What's cooking / VT cookbook merge

[privateer]

Here's a blast from the past that is actually utterly delicious. I've just eaten some and it was **** awesome. Spanish Omelette from the 1970's.

Ingredients:

New potatoes (or small old ones)

Red pepper

Green pepper

Onion

Tomatoes

Olive oil

Eggs (several)

Method:

Slice the potatoes into 1/4 slices. Leave skin on new potatoes (but wash them). Pour enough oil into a frying pan to come half way up the potatoes but don't put them in yet. Heat the oil on a low heat for 5 minutes. Put in potato and cover with a lid. You want them to part fry but mainly steam. Cook for 15 minutes. Make sure

oil isn't so hot as to crisp them.

In the meantime open up peppers, take out seeds and white seams. Slice and dice into equal size pieces. Slice the onion and chop the tomato.

After 15 mins turn over the potato and recover. Cook for another 15 mins. Tilt pan to retain juices and oil and remove with a slotted spoon and reserve. Add peppers to the pan and cover. Cook for 10 mins and stir, recover and cook for another 10 mins then add onion and stir. Cook for another ten minutes stirring a couple of times. Tilt pan to retain juices and oil and remove it all with a slotted spoon and reserve.

Add tomatoes to pan, cover and cook for 5 minutes.

Beat at least 4 eggs using 1 tablespoon of water per 2 eggs. Add salt and white pepper and beat further.

Add all ingredients back to pan except eggs, cover and turn grill on to high. After five minutes beat egg mixture briefly and add to pan. Allow to cook for 5 minutes then place under grill. Turn down to medium and cook for 5 mins but watch to ensure it doesn't overcook. Once eggs have set it is ready.

Superb hot or cold.

[JulieB]

I have one of these in this weeks veg box....:shock:

A Mandelbrot Cauliflower

Looks more like a work of art than something you cook. I think I'll try

currying it.

[C4rvillan]

Or killing it. It looks something out of the sea.

[jonno_2004]

I froze half the lamb curry I cooked last night, how long roughly should it take to defrost in the microwave?

[peterms]

Looks more like a work of art than something you cook. I think I'll try currying it.

May be hard to appreciate the flavour if you do that, and also a very good chance of cooking it to mush.

Try it as a salad - blanch in boiling water for a couple of minutes then refresh in cold water, drain, then dress with olive oil, lemon juice, capers, and finely chopped chili and olives, salt and pepper.

Or as a sauce with pasta - soften onions and garlic and chili gently in olive oil, add some chopped anchovies and stir until they melt, boil the cauliflower until tender (couple of minutes), refresh in cold water and drain, add to the onions etc, add cream and grated Parmesan, season, and mix with the pasta which has been cooking in the few minutes it takes to do this. Video demo of a variation on this here. I prefer chubby pasta like rigatoni or conchiglie with this - spaghetti and chunky veg just doesn't look right together.

Better still, use half it for each recipe. Though if you leave it for more than a couple of days the tips will start going brown, so don't hang about. You could blanch it all now and use it in a day or two.

[JulieB]

Thanks I'll give it a go!...

I washed some of the cauliflower and roasted it with some other veg with a small Harlequin squash, which I cut open when roasted

depipped put in a tiny knob of butter & some freshly grated nutmeg.... (then let the seeds roast seperately)... the squash tasted

amazing!

The leaves I steamed with some chard leaves until slightly cooked then used some leftover spicy pumpkin soup for a

sauce, put these in an oven dish & sprinkled over a little grated cheese & the squash seeds, then put back in the oven.

All the veg is organic and TBH it tastes so nice roasted in a little olive oil, sea salt & black pepper sprinkled

with a few mixed herbs....finished on the plate with some balsamic vinegar ....you don't miss the meat!

[peterms]

Sounds inventive, and interesting.

[cheltenham_villa]

Anyone know a decent chow mein recipe. I want it to taste like i bought it from a chinese with a strong flavoured sauce.

[rjw63]

I froze half the lamb curry I cooked last night, how long roughly should it take to defrost in the microwave?

Seriously? :-)

[jonno_2004]

I froze half the lamb curry I cooked last night, how long roughly should it take to defrost in the microwave?

Seriously? :-)

Am I being a complete culinary n00b here?

[Morkery]

stop using a microwave, they damage your brain

[RunRickyRun]

Here's a blast from the past that is actually utterly delicious. I've just eaten some and it was **** awesome. Spanish Omelette from the 1970's.

Ingredients:

New potatoes (or small old ones)

Red pepper

Green pepper

Onion

Tomatoes

Olive oil

Eggs (several)

Method:

Slice the potatoes into 1/4 slices. Leave skin on new potatoes (but wash them). Pour enough oil into a frying pan to come half way up the potatoes but don't put them in yet. Heat the oil on a low heat for 5 minutes. Put in potato and cover with a lid. You want them to part fry but mainly steam. Cook for 15 minutes. Make sure

oil isn't so hot as to crisp them.

In the meantime open up peppers, take out seeds and white seams. Slice and dice into equal size pieces. Slice the onion and chop the tomato.

After 15 mins turn over the potato and recover. Cook for another 15 mins. Tilt pan to retain juices and oil and remove with a slotted spoon and reserve. Add peppers to the pan and cover. Cook for 10 mins and stir, recover and cook for another 10 mins then add onion and stir. Cook for another ten minutes stirring a couple of times. Tilt pan to retain juices and oil and remove it all with a slotted spoon and reserve.

Add tomatoes to pan, cover and cook for 5 minutes.

Beat at least 4 eggs using 1 tablespoon of water per 2 eggs. Add salt and white pepper and beat further.

Add all ingredients back to pan except eggs, cover and turn grill on to high. After five minutes beat egg mixture briefly and add to pan. Allow to cook for 5 minutes then place under grill. Turn down to medium and cook for 5 mins but watch to ensure it doesn't overcook. Once eggs have set it is ready.

Superb hot or cold.

Made this today and it tasted great (looked horrible though ) . Cheers for the recipe

[leviramsey]

How very uppity. I take it you never eat anything frozen? All line caught from the deck.

I refuse to eat seafood if I'm more than 20 miles inland. Woodman's FTW.

Sidenote: this photo

is from one of my family's clambakes back in the day, here... though I see that the current owner of Tuppenny Tower has built some kind of gaudy monstrosity in the yard .

And within a week of that post, teh Grauniad took notice of Woodman's

A $4 supermarket sandwich has to be pretty damn good for two adults to start fighting over it. Looking at it, there was nothing special about this one – a plain roll in a plastic package, no salad or garnish, a little too much mayo. It was only the gasp of pleasure that accompanied my girlfriend's first bite that told me it was worth trying. In it was the freshest, softest lobster I'd ever eaten, not minced-up leftovers (as in too many lobster rolls) but large meaty chunks of claw and tail that had us squabbling over the last mouthful.

We were picnicking on lovely Good Harbor Beach in the town [Gloucester's actually a city --LR] of Gloucester on our first morning in New England, and that sandwich was a great taste of things to come. It was the sheer abundance, quality and low price of the lobster and other seafood here that drew me to New England.

...

In this part of the world, clams are as important as lobsters, and back at Woodman's a queue was forming at the self-service counter at 11.30am. People were piling their trays with fried and steamed clams, lobster, onion rings and fries. Steve fixed me a bowl of clams, coated in a thin batter and fried, as they always have been, in lard. Eaten with homemade tartare sauce, they were deliciously sweet – but half a bowl was enough. I enjoyed the "steamers" more – thick juicy clams dipped in clam broth to clean off any mud, and then in melted butter.

That evening at my hotel, the 19th-century Emerson overlooking the ocean, I was singing the praises of the local seafood shacks when a salty old dog at the next table leaned over. "They're not bad down here," he said, "but for the real deal you need to head up my way to Maine. The water's colder, so the lobster gets nice and fat and juicy."

That "salty old dog" is either another tourist, a carpetbagger, or a moron (or I guess two or more of those).

[BOF]

Note to self. Don't read this thread when you're hungry :?

Note to self. Try not to forget previous notes to self.

I just read the curry related bits of this thread from start to finish.

I've decided to buy a grinder but I want to get a manual one. Apart from them obviously being cheaper, they look much nicer too. Are they good enough for the job though ? I imagine they fall somewhere between an electric one and a pestle/mortar in terms of actual effort but I don't want to be disappointed with the results.

[rjw63]

Never seen a manual one, electric are the best and not that pricey. A coffee bean grinder for £20 will do the job

[rjw63]

This is only £8

Edit, bloody American cheapness - over £20 here :-(

[BOF]

I'd much prefer to have one of the above in my kitchen than have some polished steel anonymous blob like what I'm seeing in the google searches.

[Morkery]

Have you tried any of this stuff Rob? The chap is fairly local to me (Well in Lincolnshire) I saw him at the weekend at a farmers market in Melton Mowbray. Think he made the papers this year - hottest chilli pepper in the world.

I'd already bought quite a bit of stuff by the time I arrived at his stall, so only had a little bit of change. I bought a packet of chilli prawn crackers.....

Anyway in the evening I thought I'd try them, I gave my wife one first and she nearly collapsed. I laughed and had one and feck me I did the same!

Insanely hot.

Stupidly I ate half the packet and felt awful. The next day I had a few beers and the rest, I'm only just feeling ok!http://www.firefoods.co.uk/

[Hiney]

Cheers for the link to that site, will have to try out some of his sauces.

There's a guy in Bristol who has a hot sauce shop in Bristol, really good to go down there and try them all out.. some of them are stupidly hot.

http://www.hotsauceemporium.co.uk/ link to his site

[rjw63]

Have you tried any of this stuff Rob? The chap is fairly local to me (Well in Lincolnshire) I saw him at the weekend at a farmers market in Melton Mowbray. Think he made the papers this year - hottest chilli pepper in the world.

I'd already bought quite a bit of stuff by the time I arrived at his stall, so only had a little bit of change. I bought a packet of chilli prawn crackers.....

Anyway in the evening I thought I'd try them, I gave my wife one first and she nearly collapsed. I laughed and had one and feck me I did the same!

Insanely hot.

Stupidly I ate half the packet and felt awful. The next day I had a few beers and the rest, I'm only just feeling ok!http://www.firefoods.co.uk/

I haven't but I really should :-)