Adam Balic

Pigs? Damn, there goes my idea for a nation-wide chain of "Fluffy-Tacos: The taste of Mexico that never was" stores.

The are continously being re-invented. An early version of was the Runcible Spoon, a 1970's Australian version was called the 'Splade'. Some early table knives had a spoon depression at the end as were used as a spoon as well as a knife.

If you think about it the switching thing is basically using the fork as a spoon and reflects the way the object was introduced into the North America. What is the "correct" form of usage has changed many times over the last few hundred years, somewhere I have notes on this and will look up the specific facts of the Switching thing. ← From Margaret Visser's excellent "The Rituals of Dinner", it would seem that during the 19th century most of Europe (or a least those that used Forks), followed what would be now considered the American model (knife put down, fork switched), only the English did not swap hands. Fork switchers (the French) considered this English fashion to be vulgar, but in the end the English fashion dominated. One consequence of the English fashion of fork useage is that the fork cannot be used as a spoon, without the movement being very awkward, so food is placed on the back rounded side of the fork. The theory goes that as the fork was introduced into N. America quite late, they remained attached to the spoon and the use of a fork as a spoon. Furthermore, many American etiquette manuals have made a point of saying that this, now American model, is more refined as it is less practical and so therefore makes eating more intellectual processs then a simple necessity.

If you think about it the switching thing is basically using the fork as a spoon and reflects the way the object was introduced into the North America. What is the "correct" form of usage has changed many times over the last few hundred years, somewhere I have notes on this and will look up the specific facts of the Switching thing. What is interesting is the use of a spoon for long pasta I see in the USA and in some cases Australia. I have yet to see a spoon used to eat pasta in Italy, so I wonder were this habit comes from? Etiquette manuals maybe. I just mash everything up and use a straw BTW.

Lots of interesting ideas, thanks. I have to go to a 6 hour wine tasting in a few minutes, so I will be brief. The social aspect of the picture makes sense too. I agree that without gluten, you will not get a high rise, but another aspect of sourdough fermentation is the flavouring side of things. In the UK some 100% oat hearth cakes were made, these were often allowed to naturally sour overnight, then the hearth cakes were made from this. I would think that there would be some textural changes as well as the dough would become more acid, so likely to be changes in the composition of the dough, but although there is no gluten to trap large air pockets, heat will case disolved CO2 to come out of solution and some of these fine bubble will get caught in the matrix of the dough/batter when it is cooked. Actually, maybe that is it. The difference between batter and dough cooking. Are products from the corn kitchen made from a batter ever?

Just for you Kit, I made some of these for breakfast today, from Elizabeth David's recipe. My yeast wasn't that active so they could be a bit lighter, but these were excellent. I big thumbs up in the household. The texture was excellent, stretchy-soft without being gummy or too heavy. They would be great for homes with small children as well. They were also very good with butter and honey.

These are a Scottish crumpet and what most other people would recognise as a crumpet.

Yes you can use either rice flour or corn flour for dusting. Or even fine semolina I guess. Creaming the yeast is just mixing the fresh yeast with a bit of water, sugar salt to loosen it up. I pop it in a warm spot for half an hour to activate as well.

You seem to have done OK over the last year with just the very basics.

Bah, as you don't live in Scotland, don't complain about food availability. Nope that would be Pasticcio di tortelloni in crosta dolce. I think that the two regons differ in their preferences for the pasta filling. As for the ST. I think that the thing I like the best about this book is the way that she combines modern extant (if traditional) recipes with recipes that are not made any more and even some quite histroical ones, which out the book coming across as a hodge-podge. I think that this is a very difficult thing to do as as she does it so well, it really does illustrate 'continuity of the cuisine' in a very good way.

Seriously K, it is bllody easy and you can do a lot of it a head of time. But it isn't really a casual meal for two either. Re-heats well and it is one thing that I make that my wife really likes.

Can we have a little more detail about this please? Inquiring minds want to know (actually I'm probably tghe only one reading this who doesn't know what it is). ← Pasticcio di Maccheroni con pasta dolce is a festival (Carnivale I think) of the ER region, there numerous variations. The one I like is this, it is very easy, flavours look weird, but it tastes excellent. You try, you like. Pasticcio di maccheroni in crosta dolce (loosely based on a recipe by Pellergrino Artusi) Ingredients: Pastry: Pate brisee sucree made with 500 gm of Italian 00 flour and 100 g of castor sugar Filling: 250 gm penne 2 Tbsp truffle butter or crème etc 20 gm dried porcini, soaked in hot water for 2 hours, finely diced 125 gm fresh chicken livers, cleaned and soaked overnight in milk 125 gm of prepared sweetbreads or partridge breasts (or poultry offal of choice, gizzard, cocks combs, unlayed eggs form a slaughtered hen - go crazy). 1 medium onion, two sticks of celery including leaves, two carrots, very finely diced 50 gm of pancetta, finely diced 50 gm of fatty prosciutto, finely diced finely cut up bunch of flat leaved parsley, 6-8 sage leaves, 2 bay leaves 70 gm of grated Parmesan tiny pinch of ground cloves, 1/2 tspn of nutmeg, 1/2 tspn cinnamon (not cassia), pinch of ground coriander seeds. salt and pepper, knob of butter Béchamel sauce made with 600 mls of full fat milk, flavoured with the bay leaves and the nutmeg. This has to be very good quality stuff, not just knocked up at the last moment. Method: 1. Set oven to 200.C, cook pasta until done in salted water, drain and loosen with a little butter. Melt butter in frying pan; add sage leaves and chicken livers. Cook livers until done (pink stage). Remove do the same for the sweetbreads or partridge breasts. Allow to cool then very finely dice. 2. Sauté prosciutto, pancetta, celery, carrot and onion until very soft, add spices, porcini and cook down further with the porcini liquor. Allow to cool completely then mix through truffle butter. 3. Line spring form tin with pastry. Mix pasta with béchamel sauce and parsley. Place a layer of pasta in the pie, sprinkle with Parmesan, added a thin layer of proscuitto mixture and a layer of offal/poultry. Continue the layering, until the pie is just over-full (to give the pie a slightly domed lid). Cover with pastry lid, decorate with pastry bits. Glaze with egg/milk mix. Make a few hidden holes for the steam to escape. Place in oven, turn temperature down to 180.C after ten minutes and cook for an additional 20 to 30 minutes or until golden brown. Allow to cool for 10 minutes (very important) unmold and serve.

Pasticcio di Maccheroni with the sweet crust has to be one of my favourite dishes to make and eat of all time. Any region that can produce this (or more accurately, 'not abandon this') dish is right up there as far as I am concerned.

Most likely not, but I don't think that it really matters. Also the critical thing for the Zabaglione that sets it self apart from other caudle saues is the incorporation of egg whites, so it is a slightly different products. For instance this 16th century recipe is a sauce for Chicken. ...take the yolkes of syxe egges and a dyshfull of vergis and drawe them through a streyner and sette it upon a chafingdyshe, than drawe youre baken chekins and put ther to this foresayde egges and vergys and thus serve them hoate. Rather then being a savory zabaglione, it is closer to a Greek avgolemono sauce. But yes, very few ideas are originaly, however, it is what you can do with the concept that counts.

Or rather, Sabayon is the French version of Zabaglione, which is an Italian dessert. You don't have to take my word for it though , those lovable French rascals writing Larousse Gastronomique seem to think it is so, and I am prone to believe them. An interesting twist on the classic recipe is savory zabaglione. One could argue if it is still zabaglione at all, though the technique is the same: the wine is substituted with stock, and the sugar either left out or replaced with cheese. Chef Corelli, who was the guest of a chat in the Italy forum some time ago, serves a delicious cheese-less game risotto with a parmesan zanaglione on the side: take a fork of risotto and dunk it in the zabaglione...creamy risotto heavan. ← The savoury versions most likely pre-date the "modern" sweet types. They all belong to a class of products called "Caudles" (which comes from the Medieval Latin via Old French for "Hot Drink"). They were not all thickened with eggs (especially during lent of fish days), but many were and often they were poured into cooked savoury pies. Here is a 15th century English recipe which is similar to the modern zabaglione, except that the egg whites are not added. Cawdelle Ferry. Take yolkys of eyroun Raw, y-tryid fro the whyte; than take gode wyne, and warme it on the potte on a fayre Fyre, an caste ther-on yolkys, and stere it wyl, but let it nowt boyle tylle it be thikke; and caste ther-to Sugre, Safroun, & Salt, Maces, Gelofres, an Galyngale y-grounde smal, & flowre of Canelle; & whan thow dressyst yn, caste blanke pouder ther-on. [stir the egg yolks with wine on heat, do not let it boil. When it thickens add sugar and spice, garnish with sweet spice]

Good guess I did cut the Masa with 1/5 wheat flour. Regarding yeast etc. Commercial bakers yeast is Saccharomyces cerevisiae and this may or may not have been around pre-European contact in Mexico. But there are many other agents that can act as a raising agent. Typically sourdough breads a symbiosis between wild yeast and lactobacilli. So San Francisco Sourdough has the wild yeast Candida milleri sp. nov. and the lactobacilli Lactobacillus sanfrancisco sp. nov., while German Rye bread has the yeasts Candida krusei, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Pichia saitoi and Candida milleri and the bacteria Lactobacillius brevis, casei, fermenti, pastorianus, bucheneri, delbrueckii, leichmannii, acidophilus, farciminis, alimentarius, brevis var.lindneri, fermentum, fructivorans and Pediococcus acidilactici. In the case of the rye bread the bugs are in the flour, but they can just as easily come what is floating about in the air. They co-exist with the grain, which is why we get to take advatage of it. So there should be a similar thing happening with Masa. Possibly due to the structure if the corn cob and the processing you will not get in of the microbiol flora from the plant it self, but there should be some parts of Mexico where there a re naturally occuring bugs that will start fermentation a'la San Francisco. Due to the lack of gluten you may not ber able to produce an airy loaf of bread, but if you can make a light tamale* you should be able to ge enough rise to produce a hearth bread type produce with a lighter texture (and hopefully an interesting flavour). The lack of these types of breads strikes me as being a bit odd. Maybe there is some property of Masa dough that means these products don't work or maybe just taste bad, but they should exist in some form or another. An interesting problem. *Tamales - without baking soda (19th century) and lard (post-European contact) how did these exist at all in the Mexican kitchen? Maybe they originally a got some lightness from natural fermentation?

Thanks for that. I would have guessed that sour dough/batter was a natural process and likely to happen spontaneously. Curious that this doesn't seem to be the case. If you do try to make these, cook them very slowly as you want them to dry out the top without burning the bottom. This technique was/is used to produce various oat based hearth cakes in the UK.

Takomabaker - I'm glad that I was able to recall some happy days for you. Most people spoke Lithuanian, the older people also spoke Russian (I could if the chose to). Many people speak English, especially the younger people. Menus are mostly in both English and Lithuanian, although there were some which were Lithuanian only.

Due to a miscalculation of my own cooking ability I was left with a kilo of masa harina and some fresh yeast after the weekends Mexican cooking. So I combined the two. I made a fairly straight forward hearth cake mix then cooked in very slowly on on side until the bottom was brown and very crisp, while the top was soft, but cooked though. This was then filled with some bean chile that I made. Thus: OK, it was very good and with a bit of refinement it could be even better, but my question is, is this type of yeast cooking done in the Mexican kitchen (if so recipes or descriptions) or have I invented the fluffy taco?

I had some excellent fritters/doughnuts in Lithuania called Spurgos which in most cases are sweet, but I had some savoury ones filled with wil mushrooms which were excellent. I have also had some excellent veg fritters from Corsica. One that I remember is grated zucchini with corsican mint egg whites whiipe to a foam, so that they are very light in texture. Also, Zucchini and Squash flowers in Italy.

Sea Anenome. Or tiny shrimp. Actually I live the yeast risen rice friiters you get in Italy.

And I don't even like turkey.

The pigs ear was plenty big enough.

Well I just ordered a turkey and it cost US$101 for a 11 lb bird. Cost includes tax and delivery. Given the higher cost of living in the UK compared to the States and the fact that this is a variety of turkey (Norfolk Black) that is very old (the oldest some say) and now only produced on one farm in the UK, I think that this is a very good price. Especially, as a monster generic flavourless supermarket turkey will cost 2/3s of this price. Anyway, I am going to save on the cost of the cranberries ans I bought a whole bunch of wild cranberries (lingon berries/cow berries) in Lithuania.

Scottish Parkin is a bit drier and in South Yorkshire, Lancashire and Derbyshire there are similar cakes called "Thar" or "Tharf" cake made at this time of the year. The name is thought to come from "Thor" as in the Scandanavian God of thunder and goat eating. As the cakes were eaten at this time of the year, it has been suggested that it is connected to a pagan celebration aroud this date. Obviously, the modern cakes are not really the same, beging more like a oat bannock most likley, but still fun. More informaton and recipes