Pointless ingredients

[Gillthepainter Profile Website]

Have you got a link to the pie you make, Badger, please?

[Badger's Mate Profile]

The one time I have heard a chef use raspberry vinegar in a dish I liked was some years ago. After a meal in a French restaurant, the chef came to the table and I said I enjoyed the gesiers. Presumably they were pre prepared en confit but he said he had heated them in a pan and deglazed it with raspberry vinegar. They tasted neither of raspberries nor vinegar, I wondered if this was a known method or simply a way to use the stuff. It was late in the evening, my wits were dulled somewhat and I didn't ask.

[Badger's Mate Profile]

Just Googling 'Ottolenghi herb pie', will get it straight away. It's on his website and has been published in the Guardian & Telegraph.

https://ottolenghi.co.uk/herb-pie-shop


The recipe contains Swiss chard and celery, I use borage and a hint of lovage

[Gillthepainter Profile Website]

I've got the Jerusalem book on Kindle, thanks for the direction.
I've never cooked anything from it before. It's just not on my radar when I'm trying to think of something to make.

If I tell my husband I'm making a pie, he'll be in heaven.

[Badger's Mate Profile]

If I tell my husband I'm making a pie, he'll be in heaven.

As long as he's not expecting Kate & Sidney, nor indeed apple.

[Sakkarin Profile]

The Babka recipe I used in the Easter thread was from "Jerusalem", Gill, so I've made one more recipe from it than you, and I haven't even got the book!

[Gillthepainter Profile Website]

ah-Ha!
My most used recent book on the other hand is Bill Granger's.
Lovely dishes in it.

[Sakkarin Profile]

Great until he wants it back.

[Gillthepainter Profile Website]

Ha ha ha. Nice one.

[strictlysalsaclare Profile]

Can't digest cucumber either Lush.
I can still taste it the next day.

Whenever we have cucumber chez Strictly, I always peel it and remove most of the seeds, and neither of us have any digestion issues with it. Cucumer with the skin and seeds on always used to repeat on me something chronic.

[kavey Profile Website]

I adore salmon roe, but mostly in Japanese food where they're celebrated as a hero ingredient rather than used as a garnish. They are also usually used only when very fresh and good quality so there's a pop of intense flavour and juice with every mouthful!

For micro herbs, where they are just used as a garnish, I am ambivalent, however I've had dishes with micro lemon verbena recently where the tiny leaves were the highlight of the dessert, and finished not just the visuals but the flavour profile beautifully.

I agree on the various salts, I rarely think they add much value. The exception is a smoked salt from Halen Mon that I thought utterly delicious.

Yuzu is one of my all time favourite flavours, so different from the other citrus, I particularly love it in desserts and sweet liqueurs, where it's flavour is really incredibly distinctive. As just one ingredient in a sauce or marinade, it's likely just to be an expensive sub for lemon juice and rather wasted.

Edible flowers don't offend me, we do eat first with our eyes, but I'd not bother using them myself, seems an expensive garnish, unless you grow your own.

Exotic fruits, I adore most of them, but they must be properly ripe, whereas often the ones that arrive into the UK are picked so darn early they never ripen properly.

When it comes to lettuce, I love little gems, but I can't be bothered with the limp pointless leaves of the kind that was popular in the UK when I was a kid.

I have tasted raspberry vinegar and it was nice enough but it's not something I'd use much, perhaps if gifted it would contribute to salad dressings. I like cider vinegar and balsamic vinegar, which I use in cooking as well as dressings. For cooking, the cheaper balsamic is fine but for dressing / condiment, has to be good / real stuff.

One of my bug bears on unnecessary food is when some sauce or other is not even smeared but literally painted onto the plate, so there's literally no way for me to taste it. A smear is bad enough, when you can get maybe one mouthful of food with a little of it on, but the painted ones, uuugh no no no!

[Sakkarin Profile]

A lot of food for thought there, Kavey!

In response to the very last point on the plate stains, maybe everyone should make an agreement to indulge in a little bit of public disorder to deter them. Perhaps when you come across plate stains, at the end of the meal you should all very audibly and messily lick your plates, making "ooh this is nice" sounds. A few restaurantsfull of platelickers and they'll get the message.

Or ask for a cloth to wipe off the stain because it looks like they haven't cleaned the plate properly?

[Stokey Sue Profile]

When you say yuzu Kavey, ard you talking about fresh yuzu tasted in Japan, or the bottles you can buy in the UK? Because I really can't see that those have a distinctive flavour.

[kavey Profile Website]

When you say yuzu Kavey, ard you talking about fresh yuzu tasted in Japan, or the bottles you can buy in the UK? Because I really can't see that those have a distinctive flavour.

Both, though I don't buy plain bottled yuzu juice here, I've bought products with yuzu in such as Korean yuzu tea (it's actually more like marmalade but called tea as they mix with boiling water to make a drink), and dressings with yuzu in. Likewise I've enjoyed it used in yuzu-focused dishes in restaurants too. It has a very different taste to lemon, lime etc.

[kavey Profile Website]

In response to the very last point on the plate stains, maybe everyone should make an agreement to indulge in a little bit of public disorder to deter them. Perhaps when you come across plate stains, at the end of the meal you should all very audibly and messily lick your plates, making "ooh this is nice" sounds. A few restaurantsfull of platelickers and they'll get the message.

Or ask for a cloth to wipe off the stain because it looks like they haven't cleaned the plate properly?

Ha! I think the plate licking probably would be ignored, and you might find they spit in your dessert if you criticise by way of asking for the plate to be cleaned better!

But yeah I hear where you're coming from!

[Renee Profile]

Speaking of raspberry, I do love White Balsamic Raspberry Vinegar which makes a lovely salad dressing. It is produced in California and I was lucky to buy different ones in Home Sense a few years ago, but haven't seen it since then. Now, I see that Sous Chef have White Balsamic Raspberry Vinegar, also other flavours and these are made in Italy, so I will probably order,

Gill, which book of Bill Granger's do you have? There are quite a few of them and I did want to get one.

[WWordsworth Profile]

I sometimes find the quantity pointless rather than the ingredient, eg 1 clove of garlic in 500g minced beef.

Wouldn't register on my tastebuds, although I remember late MIL cooking a stuffed turkey crown one Christmas. She followed a JO recipe (I think) which called for one clove of garlic.
She bought a bulb, dutifully used the amount specified and gave me the rest.
Insisted she could taste it.
She didn't mention garlic to FIL as he would have refused it.

[Stokey Sue Profile]

My French OH was horrified by the amount of garlic some English cooks used - and he was brought up in Gascony, known for strong flavours, especially garlic, but he thought we overdo it here. For me, with a few obvious exceptions such as aioli I like to taste the meat or fish or veg enhanced by the garlic, not the other way round

Incidentally, the aforementioned Gino D’Acampo comes from near Pompeii, and not using onion and garlic together turns out to be the local tradition, not his personal quirk I checked when I was in the area

I have a recipe for “tamarind shrimp” that uses only a half teaspoon of tamarind paste for a whole dish for several people. I don’t trust that book

[Pampy Profile]

I stayed at Thornbury Castle once and had to send my dinner back one night - it was a fish dish with so much garlic that it was impossible to taste the fish - and I'm a garlic lover. Until then, I'd never thought that there was such as thing as "too much garlic" but they proved me wrong!

[ZeroCook Profile]

My French OH was horrified by the amount of garlic some English cooks used - and he was brought up in Gascony, known for strong flavours, especially garlic, but he thought we overdo it here. For me, with a few obvious exceptions such as aioli I like to taste the meat or fish or veg enhanced by the garlic, not the other way round

Incidentally, the aforementioned Gino D’Acampo comes from near Pompeii, and not using onion and garlic together turns out to be the local tradition, not his personal quirk I checked when I was in the area

I have a recipe for “tamarind shrimp” that uses only a half teaspoon of tamarind paste for a whole dish for several people. I don’t trust that book

I happen to agree with your French OH Stokey - to a certain extent anyway!

Historically, cooking in the UK has gone from a time when most white old school Brits knew only hugely bland food and strong flavours were virtually non existent or unheard of and considered 'foreign'.

That would have been in most pre-contemporary mainstream UK cooking, pre 1960's/70's, let's say, before the successors of Elizabeth David, Madhur Jaffrey et al appeared.

Cooking trends since the 1980's subsequently often went the opposite way in the UK to where spices, herbs and favourings dominated but equally cooks began to overflavour to the point where main ingredients often seem irrelevant or have to be very strong in and of themselves or are purely visual or status statements.

Overcompensation or something like that. The joy of unrestrained herbs and spices. I've sometimes been there myself and have evolved in my general cooking to have a much greater appreciation of subtlties and the quality and inherent flavour of ingredients rather than focussing on the added herbs and spices which is what I think often goes on.

My OH often doesn't like highly overflavoured food so I'm very cognisant of cultural and personal tastes in cooking.


,