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Cookery books

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Re: Cookery books

Postby Stokey Sue » Mon Sep 28, 2020 10:00 pm

Well I would say my mom was somewhere in between having worked her way up f rom terrible in the 40s, to nutritious and edible in the 50s to pretty good by 1970

And I think I’m foodie because I did most of that journey with her

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Re: Cookery books

Postby Suelle » Mon Sep 28, 2020 10:07 pm

Sakkarin wrote:My mum was a dreadful cook, I wonder if there's a correlation - that foodies either have fabulous foodie parents or complete kitchen disaster ones. My mum may have been dreadful, but my father never cooked anything in his life, to my knowledge. He was old school, "Men don't cook or do housework". Anyone have anything in between?


My Dad was in charge of the toasting fork, in front of an open fire, until we got old enough to be trusted to do it without setting ourselves on fire! :lol:

To be fair, those were the days when many women did little paid work outside the home. Dad did the hard work involved in growing almost all our fruit and vegetables too, on top of farm labouring work, which could be more than 12 hours a day at harvest time.
Traditional home baking, and more:
http://mainlybaking.blogspot.co.uk/

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Re: Cookery books

Postby Pepper Pig » Mon Sep 28, 2020 10:37 pm

I’m with Stokey Sue re my mum.

And at 92 she still makes the best apple pie.

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Re: Cookery books

Postby Kacey » Tue Sep 29, 2020 7:32 am

My Mum's a rubbish cook, probably because she has no real interest in food unless its a pudding, a cake or a chocolate. She's also vegetarian and it wouldn't matter what delicious main course I made if she came to dinner, she'd always rather have a flipping Quorn fillet!

I lived with my Nan for about 6 months when I was 16 and she was also a truly terrible cook and we had the same meal on the same day of each week. Even now my stomach turns at the thought of her meat and potato pie on Monday nights - this was cheap meat with no browning or seasoning and no fat or gristle removed, added to potatoes and shoved in pastry. The meat went under the table for the dog, the potatoes I could stomach and the pasty was wonderful! She couldn't cook but she could bake and what I wouldn't give for one more of her tea plate sized biscuits, one more bowl of her suet plum pudding and one more of her Congress tarts.

Re Books - I have probably heading towards 400, they're in a couple of Billy bookcases in the smallest bedroom. They're probably 50% vegetarian and I cover most cuisines but have more Indian and Mediterranean than any other. Like most of us I love Ottolenghi and his latest is on my Christmas list if can wait that long.

I suspect I'm not on my own that there are some I've never used, some I use for one or two recipes and some I use all the time. The one book I have several copies of and have given to friends is this one https://www.amazon.co.uk/Indian-Housewi ... 142&sr=8-1

Its old fashioned and basic but its brilliant for every day curry recipes. There isn't a week goes by without me cooking something from this here and I barely need to use the book these days as I know the recipes by heart.

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Re: Cookery books

Postby Sakkarin » Tue Sep 29, 2020 10:58 am

Here's my slightly dog-eared copy, a 1990 edition...

I think it cost me £1.99...

Image

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Re: Cookery books

Postby Kacey » Tue Sep 29, 2020 11:20 am

Yes that's exactly the one I've got falling apart and held together by a bull dog clip. Have a new copy on the bookshelf upstairs but couldn't part with the copy I've been using for 22yrs, for the veggie and dal recipes anyway!

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Re: Cookery books

Postby Badger's Mate » Tue Sep 29, 2020 4:47 pm

I think allotments are still measured in one of these, although not sure which :roll:


Allotments are measured in poles. However, rods and perches are the same thing, a linear measure of a quarter of a chain, 5½ yards. It is also an area of a square pole, that is 30¼ square yards. Thus a standard '10 pole plot' is 302.5 square yards (almost exactly 250 square metres)

My dad completely confused me about acres. He told me yonks ago that an acre was about 70 yards square. This is true, but it's much easier to remember it as an area of one chain times one furlong. That's 4 poles by 40, or 160 poles. Consequently a 10 pole plot is one sixteenth of an acre.

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Re: Cookery books

Postby PatsyMFagan » Tue Sep 29, 2020 5:18 pm

Thanks Ted :thumbsup

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Re: Cookery books

Postby Badger's Mate » Tue Sep 29, 2020 5:55 pm

You're welcome 8-)

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Re: Cookery books

Postby herbidacious » Tue Sep 29, 2020 10:26 pm

My mother wasn't terrible, but not great either. Cooking did not interest her and she didn't/doesn't like anything with herbs, spices or strong flavours, so nothing 'foreigh', basically. We are talking savoury here, though. Ahe still talks abput an eclaire she had in Paris in the 1980s, and cream cakes she had in teh late 40s in France too. (Although that was as much about what cream-cake luxuries they had, and at such a low price, just after the war, when there was so little in Britain.) Baking was her thing in the kitchen. Nothing fancy. Trifles made from swiss rolls, tinned fruit, Bir'ds custard and Kenwood chef cream, sponge cakes and fairy cakes, jaw-ching bread rolls... We once made a Black Forest Gateau together and it was a never again thing for her. Ditto the Aplfelstruedel. (Both inspired by foreign exchanges I went on aged 15 and 17.) She said her own mother was a bad cook, but I suppose most of my mother's experience of her own mother's cooking were of wartime cooking with poverty on top.

My foodiness came out of my vegetarianism. It made me more adventurous and more inventive, although it might not sound it now, if I were to list what I made, aged 20-21 when I moved out of Halls. My experience of savoury food before I left home and stopped eating meat and fish, was pretty just meat and two veg or stews.

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Re: Cookery books

Postby mistakened » Wed Sep 30, 2020 7:35 am

I find Diane Seeds Top One Hundred Pasta Sauces useful, some recipes come from restaurants, other are domestic in origin. I was flipping through it earlier this week and found a recipe for a Pea and Pancetta Sauce. I shall be making that soon as you can use frozen peas.
I use her recipe for an Asparagus Sauce, using the asparagus that I have frozen earlier in the year

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Re: Cookery books

Postby scullion » Wed Sep 30, 2020 3:25 pm

Kacey wrote: The one book I have several copies of and have given to friends is this one https://www.amazon.co.uk/Indian-Housewi ... 142&sr=8-1

Its old fashioned and basic but its brilliant for every day curry recipes. There isn't a week goes by without me cooking something from this here and I barely need to use the book these days as I know the recipes by heart.


i, too, have that one. i think i bought it at trago, in falmouth, back in the 80s for about 50p (new). mine is also well used but although the inside may be a little worse for wear, on favourite recipes, the cover and spine are still good - i covered it in fablon to make it last longer. the bombay potato recipe is my go-to and her veg biryani is the one i base mine on. i agree, some very good recipes.

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Re: Cookery books

Postby Kacey » Wed Sep 30, 2020 6:05 pm

I love the Bombay Potatoes, they are indeed delicious, as well as the Potato & Aubergine and the Potato & Pea. My all time fave is the whole lentil dal, could eat that every day!

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Re: Cookery books

Postby Amyw » Thu Oct 01, 2020 1:07 pm

I cooked my first dish out of the new JO book , the Mexican meatloaf and was a little underwhelmed . It was fine , but I would have added a lot more spices /seasoning to it . I did use quorn mince but even so . In fairness I do love very spicy food , but I think if something’s labelled as Mexican , you do expect it to have a bit of a kick to it

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Re: Cookery books

Postby liketocook » Thu Oct 01, 2020 1:23 pm

Oh what a shame, we've enjoyed all of the dishes we've tried so far. I've not tried that one yet (it's on my list) but will boost the spice when I do. I do think a lot of the spicy recipes are aimed at families with kids so the spices are dialled down a bit.

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Re: Cookery books

Postby Amyw » Thu Oct 01, 2020 2:06 pm

That’s what I thought , as it’s a fairly family oriented book isn’t it . I think I’d use the basic concept again , just massively ramp up the spicing

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Re: Cookery books

Postby Earthmaiden » Fri Feb 26, 2021 7:11 pm

I was re-looking at the JO book (7 Ways) again having watched him on TV this week cooking something I didn't remember at all. I came across a dish I wouldn't try in a month of Sundays unless someone said it was nice. It was the Easy Egg & Ham Filo Bake which consists of cheese, spinach, cottage cheese, spring onion and grated apple rolled in eggy filo pastry. Has anyone tried it? I'm not sure about the grated apple or the egg poured onto the pastry.

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Re: Cookery books

Postby scullion » Fri Feb 26, 2021 8:18 pm

i've had (and made) pastys that have an egg broken into them before baking - nice - different but nice.

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Re: Cookery books

Postby Stokey Sue » Fri Feb 26, 2021 8:57 pm

We had Tunisian briks in Carthage, which are brik pastry circles folded to form a pasty over a filling made by making a little wall of suitable savoury stuff - usually cheese, spinach or tuna or some combo- the space inside the wall is filled with an egg before sealing, then deep fried.

This video is pretty much what chef did, except he craftily dipped his finger in the egg white and ran it round the egg (I meant edge :roll: ) of the pastry and sealed it before frying

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5n1fN8TGHs

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Re: Cookery books

Postby Earthmaiden » Sat Feb 27, 2021 12:08 am

That looks nice Sue and sounds nice, scully.

The recipe I am talking about has the ingredients I mentioned and Gruyere mixed together with beaten eggs added. It is then strained so that most of the egg goes into a separate bowl. The mixture is put onto filo pastry and rolled like long sausage rolls. These are placed nestled together in a casserole dish and baked for a while. They are then removed from the oven and the eggy mixture from the bowl is poured over the pastry, more Gruyere is sprinkled on and it is all returned to the oven until brown.

My only queries really were whether the final egg topping and the apple worked well.

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