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Druckenbrodt

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Everything posted by Druckenbrodt

  1. Just bought a bunch of them in my local greengrocer. Have never cooked them before and would love some tasty suggestions. I'm imagining some kind of chillie/garlic/olive oil action could work with them, perhaps with beans, or pasta, or buckwheat something or other in a hearty winter way?
  2. I bought Zurban only for the food reviews. What's wrong with drinking oolong tea in a floaty dress? Does it prevent from writing good articles? ← Ha ha! Well, nothing really wrong with drinking oolong tea in floaty dresses - I'm quite partial to that myself. It's just that being in a 'zen' comfort nest has never helped me find any stories. But maybe I've just got some weird uptight Protestant hang-up about pain. I believe the British have the longest working hours in Europe but still manage to be ridiculously ineffective on lots of levels, which might suggest that suffering does not necessarily equate with better work. I'll just go and put the kettle on...
  3. Here's a link to a royal horticultural society webpage on purple sprouting broccoli, with pictures. It's a winter/early spring vegetable. I've been trying to figure out whether it's the same thing as 'cime de rapa', which I'm not familiar with, but the few pictures I've found googling suggest that they're quite diferent. http://www.rhs.org.uk/Learning/publication...03/broccoli.asp Purple sprouting broccoli is long with small purple 'sproutlets' rather than all the sprouty bits squeezed together like supermarket broccoli. It's more tender, full of flavour and is delicious simply steamed. It's a good balance to meaty, wintery food. Sometimes when I'm on a diet (not all that often) I'll have it with a thin steak and perhaps a dash of soy sauce and it makes a very tasty simple supper. I get the impression it's an 'older' form of broccoli i.e. pre dates the more commercially viable broccoli you find in Northern European supermarkets. Which is why I'm surprised it's not available in France where there are so many wonderful vegetables to be found in ordinary neighborhood greengrocers. I wonder whether it's a climate related thing? I do find it rather mystifying. If only I had a garden...
  4. I have to say I always found Zurban a bit of a disappointment, coming from London and being rather spoilt by Time Out. It sort of fell between two stools - not sharp enough for a really good consumer publication, not enough information for a listings mag. And the features all got really unimaginative and dreary over the last year. I really got the impression it was run by a bored/complacent/flaky team which spent a lot of time sitting round the office drinking oolong tea in floaty dresses rather than going out and getting good stories. I'm sorry it's died - it will make it very hard for anyone with a plan to do something similar (but better) to get any financial backing. The magazine that really deserves to die though is Elle a Paris. If ever a magazine needed a kick up the back side... OUCH! That sounds really bitchy. I didn't really mean to be so aggressive - it suddenly all came out! (must be the weather.)
  5. Does anyone know whether it's at all possible to get purple sprouting broccoli anywhere in Paris? My father grows it in his garden in Somerset, and you can even buy it in Tescos in London these days, but I've never seen it in France and I really miss it. I can't really understand why the French aren't keen on it because it's one of the most gloriously delicious vegetables. Eating normal broccoli is like eating cow's milk mozzarella when you could have the real buffalo deal.
  6. That's the book, Torakris. I think Yamuna Devi's "Lord Krishna's Cuisine: the Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking" is perhaps more exciting in terms of mind boggling flavours. But it has a very specific focus and cooking some of the recipes is a bit of an event and requires dedication. I love Madhur Jaffrey's mad global mix of really unexpected things and her emphasis on food that's relatively easy to just throw together. To borrow a fashion analogy, she's more 'ready to wear' whereas Yamuna Devi is perhaps a bit more 'couture.' Looking forward to trying out the panisses too... Also, I think this is the prefect answer to meat eaters who think a vegetarian diet is boring/involves variations on the same aubergine theme. I was eyeing at that poached egg plants in Korean sauce recipe before you mentioned it... will definitely have to give that a go now. The other one I really liked, p. 273 of the paperback, is Gujarati-Style Hot Sweet and Sour Potatoes which involves tamarind paste
  7. I'd like to buy a pasta machine as a birthday present for my boyfriend (ha ha - a clever sort of present which effectively I'll be giving myself.) I'm based in France so ideally looking for brands that are likely to be available here. What sort of things should I be looking for? Also: can you use Italian machines for rolling out dough for Japanese/Chinese etc recipes too? Any other associated paraphernalia that would be fun to throw in with the machine? Any words of wisdom/warning would be most appreciated.
  8. I wish I could buy eggplants like the ones in athinaeos' picture in Paris... Please please can we have your Tortiera of white egg plant with lentils recipe? Even if it is just for the purposes of dreaming? The greengrocers I saw in Heraklion on a recent trip to Crete were the stuff of dreams, especially their piles of strange green veg I'd never seen before.
  9. It's great! I love the way it's organised, the fact that it also covers more unusual ingredients (rather than focussing on bland supermarket staples) and it's packed with unusual/surprising recipes that I'm dying to try out. So often with cookbooks I find the recipes given are variations on a theme that I'm already quite familiar with. I love the fact with this book you'll find things like 'Greek semolina pancakes', 'Peruvian Potatoes in the Huancayo style', "Okra with tomatoes' as cooked by the Indians of Uganda, 'Poached Eggplants with a Korean Hot Sauce', 'Boiled Peanuts, Indonesian Style' and Mango curry from Trinidad! It's exciting and unpretentious and does what a great cookbook should do; open up new worlds for you. I feel very inspired to go through the whole book and try everything out. I had a 100% success rate with a bunch of recipes I tried out on friends last night. My particular favourite was an Iranian puree of zuchini which involved tumeric, cumin, cayenne, garlic and a smidgin of tomato paste. Anyway probably everyone on this forum is already familiar with it, but if not, I heartily recommend it - particularly for meat eaters who are racking their brains as to what to cook for vegetarian dinner guests. (Hopefully triggering an end to the mushroom risotto/ratatouille/pasta with home-made pesto/roasted vegetables cliches of recent years - delicious though they can all be.)
  10. Wanted to also add, people were extremely kind to us. I really liked the gentle courtesy to strangers that seemed pretty much standard everywhere we went even in Athens.
  11. Thought I'd do a report now we're back. I was really impressed by the range of delicious things available for non meat eaters, so thought it would be useful let other vegetarians know that Greece is certainly not a 'no-go' zone. In fact compared to France where we live, I'd say the general food culture on a basic, day to day level (not talking about fancy fine dining which I don't have much experience of & therefore can't comment on) was infinitely superior. (Hopefully there aren't too many francophiles reading this...) What was also clear was that the food lives and dies by the quality of its ingredients. A 'Greek salad' in Northern Europe is probably something I'd normally avoid, but when the locally grown ingredients are so sublimely delicious, it can become something perfect, a sort of Platonic Greek salad experience. Likewise the freshly squeezed juice made from locally picked oranges in Crete - spoils you for life. Everything seems flimsily flavoured now I'm back 'up North.' It reminded my of the basic principle with a lot of Italian cooking - if the ingredients are great, the simplest of things are delicious. But if you follow the same recipe with veg grown in Dutch greenhouses or flown in from Kenya, it can be a miserable affair. Most people now realise that those miserable little cow's milk mozzarella balls sold in supermarkets should be given another name, since they bear so little resemblance to the real thing. I suspect this is why Greek restaurants in Northern Europe are often considered boring. While people recognise the distinction with Italian food, they just haven't made that imaginative leap with Greek food, so it continues to get patronisingly dismissed. Anyway, a few highlights: Since we were cycle touring on a minimal budget our focus was on simple food. I loved the whole taverna culture - which the Greeks have turned into a fine art. The simplicity and honesty of it - and the fact that you are never too far from another taverna when cyclists' 'bonk' threatens, even on the remotest mountain road in the Pelopponnese. I loved the tiny bakeries in villages tucked away in secret valleys, with interiors that look like they haven't changed since 1910. They'd have perhaps one type of bread on sale, which looked a bit boring and dry. But was in fact full of flavour (frequently lots of olive oil) and dense with enough moisture. The perfect en-route fuel with some tomatoes and a bit of tapenade. the spanakopita and other related pies were great but extremely greasy & not sure if you'd really want to be eating them on a regular basis if you weren't burning up thousands of calories every day... The fruit & vegetable market in Heraklion - beautiful ingredients, 3d flavours, cheap, and lots of weird looking green things I've never seen before. Made me want to buy a whole load and borrow someone's kitchen for some enthusiastic experimenting, or buy lots of packets of seeds and find a garden... Favourite dishes were things like 'horta' - steamed green veg, most of which seem to be any sort of green herby things harvested wild. Delicious. Fava - the hummous like thing athinaeos mentioned. Gigantes. Green beans with tomatoes and potatotes. Briam. Dolmades. Stuffed veg. Those biscuit rings covered in sesame seeds - with black coffee and maybe some joghurt and fresh fruit - perfect breakfast! It was never a problem finding delicious things to eat in fact. There was a marked difference between the less touristy Peloponnese and Crete where the level of tourism is extraordinary and rather depressing and food prices were similar to London. We sought out the remoter roads however and were rewarded with the most exciting, constantly evolving landscape I think I've ever been in. Having the mobility of being on a bike does make it easier to find tavernas off the beaten track, which I think makes a big difference. But even in touristy spots we could find places to eat well. Even Heraklion, which seems to get a bad rap, we managed to hunt out a few good spots (near the fruit & veg market seems to be a good bet.) Well, that's enough of a ramble. Greece is great! I'll definitely be back for second helpings...
  12. Ah, just found out. Spinach pie and cheese pie - both sound tasty!
  13. Yes he eats eggs - just not meat or fish. What are spanakopita and tyropitakia?...
  14. Hi - thanks for the 'feed'back everyone. (sorry can't resist bad puns) so, on the list now are: Briam Melitzanosalata Gigantes Dolmades Revithosalata Tzatziki Olives General Mezze grazing Greek yoghurt (with honey - mmm) Arkadian Nectar (just invented that one - we will be cycling through Arkadia though. But avoiding Megalopolis) This is true - I rarely use the word 'vegeterian' anyway because it is so loaded with weird interpretations - so end up with the long winded but more neutral 'dishes that contain no meat or fish'. Go into most restaurants and ask them if they have any 'vegetarian' food and the look on their faces is usually panic or disdain. Anyway, this thread isn't about defending vegetarians, a topic I've taken up with passion after falling in love with one... What about delicious sticky pastries to stash in our panniers as 'emergency fuel rations' (i.e. to be scoffed before the morning's even finished)? Isn't there something involving cheese and honey, filo pastry and probably a deep frying session? Are there any unusual things we should be hunting out? Some kind of mountain food that involves lots of starch? Thank you also for the link, Petite tete de chou. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to give many of the Greek names of dishes but it's a great reference site - have already found a couple of recipes I want to try.
  15. Thank you for the replies! I haven't seen 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' but like the 'don't worry I make lamb!' line! You'd also be amazed how many people seem to also think chicken isn't an animal... Ah well... What are melitzanosalata and gigantes? Something involving aubergines and giant beans?... I reckon side dishes & lots of them is probably the way to go. We love eating Lebanese food which has tons of delicious things that don't have meat or fish in them, and there are a few distantly related Greek dishes which are similar. Jonathan isn't vegan so does eat dairy produce. And he hoovers up carbohydrates. (Well, everyone does when cycling). He's actually more of a 'foodie' than me when it comes to having taste buds that can really distinguish fine nuances, knowing how to prepare things properly, having a talent for combining flavours. People always think vegetarians dislike food which is so depressing when the opposite is the case... so I reckon the trick when travelling is to research some of the good things in advance and then hunt them out.
  16. So, our flights have been booked for next Sunday, we're servicing our loyal bikes, the panier bags are coming out of the cupboard and we're checking the tent still has all its poles. Our plan is 10 days of cycling, through the Pelopponnese and Crete, far from the madding crowds, through mountain meadows and forests full of bee hives, with regular visits to pristine hidden beaches. That's the plan. Of course, to make our holiday perfect, some feasting would go down well. I had thought that this would be impossible for my boyfriend, given he's vegetarian (no fish either), since I assumed the options will only be grilled meat, grilled fish, or Greek salad. But having had a look at some of these posts, it seems like there are quite a few really delicious (and popular?) dishes that don't involve meat or fish, but do include delicious things like spinach, fava beans, chick peas etc. So, I'd like to compile a list of Great Greek Dishes that vegetarians can eat, the sort of simple everyday stuff that we might be able to get in a small village taverna. To kick start the list I'm nominating: Briam - I had this about 10 years ago on the island of Amorgos and it was mindblowingly delicious. Potatoes, courgettes, tomatoes and maybe onions and lots of olive oil? All cooked together extremely slowly. I've tried recreating this but never succeeded. It's something I still have fond memories of! Any general advice or additions to the list would be most gratefully appreciated!
  17. Just wanted, belatedly, to add my thanks for this amazing thread. It's such an incredible resource and must be a really mammoth task to compile. I've just been scanning through the last few months and it's fascinating to observe all the trends and current debates as they emerge from your posts.
  18. Buckwheat is great - I've been discovering it this year. And really good for hearty carb meals if you're doing a lot of exercise. You certainly won't feel starved. You could try Pizzocheri - an italian dish involving buckwheat pasta & potatoes with savoy cabbage, sage and cheese - great winter comfort food. Or Breton style buckwheat pancakes. Or dishes involving soba noodles. Or kasha with pasta and puy lentils and sauerkraut works very well for me.
  19. I mean, he bought a box of sfogliatelle, not their makers. That WOULD be a rather unusual way of showing your affections...
  20. I think one of the many moments where I realised that my (very new, at that point) boyfriend was the man of my dreams, was towards the end of our first 'date', which was a weekend in Naples. On the final rush of getting essential things (like mozzarella) to take home before heading to the airport , we'd divided up responsibilities and gone our separate ways. His responsilibities were rather stressful & involved little time & lots of lugging of heavy bags. I'm not sure I remember what mine were. When we reconvened he'd not only done the epic bag-lug but somehow also managed to find the best sfogliatelle makers in town and bought a whole box of them, because he knew how much I loved them. My friends don't really understand the significance of this moment.
  21. Druckenbrodt

    Yams

    Sorry for the ridiculously late reply ; have just re-emerged from a hellish week. Thanks so much for the replies - I particularly wanted to thank Anzu for the really informative post. I'm still not sure what my yams are/were... They look a bit like a cross between arbi and cassava. And still remain uncooked. My excuse is 'I've been too busy'. Anyway, maybe I shall go and buy some fresh ones and experiment. There are quite a few African and Indian grocers in my neighbourhood, and walking past one the other day I noticed about five different types of yam/cassava/arbi type things. Which presumably are all cooked differently. They look so unprepossessing that they have to be good. Otherwise why stock so many of them? What if you cooked your yam with rice - does anyone do that? I once came across a delicious Persian dish that involved baking potatoes with partly cooked rice in a dish lined with filo pastry. If you partly boiled your arbi/cassava thing & then peeled it & then finished it off with the rice could that be good? Can you stick it in stews? Does it absorb flavour well? Or add any interesting flavour to things? Or is it mainly just another form of starch I wonder... My cooking references are so narrow and European. I came across quite a good caribbean recipe the other day for a sweet potato and watercress soup; boil a grated sweet potato and chopped onion until cooked, strain through a sieve, squish the pulp through the sieve & put everything back in the pan again. Chuck in a generous amount of finely chopped watercress. That's about it although you can stir in cream & you can also choose to cook the sweet potato and onion in a vegetable stock. It tastes extremely 'clean'.
  22. Or you could try Senderens in the Place de la Madeleine - also quite near. Not sure if it's open all day though... perhaps not... but worth asking maybe? I haven't been there yet so I probably shouldn't be recommending it, but I've heard good reports from people I've met who have.
  23. Druckenbrodt

    Yams

    This is great - thank you Milagai. Yes I think these are the sort of yams I'm dealing with here. I like the idea of using Indian recipes. We have a very well-loved copy of Yamuna Devi's 'Lord Krishna's Cuisine; The Art of Vegetarian Cooking' which results in consistently delicious dishes but it only has one yam recipe. When I looked under 'arbi' just now it had one recipe for arbi leaves. Anyway with your links I now feel a bit more inspired. Can you explain what beaten rice is however? And what if I try to cook them without a pressure cooker? Do you think it would be OK to, say, cut them in half and boil them? Or bake them? jeniac42 - I like the sound of your recipe - I'm assuming for sweet potatoes? What is sriracha? Also like the idea of any recipe that calls for a 'metric shit-ton' of minced garlic.
  24. Druckenbrodt

    Yams

    That recipe does sound good... I especially like the idea of the addition of nutmeg. The vegetarian/nutrition/exercise thing is quite interesting. I think you're probably right about talking to a nutritionist - my boyfriend wants to get his blood tested to check he's getting enough iron etc. I know people get quite heated about it and I really don't know enough to have a strong opinion. Jonathan, who has the sort of enquiring mind which leads him off on mad, amazon visiting tangents, has recently been buying and reading tons of sports physiology and nutrition text books. It seems to me, from what he's been telling me as a result of his research, that although there certainly are issues for vegetarians who do a lot of sport, they aren't quite as dramatic as omnivores sometimes make out. I think the real issue is that vegetarians need to be more well informed about the nutrional values of what they're eating, than omnivores who are happy grazing on lots of different things, and are therefore more likely to get all the nutrients they need by accident. I think there's a lot to be said for that Japanese idea of 20 different flavours a day (or something along those lines.) But it also seems that many of the virtues meat is supposed to have are a bit of a myth - e.g. it may contain a lot of protein or iron, but it's actually harder for your body to digest these things from a meat source rather than a vegetable source. I can't remember exactly what the deal is on this (I wasn't really paying enough attention.) Anyway it's a subject that people seem to have very strong opinions about. In France where we live, for instance, there's such a strong cultural bias towards meat eating that if you tell a doctor you're vegetarian, the common reaction is a sort of tut-tut. Whereas I could imagine that if you lived in California, the opposite might be the case. Anyway, I love the fact that sport allows me to have second and third helpings of everything. It wasn't until I started taking up cycling and running quite seriously in my late twenties/early thirties that I really vividly understood that food = fuel. It's amazing what happens if you don't eat enough! Oh, how I love 'carbohydrate loading' now before a big race... sorry, bit of a ramble...
  25. Druckenbrodt

    Yams

    Well, in fact I didn't mean the red sweet potatoes, although I'm not particularly wild about them either. But this thread has certainly given me a few ideas that I really like the sound of. In particular those soy glazed sweet potatoes...hmm... Apart from roasted red peppers, I've got some weird thing about naturally sweet veg - I find them really quite revolting. It's mainy root veg; carrots, turnips, swedes, beetroot, but also pumpkins and squash are a bit creepy... It's a last bastion of food prejudice that I need to overcome. I'm really very open minded about most food, and I wonder how much my dislike is a last vestige of a petty childhood thing, or whether it's almost like a genetic thing, where I'm pre-wired to dislike them. Logically, there's no reason for it. I don't mind sweet things in savoury dishes; e.g. prunes in stews, sultanas in rice, pomegranate seeds in salads, using fruit juices when cooking meats - all these things can be delicious. And as I say, red peppers are divine. But yellow and orange peppers...euch... (Maybe it's a colour thing? Is there some common element in orange food which I can't hack? ) Anyway I'm talking about the other yams - the long thin white things with the brown, bark-like skin which come from various countries in Africa. I think in the US you call sweet potatoes yams, whereas in the UK (where I hail from) they are two separate and distinct things. So the yam challenge remains unanswered...
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