quite a few of the recipes are dishes I could put together without a recipe, or are recipes I can easily find elsewhere.
  • MaryLouiseMaryLouise Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    There is not a hope that the NE household will ever support any decluttering.

    This week's recipe book is a charity one sold in aid of a hospital in Malawi. All the recipes have been winners in the past, but quite a few of the recipes are dishes I could put together without a recipe, or are recipes I can easily find elsewhere.

    Yes, cookbooks where you don't need the recipes. I have a number of recipe collections put together by nuns in convents and school teachers for charitable fundraisers, as well as celebrities with kind hearts who can't really cook. On the other hand, I sometimes find recipe collections with contributions from home cooks who were replicating their great-grandmother's recipes and those were real finds.

    There are cookbooks I use regularly because the recipes never let me down. Diana Henry is a big favourite along with Nik Sharma on Indian spiced dishes and vegetarian writer Deborah Madison. Then older writers like Jane Grigson and Marguerite Costa.

    This year, finances and food supplies permitting out here, I'm going to cook more Middle Eastern dishes. We get affordable pomegranates, quinces, fresh dates and pistachio nuts in season and I'd love to use them more confidently.
  • ArethosemyfeetArethosemyfeet Shipmate
    edited January 2022
    I suspect in 15-20 years when my mum passes or needs residential care and we need to clear the house there will be a polite squabble for her handwritten recipe book she had begun (I think) at school. Of course I suspect the recipes are wholly reflective of what she actually did, but I will need to try making chocolate sponge and chocolate custard at least once.
  • HelixHelix Shipmate
    That's a really good point about mum's recipe dish. I need to try and get mum's recipe for her cake and marmalade. Not there is any chance of me making them in the short term but oh they were good. They were both hand-downs from her parents - the marmalade from her father and the cake from her mother.
  • @MaryLouise - my Margaret Costa Four Seasons Cookery Book is one of three that sit on the shelf, sort of together, connected more by the plastic library cover than the spine. The other two that have been loved to disintegration are Madhur Jaffrey's An Invitation to Indian Cooking and Jocasta Innes' The Pauper's Cookbook (the second copy I've wrecked that much), all of which are more used than The Complete Cookery Course by Delia Smith, which I also own and do use for some things.

    My daughter and I've taught a whole generation to cook with the peanut butter and banana breads from the Margaret Costa. One of the reviews I found when I was checking I'd got the title right said that the book was a reflection of the food in the UK before we joined the EU, not that her recipes were bad, just it showed what was available.
  • Tonight I made mushroom pate from the recipe book as a starter.

    I'm going to keep a note of this recipe because it's easy, tasty, and I already had all the ingredients to hand.
  • One of the reviews I found when I was checking I'd got the title right said that the book was a reflection of the food in the UK before we joined the EU, not that her recipes were bad, just it showed what was available.

    Judging by my upbringing, Goscinny and Uderrzo had a point in "Asterix in Britain", which predates me by a mere 5 years. Admittedly the Rayburn (think an Aga's child), and the Baby Belling when it was too hot to light the Rayburn, didn't lend themselves to exotic techniques such as grilling - I don't think I even saw a grill until I went to boarding school - but if it wasn't roasted, it was boiled. And it tended to be meat and two veg (being away so often it took me years to twig that Dad insisted on potato with everything - even with spag bol!).

  • HuiaHuia Shipmate
    Peanut butter bread? As a fan of Fix and Fogg's Everything Butter* which has hemp, almond, peanut, pumpkin, chia, sesame, sunflower and flaxseed, I'd love to try making it with that.

    * Fix and Fogg are a NZ company - from Wellington, but I think they may export to Australia as well.
  • PomonaPomona Shipmate
    The Old Recipes subreddit (a subreddit is like an individual forum within reddit) is an absolutely brilliant resource for finding old recipes (whether from actual cookbooks or otherwise) and to share them - you don't need a reddit account to read the posts, just Google 'Old Recipes reddit' and it will come up. Sometimes there are the more uh, interesting vintage recipes but often some really great ones too (and often some lovely handwritten ones written down by a grandmother or great-grandmother). Often people share PDFs and ebooks of public domain vintage cookbooks too.
  • PomonaPomona Shipmate
    Also sorry for the double post, but if you enjoy Chinese food then I would highly recommend the channel SoupedUpRecipes on youtube. It's hosted by a young Hakka Chinese woman called Mandy, and her instructions and filming are so helpful and clear (and she speaks excellent clear and fluent English). She also gives helpful advice on substitutions and alternatives for more obscure ingredients.
  • <tangent> @Huia - if your email address is the same, I've sent you the recipe for Peanut Butter Bread. </tangent>
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    We did a fairly major declutterance of our cookbooks each time we moved house, and when I moved back to Scotland I reduced the collection to one fairly small shelf's worth.

    I wouldn't be without the ones I have left; I actually enjoy reading them, especially while I'm eating! They include Delia's Complete Cookery Course (which I still use regularly) and her Christmas book; a rather nice Sunday Times cookbook that was a wedding present; and a couple of Orkney cookbooks written by my late brother-in-law's cousin.

    I may not use all of them all the time, but I like to have them there.
  • HuiaHuia Shipmate
    Thanks very much CK. I will have to wait to make it as NZ has had a crisis with brown sugar. There is only one refinery that provides all NZ sugar and before Christmas all brown and raw sugar were recalled because they had been tainted with lead. It has also meant that I couldn't make my usual rum and raisin muffins.

    It's not something that you want to happen at any time, but before Christmas was a disaster for many.
  • MaryLouiseMaryLouise Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    @MaryLouise - my Margaret Costa Four Seasons Cookery Book is one of three that sit on the shelf, sort of together, connected more by the plastic library cover than the spine. The other two that have been loved to disintegration are Madhur Jaffrey's An Invitation to Indian Cooking and Jocasta Innes' The Pauper's Cookbook (the second copy I've wrecked that much), all of which are more used than The Complete Cookery Course by Delia Smith, which I also own and do use for some things.

    My daughter and I've taught a whole generation to cook with the peanut butter and banana breads from the Margaret Costa. One of the reviews I found when I was checking I'd got the title right said that the book was a reflection of the food in the UK before we joined the EU, not that her recipes were bad, just it showed what was available.

    Yes, Margaret Costa, not Marguerite as I wrote. I bought the original paperback of her Four Seasons and have replaced it once with a later edition. I go back to certain recipes again and again, as you mentioned, in my case chutneys and casseroles. I'm also a fan of Madhur Jaffrey and have several of her books.
  • MaryLouiseMaryLouise Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Pomona wrote: »
    The Old Recipes subreddit (a subreddit is like an individual forum within reddit) is an absolutely brilliant resource for finding old recipes (whether from actual cookbooks or otherwise) and to share them - you don't need a reddit account to read the posts, just Google 'Old Recipes reddit' and it will come up. Sometimes there are the more uh, interesting vintage recipes but often some really great ones too (and often some lovely handwritten ones written down by a grandmother or great-grandmother). Often people share PDFs and ebooks of public domain vintage cookbooks too.

    Thanks for this, bookmarked.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    It'll be the Rogan Josh out of the (much stained) copy of Madur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery tonight.

    Another cookbook has stood the test of time is the Readers' Digest Cookery Year which is a compendium of a certain kind of classic Anglo-French cuisine, and invaluable if you need basic things like cooking times, or a recipe for soufflé.

    But a good many others - Nigel and Nigella and Yotam and Hugh - are there to be read more than cooked from.
  • HuiaHuia Shipmate
    Thanks Pomona.

    The oldest recipe I have from my family is my step Grandma's (Aunty Sadie's) Christmas cake. Apparently she couldn't write it down for Mum because she didn't strictly measure ingredients but could tell by the texture of the cake that she had the balance right - so instead they cooked Mum's first cake together with Sadie writing directions as they went. She wrote a pound of eggs because in those days there were often egg shortages, or eggs from different sources. Six duck eggs would have much more liquid than 6 bantam eggs - so she wrote 1 lb (a pound) of eggs (which I found equalled 6 NZ size 7 eggs). the cake also used a pound of butter, which dripped out the bottom of the cake tin. Sadie also wrote the cooking time and temperature to suit the oven mum had at the time which wasn't as hot as later ovens.

    Making the Christmas cake was a family endeavour. Mum and I measured out the ingredients. I washed the fruit and dried it on tea towels in the sun and also blanched the almonds by pouring hot water over them and popping them out of their skins when the water had cooled. Dad carefully measured the layers of paper to line the tin, and some to be wrapped around it and tied with string. Every one stirred the cake and the boys licked the mixing utensils and bowls when we had finished using them.

    Even now, over 60 years later when I am making the two cakes I usually bake I think of the busy-ness and almost ritualistic process of that cake making.

    I haven't made Sadie's recipe for years. Alison Holst who was NZ TV cook brought out a recipe that used pineapple to keep the cake moist and we switched to that (as did many household in NZ) the recipe was clearer and the instructions written by someone who didn't presume the bakers did a lot of baking - in the way Sadie's did. These days I don't make the pineapple cake either, but a smaller 20cm square one - either Alison Holst's easy mix Rum and Raisin or the cake she invented for Diabetes NZ- which I prefer because it has a different kinds of of fruit and nuts in it, but which doesn't keep as long, I also don't ice the cake but sprinkle the top with sliced almonds.
  • Firenze wrote: »
    It'll be the Rogan Josh out of the (much stained) copy of Madur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery tonight.

    Another cookbook has stood the test of time is the Readers' Digest Cookery Year which is a compendium of a certain kind of classic Anglo-French cuisine, and invaluable if you need basic things like cooking times, or a recipe for soufflé.

    But a good many others - Nigel and Nigella and Yotam and Hugh - are there to be read more than cooked from.

    Yep; not to mention Elizabeth David

  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    Firenze wrote: »
    ... But a good many others - Nigel and Nigella and Yotam and Hugh - are there to be read more than cooked from.
    My sister gave me Nigella's Eat, Cook, Repeat for my birthday, and I agree, it's more of a read than a cook-from.

    Having said that, a Nigella book that we used to have had a really nice recipe for chicken marinated in yoghurt and cinnamon; sadly, that book wasn't one of the ones that survived the declutterance.
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    ETA: found it.
  • I've been cooking from Yotam Ottolenghi's Flavour most of this year. I had a second book as a birthday present and have noted some recipes to cook but haven't started perusing it yet. He's very good for making vegetables interesting. I also have some Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall books that I cook a few recipes from, but he's more for reading than cooking.

    The other thing I use the Margaret Costa Four Seasons Cookery Book for is game, when/if I get my hands on any (the local butcher has pheasant, I noted as I wandered past, and I know where to find venison).

    I find with the books that stay on the shelf, that many of the recipes have become part of my repertoire unless it's something I cook rarely or need to actually measure out, and then I have to find the recipe. But when I look at various pages I realise that I originally learned it from some book on my shelves and now cook it regularly.
  • HelixHelix Shipmate
    I'm curious about Peanut Butter loaf @Curiosity killed - might you be so kind as to share the recipe??
  • The problem is that it's still in copyright (the author died in 1999, the book is still being published), which is why I didn't share it on a public board and when I looked most of the other places that mentioned it said pretty much the same thing. However, Google Books has it published here
  • HelixHelix Shipmate
    Ah thank you! I appreciate that I will give it a go!
  • We inherited all my Dad's cook books a decade ago, which also sit on the shelves. Some of them are a bit useful...
    Oddly enough, an elderly copy of Cooking in Colour by Marguerite Patten given to us when we got married 40-odd years ago (and it wasn't anew copy then) is still being used - for some things...

    Now ewe get a regular Riverford delivery, the Riverford books are the most used. But, does anyone know what to do with courgettes???? The Chef in the house has baked them into chocolate cakes, lemon cakes, fried them as veg, baked them with tomatoes and onions is a traybake of veg...
  • Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall has a pasta sauce recipe - this one without the crème fraiche. I also roast them whole in the oven or on barbecues, eat them as part of a crudité plate, generally love them.

    I don't have a problem with courgettes, it's the never-ending carrots and cabbage at this time of year, which I am sure are lovely with meat as part of the two veg, but I don't eat meat, much if at all. They both get used in stir-fried veg with egg fried rice once a week and an occasional Nasi Goreng mix, but most of my other options are not happening with my daughter at the moment.
  • I think my mum cooks them on a griddle on the hob, possibly with some olive oil, until the bits touching the griddle brown. Never been inclined to eat the things, myself.
  • HelixHelix Shipmate
    Courgettes in an omelette are yum - with cheese!
  • I like carrots from our veg box - they taste like carrots used to, and are yummy in a chicken tagine (which is what we are having tonight)!
  • PomonaPomona Shipmate
    Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall has a pasta sauce recipe - this one without the crème fraiche. I also roast them whole in the oven or on barbecues, eat them as part of a crudité plate, generally love them.

    I don't have a problem with courgettes, it's the never-ending carrots and cabbage at this time of year, which I am sure are lovely with meat as part of the two veg, but I don't eat meat, much if at all. They both get used in stir-fried veg with egg fried rice once a week and an occasional Nasi Goreng mix, but most of my other options are not happening with my daughter at the moment.

    Cabbage rolls with a rice filling maybe? It depends on the type of cabbage I suppose but vegetarian Indian food uses a surprising amount of cabbage - vegetable kofta curry is good and cabbage is a common veg to use in the koftas. Cabbage in Hindi is patta gobhi (literally 'leaf cauliflower') which might help find recipes. Carrots I think are easier to deal with as they're really good pickled or turned into sweet preserves or baked goods, so at least can be stretched out more. Or turned into soup! Cabbage could work in an Asian noodle soup though, maybe a miso one if not using meat.
  • Unfortunately soup is off the menu, as are quite a few things as difficult to swallow with inhaling the liquid. Plus I'm also cooking gluten free, dairy free, and avoiding various other nuts and seeds and/or most pulses as either allergy triggers or aggravate gut problems.

    I can and do find other recipes, but it's more than a little boring spending hours cooking something to just chuck it in the bin.
  • HuiaHuia Shipmate
    I don't bother cooking carrots, I've always preferred them just scraped and scrubbed. I also prefer peas podded and washed, rather than cooked.

    CK I am in awe of the way you navigate the challenges of preparing food for such a restricted diet, I realise its borne of necessity but the inventivness of your approach is awesome.
  • Thank you @Huia - that was nice to see after half the lunch I cooked (not my share, I ate mine) is heading to the compost bin: braised ribbons of leek and carrot with GF pasta and a spiked tahini as a cheese substitute.
  • Has anyone got an air fryer? What do you think of it - should I get one?
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    I had one for a time; fairly basic model with a paddle. I found that rather mangled roasties. It was useful in so much as my then cooker had an integrated grill/oven. Once I got a cooker with fan oven + oven/grill and could therefore do different processes/temperatures in the same appliance, it was superceded.

  • We have a Ninja air fryer and we use it all the time, it makes lovely crispy potatoes and is great for breaded fish and chicken. Husband experiments with it all the time but I stick to the basics.
    (I like Ninja, my eldest son has their blender and I'm tempted to get their food processor)
  • PomonaPomona Shipmate
    Unfortunately soup is off the menu, as are quite a few things as difficult to swallow with inhaling the liquid. Plus I'm also cooking gluten free, dairy free, and avoiding various other nuts and seeds and/or most pulses as either allergy triggers or aggravate gut problems.

    I can and do find other recipes, but it's more than a little boring spending hours cooking something to just chuck it in the bin.

    Do you have any Indian grocery stores near you? They do various gluten-free flours like millet and sorghum flour quite cheaply as they are used in Hindu fasting periods. I'm wondering if some stuffed flatbreads would make a nice change, and flatbreads are more forgiving of GF flour.

    Carrot chips and roast carrots instead of the potato versions are at least easy, and carrot crisps are nice (you can do them in the oven). If eggs are OK, some whisked egg white helps get carrot chips/roasties crispier.
  • I like carrots, but the current quantity in the veg boxes effectively means carrots in every meal and that I find more challenging. So for lunch we had a pasta thing I do (GF pasta), braised ribbons of leek and carrot which because we're dairy free I made a spiked tahini sauce through it all (spiked with tamari (soy), Worcestershire Sauce (GF) and I usually add some Vecon stock, but have run out). And for supper I had some GF puff pastry and used it to make sort of Nasi Goreng wraps, containing cabbage, carrot and an egg.

    No local Indian food stores, and I can't think where the nearest is.
  • @ Curiosity killed, I am not sure where you are but in the US you can find Indian Grocery online https://www.ishopindian.com/Indian-Flours-Grains-Millets/
  • We have had an air fryer for about 5 years, and love it. It does wonderful roast potatoes and chips, so much so that we bought one for Lord and Lady P.
    As Darllenwr has to do all the cooking now, potatoes are the only thing we’ve used it for, but it’s much cleaner, reliable and healthier than a deep fat fryer.
  • AravisAravis Shipmate
    I have three completely different courgette recipes. Nigel Slater’s courgette, Wensleydale and new potato crumble is probably available online? The others are from friends.

    Paula’s courgette salad:
    Put about a tablespoon or two of olive oil in a bowl with one or two sliced (not crushed) garlic cloves. Slice courgettes, fry rapidly with minimal oil and add to bowl immediately. The heat of the courgettes will help the garlic infuse into the oil. Once it’s cooled down, add the juice of half a lemon (or more to taste) and pick the garlic slices out. You can also add chopped mint if you like. This is very nice with salmon and new potatoes.

    Rachel’s spiced courgettes:
    Slice courgettes, fry till soft in olive oil with a chopped green chilli, and a teaspoonful of turmeric. Add about a tablespoon of creamed coconut, and some water - sorry I don’t know how much; keep adding small bits and stirring till it makes a creamy yellow sauce.

    Both recipes only take 5-10 mins to prepare and are gluten free and vegan. I have no precise amounts written down so you may have to experiment. Add salt to either if you want (I tend not to as my salt tolerance is rather low).
  • MaryLouiseMaryLouise Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    edited January 2022
    Thanks @Aravis, we have a glut of courgettes here right now. I also make sliced courgettes in a little olive oil and garlic, with a squeeze of lemon and sometimes served up with cooked linguine and a handful of grated Parmesan.

    My other go-to dish is courgette fritters (from Nigel Slater in the Guardian, I think), coarsely grated courgettes (6), mixed with crumbled feta, mint and parsley chopped fine, chopped spring onions, all mixed together with a little flour and a beaten egg and shaped into rough ovals, then fried in shallow olive oil. A quarter of lemon to squeeze over the fritters.
  • ML if you have courgettes ( zucchini in Oz) coming out of your ears then it is worth making ratatouille if you can get your hands on the other ingredients. Tinned tomatoes make it easy. Is fresh basil available in your part of the world?
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