Recipes

[efros]

Place to deposit your recipes, original, traditional or adapted.

One that I can't make over here as I refuse to pay the price they ask for smoked haddock (about $30 a pound the last time I checked).

Cullen Skink


500g of smoked haddock

1 large onion finely chopped

2 large peeled and cubed potatoes, about 1.5cm  cubes

500 ml  of whole milk

400 ml of water

large pinch of mixed herbs


Place the potatoes and the chopped onion in a large pan with the butter and gently fry until the onions become translucent, sprinkle the mixed herbs onto the mix and add the water to the pan and bring to a simmer. Put the lid on the pan and simmer until the potatoes are cooked. Roughly mash about a third of the potato and onion mix.

Put the milk and the haddock in a large pot and gently poach the smoked haddock keeping the milk on the move throughout. Once the milk has heated up the fish will take about 5 minutes to cook through. When the haddock is cooked through add the potato mixture to the party and stir to ensure a uniform mix of the liquid, also break the haddock up into bite size pieces. Taste and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. If need be you can enrich the soup with some single cream. I like mine with a dash of chili sauce (Encona was the favoured brand in the UK) and buttered bread.

[jenny]

I love Cullen Skink! And agree with you about the price of smoked haddock, so I don't buy it either. This is basically how I make my haddock (unsmoked) chowder. I also like to add fresh corn to my chowder.

[efros]

My Dad used to a variation on this using Arbroath smokies. Poach the boned and skinned smokies in milk with some onions when they're warmed through remove them from the liquor and put aside. Use the milk the smokies were cooked in to make a cheese sauce and serve on the smokies with boiled potatoes and marrowfat peas, not high cuisine but you'd be travelling a long way to find something more delicious.

[jenny]

I would eat those gladly! We only seem to be able to get canned kippers here though - those work for something like a kipper pate but not for the deliciousness described above.

[crissdee]

Ooooh, I love me a bit of smoked haddock and that sounds like a bit of a change from anything I've done before. I shall give it a try when next I have haddock to hand....

[sjb]

Jul 22, 2024 19:23:33 GMT efros said:

My Dad used to a variation on this using Arbroath smokies. Poach the boned and skinned smokies in milk with some onions when they're warmed through remove them from the liquor and put aside. Use the milk the smokies were cooked in to make a cheese sauce and serve on the smokies with boiled potatoes and marrowfat peas, not high cuisine but you'd be travelling a long way to find something more delicious.

Oh my, that sounds fantastic. (I visited Arbroath on my last trip to Scotland. Was hard not to leave.)

[Bondee]

Jul 22, 2024 19:23:33 GMT efros said:

...not high cuisine but you'd be travelling a long way to find something more delicious.

The simple stuff is often the best. I'd rather eat a plate of the vegetable hash that Jenny mentioned elsewhere on the forum than any of the pretentious wankage* that gets thrown up on MasterChef.

One of my favourite meals to make is chopped potatoes and onions, drizzled in olive oil, bit of salt and pepper, in the oven at 180c for about 20 minutes or so. Take it out, sprinkle some grated cheese - any type, or none at all, the choice is yours - and tuna, chicken, pulled pork, whatever on to the tray. Back in the oven for another 5-10 minutes. Done.

*© suze, 20-something-or-other

[amanda]

Bondee wrote:

The simple stuff is often the best. I'd rather eat a plate of the vegetable hash that Jenny mentioned elsewhere on the forum than any of the pretentious wankage* that gets thrown up on MasterChef.

With the Australian Masterchef season just finished being shown on tv, this is again in the spotlight. 

There's another show on afternoon tv here called 'Ready Steady Cook' which is where two local chefs, some of whom were on Masterchef, get a contestant who brings a bag with four basic ingredients and from that they make something the average person can do at home. 

Far more manageable than recipes that need a cuckoo's egg and other things. 

 

[suze]

Jul 23, 2024 9:46:16 GMT Bondee said:

*© suze, 20-something-or-other

I wish.  I first used the expression pretentious wankage in another place in 2013, and at the time I did vaguely think that I'd made it up.

But sadly not.  I have since traced it back to 2007, when a San Francisco journalist named Dennis Harvey used it to describe a movie.  The movie in question was Bob Dylan's Renaldo and Clara, and I make Mr Harvey spot on.

 

As for Ready Steady Cook, that was originally a British format, and it is so old that it predates Endemol who later bought the rights. It has by now retired from British television, although there are still plenty of repeats, but it ran for 32 seasons from 1994. It was fairly silly at times - it was presented by a guy called Ainsley Harriott, who had been a serious restaurant chef but turned himself into a caricature comedy black man à la Lenny Henry - but quite good fun in its own way.

[eeyoresmum]

I'd love to make myself a large dish of Kedgeree again, but alas here in the Netherlands you cannot get smoked haddock. The Dutch version of this recipe suggests mackerel, which I detest. Ergo - I will have to live with the memories.

[jenny]

Jul 23, 2024 20:22:51 GMT eeyoresmum said:

I'd love to make myself a large dish of Kedgeree again, but alas here in the Netherlands you cannot get smoked haddock. The Dutch version of this recipe suggests mackerel, which I detest. Ergo - I will have to live with the memories.

It actually does work quite well with smoked salmon. We can buy a small chunk of smoked salmon (not the slices, a chunk you can flake) here and I have done it a few times that way. I have also made it with canned kippers, which isn't too bad. 

[efros]

3 Berry compote

4lb bag of mixed frozen berries, (ours is usually strawberries, blueberries and raspberries),

1/2 cup of lemon juice,

1/2 lb of sugar.



Throw it all in a large pot and bring it to a boil, keep it on simmer for about 30 mins with the lid on the pot, stir every 5 minutes or so. If it isn't thick enough for you you can use a cornstarch slurry to thicken it up for you. Just make sure you simmer it for about 10 minutes after adding the slurry to cook it out. This one is more sour than sweet depending on the berry mix you have, but taste it and see if you need more sugar. We have this hot or cold on dessert shells or slices of pound cake accompanied by vanilla ice cream and whipped cream. Really good for potlucks and family get togethers. Also a very good sauce for roast pork.

[jenny]

Easy too! I like easy. I would probably use less sugar than that though.

[eeyoresmum]

I am not going to attempt it, but this video by Julia Child (I'd never heard of her, but she strongly reminds me of Keith F) is a joy to watch.

Proper French Baguettes.

I can already smell 'm!



www.dailymotion.com/video/x2gtlad

[suze]

If you'd spent your life in North America you'd know all about Julia Child!  She was "the" cooking person on American television in the 60s and 70s, perhaps comparable to Fanny Craddock and later Delia Smith in Britain.  The height of her TV career was a bit too early for me, but I saw some of her later shows which were mostly based around hosting dinner parties.

She had no particular interest in cooking as a girl or a young woman; that only came after she married a man who was a bit of a foodie.  The husband worked for the State Department, and engineered himself a posting to France.  His wife went with him, and it was there that she learned to cook.

There are two things for which she is particularly known.  When I was a young person, you'd occasionally hear some self-proclaimed "expert" declare that Mrs Child was actually a man.  She wasn't, but she stood 6' 2" in her socks, and tried to disguise her height on TV by having her kitchen set built with unusually high worktops.  The other is that she seems to have been the first ever to use a blowtorch as a cooking instrument, twenty years ahead of the late Gary Rhodes.

I'm not sure that Keith Floyd would have seen her early TV shows, but I know what you mean about the eccentric presenting style.  Not as much wine, but nearly as much silliness!  The obvious influence on Mrs Chiild's cooking style was Elizabeth David.  They were much of an age, although they are believed never to have met - but they certainly read one another's books.

Julia McWilliams Child, 1912-2004.

[crissdee]

She does strike one as a fairly sturdy wench.....

[efros]

She was also employed by the OSS during the war IIRC. Cooking up, amongst other things, shark repellant.

www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/julia-child-shark-repellant-world-war-ii

[celebaelin]

Sept 25, 2024 17:09:06 GMT suze said:

...she stood 6' 2" in her socks, and tried to disguise her height on TV by having her kitchen set built with unusually high worktops.

Julia McWilliams Child, 1912-2004.

Speaking as one of the vertically gifted I feel comfortable in suggesting that there are practical advantages to higher kitchen worktops etc.  If you find it necessary to bend over to reach the flat surface you're working on it can cause lower back pain and might even have long term consequences.  It may well be that Mrs Child chose higher surfaces for appearances sake but there would have been other benefits.

[jenny]

My husband is pretty tall and we keep a chopping board on the counter to raise that area a couple of inches for his comfort.

[efros]

I'm 6'3", used to be taller but ageing does things, never had an issue with chopping boards or counter heights. Cupboard doors being left open and my head coming up and smacking them, that's another story.