Adam Balic

Hathor - now you tell me. I don't supose you have a photo of the birds, so that the species can be identified? Hummingbirds are regularly sighted in the UK, but to date these have turned out to be Hawkmoths, which make a similar sounds and don't look disimilar.

From the mercato centrale in Florence, earlier this year. Anchovies Soup fish

A rainbow trout. Not native to Scotland, but used to stock lochs etc for recreational fishing. Also the first fish I caught on a fly. Used to make "Blue Trout".

Pomfret (sorry, no idea of the species). Again from my fishmonger in Edinburgh. Highly prized in SE-Asia. Deep fried and used and sauced with Thai 'Three flavour sauce'.

Arbroath Smokies. These are haddock that are hot smoked in pairs from a geographically defined area in the east coast of Scotland. In this case I used them to make a local variation on a typical salt cod 'cream'.

A meal from Cinque terra (Liguria) a few years ago. A terracotta amphora is filled with seafood (cuttlefish, shovel-nosed lobster, clams, mussels, scampi and mantis shrimp, in a wine broth flavoured with tomato, saffron, thyme, anchovies (and a few other things they wouldn't tell me). This is sealed and baked in an oven. Whatever you don't eat is used to produce a sauce for pasta.

Just some leeks, thyme, salt and pepper. Next fish is a Indian ocean snapper, not idea of the species. Weirdly, good fishmongers are an exception in Edinburgh. On shop that is very good (Eddie's Seafood) imports fish like this that is fresher then local fish sold by other shops. Go figure. Baked in vine leaves with sort of a Sicilian stuffing (capers, tomato, mint, pine nuts)

Hi Mike, Appreciate the references you've passed, I'll have a look... at first glance, I see some reading material. Thanks! I hope this thread isn't too whimsical/redundant, but one of the things I've noticed about googling recipes is often I don't seem to get results which include measures. And Larousse has a great deal of biographical information about the past masters but very few recipes. My latest example of coming up short: Taillevent... it may be a function of how his recipes were recorded, but very rarely do I see measures and methods that have any sort of definition. Those that I do see are often recipes from Restaurant Taillevent/Paris (and Tokyo). I thought that perhaps I could use this thread as a "wikipedia" of sorts to collect actual recipes. Many thanks for your help, Chris ← The older "recipes" are more memory aids, rather then what we would think of as a modern recipe. So modern versions are going to involve guess work. I am interested in 16-18th century British food. One recent recipe Elizabeth Raffald’s Experienced English Housekeeper, published in 1769: A Lemon Pudding "Blanch and beat eight ounces of Jordan almonds with orange flower water. Add to them half a pound of cold butter, the yolks of ten eggs, the juice of a large lemon, half the rind grated fine, work them in a marble mortar or wooden basin until they look white and light. Lay a good puff paste pretty thin in the bottom of a china dish and pour in your pudding. It will take half an hour baking". I think that there is an error in this recipe as there is no mention of a sweetening agent. Here recipes for similar puddings contain sugar. With out the sugar the mixture is very tart. In the 18th C., puff paste was used pretty much as we would use short crust, hence using it to line the dish. Part of its function was to keep the filling in, as the filling expanded, the outer crust kept pace with it. The function of the orange flower water is to stop the almonds oiling when beaten in a motar. This isn't an issue when using a modern blender, but the flavour is nice. My Pudding. 225 gm of blanched almonds 125 gm usalted butter 10 egg yolks 100 gm of sugar rind of a lemon juice of half the lemon orange flower water. 1. Grind almonds finely in food processor. Place almonds, egg yolks, butter and sugar in a basin. Use an electric beater to cream these ingredients. 2. Mix in lemon rind and juice. Add orange flower water to taste (userly a few drops only). 3. pour into a blind baked shortcrust tart shell of what ever recipe you use and bake for 30' at 180.C or until firm and golden brown on top. Serve at room temp. In the tart above I added raspberries to the tart shell before adding the batter. You could use other fruit as well. Blueberries or apricot halves would be good.

Prospect Books has a very good glossary of 17-18th century English cooking terms. Codlings were apples that were poached "coddled", while still hard and green. Effort was made to keep the green colour. Discriptions of the apples suggest a pear shaped fruit, but Bramley apples are often cited as a modern codling type (although they don't retain their shape when cooked, so I doubt this).

I am very interested in fish and seafood. One of the good things about moving continents is that the local fish tend to be completely different. Hence, I have a lot of fish images. I thought that a single thread would be a good place to put them and obiously, if other people have images that would be excellent. First up. The fish: Salmo trutta, "sea-trout", "salmon-trout", "selwin" etc. Actually, this is a type of Brown trout, that has a sea migratory phase, only returning to freshwater to spawn. They are delicious, I prefer then to salmon (Atlantic). As I don't eat farmed salmon, it tends to be a rare treat, but on this occasion I rejected hugh wild salmon in favour of this sea-trout. About 3 kg and 50 cm long Poached and served with a Normandy sauce (cider, creme fraiche etc)

Daniel - it would fun to know the truth about the Romans and there dieting habits, but I guess we never really will. Recontructing a pot from a shard is possible, but what went into the pot and how it was prepared is another thing entirely. Fun to speculate though. I have eaten ducks tongues a few times, quite nice except the gristly root.

The German specimen is the only convincing modern hummingbird found in Europe to date, it is 30 million years old. Given the amount of geographical, climatic, flora and fauna changes in Europe during the last 30 million years, I doubt very much that the Romans saw a hummingbird. That some later comentators may have misinterpreted a Latin description as a hummingbird is another item all together. According to the OED the earliest mention of "hummingbird" is from the 17th century and not surprisingly describes the New World birds. Obviously, "Hummingbird" isn't Latin, any translation of a Latin phrase as "Hummingbird" post 17th century is suspect. I would be surprised if any Roman descriptions of the birds would be clear enough for modern writers to make a positive ID. "Bird with a long bill" isn't enough. The only Roman reference to birds tongues in a recipe I am aware of, refer to the flamingo. Since there are over forty literary references to "Hummingbirds", it should be a simply matter to look at the original Latin and work out what was ment. What is the Latin word? I only have access to Apicius and Pliny, the only bird tongues I seen mentioned are "Phoenicopteri linguam praecipui saporis esse Apicius docuit, nepotum omnium altissimus gurges", which is Pliny mentioning that Apicius thought that flamingo tongu tasted quite nice.

Hummingbirds are confined to the Americas, so it seem unlikely that the Romans ever had conact with them.

Dalmatia makes up most of the coastline (Adriatic) of Croatia. The dogs may or may not orginate from there, but Zinfandel grapes originate from there (As do the Balic's). Never heard of the sage. Salvia officinalis is a speces name, there are many different strains within this species, often with different flavours etc. Maybe Dalmatian sage is a specific strain?

The No.3 Cup has been re-launched as "Pimm's Winter Cup". Brandy based? Winter Cup Quite nice, but I prefer the No. 1.

I think that if you used black treacle (mostly known as "treacle") or molasses the flavour would be very strong and not to everybodies taste. Golden syrup ("light treacle") isn't just a thick sugar syrup (like corn syrup), but has amazing buttery flavours as well. It should be used more often I think. More treacle More more treacle

Kelli - The Legendary Cuisine of Persia is a !great book on the subject (and at a reduced price!). This book has the most detailed (but well explained) instructions for making polow (pilaw etc) that I have seen.

Wine with fine bubbles that stick to the inside of the glass and give a slight prickle on the tongue are refered to as "Pétillant", "Pearling' or "spritzig". Spritzig is more like what you describe, it is sometimes considered a fault, but isn't really harmful to the wine (unless you realy hate bubbles). It's relatively common with riesling wines. I wouldn't agree that "riesling is a desert or after diner wine" though. It can be and make some of the best of these wines, but Riesling comes in many styles.

Hey, guess what happens when you put "Madeira bean" into a google search. J'accuse ranchgordo! Shill, shill. Do you ship to the UK BTW?

Yep, exactly like that. After a bit of interneting I found that the are called "Ojo de Cabra" (so I guess I know where the odd name comes from) and are new world in origin, but have also ended up in Italy for some reason (and Croatia). I must remember not to tell my family that the special 'Balic family beans' are not so damn special. Curse you egullet. As far as I know the only Old World beans are fava/broad beans, Cow peas (including black eyed peas and pigeon peas. Plus garden peas/chickpeas/lentils etc. I like beans, wicsh I had access to more types.

present at the barbecue on Saturday night was an American friend who fell upon my beans crying 'pinto, pinto, I used to put these in my chili', so in his eyes at least they are the same. But I accept this may not be THE most scientific corroboration... ← It seems that cranberry beans are borlotti beans, but these terms refer to a class of beans, not a specific variety. Pinto beans are similar, but not quite the same thing. All seem to be of the kidney bean type. Dried Bean types p.s. You can buy pinto beans in the U.K..

This recipe was often mentioned in 16th- early 18th C. English cookbooks. Part of the entire jokey/figurative "gee whiz, will you look at that" attitude to food that was current then. I haven't made it as I am far to serious.

No. They are more similar (if not the same) as Borlotti beans. There are numerous types of this class of beans (cranberry, pinto, borlotti) and there are different types of borlotti beans as well. My family has a croatian type that is called a "goats-eye" bean (the blotches form a vague stripe, which sort of looks like a goats eye if you are really generous). Are pinto and cranberry beans the same thing or are they just similar?

Kevin - caciocavallo is a cheese that changes depending on its age etc. When it is young it tastes a little like provola dolce, but once aged it is hard enough to grate and tastes more nutty. Provolone is a good substiute, but use a younger/milder type. Not all scamorza is smoked, but my experience in ordering pizza is that if this cheese is mentioned, then it will be the smoked type. Another cheese bit of information. According to Mary Taylor Simeti "parmigiana" as is Melanzane alla parmigina" comes from the Sicilian word "palmigiana, which means shutter (the overlapping slices look like a louvers of a shutter). Sicilians don't pronounce the 'l' distinctly, you get a name that leads to confusion with the cheese. Is it true? No bloody idea.

The mayor of Nice thing was suppose to be tongue in cheek (a casual look at recipes from the region and the mayors own comments suggest that there is a degree of variation). "Authenic" is not something that is possible for most dishes outside their place of origin. Something is either authentic or not, there is no "semi-authentic". That's why I don't like the word. Defining key componants that constitute a specific named dish is entirely another matter. Based on information avalible "classic" (the word that was used in the original query) salad nicoise uses preserved tuna or anchovies, not fresh. But, I don't think that is any reason not to experiment with the the recipe, especially in this case where Bond Girl went to the trouble to determine if she really didn't like canned tuna or just had not had a good quality article and found out that it was the latter. Dishes change and evolve over time, that is the nature of food and cookery and also it is often the fun bit.