Profile

eaguk

nearly retired, married, kids, grandkids

  • Location: Fife, Scotland, UK, but from Massachusetts

Where is BitchinFixin's

I'm really glad you are ok. I can send a contribution if you tell me where.

England In Less Than A Month - I need some help!

Okay, so nobody's said anything about Swindon yet - I wonder why??!

A challenge, SEers. I throw down the gauntlet. If you can list a great eating place in Swindon I will be very grateful too! We have to go there sometimes, not by choice, but into each life...etc.

Advice on great places to eat in Europe

Sorry I think that's 'haidhausen'.

Advice on great places to eat in Europe

And what about the cafe in the Gasteig in the Heidhausen district of Munich? Right near downtown, buzzy, good food (mostly pasta of various descriptions), reasonably priced, and the Gasteig is an impressive venue. You might even want to attend a concert there.

If you could only make one...

Pecan or walnut shortbread balls (see 'what do you call this cooky' thread)! After years of baking umpteen different kinds, now this is just about the only one I do.

I just saw a recipe for stollen bars though that I am going to try out. In Germany now they sell 'Stollen bites', mini-mini-stollens, which are delicious; the bars look to give a very similar result.

What do you call this cookie?

Pecan shortbread balls. Or walnut shortbread balls. Most years they are the only kind of Christmas cookie I make now, people love them so much.

I seem to have less and less of a sweet tooth as I get older and older. So I've recently discovered these are delicious just baked and not rolled in icing sugar afterwards. The dough itself isn't very sweet, as I'm sure you all know.

what about candied fruit?

Yes, @JT, sounds as if @rasellers0 doesn't really mean the full-on 'candied fruit' I've done in the past.

I've had fruit simply dipped in sugar syrup cooked to 'hard crack' stage and it was beautiful. But short-lived as you say.

Toronto

Many thanks both! No, no vegges. Maybe one of these for daytime, one for evening? Great!

Writers, get serious about cooking and use a scale in recipes.

Devil's advocate here - being able to convert weight recipes to cups and spoons can be a great boon actually - think isolated cottage on an island off the coast of Scotand with no scales!

Conversely it seems perverse to design and use multi-loaf bread recipes that call for e.g. 15 cups of flour (yes!) instead of 4 lbs/1.8 kilos of flour.

Think laterally and go with what's least hassle that gets the results!

what about candied fruit?

PS @Jerzee I think what I have done in the past is what you are calling 'Glace fruit'.

It seems to be called both things. I did find this procedure here but I note it's only a week - works best if you do it over 2 weeks. It works fine with tinned fruit btw, e.g. apricots. You then don't bother with blanching the fruit to start with.
http://www.sofeminine.co.uk/guide/food/f16634-how-to-make-candied-fruit.html

what about candied fruit?

Well, I did once make candied strawberries. I followed the trad. method which involves gradual replacement of the water in the fruit, with sugar. You pour a syrup involving glucose as well as sugar, over the fruit, then dissolve more sugar in the syrup gradually over 2 weeks. As per The Good Housekeeping Cookery Book, Mrs Beeton, etc. I'd used this method successfully in the past for pineapple, apricots, pears, kiwi fruit (very pretty, those), tiny whole peeled mandarins, etc. Back when I did such things.

But really the results for strawberries were not great. Unfortunately strawberries are really fragile because of high water content. And their flavour is so evanescent.

As you say @lf, citrus peel is a different matter altogether, much denser and dryer. I am just about to add sugar to a batch of orange shells which have been boiled soft and then soaked in syrup for a couple of days. You don't have to do the gradual replacement with them. A few days suffice!

But by coincidence today the Farmer's Market had some so-called' dried strawberries'. They weren't great, I'd have called them 'candied', turns out they were processed with fruit juice concentrate. Mostly just tasted sweet to me. I've had sliced freeze-dried strawberries before and they really are good, but helluva expensive. Maybe that would be the best way to preserve them as a gifting treat.

Lets Talk Fruit Cake!

PS: I didn't bother with the marzipan, what she's describing is the decoration for a traditional 'Simnel' or Easter cake in the UK, but you can use whatever topping you want. For Christmas fruitcake I do use marzipan, it's very good but not necessary..
The second time I made it, I used loaf tins, obviously baked it a shorter time, and it worked fine.

Lets Talk Fruit Cake!

Try this one. It's traditional but with a few twists. Loads of booze. I've been making fruitcake all my adult life (a LOOOONG time!) and this is one of the best I've ever made.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/apr/17/lorraine-pascale-easter-cake-recipes
(The top picture isn't for the recipe that follows, the picture for the recipe is underneath it.)

Stumped... What is the name of this pastry

They have these sometimes here in Scotland also. This type of tart or tartlet is quite common in Europe generally. Sometimes they are full-size. A favourite in the UK is Bakewell Tart, with a layer of jam or lemon curd underneath the almond filling, and sometimes without the sliced almonds on top. I'm sure folk are right, yours is a 'tartchen'.

The filling is called frangipane (or frangipan). it's a mix of ground almonds (or part cake crumbs or ground rice if you are feeling poor!), egg, sugar, butter and flavouring. Someone posted a picture of a pear tart recently which looks to be a pear frangipane tart. This type of tart is SO easy to make at home, and so delicious! In fact you can just bake the filling on its own and have it with stewed fruit, or put some jam in the bottom of the baking dish and then top with the filling and sliced almonds, and bake.

Fun and sophisticated cupcakes?

The best cupcakes have a filling, in my experience.

There is a silly, expensive, dedicated cupcake shop in our town, but the ones with butter icing are good (NOT the ones with fondant icing - yuk!), and that's mainly because they always have an interesting filling. Otherwise they are kind of boring. It is more work though.

Microplaned Garlic - How do I do it?

I have a garlic press with fairly big holes which is v easy to clean. Nowadays I don't even bother to peel the garlic before crushing. Works just fine and saves more time than anything I've heard yet. You can squeeze and resqueeze too to minimize waste.

I've never quite got the snobbery about garlic presses. Even the late great Elisabeth David abhorred them. Supposedly it makes the garlic bitter or something but I've never ever noticed that, no one I've cooked for has ever noticed either.

Left over Make Over Meals-Your best dishes

How about for lunch next day, either reheated or just out of the pan, cold? Always tastes better than it did originally...OH takes a bowl to work most days with everything in it, heats it up in the microwave, everyone is always jealous! Sometimes we fight over who gets it....

Home Town Favorites

Great topic, @bitchin'!

Here's my example: Fudge doughnuts. Found in East Fife, Scotland (St Andrews, Cupar, East Neuk). Plus some bakeries do a Fudge Doughnut birthday cake - yes - a GIANT fudge doughnut!!

A fudge doughnut is a fried yeast doughnut just like a jelly doughnut, only filled with custard instead of jelly, and coated with a delicious toffee-flavoured glace icing on top. It's divine.

Of course there are lots of other indigenous Scottish dishes here in St Andrews - haggis, clootie dumpling, black bun - but they aren't quite so specific to this particular small area.

I must confess I did once have something called a 'toffee custard doughnut' from a doughnut shop in Piccadilly Circus in London. It was almost the same... I bet they stole the idea from East Fife though!

What "normal" food have you never had?

only if your mother doesn't make it, right?

Boiled Vegeterian Husband Risotto

@soozm, definitely.

And hey guys - what about us trannies? start veggie, end up carnie - what about us? Huh??

Open letter to the foodies of tomorrow

@db - 'cake pop lemmings' - love it!!!

Bread Baking and Other Culinary Fantasies...

I'm no breadmaking expert. But one thing you said, @gargupie, rang bells with me, about the strong yeast taste in homemade bread.

I found that too and discovered if I just used a small teaspoon, say, where recipe called for a Tablespoon, of yeast, and then let it rise much longer, that seemed to solve the problem. A lot of very fast bread recipes use loads of yeast, for fast rising Try going slow - which is no harder than going fast, just - slower! - and see.

Food you were denied as a kid and crave now

@Jerzee, interesting story about the olives. I had the opposite treatment. I too adored olives so for my 7th? 8th? 9th? birthday they gave me a whole, entire jar, all for me, including the brine.. Maybe they thought I'd get sick of them? Not a chance...!

How do you keep track of your food?

I used to keep track in my head. But something seems to have happened lately - category slippage? Grey cell reduction? Anyway - I just go and look every once in a while.

Once I started deploying 'mis en place' instead of getting halfway through making something and realizing I was missing flour/sugar/eggs/butter/tomatoes/bacon or whatever, that's how I know when I'm running out.

Who can tolerate raw onions/scallions/garlic?

I like thin slices of raw green onion (and @Jerzee you are right, the green part is milder), and raw sweet red onion. Others can be hard on the digestion.

But I can tolerate raw regular onion sliced thin if it's been soaked in salt and vinegar for a wee while (@Hotnp, similar to your suggestion). Try it, it really does work. Doesn't solve the restaurant problem though.

Toronto

Heading soon for short visit to son and family who just moved in July to Toronto. (Him, dil, 3 year old and 9 month old)
So where would be a nice place for me to treat us all to a lunch out?

Specs: He and I love all food, dil not so food-oriented, not crazy about spiciness etc, plus lively 3 year old and baby. Lunch, preferably early, not evening.
So no formidable high-dining experience, just good food with range of choices, relaxed ambiance, kid-friendly. They leave in Little Portugal, so close by would be nice if possible.

Plus recommendation for me to treat son and dil to a meal out on their own in the evening, with me babysitting at home. Again, nothing too fancy or formal but good food, ambiance, service.

problems with Food/Priciest meal comment

I just sent a comment to this thread, which shows in my 'profile' as being sent. not only does it not appear but I can't read any of the other 60+ comments in this thread now. It shows as having no comments at all.

crustless bread?

Yesterday in the supermarket (Tesco) I was behind a lady who was buying about 20 loaves of CRUSTLESS sliced white.

Am I way behind the times? Has this product been around for years? She had her teenage daughter with her, I think she was buying for the freezer, not for a big catering event. And I don't think she was Italian, so probably not for making tramezzini.

Was she simply catering to her children's distaste for crusts? Is that the point of such a product? If so I feel disapproval coming on! I can certainly see the point of this bread for, say, making loads of wee sandwiches for a kid's birthday party, or as part of a Strawberry tea at a fete or the like.

Has anyone used this product? If so, for what?

Bon appetit wedding cake

@suburbanfoodie, I found that recipe! (Sorry so long, I've been away.)

At least I think it must be the same one, it even has crystallized flowers for decoration. It's from June, 1982.

I converted it to all-chocolate but the main thing is the 4 different parts - spongecake, ganache, a souffle layer and buttercream icing (NO FONDANT!!!!). Does that sound right? Maybe I could make a .pdf copy and send it to you as an attachment. It is quite a long recipe involving several pages of small type, though it's really not difficult, just takes time to make all the parts. It has very useful tips about the avoidance of crumbs in icing, which I have applied to many other cakes.

(I'm amazed lookling through these back copies, just how much writing and how few pictures there were compared to today!)

no-knead bread is too flat

I know this is often discussed. I made long-rise no-knead bread recently using my big Le Creuset pan and white bread flour. It came out perfectly.

This morning I baked another batch. This time I'd used a mix of white bread flour, granary flour (a 'malty' flour with a mix of wholemeal and white) and rye - so same technique, same recipe, but different flour and this time I let it rise twice as long (not by design, just happened that way).

It tastes good, has a good texture and crust, but it is much, much flatter than first one. Too flat to be practical as sandwich bread or the like. Is this just because it has rye, which tends to make a flat loaf anyway?

I'm wondering if a solution would be to bake it in a loaf pan with another loaf pan inverted over it for the first half of baking (to approximate le creuset environment).

Any thoughts? @Dbcurrie is this a problem you or others have encountered when using wholegrain flour for this type of bread?

Scientific American and Cooking

Scientific American is focussing on the science of cookery lately.

At last I understand the basics about 1) sous vide (last month!)

and 2) Molecular gastronomy (this month - under heading 'centrifugal something or other' I think)

I finally get what the appeal of 2) is - never got it before! It's that layer of intensely-flavoured essence, right?

LINKS

Okay, another weird problem.

I just posted a couple messages, in quick succession, about quinoa in 'talk/food and drink'.

One appeared right away, the other, 5 min on, hasn't yet, which is weird enough.

However, link included in the message isn't live, though it should be.

But - here's the weird thing - the link IS live in the place where all the messages I've sent appears (when I click on 'eaguk'). Also the second message is there, alive and well, though not yet in the actual 'talk/food and drink' bit!

Whatever is going on?

the people's supermarket

OK I know this is the Big Night but...

Tonight Channel 4 in the UK showed 'The People's Supermarket', about someone in London who is trying (has tried? failed?) to start a supermarket. He wanted it to be like a particular Co-op in Brooklyn where people work for free in return for a very substantial discount on their food shopping.

Do any of you New Yorkers know what supermarket this is? Is it still working? Does it work because there is a huge concentration in this particular neighbourhood, of like-minded folk? (Brooklyn Heights? Park Slope?)

(This guy then went on to source a fund-raising meal for 60 entirely from food thrown out by the big supermarket chains - but then I stopped watching to talk to my kids on the phone so I dunno what happened!)

Preview doesn't work

Hello-
Sometimes nothing appears in the 'preview' box. Messages still get sent and appear, but they only appear in the 'message' box as I'm writing them. This is as of a few days ago.

It's ok for this message though, but not for one I just sent about making things at home for the first time.

Uses for Gluten free bread

I got some gluten-free bread for my sister who was visiting over Christmas, as a change from pumpernickel. (It's actually wheat she has a problem with, but of course gluten-free is also wheat-free.)

Anyway, as it turns out, it's really nasty to eat on its own, as bread. I did use it for the stuffings I made though, and it was fine for that purpose. Only my sister knew, and no one else noticed any difference at all.

I think I'll make it into breadcrumbs and just freeze them. Can anyone think of any other good use for it?

japonica membrillo - 'quince' paste

Maybe I asked this before - but does anyone have a good recipe for quince paste, as in Spain/Portugal/Brazil, but made with the fruit from a japonica bush?

I have tried before and gotten stuff I like but no one else did, because it wasn't sweet enough. Where we live the japonicas don't really get ripe, but this year as with everything else, we have a bumper crop. I have japonica jelly left over from last year so want to do something different. Do I just need to add more sugar to the standard recipe?

blackberries

It's a bumper year for us. I make apple-bramble pies, crumbles, use them in cakes, have put some in rumtopf . What next, folks? I've got about 20 lbs in the freezer and more to come by the look of it. We don't really need any more jam or jelly either. Any ideas for savoury recipes?

Please don't tell me to stop picking, I just can't help it...the park around the corner has brambles dripping over the fence, ours for the picking, enough for everyone.

Rhubarb recipes?

My rhubarb is going mad. I make rhubarb crisp, and rhubarb pie, and rhubarb cobbler, and sometimes mix in strawberries and/or raspberries to these.
I've made rhubarb-ginger jam in the past, but I don't think there is quite enough for that.
Has anyone tried rhubarb buckle? If so, do you have a recipe?
Can anyone think of other things to do with rhubarb? I remember a Middle Eastern recipe recommending rhubarb with lamb or chicken, but can't seem to find it.

eaguk hasn't favorited a post yet.