Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot eating & cooking in Northwest England)
414
Well, you could taste the orange and cream that went into it. Texture was like a light mousse. Mrs H says she’s glad to have made it - but it’s not really one to repeat.
If you’re interested in historic recipes, here’s one for “Gingerette Pudding” that I used in my book about food during the period of the Great War. Recipe is taken from a 1915 publication “Thrift for Troubled Times”:
4oz suet
4oz treacle
8oz flour
1oz sugar
Juice & rind of 1 lemon
!tsp ground ginger
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
0.5 gill of milk
Mix the dry ingredients then add the treacle and milk. Put into a pudding basin, cover with greased paper and steam for 3 hours.
I have cooked this one and it was OK (which is more than can be said for a couple of other recipes that went into the book)
Thanks!! I’m always curious of historic recipes. It is fascinating to know how people before us had their meals compared to people now. For example, I never heard of suet and need to look it up. The other recipe you talked about oak “soak” water.
Sunshine summery day today! My long bike ride was literally an obstacle course between - high school marching band situation in central park (seriously?!), a few suicidal tourists with selfie sticks stopping in the bike lane, a street fair closure, and the usual dimwits double parked in the bike lane.
I found some decent looking hothouse tomatoes from canada of all places and decided fatoosh was in order!
Well, kind of. Added in cucumber, scallions, cilantro, and some bell pepper. And apparently didn’t take a pic of it all mixed together with the vinegrette …
We had another excellent dinner at Laurel and Sage in Montclair Sunday night. I had a special of melt in your mouth pork belly with sweet potato puree, homemade kimchi, pineapple dijon glacé, and sautéed spinach. Mrs. P had the awesome lightly tempura battered soft shell crab with corn pudding. For appetizers we had the always refreshing local roasted baby beets salad with goat cheese, spiced pecans, candied bacon in a banyuls vinaigrette. We also shared the colossal lump crab cake with granny smith apple slaw and a green peppercorn tartar. The pork belly went great with a 2016 Adage gigondas.
Finally - trial is over! waiting on verdict now, jury’s first full day out is tomorrow. No more overtime for me - it was a nice paycheck but I was happy to have a full free weekend again.
Dinner was chorizo and egg tacos, made with red chilis and onions, and a little grated jack cheese melted in. Also made black beans with browned bell peppers and onions blended in, topped with cotija and cilantro. Yucateco habanero salsa for me, and crema at the table.
Also made NYT’s recipe for butter chicken, which will be tomorrow night’s dinner.
Came back from a wonderful trip to Santa Fe a few weeks ago. Today I finally broke out the bag of “medium” red chili powder we got at the farmers market and made a pot of red chili sauce. I froze a few jars and used some tonight to marinate chicken for tacos. DH was thankful I didn’t use the “hot” powder.
Raining again all the weekend, it jeopardised the already delayed gardening schedule.
Last night was red squid paella, improvised the last minute by pulling out the book Paella by Alberto Herráiz. I mixed 2 portion of different stock, fish and shrimp made last week. Cooked with some finely chopped tomatoes of Mutti Polpa. Small red squid was cooked before the rice, and put aside, and reintegrated with the cooked rice for a few minutes before serving. The fish stock was quite spicy, so I didn’t add chili. It was so good that, we nearly finished the whole paella of 40 cm (15.5")! I liked especially the slightly burnt crust.
Thanks. I like the white squid more, the red ones are common here, personally I don’t feel much difference, except the red colour can be an off if you are into plating, it makes everything a bit reddish. Some said they are more firm, but I don’t really feel that. I came across more smaller sizes red squid, so I even have a feeling that they are thinner in “skin”. The white seems more “meaty”.
2 Likes
Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot eating & cooking in Northwest England)
425
Yes, it is.
I’d had an interest in the war for some time and had researched the lives and deaths of the men commemorated on our borough’s various war memorials - about 3000 names. That led me on to writing a couple of battalion histories of local units. And then I thought “Hey, I can combine my two enthusiasms here - food and the war.” So, I spent about 18 months researching and writing . And then had to convince the publisher to take it up which, eventually, they did. It proved to be quite a crowded market at the time, including a similar one from a nationally known military historian so sales were never fantastic - but it was fun to do. Whilst the book mainly focuses on the British experience, I do also draw on a number of sources for other units - Canadian, American and Australian, mainly.
By the by, I end each chapter with three recipes from the time.
Asparagus season is here, so time to enjoy it every which way we can manage. This is steamed fresh asparagus with garganelli pasta in a light cream sauce that I tinged with fresh tomato. A slice of prosciutto shredded on top, to be mixed in after serving.
I took this photo before we grated Parmesan cheese on our plates. This dish came together fast and tasted like springtime.
@paryzer, I saw that feast your friend cooked on your Instagram. We are still talking about it at our house. Wow!
Ramadan crept up on me this year. Haven’t been able to post regularly on HO like last year. Just posting a quick (poorly edited) pic on Instagram every day has felt hard. Some highlights…
Earlier in Ramadan we had prepared our iftar (breaking fast meal). Rice, fried chicken, papadum, mango frozen yogurt, and cucumber.
Then our doorbell rings and it’s a our neighbors who have this annual tradition of dropping off an iftar for every Muslim family in the neighborhood. Pakora, samosa, keema patty, chicken patty, kheer, dates, chocolate chip cookies, gulab jamun, chana chaat, biryani, dahi baray, and fruit chaat.
