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Food Room 101

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Re: Food Room 101

Postby KeenCook2 » Mon Oct 05, 2020 6:41 pm

Pampy wrote:One of my Indian friends uses slices of white bread instead of pastry when she makes samosas. She cuts the crusts off, then uses a rolling pin to flatten the bread before filling and frying - and they're so tasty - they seem a lot lighter than when they're made with pastry.


Now that seems like a brilliant idea - but do samosas have to be deep fried? If they don't, I might be tempted to give them a whirl!
I'm afraid I'm one of those people who has never ever done any deep frying and has no intention of starting now :oops: :lol:

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Re: Food Room 101

Postby karadekoolaid » Mon Oct 05, 2020 7:39 pm

Sliced white bread is good enough for a sausage sarnie, but otherwise, I use it for toast - or for the dog. He just loves bread - wierd animal, but then he´ll happily eat fruit, cucumbers, lettuce :shock: :shock:
Bread and Butter Pudding, along with bread sauce, are things I have never made and have no intention of ever doing so. Unbelievably bland and uninteresting. :P

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Re: Food Room 101

Postby Badger's Mate » Mon Oct 05, 2020 11:26 pm

I've never really understood the argument that wrapped sliced white bread is the best or only option for anything. Bacon sandwiches are much nicer with crusty bread, rolls or French sticks IMO. Our old local baker Hibberds used to do a nice bloomer. Makes perfectly good toast too, not to forget bread pudding. Bread and butter pudding wasn't any part of my childhood, but it's lovely, as is summer pudding and both can be made perfectly well with nice bread. I also like bread sauce. It seems unlikely that someone could tell the difference between bread sauce or stuffing made with sliced white or another loaf. We accidentally received a wrapped sliced multiseed sourdough loaf earlier this year. It was rubbish and probably not cheap.

There are many things I don't bother buying but very few of them are positively disliked. Not a great fan of strong goat cheese or radicchio but I will eat a little of them. Don't like root beer. Wind-dried lumpfish and 'delicious cuttlefish heads with sugar' could cheerfully be consigned for all I care but some people must love them.

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Re: Food Room 101

Postby Pampy » Tue Oct 06, 2020 1:00 am

KeenCook2 wrote:
Pampy wrote:One of my Indian friends uses slices of white bread instead of pastry when she makes samosas. She cuts the crusts off, then uses a rolling pin to flatten the bread before filling and frying - and they're so tasty - they seem a lot lighter than when they're made with pastry.


Now that seems like a brilliant idea - but do samosas have to be deep fried? If they don't, I might be tempted to give them a whirl!
I'm afraid I'm one of those people who has never ever done any deep frying and has no intention of starting now :oops: :lol:

If they're not fried, I think they'd just end up like toast - unless, maybe, they could be brushed with a generous amount of melted butter and then oven cooked.

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Re: Food Room 101

Postby scullion » Tue Oct 06, 2020 12:00 pm

karadekoolaid wrote:Bread and Butter Pudding, along with bread sauce, are things I have never made and have no intention of ever doing so. Unbelievably bland and uninteresting.

completely agree. my mother used to inflict the pudding on us - gruesome - and the only time i can remember having bread sauce was at a joint christmas dinner with a group of friends. the family who brought the sauce eulogised over it. it was described as 'the famous bread sauce' - it tasted like mashed up soggy bread and looked like cat sick. a pointless, off putting detraction, rather than addition, to the meal.

i think the only time i have bought a sliced loaf is for using in a sandwich toaster or making summer pudding.

it has just occurred to me that the shape of the sliced white has changed - maybe to fit in with packet sandwiches. my breville machine from the late seventies was made to fit a taller loaf while the more modern ones have been made to fit the modern square loaves. my consumption of toasted sandwiches possibly decreased due to filling leakage and extra cleaning needed due to the sandwich no longer sealing at the end!

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Re: Food Room 101

Postby herbidacious » Tue Oct 06, 2020 3:03 pm

Years ago, I used to make little pizza canapes with base of sliced bread that had been rolling pinned flat. People couldn't guess what the base was. Probably brown sliced bread though...

I love bread and butter pudding - plenty of spice, and eaten cold with cream. I also like bread sauce - without cloves though.

I don't like summer pudding though. There is only so far I will go with soggy bread. (Which I don't think b&b pudding is, actually. The egg takes it somewhere beyond that.) I am not so keen on bread pudding either oddly. The texture is too homogenous I suppose.

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Re: Food Room 101

Postby Earthmaiden » Tue Oct 06, 2020 3:10 pm

The cheap Sainsburys sandwich toaster I've got is made for small square slices. I imagine it was designed either to fit bread from elsewhere or to cut costs because I've never seen any on sale quite that size in the UK. The toaster I had years ago was a reputable European make and standard sliced bread fitted.

I adore bread sauce. It is an essential food at Christmas which I really look forward to both with the main meal and cold for leftovers. The first time I went for Christmas at MIL's and discovered they didn't go in for it I could have cried with disappointment.

I agree re bread pudding Herbi, too stodgy. If I wanted a fruit cake I'd make one and I've rarely had tons of leftover bread.

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Re: Food Room 101

Postby herbidacious » Tue Oct 06, 2020 3:30 pm

Toasted sandwiches - proper Breville ones with sealed edges - always remind me of childhood, but also post grad. days. I got two free SCR lunches a week in the college where I had a regular job, and for the other two (I taught 4 days a week at one point) I'd pop across the road to 'my' college (where I was technically a student) for a toasted sandwich in the GCR.

We have a Breville lurking in a cupboard somewhere.

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Re: Food Room 101

Postby Earthmaiden » Tue Oct 06, 2020 3:38 pm

We had one in our wholefood cafe. We came up with some quite inventive veggie fillings (for that time). I can't think what they were or that they'd seem very inventive now.

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Re: Food Room 101

Postby cherrytree » Tue Oct 06, 2020 3:56 pm

The mention of summer pudding and soggy bread is interesting. It is why I use Angela Nilsen’s Ultimate Summer pudding recipe. Instead of lining the bowl, the bread is layered between generous helpings of fruit. My daughter in law detests soggy bread with a vengeance and yet she’s had seconds of this recipe. The pudding holds its shape beautifully and has a gorgeous magenta colour. I think it came from a BBC Good Food magazine.

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Re: Food Room 101

Postby Stokey Sue » Tue Oct 06, 2020 7:31 pm

I like bread and butter pudding, but usually have to ignore it on menus as people will "improve" it by adding syrupy things like jam or marmalade or even booze, I blame Anton Mosimann :D

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Re: Food Room 101

Postby Pommes » Tue Oct 06, 2020 8:18 pm

My biggest hates since childhood & are prime contenders, IMO, for room 101, are Trifle, Blancmange, & Marzipan.

I have now discovered that it is the almond essence in the marzipan that is the problem, as I love homemade frangipane tart. Similarly with all things mint, in that it is the artificial flavouring. Plus the fact that mint ice cream tastes like toothpaste, anyway!!

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Re: Food Room 101

Postby cherrytree » Tue Oct 06, 2020 8:51 pm

I quite agree Pommes. I wrote a similar thing on the Guardian website a couple of weeks ago in reply to the writers who said how much they hated marzipan. I use Felicity Cloake’s marzipan recipe which is in her ‘Perfect Simnel cake’ recipe which always works out beautifully and I omit the almond extract.

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Re: Food Room 101

Postby scullion » Wed Oct 07, 2020 12:50 pm

herbidacious wrote:We have a Breville lurking in a cupboard somewhere.

mine died a decade, or so, ago. the rubber covering the flex rotted and it didn't want to be undone to replace it. i miss it.

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Re: Food Room 101

Postby karadekoolaid » Wed Oct 07, 2020 2:03 pm

Years ago, I used to make little pizza canapes with base of sliced bread that had been rolling pinned flat


I´ve got a friend who does something similar. She rolls the bread flat and cuts each slice into 4. She then presses each little square into a muffin tin mould, fills them with (tinned) artichokes and cream cheese, and bakes them. Or sometimes, she makes a load and freezes them. You could probably fill them with almost anything and freeze them; a quick snack for a rainy day.

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Re: Food Room 101

Postby herbidacious » Wed Oct 07, 2020 2:11 pm

I am with you on both counts with the marzipan, Pommes.
I hated blancmange as a child too - I have not revisited it since.

I do like trifle though.

I don't like banana flavoured things. I have read that artificial banana flavouring is based on, and more similar to, Gros Michel bananas, than Cavendish. Not sure if this is true.

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Re: Food Room 101

Postby herbidacious » Wed Oct 07, 2020 2:15 pm

Cloves, if I haven't mentioned this. I think I am slightly allergic to them - at least in clove oil format, although that might be a sensitivity to essential oils in general.. When the person who sits next to me in the office (about 5ft away) uses lavendar oil, I get a sore throat. Ditto when mother put rose geranium oil on my pillows once.

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Re: Food Room 101

Postby Hickybank » Wed Oct 07, 2020 7:52 pm

herbidacious, with you on Banana'a don't think I am allergic to them just cannot even pick one up.f two 16 KG sacks of Back to bread, I have just had a delivery of two sixteen Kilo bags of bread flour, one strong white & one wholemeal also 500g bag dried yeast, that should keep me going for a bit

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Re: Food Room 101

Postby Earthmaiden » Wed Oct 07, 2020 9:30 pm

I think that both banana and pineapple flavourings often miss the mark quite badly.

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Re: Food Room 101

Postby PatsyMFagan » Thu Oct 08, 2020 11:41 am

Stokey Sue wrote:I like bread and butter pudding, but usually have to ignore it on menus as people will "improve" it by adding syrupy things like jam or marmalade or even booze, I blame Anton Mosimann :D


Having sampled AM's signature B&B pudding, I have to declare it absolutely delicious. :yum . If/when I make B&B pudding I always feel the need to embellish it ;) :oops:

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