Plantes Vertes

Do you put salt in yours Tzatziki? I tried one a while back and it was wretched. Interested to know how to make it work.

If you have old wonky kitchen drawers with gaps between them, get some thin insulating foam (like the stuff used down the back of radiators) and cut it into ~1cm strips. Stick them to the top of the front of your kitchen drawers. Then when you spill something down the front of the drawer there is a much lower probability that it will flow into the drawers and necessitate removing everything from the drawer, cleaning it, cleaning the drawer and replacing everything inside. (Although then you have to compensate for the lack of unexpected opportunities to clean the drawer by regularly cleaning your drawers...) Eggs are easier to peel if you pierce them before boiling because the water rushes into the space between the egg and the shell and stops them sticking together. If you're boiling a lot of eggs, don't mess about with a pin - just put the eggs in the water and stab them with a knife. It doesn't matter where on the egg. The water pressure keeps the egg from coming out, provided you use a sharp knife and make a thin slit only. If you can't get the top off a jar, you need to break the vacuum. Do this by 1) poking a knife-tip under the rim of the lid and twisting to let air in 2) (if you'll use the whole contents of the jar at once) stabbing a hole in the lid with a corkscrew or knife 3) bashing the edge of the lid on the counter to momentarily open a gap between lid and jar. Don't use good knifes! If you have a juicer, put a plastic bag inside the bin where the pulp goes, rolling the top down over the edge like you would a rubbish bag. Then you don't have to wash the bin and you can stick the bag straight in the freezer to use the pulp in soup/cake later. Print out some temperature and volume conversion charts and stick them on the inside of a cupboard door. If you make sauerkraut or other fermented leaf food, save some whole leaves and roll them loosely to push the shredded cabbage underwater and stop the top going mouldy. Save the silicone packets that come in medicine bottles and put them in with your dry goods to stop them getting damp. Put a few grains of rice in the salt cellar to absorb moisture. If you have a large collection of, say, teas or flours and you keep them in caddies, cut off the part of the packet that says what the hell it is and put it in with the tea/flour. Then you'll actually know what you're eating or drinking. If your broccoli or cauliflower or cut herbs or anything with a stem starts looking a bit sorry for itself in the fridge, cut off the end of the stalk as for cut flowers and stand it in room-temperature water for a few hours so it can get its good looks back. If you get recipes off your iPad, put it in a freezer bag before taking it into the kitchen. Might save a few tears. Put a shelf a few inches from the top of your freezer and keep it clear so you can put baking sheets in when freezing something like beans in a single layer. Always grind pepper for a hot recipe onto a saucer/into a ramekin before adding it to the pot; otherwise the steam can rise up into the mill and make the pepper clump and stop the thing working properly. Use a flannel-glove to clean your jars. It's super-easy. Attach one of those small wire shelves with a rim that you're meant to put by the sink for your sponges, at eye-level in the place where you do your prep. You can put a cook-book in it on its end, out of the way, and the rim keeps the book open. If you have a compost bucket/bin in your kitchen, save paper bags to line it with after you empty it. Less gross slime in your bucket that way. Tuck a couple of tea-towels into the belt of your apron before you start cooking. They're very handy. If you need boiling water to cook something like pasta, boil it in the kettle, not the pot. Way more efficient. Make sure you use the correct burner for your pot. If the flame is too large the heat just escapes up the sides of the pot and doesn't heat the food. If you wash up by hand, wash the knives first. Don't put them in with the rest of the dishes where they can amputate your finger under the suds. Sprinkle the bottom of the oven with bicarbonate of soda before you cook something fatty like a roast, and wipe the sides of the oven with a soda solution. This absorbs all the fat and you can just clean it off with a cloth (no scrubbing) after.

This one's tomato, broccoli and roasted garlic: 1 head of broccoli, 1l tomato juice, 1 head garlic roasted in olive oil. Simmer until the broccoli is soft, blend. And this is Russian black bean soup; cook maybe 3-4 cups dry beans in the pressure cooker with an onion, a couple of carrots and tomatoes, 2-3 cloves garlic and a few sticks of celery, chopped, ample water and a bay leaf, chilli powder, paprika and 3 cardamom pods; fish out the whole spices (use a tea ball or similar as the beans dye everything purple and they're impossible to find otherwise) then blend with some salt and pepper. You can serve it with sour cream. Don't plan on eating much else. It's pretty rib-sticking.

It's a Bamboo #1. 2oz Tio Pepe fino 2oz extra dry vermouth 1/4oz Cointreau 3 dashes orange bitters It's a very subtle drink and a good way to appreciate the grape and citrus flavours of the main ingredients. It's very dry obviously and the nice bitterness is quite pronounced. The sweetness and spices from the Cointreau come through at the end. I really liked it.

I think the other traditional ingredients are onion, garlic, chicken stock, and sometimes corn, coriander and/or poblanos. Maybe you could work with one of those, perhaps with a trendy presentation like a dehydrated powder or a fried crisp, rather than just adding it to the other vegetables? Dehydrated corn is commercially available I believe. If the dish is supposed to be vegetarian of course the chicken is out - otherwise maybe a jelly made with chicken stock.

Just about all tasty cheese is traditionally made with rennet, a coagulant enzyme complex obtained from an animal's stomach, and Parmesan is one. Vegetarian versions are available.

For meals you could make: Indian or Thai curry with rice Bean chilli with cornbread, biscuits and/or baked potatoes Frittata Potato hash with eggs Pasta Puttanesca Leek and potato soup Fried polenta with roasted root vegetables Tabbouleh, ful medames, hummus and pita bread Salad of green lentils, grated carrots and radishes Moroccan stew with couscous Black bean soup Stewed apples Gnocchi with sage oil You could even bake a cake.

I lived in a caravan with no electricity for six months, and kept perishables fresh by putting them in a box of water and lying a wet towel over the top. You have to submerge the end of the towel in the water so that as the water from the towel evaporates, taking heat out of the food, more can be absorbed. Some groceries you could take: Dried coconut/tins of coconut milk Dried beans (red lentils cook quickest)/tinned beans Shelf-stable tofu Rice/dried noodles/couscous/bulghur wheat Dried fruit Apples/unripe fruit and vegetables (will ripen in the heat and won't go rotten so quickly) as well as potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, onions, garlic, carrots Coffee and tea UHT milk and cream (Doesn't need refrigerating until opened - I used to use the smallest 250ml cartons so I could open just a bit at a time) Sun-dried tomatoes/olives/dried mushrooms Tinned tomatoes/corn Anchovies/sardines in oil Flour/vinegar/oil/stock cubes Any dried herbs and spices Liquid egg cartons Oats Long-life fruit juice Beer, wine and spirits

Speak of what?

We snuck in some Old Cubans and Scrabble in the garden this evening, and gentle zephyrs kissed us with their breath.

You're welcome round mine for some stew any time, dcarch

Thought I'd bump this thread as I found it very fascinating and thought others might too. Thank you Tammy!

^^ Rookie mistake. Just as you should never go to the grocery shop hungry because your appetite will make you buy a load of stuff you don't really need, you should never go to the liquor store sober. I bet you went sober.

Thanks Chris! It sounds pretty far out. Tomato eh?

Was it good, ChrisTaylor? Do you know which spices were in it?

A post by Olmoelisa reminded me to make a Campari Spritz. Yum.

This is a squash soup made with 1 squash, 1 large sauteed onion, a can of coconut milk, a small handful of coriander and juice of 1/2 lime. I halved the squash and cooked it in the microwave for 15 minutes, then peeled it and chopped up the flesh, added everything but the coriander to the pot with water to cover, simmered 10 mins, added the coriander and blended. It's garnished with some toasted seeds. This soup was so good!

Hi Jaymes and furzzy - sorry I didn't notice your questions until now. I used this recipe for the stock with some guidance from the Guardian, roasting the bones for 1h and boiling for 8h (I painted a bedroom and put up a set of shelves in the meantime! A productive day ). Then I followed the Joy of Cooking directions for clarifying, which have you use 'several' fowl carcasses (3 in my case) plus 1/4lb lean ground beef, an unspecified number of uncooked tomato skins (I used 2 chopped beef tomatoes in their skins for the whole pot) and 1 slightly beaten egg white and 1 roughly crushed shell per 2 pints of stock.You mix them into the cold stock, then heat very slowly until the foam rises. Simmer for 2 hours and cool for 1 hour. Then you push the foam gently away from one side and ladle the stock out from underneath, straining through sterile muslin into a bowl. The only modification I made to those instructions was to add an onion, cut on the horizontal and scorched to black on the cut sides, to the simmer, to brown the stock.

The greens I wilted and then pressed in a sieve to drain. Then I mixed them with some onion sauteed in olive oil, added a good squeeze of lemon juice and grated some nutmeg in. I don't know if it's a traditional recipe but I got this preparation from a Lebanese restaurant and find it very delicious. And thanks for naming my leaves for me

Today aubergines were 3 for £1 so I made this dish full of childhood nostalgia. It's a stew made with onions, aubergine, tomatoes, chickpeas and mint. We also ate this beautiful spinach. Look at the stems!

Hope you and your friend have a great day, Bojana!

You can make a green tea panna cotta by soaking (optional - cardamom and) green tea in bags in the milk when you dissolve the sugar. Ice-cream could be flavoured in the same way, soaking the tea in the heated milk. Green tea can be the base of a jelly, gel or granita too. You can also use the tea powder as a garnish or marinade for oily fish like mackerel or salmon, or add it to the cooking water for rice.

Perhaps rice paper rolls could contain the salad? You can also cut one of the vegetables into strips and roll it around like this (picture on the left). The Madeleines will be fine to freeze. For fish there is always shellfish served on its shell (although you will have to provide somewhere to throw the shells).

On that subject, here is a picture of my favourite Sculpin, the Blob Sculpin

I tried with a ballet slipper and was perfectly satisfied.