The Old Foodie

Mash the doubtful cake up, wet it with a bit of milk or egg, squish it into a pudding basin and steam it - Voila! Pudding. Works perfectly. I've done it. Anyway - anything is good with custard.

How about A Soup with Hop-Tops. Blanch your hop-tops, tie them in bunches, and put them over the fire in a kettle or earthen pot, either with some thin pea-soup, or juice of onions, or soaking broth. When done, put some crusts in your soaking broth, and your soup being enough, dish up, and garnish your dish with the hop- tops; put a large crust of bread in the middle, and pour over the broth of the hops, and serve your soup up hot. The Practical Cook, English and Foreign, by J. Bregion and A. Miller (1845) Hop Salad. In Germany a very nice salad is made from young hops, which are grown very extensively in America and Germany, as English brewers are well aware. The hops are picked when quite young, before they get leafy; they are then boiled till nearly tender. They can be dressed in the English fashion with oil and vinegar, or in the German fashion with vinegar and sugar. Cassell’s Vegetarian Cookery (1917) Janet

Yes, please do support this. Proceeds this year are again going to the School Lunch Program in Lesotho. This is not a "hand out" program. Lunch helps keep the children in school and getting an education - increasing their chances of breaking out of the poverty cycle. A lot of the food is bought from local subsistence farmers. There are some great prizes - almost all food-oriented. The master list of prizes and instructions on how to donate are at Chez Pim

Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book has info on how to prepare hop shoots (for eating as a vegetable) and she gives two recipes - one with Bechamel, one with mushrooms.

Hops used to be used a lot in making yeast - there are lots of recipes for it in eighteenth century texts. Those of you who make your own bread might enjoy making hoppy yeast. I'll post (or PM) some recipes for it if anyone is interested. Another interesting thing is that in England, gooseberries and hops were ready at the same time of year, and for some reason it was popular to preserve gooseberries in syrup "in imitation of hops" for use as a condiment. I have no idea how this idea came about, and have not seen any recipes for hops themselves preserved in this way (but I havent specifically looked either) Also, of course, the hop shoots as asparagus.

add a splash to anything that lends itself to the aniseedy or liquorice-y flavour? - seafood marinades or sauces (Pernod is the standard, but why not ouzo?) - sorbets? - fruit salad, poached fruit? Emeril Lagasse suggests this - Shrimp with Tomatoes, Feta, and Ouzo.

I just tried this - what fun. But huge. I tried again at half the quantities, and it worked fine. Then I did a gluten-free version, which was even better - more smooth and fudgy. Needed more water though. For the GF version I used 2 T cornflour 1/4 teas GF baking powder 2 T sugar pinch salt 1 T oil 1 and 1/2 T water 1/4 t vanilla. Excellent. Great for your gluten-sensitive friends, and your non-GF sensitive friends (they'll never know, and honestly, the texture was fantastic) Might add cinnamon next time. ← It works pretty well as a gingerbread pudding too. Same recipe, but replaced the cocoa with more flour, used milk instead of water, 1/4 teas ginger and 1/8 teas cinnamon (could have taken more of each). Was definitely pudding-y, even after an extra 15 seconds. Might be better with half an egg?

I just tried this - what fun. But huge. I tried again at half the quantities, and it worked fine. Then I did a gluten-free version, which was even better - more smooth and fudgy. Needed more water though. For the GF version I used 2 T cornflour 1/4 teas GF baking powder 2 T sugar pinch salt 1 T oil 1 and 1/2 T water 1/4 t vanilla. Excellent. Great for your gluten-sensitive friends, and your non-GF sensitive friends (they'll never know, and honestly, the texture was fantastic) Might add cinnamon next time.

Emily Dickinson was supposed to be famous for her Black Cake. There is an "adapted" version of the cake HERE.. I'd love to have a copy of the original one. Edited to add: There is also this, from the play The Belle of Amherst, by William Luce (1976) Black Cake: two pounds of flour, two pounds of sugar, two pounds of butter, nineteen eggs, five pounds of raisins, one and a half pounds of currants, one and a half pounds of citron, one half pint of brandy -- I never use Father's best -- one half pint of molasses, two nutmegs, five teaspoons of cloves, mace, and cinnamon, and -- oh, yes, two teaspoons of soda, and one and a half teaspoons of salt." (Emily has removed her apron) "Just beat the butter and sugar together, add the nineteen eggs, one at a time -- now this is very important -- *without beating.* Then, beat the mixture again, adding the brandy alternately with the flour, soda, spices, and salt that you've sifted together. Then the molasses. Now, take your five pounds of raisins, and three pounds of currants and citron, and gently sprinkle in all eight pounds -- slowly now -- as you stir. Bake for three hours if you use cake pans. If you use a milk pan, as I do, you'd better leave it in the oven six or seven hours."

I am sure everyone knows by now about the Italian governments attempts to prop up the flagging Parmesan industry by buying it up big and giving it to the needy - a noble aim indeed. The story is outlined HERE Helping to save the Parmesan cheese industry is surely a project worthy of e-Gulleters? Vital, I would say. So, lets have your ideas as to how to use more Parmesan, lest it becomes a mere memory. Here is my suggestion - naturally a historic one. I know there is an earlier version of this somewhere, but this will do for starters. Cheese (Parmesan) Ice Cream. Take six eggs, half a pint of syrup and a pint of cream; put them into a stewpan and boil them until it begins to thicken; then rasp three ounces of parmesan cheese; mix the whole well togetherand pass it through a sieve, then freeze it according to custom. From: The Cook's Dictionary and House-keeper's Directory … by Richard Dolby (1830)

The fruit cake has been tasted and pronounced very good, and apparently I did not over-cook it at all, it was very moist and a great flavour (must be all that booze) and great texture. No-one would be aware that it is gluten free. annarborfoodie: my son (whose wife is the one who is gluten-intolerant) says he prefers my brownie recipe when I make it GF - and funnily enough a few other friends who have eaten them (not knowing they were GF) have said they were particularly good. I think the denser fudgier texture of brownies is improved somehow? i dont know why that is. I usually use a blend of GF flours, but am just on my way out to shop, so I'll buy some brown rice flour and try it out in my standard recipes (both brown and blond) and I'll also try Alice Medrich's recipe. Thanks.

The fruit cake turned out beautifully - sorry I dont have a pic. I may have very slightly overcooked it, so will give it 5-10 mins less next time. Maybe I should just pour some more muscat over it! I am thinking that ground hazelnuts would work too - and chopped hazelnuts instead of walnuts.

I think that any GF flour that is mostly cornflour would work - I'd mix the purple sweet potato flour with at least 50% cornflour. A fruit cake is not "light" so it doesnt matter so much.

I know I have been very absent from e-Gullet for ages ... but ... I am back ... My daughter-in-law is seriously gluten intolerant, and I know it is a common problem, so I thought I'd post this recipe for a G-F Christmas fruit cake. I havent cut it yet (it is still hot from the oven), so perhaps I am being a little premature in posting it, but it looks and smells good - no doubt due to the large amount of booze in it. The recipe is a sort of amalgam of boiled fruit cakes I have made over the years, plus some ideas from other G-F recipes. Gluten-Free Fruitcake. I kg dried fruit (about 100 gm glace cherries for colour, the rest made up of approximately equal amounts of raisins, sultanas, currants, and prunes. 1 bottle wine (I used muscat - had a bottle of nondescript brand languishing at the back of the cupboard; I guess any wine or mixture would work well) 125 gm brown sugar 150 gm unsalted butter 150 gm walnuts, broken up into largish chunks 1 teas allspice 1 teas ground ginger 1 ½ teas cinnamon ¾ cup ground almonds 1 teas baking powder 2 large eggs 180 gm GF flour (a bit more or less) Mix the fruit, wine, sugar and spices in a pan; bring to the boil. Take off the heat, stir in the butter, ground almonds, baking powder. Add the beaten eggs and stir well. Add sufficient flour to give the right texture (difficult to be exact, because all G-F flours are different). Bake. I did mine at 160 deg Celsius, fan off. Took about an hour – one standard size loaf tin and one small – I put the larger one back in the oven (switched off) for another 15 mins as I was not certain it was cooked. Any other ideas for G-F Christmas goodies out there? Janet

Now THIS is Jell-O ! Taking Jell-O into the Stratosphere

There is also the variation of a chip butty made with the very thin packaged potato "crisps" (English) or "chips" (Australiah) or ??? (American) Eat them straight away or the crisps go un-crisp and the whole point is the texture difference between them and the soft bread.

A hint of chilli in any chocolate dessert is a good compromise that should appeal to the traditionalist and the nouveau-inclined ? (I am speaking as an enthusiastic amateur dessert-maker and eater, not a professional) Janet

Boy, I gotta return to e-Gullet. , I have been shamefully absent for an embarrassingly long time (I plead writing deadlines, plural) - this seems as good a thread as any to show my face again. I would go for a roasted vegetable salad, room temp not chilled, with a robust dressing - maybe Asian style with a hint of chilli. Janet.

Hello nickrey I had to reload that page at some stage, and the old link on eGullet is now defunct. The list has been considerably updated since then - I must get around to putting up a new version. If you want the basic Excel spreadsheet from which the pdf was derived, just pm me and I will send - it is easier to adapt it to your own purposes. As soon as I have cleaned up the very messy Version 4 (too many dead links, new links, and duplicates), I will post to the blog and to here.

Is this where we now tell what we each do with a surplus of very ripe bananas? Or is that another thread?

Here is a blog post I did on "Pavlova" January 31st … The Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova was born on this day in 1885, so there is no difficulty guessing our topic today – ‘the pavlova, the sweet dessert’. There has been a longstanding battle between Australia and New Zealand as to who 'invented' the pavlova, with tempers getting quite nasty at times. This is my contribution to the war. For those of you who need the clarification, a pavlova as defined by the OED is “a dessert consisting of a soft-centred meringue base or shell filled with whipped cream and fruit.” I would like it put on notice here that the OED, which should be absolutely non-partisan, has clearly allied itself with the “soft-centred like marshmallow” school of thought, in complete disregard for the very vocal opposition school that maintains a pavlova should be thoroughly dried and crisp throughout. We have established then, that a pavlova is a form of meringue. Neither Australia nor New Zealand invented the meringue, because the meringue was invented before they were. As for meringue, it was not, repeat NOT ‘invented in 1720 by a Swiss pastry-cook called Gasparini, who practised his art in Mehrinyghen [hence ‘meringue’], a small town in the State of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.’ Even the venerable Larousse perpetrates this myth, in complete disregard for the fact that confections made from sweetened, stiffly-beaten egg whites appear in cookbooks printed well before that date. The earliest I can find appears in the recipe collection of Lady Elinor Fettiplace, which is dated 1604, which she calls White Bisket Bread. To make White Bisket Bread. Take a pound & a half of sugar, & an handful of fine white flower [flour], the whites of twelve eggs, beaten verie finelie, and a little annisseed brused, temper all this together, till it be no thicker than pap, make coffins with paper, and put it into the oven, after the manchet [bread] is drawn. Note: this is clearly what we would call ‘meringue’, but Lady Elinor does not use the name. The first use that I am aware of (and I stand willing to be corrected) is in the cookbook of François Massialot, the first chef of Louis XIV (1638 - 1715). His book was published in 1692, and contained a chapter on “Meringues and Macaroons”. This is one of the recipes from the English translation of 1702. Dry Meringues. Having caus’d the Whites of four new-laid Eggs to be whipt, as before, till they rise up to a Snow, let four Spoonfuls of very dry Powder-sugar be put into it, and well-temper’d with a Spoon: Then let all be set over a gentle Fire, to be dried a little at two several times, and add some Pistachoes, that are pounded and dried a little in the Stove. Afterwards, they are to be dress’d as other, and bak’d in the Oven somewhat leisurely, with a little Fire underneath, and more on the top; When they are sufficiently done, and very dry, let them be taken out, and cut off with a Knife: Lastly, as soon as they are somewhat cold, let them be laid upon Paper, and set into the Stove to be kept dry. So, should M.Massialot get the credit for ‘inventing’ the meringue, as the evidence is that he used the name first? Or, until an earlier manuscript turns up, should it go to Lady Elinor, on the principle that the concept is the thing, not the name? Australia and New Zealand, we have established, did not invent the bisket-bread/meringue style confection itself. Did either of them actually invent the particular iteration which both now call the pavlova, or did one of them steal the name an apply it to a similar, but quintessentially different variation? Here we have the nub of the dispute. It is all in the name. It is not my job here to take sides (although as I have pointed out elsewhere, NZ is the country that re-named the Chinese Gooseberry the Kiwi Fruit, in what was clearly an attempt to give it origin status), so I hereby give you the known facts/factoids in chronological order for you to make up your own minds. 1926: A cookbook printed in NZ called Cookery for New Zealand, by E. Futter contained a recipe ‘Meringue with Fruit Filling’. It was not, however, called Pavlova. 1927: The OED cites the first use of the word ‘pavlova’ in ‘Davis Dainty Dishes’, published by Davis Gelatine in NZ. It was ‘composed of coloured layers of jelly made in a mould resembling a ballerina's tutu’. Pavlova, as coloured jelly – I don’t think so! 1927: A group of Congregational Church ladies produced a cookbook called Terrace Tested Recipes, in Wellington NZ in 1927. One recipe was for ‘Meringue Cake’, which was made in two tins, the resulting two cakes being sandwiched together with cream and fruit, or serves as two cakes. Not called pavlova. Structure similar? Not the two layer one, certainly. 1929: Yet another NZ cookbook, Mrs. McKay’s Practical Home Cookery, had a recipe for ‘Pavlova Cakes’, the plural representing the three dozen little confections made from the mixture. This is hardly the same thing as a pavlova with the traditional filling/topping, now is it? 1935: The family of Herbert Sachse of the Hotel Esplanade in Perth, Western Australia have maintained a vigorous claim that he invented the dish to be served at afternoon tea, and commented (or someone did) that “It is as light as Pavlova”, and hence the name Sachse claimed in a magazine interview that he ‘improved’ a recipe for Meringue Cake he found in the Women’s Mirror Magazine on April 2, 1935 (which had been submitted by a NZ resident. I guess the only way this dispute will get resolved is if we can come to a consensus as to what defines a pavlova, as distinct from a meringue or a meringue cake or a pavlova cake(s). FOLLOW-UP: A NZ blogger , Bron Marshall at http://bronmarshall.com/?p=434 added her own knowledge to the picture, and in summary said that "pavlova" (so named) appeared in a NZ cookbook in 1933 ""The recipe was submitted by a Laurina Stevens for the Rangiora Mother’s Union Cookery Book, it was called “Pavlova” - the correct name, the recipe was for one large cake and contained the correct ingredients, egg white, sugar, cornflour, and vinegar, and it had the correct method for cooking. This has been proven thanks to the research of Professor Helen Leach, of the University of Otago’s anthropology department. Prof Leach also uncovered a 1929 pavlova recipe in a New Zealand rural magazine which had the correct ingredients and correct method of cooking, however it was unfortunately published under a pseudonym."

Some inspirational quotations on breakfast, to keep the ideas flowing: To eat well in England, you should have a breakfast three times a day. Somerset Maugham Pooh and Piglet walked home thoughtfully together in the golden evening, and for a long time they were silent. “When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?” “What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?” “I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet. Pooh nodded thoughtfully. “It’s the same thing,” he said. A A Milne Experts say that Chardonnays have the flavors of fruit, butter, toast. Sounds like a good breakfast wine. Jack Mingo; Wannabe Guide To Wine It takes some skill to spoil a breakfast - even the English can't do it. J K Galbraith. But the breakfasts ! that's what redeems the land [scotland] — and every country has its own peculiar excellence. In Argyleshire you have the Lochfine herring, fat, luscious, and delicious, just out of the water, falling to pieces with its own richness — melting away like butter in your mouth. In Aberdeenshire, you have the Finnan haddo' with a flavour all its own, vastly relishing — just salt enough to be piquant, without parching you up with thirst. In Perthshire, there is the Tay salmon, kippered, crisp and juicy — a very magnificent morsel — a keltic, heavy, but that's easily counteracted by a teaspoonful of the Athole whisky. In other places, you have the exquisite mutton of the country made into hams of a most delicate flavour ; flour scones, soft and white ; oat-cake, thin and crisp ; marmalade and jams of every description .. From Marriage: A novel, by Miss S Ferrier, 1847 What does this journey seem like to those who aren't British--as they head towards the land of embarrassment and breakfast? Julian Barnes; Flaubert's Parrot. "What a breakfast! Pot of hare; ditto of trout; pot of prepared shrimps; tin of sardines; beautiful beefsteak; eggs, mutton, large loaf and butter, not forgetting capital tea. There's a breakfast for you! George Borrow; Wild Wales. What? Sunday morning in an English family and no sausages? God bless my soul, what's the world coming to? Dorothy Sayers.

What about your cup measures too? Isnt it only an issue if your recipes are not turning out OK? If you use the same set of cups and spoons all the time, then the error is constant.

What are the other conditions of the contract? Is the 10K an advance on sales, then you get an increasing percentage depending on sales? What about subsequent editions? I am sure you will get some good points from the e-Gulleters with legal backgrounds.

One has to have the choice, doesnt one? one never knows in advance what one might fancy at breakfast, does one? Besides, it keeps it simple for the Hired Help, does it not? One has to keep one's servants happy (not unhappy, at any rate), because it is so difficult to fine good replacements, is it not? One didnt think one ate it ALL, did one?