The Old Foodie

..... chicken-fried steak ... now THAT is a mystery in this part of the world. I will eagerly await your words and pictures. The dish has been mentioned to me by returned travellers from YOUR part of the world, but not in the same tone of breathless anticipation .... In the interests of international culinary education, do I rush out now and buy a chicken, or a steak, or both, in anticipation of you supplying the definitive recipe?

we will expect a post each day telling us what you have made!

There is some good evidence that the lycopenes in tomato products help too - so the beer should be used to wash down copious amounts of pizza or tomato pasta perhaps!

It sounds like two issues: It sounds like overcooking. I dont know why the water-bath is suggested - I've never ever done it - it is pretty difficult to get poisoned by jam or jelly because bugs that make humans ill dont like high sugar. Sure, they can get a bit of mould on the top, but it is not harmful - just not pleasing to look at, - and can be scraped off. If you are nervous about mould you can invert the hot jars for a couple of minutes to "sterilise" the lids, then put them right way up to finish cooling. If you use sterilised jars it should not be necessary . I "sterilise" by putting the jars in the dishwasher on hot cycle, then put them in a cool oven , bring it up to 120Celcius and maintain it for 20 mins - this is more than enough, probably for jams and jellies just the dishwasher is enough, as long as the jars are dry. jam/jelly continues to "cook" from its retained heat after you take it off the stove, so it is better to underestimate the cooking time - you can always tip it back in the pan and cook a bit longer if you need too. It also sounds like a lot of sugar - I always put one cup of sugar to one cup of the cooked fruit, a bit less if it is a high pectin fruit like citrus for marmalade. Another tip is that if you are using a low-pectin fruit like berries, if you dont want to buy powdered pectin, is to add some lemon juice, or use some apple juice instead of the water to cover the fruit, or you can boil up apple skins and cores, lemon peels etc in some water and use it. If you use good pectin, you can get away with a bit less sugar (so more fruit flavour) - although if you use too little you can affect the keeping qualities. Keep experimenting! Jam/jelly making is a bit like bread - you get the "feel" for it after a while. P.S you could cook your blackberry preserve down even drier and make it into fruit paste (fruit leather) and serve with your cheese platter instead of expensive quince paste.

I have a huge amount of info on menus from even earlier, if you are interested. If you want to recreate a menu from 14th C onwards, I would have something for you - but the recipes from way back then were very minimalist, with much assumed knowledge on the part of the chefs. There were quite a few menu books published in the nineteenth century, with a menu for each day (each meal) and accompanying recipes. One even has a separate dinner menu for "the kitchen" (i.e the staff) They are quite workable, although I dont think they fit today's palate very well, so it depends what you are aiming for - re-creation of a historic menu, or inspiration from a historic menu.

Hello Grub; I know I am a long way from where Sally lives, but I sometimes store extra flour in the freezer because our climate here is hot and humid, so it keeps better. If you ever have a pantry problem with those weevils/moths that love flour and other grains, it helps control it by putting any purchases in the freezer for a couple of days first - kills off any potential ones in the mix, so they dont take over your pantry.

I finally checked the OED, and it says that "retro" is: "Something that imitates or harks back to a former style; esp. a style or fashion (of dress, music, etc.) that is nostalgically retrospective" So it seems that our back-to-childhood, comfort food choices were spot-on! Any more "nostalgically retrospective" foods that warrant a mention?

Sazji, I was in Istanbul in February last year - only 5 days - I absolutely loved it. If I come again, and you have a pantry full of preserves like the ones you have listed, I'm coming to visit you!

Thanks sazji ! I already have quinces, in the hope that someone would rescue me. Funny, I'm not in the least bit intimidated by pastry, which several of my foodie friends wont tackle. There is almost nothing that I haven't cooked at some time - not live lobsters though. I cant think of anything else food-wise that intimidates me -artichokes make me a bit nervous though. Is that a new thread? "Foods that I am afraid to cook"? A bit different from food phobias, like on a previous thread about fear of peanut butter.

Sally on her blog <a href="http://dart1121.blogspot.com/2006/06/ingredients.html">Tip of the Iceberg</a> has a great idea. She has decided not to shop for a week (apart from things such as milk) as her fridge, freezer, and pantry are stuffed full, and she feels she wastes a lot of food every week. The challenge is on to help her cook with what she has - mind you, she has a better stash than most of us I think. It seemed like a good idea for a thread for this forum. After you go on over and help her out with ideas, how about posting here a list of your current stores, and get some ideas as to how to use them. Especially those things lurking in the back of cupboards and the depths of freezers that you keep moving to one side.

Use it when you make a roux where bacon flavour would be good - any gravy or stew etc. Use it to make pastry for savoury pies instead of using butter or lard (I guess it is lard anyway, isn't it?). Fry anything else - onion confit, eggs. But I think you got it perfectly right with the potatoes idea!

I think the issue is using "artificial" flavourings (and I dont mean oil-infused-with-truffle etc here, where the individual ingredients are indeed authentic) and allowing the customer to believe that the flavours are from the real thing - which is simply dishonest. If a chef uses these flavour-enhancers (and I dont mean boosting the tomato pasta sauce with tomato paste - assuming it is made from tomatoes!) and is open about it, that is OK - OK as long as you like your kitchen to be akin to a chemical laboratory that is (I dont, I like it to be in a direct line between the farmers' market and the dinner table).

This is the culinary equivalent of "athletes" who enhance their performance by taking drugs. Cheating, plain and simple.

I buy large amounts, especially when it is young and the skin is fine, grate it (actually chop it in the processor), put in jars and cover with sherry. Keeps indefinitely, you can chop it as fine or coarse as you like; the sherry is great in Asian stir-fries.

There is a whole chapter on the art of making sandwiches in a charming little English (very) book called “The Gentle Art of Cookery” , by Mrs C.F Leyel and Miss Olga Hartley. They give 38 recipes for sandwich fillings, and start off by suggesting that the proper accompaniment is champagne, and that: “ … many hostesses who offer their friends indifferently cooked but pretentious lunches could, with far less trouble, gain an epicurean reputation if they were content with the simplicity of wine and sandwiches. And as one of the "Best and least known" sandwich fillings they suggest: Green Butter Well wash and bone two ounces of anchovies. Boil a large handful of very green parsley, just cover it with water and leave the lid off the pan it boils in. Boil for about five minutes then immediately put the parsley under the cold water tap. Strip the parsley from the stalks and chop it very fine (a parsley cutter costs only a few pence and saves a lot of time). Beat the parsley, the anchovies and a quarter of a pound of butter together into a paste, and pot it. This will keep for a week. I've been meaning to try it for ages. I guess it would work well with cream cheese too (low fat maybe, if it is an issue). I can imagine some gruesome little boys having great fun showing off their green butter too.

There have always been food fashions - well, not always, but for a few centuries. I think that "retro" is completely in the heart and mind and tastebuds of the beholder, in the same way that one man's comfort food is another man's poison, or one ethnic group's staple is another's exciting venture into foreign food. What would we argue and debate, food-wise, if that wasn't the case? Must go and see how the OED defines "retro".

Without being able to comment specifically on New Orleans, for obvious reasons, I would say that however frustrating it might be for all of you (whether diners, reviewers, writers or restaurateurs), it is a very healthy sign of a recovering society that people are starting to have expectations of normality. So it is still "a good thing", Yes?.

There seems to be some sort of trend here - that retro food = comfort food, particularly the food of childhood and "home"??

My tolerance level is dropping too, and I was attributing this to age, but if it is part of a trend, so much the better - if diners are getting more discerning, it has got to be a good thing, surely?

Here is the menu: FIRST SERVICE POTAGES Le consommé de cheval à l’ A B C A la purée de destriers. Amontillado POISSONS Le saumon à la sauce Arabe. Les filets de soles à l’huile hippophagique Vin du Rhin HORS D’OEUVRES Les terrines de foie maigre chevalines. Les saucissons de cheval au pistaches Syriaques. Xeres RELEVÉES Le filet de Pégase rôti aux pommed de terre à la crême. Le dinde aux châtaignes. L’Aloyau de cheval farci à la Centaur aux choux de Bruxelles. La culotte de cheval braisée aux chevaux-de-frise Champagne sec ENTRÉES Les petites pâtésa à la moëlle Bucéphale. Kromeskys à la Gladiateur. Les poulets garnis à l’ hippogriffe Les langues de cheval à la Troyenne Chateau Perayne SECOND SERVICE RÔTS. Les canards sauvages. Les pluviers. Volnay Les mayonnaises des homard à l’huile Rosinante. Les petits pois à la Francaise Les choux-fleurs au parmesan ENTREMETS La gelée de pieds de cheval au marasquin. Les zéphirs sautés à l’huile chevaleresque. Le gâteau vétérinaire à la Ducroix Les feuillantines aux pommes des Hesperides. St. Peray GLACES De crême aux truffes. Sorbets contre-préjugés. Liqueurs DESSERT Vins fins de Bordeaux BUFFET Collared horse-head Baron of horse Boiled withers. The newspaper report said: "WE should add that the three horses partaken of were of the respective ages of 4, 29, and 22 years, Two had been cart horses, one had drawn a brougham, and in his prime had been worth 700 guineas. The baron was carved from the four year old." What is really gruesome is that photos of the three horses were handed around during the meal!

In the mid-nineteenth century in France, but also to some extent in England, there was a move to make horsemeat more popular - for the masses of course. To that end, several horsemeat banquets were held, and I discussed one that took place in Langham's hotel in London on February 6th 1868 on my blog a few months back. The particular story was retrospectively posted, so actually appears in the March archive. If you want to read it, after you go to http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2006_03_0...ie_archive.html you will need to use Ctlr+F to search for February 6. As I say in the post, I am happy to email the complete horsemeat menu to anyone who is interested, or later this evening I will post it here. Perhaps one of you horsemeat afficionados might like to reproduce the menu?

OOPS! edited because I deleteted my comment fractionally before posting instead of previewing. So here is the real posting: I recently did a post on my blog about Baked Alaska, with a link to an earlier one that also touched on it, and referred to an amazing thing called an "Inverse Alaska". The post is http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2006/06/ices-baked.html.

I love the suggestions so far - although Bananas Foster is a bit of a mystery to us "over here", although I have read about its history. If someone can post or send and authentic recipe, I'll give it a try. I hope no-one lists the orange-stuck-with-toothpicks-with-cubes-of-cheese-and-onions-etc that used to appear with drinks and nibbles ......

Would you part with the recipe?

Just to put a little historic perspective on this debate (it is my specific interest, after all), I thought you might be interested in a recipe for kangaroo brains. First - some comment on the cookbook concerned. Australia's first cookbook was the "English and Australian Cookery Book: Cooking for the Many as well as the Upper Ten Thousand", published in 1864 by Edward Abbott. He was a Tasmanian MP and a fanatical promoter of all things Australian - which was not considered quite "O.K" at the time, when the Gold Standard was everything as it was done "Back Home". The book never did well - too much competition from Mrs Beeton no doubt, plus, even at the time it was considered a bit outlandish. This recipe is usually the one quoted to demonstrate why it was not popular. "Slippery Bob" Take kangaroo brains, and mix with flour and water, and make into a batter; well season with pepper, salt, &c., then pour a tablespoonful at a time into an iron pot containing emeu [emu] fat, and take them out when done. "Bush fare" requiring a good appetite and excellent digestion. And, no - I haven't tried the recipe, nor do I intend to, but if you do, please let me know your thoughts.