Mjx
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Posts posted by Mjx
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Is marzipan an option? There is an Italian bio marzipan that you can sometimes find at Whole Foods (I can't remember the name at the moment) that is really pleasant to work with (holds a high level of detail, and does not slump), and tastes lovely (assuming you like marzipan).
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Thanks for the suggestions so far, and please keep them coming (and apologies for not responding sooner: I was in transit to/from airports, flying)! Brixton and Divertimenti are sounding particularly good, and I actually kind of like Borough Market, but just cannot deal with the crowds, and will be taking a look at Maltby Street.
Which part of London will you be in? Might be able to suggest some local markets.
We've been staying at different places, and are not far from Bloomsbury Square at the moment, but I'm most interested in anything that is within a one-hour-walking-distance from, say, London Bridge (I'm impatient with public transit, and don't love crowds), although I'd certainly consider breaking out the Oyster card for someplace that is farther away than that.
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I'll be spending a fair amount of time in London in the near future, but the city is completely new to me, so my knowledge of its particularly worthy features is more or less non-existant, and we've done any food shopping at the big supermarkets and department stores, which are relatively well stocked. However, I'd love to find shops that carry unusual, specialized, or otherwise interesting and useful selections of ingredients and kitchen articles.
Anyone care to share their favourites?
Thanks
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Tamarind puree! Do you like tamarind drinks? I've usually had it cold, but I seem to recall that hot tamarind is wonderfully warming drink - almost but not quite entirely unlike tea.
I also like tamarind as part of a chicken glaze. Haven't tried it with shrimp, but I bet it would be good.A hot tamarind-based drink would be pretty good during cold, grey, and clammy season. Have you made/come across any?
Also, I wonder how it would work out, replacing some other liquid in something baked (the puree I have is very runny). It's pretty sour, so it might do strange, pH-related things.
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What is Befanini?
They're cookies with sprinkles (dough is traditionally flavoured with flavoured with rum or anise liqueur). The name comes from La Befana (elderly woman/witch who does Santa's gig, but on Epiphany). I admit that my wanting to make befanini mostly reflects my desire to use the hell out of our new kitchen [i'm not supposed to eat them, blablabla], and I'm trying to figure out who to give them to, since my boyfriend won't eat them all.
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Happy new year!
I really like seeing and hearing about what others are doing, so I'm extending this a little beyond December, in hopes of seeing what others may be doing for Epiphany/Twelfth Night. Even if/especially it is not traditional.
I'm planning on baking Befanini, a nod to La Befana, and my parents conceding a point and giving us gifts on this occasion when my siblings and were small.
Between now and then, the plan is to use up every perishable thing lurking in the refrigerator; anyone else do this at the beginning of the year? Or, have lots and lots of ideas for tamarind puree?
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Yesterday, I killed off the last of the fruitcake I've been more or less living on during the past week, tarting it up with sour cherries, and dustings of cacao, smoked salt, cayenne pepper, and citric acid, because this year's fruitcake insanely sweet:
Today I'm essentially fasting, in order to accommodate this evening's festivities, which, per tradition, are taking place at the home of friends, one of whom is well over 6 feet tall, and has expansive ideas about the human body's capacity to hold food.
Our host will be serving roast lamb, soup, salad and bread, and the guests will be bringing drinks, cheese, and dessert.
I'm bringing the dessert, and my tentative suggestion of marshmallows (since I've pretty much fallen in love with making these squishy, bouncy things, and the seem light enough to follow a lot of heavy food) was seconded and approved. This time, they're vanilla and lemon:
Certainly the perfect pairing with the award-winning Nugan Semillon that is being served with dessert <cough> (the guy in charge of bringing the wines asked 'Anyways, what type of drink goes with marshmallows? Red soda pop?').
Anyone else dining out (or drinking in; I did that one year, and it was brilliant)? Any special food-related preparations for tonight's festivities (or avoidance thereof)?
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I wonder if these are edible:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliath_birdeater
MJX I cant find the book at the moment but IIRC it was a lab
They may be edible and taste okay, but it seems like they'd be mostly water and chitin, which might give you an impressively hairy-looking crunchy snack, but 24 bucks a pop seems kind of steep...unless it's question of simply wanting to satisfy your curiosity and there being nothing available at a lower price point, then sure, why not? I've certainly spent more than that to satisfy my curiosity.
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So awhile ago i bought this cookbook
I was so excited that there were sources in the back for where to buy edible bugs, cause I really wanna try fried tarantulas, cause they supposedly are
crab-like.but tarantulas are $24.00 a piece! Too expensive for a nice plate. Does that price seem right to you?
Seems like the sort of price I'd expect for any 'novelty' ingredient that is being pushed asspecial; I'd bet that if few go for it, the price will come way down, as sellers try to get rid of their spider overstock. How many tarantulas are considered one serving?
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They are amazing. Like you I was not impressed when I first heard about them. I hope Michaela will tell you how she does hers and I will tell you how I do mine. I boil or steam some peeled baby potatoes. Or if I'm feeling really ambitious I will steam them with the peel on and take it off while they are still hot. My Danish sister-in-law was an expert at doing it that way! She had asbestos fingers! I then place equal amounts, more or less, of sugar and butter in a sauté pan, wait until it has melted into golden caramel then roll the potatoes in it until they are uniformly golden and glazed with the butter and sugar.
My boyfriend always takes charge of making the brune kartofler (he knows I don't really get behind the concept, and may suspect that I'll make them somehow 'different'), and his method is identical to Anna's, athough he uses pre-cooked and -peeled new potatoes, since his patience with peeling vegetables is close to zero.
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Happy whatever-you-celebrate!
My boyfriend's parents dined with us last night, and the planning for that began a month or so ago, when I first steamed the pudding.
Plan A included roast goose, because it is delicious, and my boyfriend's mother enjoys watching him eat it. For me, December means an RTI with one of those robust, tearing coughs that guarantees a free seat beside you on public transit, so my hunt for a goose was not particularly energetic; in fact, when I came across a good-sized duck, I closed on it, and got that.
Then, I was shopping for various last-minute odds and ends at a not-cheapo supermarket, and saw this (DKK325/each):
No sane person would blow that on a goose, after dropping a wad on a duck.
When I got home, I drank some tea (second-to last liquorice Advent calendar offering),
and set about unwrapping the goose and hoping it would fully thaw in time.
After doing this and that to it, it was ready for roasting:
I set about starting the gravy and the latkes, then set the table for the traditional afternoon-preceding-Christmas-dinner coffee and tea.
Traditionally, this involves plenty of bread, cake, and sweets, so by dinner-time, you're still packed pretty solidly.
Since dinner on a full stomach never strikes me as pleasant, I discussed this with my boyfriend's mother the day before, and she fell in with my plan of having just coffee and tea, and 'a few light things to nibble' (coffee, kettle, not yet on the table):
She arrived with a substantial number of chocolates and biscuits, and also a red cabbage dish and beets, for dinner (traditional Danish Christmas dishes). My boyfriend looked at the [to him] naked table, and dumped a heap of 'fun-size' Mars, Snickers, and the like on the table.
I mused on the many, many intepretations of the concept of 'light snack', as I shuttled back and forth between the table and the various non-goose preparations.
Finally, after 3 hours, the goose was done, and a thing of beauty (I used the Cook's Illustrated recipe, which worked out well for me before, although I skipped the stuffing, since there was so much other food):
On the menu:
Goose with brown gravy
Latkes
Brune kartofler (small potatoes in what is essentially a butterscotch sauce)
A red cabbage dish
Pickled beets
Green salad with fennel
Traditionally, a Danish Christmas dinner concludes with cherry-sauce-garnished rice pudding that has an almond embedded somewhere in it, and the person who gets the porton with the almond gets a small gift (mandelgave). A little discussion revealed that feelings about the time-honoured and beloved rice pudding tradition ranged from 'Eh' to 'HELL no', so I got some ice cream, portioned out a number of scoops, shoved an almond into one of them, and passed that around instead (and forgot the cherry sauce).
I'd also assumed the reponsibility for the mandelgave, and decided that rather than the usual keychain, puzzle, or packet of sweets, something practical that virtually every adult could use was in order:
This was followed by dancing (read 'walking': everyone had just eaten roughly their own body weight in food, brisk cavorting would be disastrous, or at least messy, and personally, I've never seen actual dancing involved in this) around the tree and singing holiday songs, then unwrapping gifts.
By this time, the plum pudding was done reheating.
My boyfriend lit and poured a cupful of whisky over it (it's currently drying out a bit, since it got very soft and wet):
And that was that!
Next: preparing (aka 'Will fasting a day in advance mitigate the appallingly overdistended feeling that has become the norm for January 1st?') for the culinary assault that is New Year's Eve with friends who happen to have an awe-insipiring capacity for food, combined with the metabolism of a couple of racehorses.
Still a week of December left: anything doing for New Year's Eve?
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From what I've seen, it's used interchangeably with 'riso originario', which is short grain and very starchy, holds together very well, and can get very porridge-y when cooked (i.e. not great in risotto, more information here, http://www.cucinaitaliana.info/riso/riso-qualit%C3%A0-tipi-chicchi-immagini/riso-qualit%C3%A0-cosa-%C3%A8-fotografie-descrizione.htm, which you can run through a translator; there's not much text for it to make a mess of)
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I'm fairly certain that enough gelatin to stabilize would also change the texture; I'd expect it to be a bit marshmallowy. Might almost make sense to go with a different dessert, but if your crowd is not super-uptight, I doubt anyone would care if the texture is untraditional for tiramisu.
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Gelatin might stabilize the zabaglione, but it will change its texture, too, which could be a problem (e.g. I think most Italians would notice the difference, and not be thrilled with it, since tiramisu is expected to be a bit loose, not tight and firm).
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Simultaneously with the reflexive gagging over the joint presence of 'yummy' and 'tummy', I thought 'Right. Must be popular with predators that prefer to kill their prey by eviscerating it, and eating the innards first..? I mean, who else would care how your stomach tastes?'
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Unless most of your guests will be self-styled 'gourmets' or 'foodies' (in which case, I recommend simply doing what works, then pounding a couple of glasses of something potently alcoholic immediately before the first guests arrive), guests at a holiday dinner tend to arrive expecting to enjoy themselves, and eat too much, so don't put too much pressure on yourself. The amount of food seems fine for the number of guests you'll have, and if you have any lingering doubts, go ahead and cook some pasta and some marinara sauce. The vegetarians will appreciate it, and if there are none, anyone who is still 'hungry' (i.e. hasn't already eaten him or herself into a coma) will.
In addition to whatever else I make, I usually include a large, undressed salad composed of the more robust salad greens. Even if nobody touches it (and usually, one or two people will decide to have a go at it, to break up their three colossal helpings of meat and starch), it will still be quite edible the next day, when you may have little inclination to prepare food or eat it.
Your menu sounds great, don't panic
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My query comes to when you see so many biscuit (uk), shortbread and cookie recipes differentiating between the two mixing methods ?
It's really straightforward, no mystery: these are two different techniques that give two different results when it comes to biscuit texture.
sometimes from the same chef you see two recipes for the same product with different mixing methods.
This just sounds peculiar, unless the biscuits in question aren't actually specific types, but broad categories (e.g. 'Christmas biscuits' or 'sweet biscuits').
pbear's suggestion is a good one: post a couple of links demonstrating what you mean by 'sometimes from the same chef you see two recipes for the same product with different mixing methods.'.
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Both techniques are 'ideal'/'right' for different things: You'd typically cream butter if you're making softer, cake-like buiscuits, and cut-in butter for things like shortbread. Usually, if you cream butter, you cream it with sugar, then the rest of the ingredients are combined with that, in one sequence or another, so you get a somewhat wet mixture. When butter is cut-in, it's usually into flour, which yields small bits of butter, each of which is surrounded by flour, which is somewhat coated by butter; when the other ingredients are added, they usually include minimal liquid, so the mixture is firmer, and usually not intended to rise much.
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Scandinavian foods, most of us from the Scandinavian area dislike this term. It is like saying American food and meaning Canadian, Mexican and food from USA as one and the same. Yeah right Sweden ruled them all at one point but that doesnt mean we all eat meatballs and runs around with horns on our heads.
Regarding the term 'Scandinavian', maybe (although I've never heard anyone in Denmark express a distaste for the term), but 'nordisk' is used to mean the exact same thing (and of course, 'det er meget mere moderne'), and when it comes to acknowledging the many similarities of Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish food/shared culinary traditions, that's widely accepted.
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Melty.
Just dumb.
God, YES. And, yes, 'yummie/yummy' and 'tummy'. Baby talk from adults is just plain creepy, why is there such an uptick in it?! <Blergh>
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I'd start the pearl barley, using appropriate the amount of water, then, at the 20-minute mark, add the rice and the amount of water for that, boiled (so you don't lower the temperature), give it another 25 minutes and then let it rest. You'll probably need to fine-tune it a bit to get it exactly the way you want it, but this should give fairly decent results (this is the way I proceed when I'm doing this sort of thing, and prefer to keep it all in one pot).
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I just made some the other day also following David Lebowitz's recipe. I wasn't able to get the icing sugar/ cornstarch mixture down as evenly as I wanted to and so had some hard bits stuck to the bottoms. Next time I will spray a pan with cooking oil, coat it with the mix and tap the excess out. Should make for tidier bottoms.
You might have better luck just doing a really thick layer of the powder mix, since I suspect oil might make things a little pasty.
Love the name. Spring snow would work equally well if you were spawned in Ontario!
In the meantime, here, there is no snow at all. Things are looking a bit dingy, as you'll see.
Today, I went on a hunt for salt. Special salt, to be precise, a smoked salt so amazing that I'd scraped out the last remaining grains the other day, and was grieving. The man who makes and sells it shows up at the Ingerslevs Boulevard greenmarket, on Saturdays, sometimes: today seemed a bit iffy, since it's been bloody cold, and he is not a young man.
I hopped on the bus, and headed into the centre.
The greenmarket looked more or less the same as it did when I last posted images of it (so, I won't duplicate them), except for the plants for sale were skewed more towards holiday greenery and poinsettias for people to kill over the holidays, and everyone was freezing their nads off.
Sadly, the salt man was not there.
I wandered off, and while festively gnawing on a chicken-skewer-thingie from 7-11, I noticed some holiday platters waiting for pickup in a the window of a delicatessen.
At this point, it occurred to me that the salt man might well be at the Christmas Market, so I headed over there.
Immediately inside the entrance to the Christmas Market (housed in the old cavalry training building) are some tables, and some food service; it was crowded, but this doesn't begin to suggest how packed the place was:
I ploughed my way around the place twice, and had just concluded that the salt man wasn't here, either, when I saw my goal.
But, would he have the salt I sought?!
He did
Then I headed home, and we prised this from today's window of the Advent calendar:
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Wouldn't this simply be 'marinading'? Whatever you call it, It would probably just make the outer portion of the meat (the only part it would penetrate) kind of mushy; if you want the cider flavour in the meat, you'd be better off using the cider as [part of] a braising liquid.
"Deep" Shopping in London: Beyond the Big and Obvious
in United Kingdom & Ireland: Cooking & Baking
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Partly, it's just the pleasure of browsing. Also, Denmark has a somewhat narrow selection of goods, so from the standpoint of actually buying things, places with broad arrays of 'standard' items are of interest, and I'm also interested in things related to making sweets, modernist ingredients, assorted Southeast Asian cooking ingredients, and traditional local items (if there is any such thing, any longer).