Okay, this is the most recent Recipe Thread

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Since there didn't seem to be a recipe thread per se, I'll lead off with The Frugal Gourmet's recipe for Bubble-And-Squeak, with some comments. By popular demand among the Cellar's potato fiends...


BUBBLE-AND-SQUEAK

3 unpeeled potatoes, boiled
4 cups cabbage, chopped, blanched
1/2 med yellow onion, peeled, chopped
1 zucchini, grated or julienned
1 carrot, grated or julienned, optional
3 or more slices bacon, browned, chopped; reserve the fat
1/4 cup diced ham or Spam
fresh coarse-ground black pepper, to taste; salt ditto
English-y cheeses to top, optional

Fry the bacon and boil the potatoes, which may be cut up into thirds if you like; blanch the chopped cabbage in the potato water. Mash the potatoes into rough lumps with hands or the bent-wire type of potato masher. Just break them up some, don't reduce them to paste. Add everything else but the reserved bacon fat and stir together in a mixing bowl.

Heat a frying pan of any size that suits; nonstick ones are okay too. Put the bacon fat in the pan and press the potato mixture into the pan after it with a basting spoon or a spatula. Fry the resulting pressed layer of potato mixture until the bottom is golden brown, over medium-low to medium heat. The Froog says half an hour, but this depends on how thick you've loaded the pan. A too-heavy smell of frying potatoes says you're starting to burn it. Loosen it in the pan with the spatula, around the edges and underneath, clap an inverted plate on top of the frying pan and upend the whole thing so the bubble-and-squeak falls out on the plate. Top with a cheese you like, if desired; crumbled, grated, or sliced thin.

* * * *

I've tried things like adding red pepper, Italian seasoning, or minced garlic, and I'm not convinced they do anything for the dish. Seems like garlic should work; curry powder definitely doesn't. I've added mushrooms this time around -- maybe I need more mushrooms. As for Italian seasoning, perhaps the way to go is with some single green herb rather than a mixture. I suppose anything you like with ham might be considered, but the main seasoning it seems to really need is plenty of black pepper. I haven't tried any radical vegetarian revisions, though olive oil would suggest itself as working with the cabbage. I suppose bacon flavor TVP would make it.

The quantities given are really starting points; this stuff can be made by eye and if you've an extra for dinner you can toss in a little more of everything. Four cups of cabbage is about half a cabbage head. Once the ingredients are prepped, this is a mix-and-heat recipe.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

BOSTON BAKED BEANS in a CROCKPOT

When my maternal grandfather passed away, he left his baked-bean recipe for posterity. He made his in a very slow oven in a bean pot, topping it off with water if the beans started getting too dry. When I saw it cooked at 250 F, I said to myself, "Aha! Crockpot on high power!" Tried it that way and it worked fine -- don't even have to tend the pot. This is baked beans from scratch, and I haven't bought a can of Boston baked beans in over ten years. Doubles easily.

1 lb dried white beans, Navy or Great Northern
1 tsp baking soda
Water to soak, parboil, and to cover

The night before, soak the dried beans in the water. Then add the baking soda and parboil the beans in the soaking water until the bean skins break when blown on. This isn't terribly long, maybe as little as fifteen minutes. The water will foam up as the parboiling goes on; when the foam reaches the top of the pot you're parboiling in, check the beans by blowing on them. Skim off the foam, leave the beans in the water while you put into the Crock-pot:

1 sm onion
1 to 2 tsp dry mustard
2 TBSP brown sugar, or molasses and sugar to taste
(Grampa Rolie's original recipe included 1 tsp salt, but this DOESN'T need salt with the baking soda being in there already)
1/8 to 1/4 lb salt pork, cut in 1-inch pieces, per pound of dried beans, but no more than 1/4 lb or it goes too greasy. You can really hold back on the amount of salt pork.

All this goes in the bottom of the Crock-pot. Drain the beans and pour them in on the other ingredients. Add the bean water to just barely cover the beans, discarding any remainder. Cook on High for five to six hours. Around five hours, stir the potful well to check doneness and to break up some of the baked beans, thus making the sauce, then continue cooking for a while. Six hours total should really do it, but if it takes longer, it's not a problem. The beans at the top may have dried out a little, but just stir these back into the potful. At this point I check it for taste and usually end up adding some more molasses; I like baked beans rather sweet.

You can cook the beans all night and half the day on Low power, but remember to turn to High when you lift the lid to stir the beans. Don't cook it this long on High unless you really want Boston Baked Refrieds -- interesting, but it's because it's peculiar. Navy beans work well for this recipe, but I think Great Northerns actually have the real baked-bean texture; the Navy beans feel a little different.

Serve with fresh-baked bread, particularly brown bread of any sort.

There's supposed to be a vegetarian/Kosher edition of this dish in the Mediterranean, substituting olive oil for the salt pork. I haven't tried this.

[jinx]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

BOSTON BAKED BEANS in a CROCKPOT

What is the procedure if you are going to use a bean pot?

[Skunks]

<b>Cheap Lazy But Vaguely Pro-Vegetable College Student In A Burrito</b>
(tonight's dinner.)

- sweet onion
- broccoli
- tortillas (large, cheap, local & fresh, ideally)
- salsa
- refried beans
- cheese (opt.)

Slice onions, crudely chop onions. Leisurely sautee on medium in covered pan with olive oil and <a href="http://www.huyfong.com/frames/fr_sriracha.htm">cocksauce</a> until the broccoli is cooked to taste and the onions are brown. (Add broccoli later if you want it crisper.)

Dump the veggies into a bowl, add olive oil & a tortilla to the pan. Apply sliced/etc cheese, refried beans. Let it cook a while (still on medium-ish), then add the vegetables. Keep an eye on the bottom; ideally, it'll turn a light golden brown and turn crispy. Take it off before it gets too crisp to fold or roll, add salsa, consume.

If you're particularly lazy, try to use only one plate for the vegetable storage and burrito consumption.

[Trilby]

I threw some sausage, saurkraut, and dumplings (with a bit of water) in the crock pot, let it cook on high for 4 hours and served it over mashed potatoes. Mmmmmmmmmm.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Oven at 250 degrees, same amount of time, and check the beans every hour or so for drying out. They get too dry, add a little water to barely cover, stir. Everything else is as above.

The crockpot will consume less energy than heating an entire oven, but you can get more out of the oven if you slow-cook some other stuff in there along with the beans. This is good in the winter, as the hot stove will take care of some of the heating of your house, perhaps all of it if your place is well insulated and easy to heat.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

LEMON MERINGUE PIE, the condensed milk recipe

There are several ways to make lemon meringue pie. We've never found any others that could match this one. It's my mother's slight modification of the recipe found on cans of condensed milk; over the years she's tweaked it a bit. The secret to a lemon meringue pie that will blow your guests' socks off is the homemade graham cracker crust; storebought graham pie shells just aren't the same. We like the pie pretty tart now that we're all grown up and don't have kid-type sweet tooth any more, so a little more lemon and less sugar will doubtless suit maturer palates. Doubles easily; you can go from a nine-inch pyrex pieplate to a fourteener.

Heat oven to 375 degrees.

Graham cracker crust: mix together
3/4 stick of Butter, melted
20 squares Graham Crackers (one of those packages inside the box), crushed to crumbs. Flog 'em up in a food processor or crush with rolling pin between layers of wax paper. Fresh crackers are best.
1/4 cup Sugar (you may be able to reduce this quite a bit, or cut it with Splenda)

Press mixture into 9" pie pan. Bake at 375 degrees for 8 minutes, cool on rack.


Filling: while pie shell is cooling, mix together, then immediately put in pie shell
1/2 cup Lemon Juice
juice of 1 Lime (optional)
1 tsp Grated Lemon Rind (more if desired)
a little Grated Lime Peel (optional)
1 14oz can Condensed Milk (not evaporated! that's for tea!)
1/4 tsp (heaping) Trader Joe's Trader Darwin's (tm) Vitamin C Crystals (optional. Now the pie is good for you, at about 250% of RDA per slice)

Mix everything but the condensed milk together first. The minute the condensed milk hits the lemon juice it's going to start to set up. Mix together quickly and immediately pour into pie shell. Allow to set while you prepare the meringue. Mom doesn't put the yolks of the separated eggs into the pie filling as the original recipe has it, on the grounds that uncooked egg parts may not be safe and she dislikes the texture; she reserves them for the morrow's scrambled eggs.


Raise oven heat to 425 degrees.

Meringue:
3 Egg Whites
1/2 tsp Cream of Tartar
1/4 cup Sugar
pinch of salt

Beat Whites w/Cream of Tartar until stiff peaks form. Beat in Sugar, Salt. Pile onto pie filling, bake at 425 degrees for 5 minutes, until peaks start to brown or meringue is just getting golden. Let cool, refrigerate. Several hours fridgeing is better than just one hour.

This pie doesn't travel very well. At least, the meringue doesn't -- automobile vibrations seem to start breaking the meringue down into a sweet eggy liquid -- a little of this moistening the crumb crust is nice, but a flood of it makes for a sticky mess. Basically, make it where you're going to eat it if at all possible.

[Skunks]

Tonight has been a double feature. Starting at around 10:30, I made a batch of <h1>Woo's Blue</h1>
Kingston Spar 42.0
Silica 27.0
Ball Clay 13.0
Whiting 18.0
--
Red Iron Oxide 4.0
Rutile 4.0
Bentonite 2.0

Mix gently (wear a respirator), add <i>to</i> water (oops) & sieve repeatedly, about 9 times.

Mixing 300g plus cleanup took me about 2 hours, so when I got home, I made myself some <h1>Nutritional Yeast on Toast</h1>

- Toast some bread.
- Apply vegan butter of your preference (Soy Garden, Earth Balance, etc)
- Sprinkle with nutritional yeast, pepper (opt), salt (opt)



never said the recipes had to be food. ;)

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Same idea, from bottom to top:

Whole grain toast, butter, Vegemite. Vegemite beats its Canadian cousin Marmite.

[Trilby]

Delish corn casserole dish I'm making for T/giving dinner:

(Not for dieters)

1 can (15 0z) creamed corn
1 can (15 0z) whole kernal corn, drained
1 cup buttermilk
1 stick melted butter
2 eggs, whipped
1 package JiffyBrand corn muffin mix

Spray 2Qt casserole dish with non-stick spray

Mix all ingredients together
Pour into casserole

Bake, uncovered, 350X45 min. to an hour

I cook for an hour--I like it brown and crispy.

Amazingly easy and really

[melidasaur]

Originally Posted by Brianna

Delish corn casserole dish I'm making for T/giving dinner:

(Not for dieters)

1 can (15 0z) creamed corn
1 can (15 0z) whole kernal corn, drained
1 cup buttermilk
1 stick melted butter
2 eggs, whipped
1 package JiffyBrand corn muffin mix

Spray 2Qt casserole dish with non-stick spray

Mix all ingredients together
Pour into casserole

Bake, uncovered, 350X45 min. to an hour

I cook for an hour--I like it brown and crispy.

Amazingly easy and really

Sounds totally awesome - I may have to give it a try!

[busterb]

Originally Posted by Brianna

Delish corn casserole dish I'm making for T/giving dinner:

(Not for dieters)

1 can (15 0z) creamed corn
1 can (15 0z) whole kernal corn, drained
1 cup buttermilk
1 stick melted butter
2 eggs, whipped
1 package JiffyBrand corn muffin mix

Spray 2Qt casserole dish with non-stick spray

Mix all ingredients together
Pour into casserole

Bake, uncovered, 350X45 min. to an hour

I cook for an hour--I like it brown and crispy.

Amazingly easy and really

I had something like this as a kid, but had greenpeas in it. only way I'd eat the damnn things. Almost sure no one has Jiff in thoses days, so must have been bread crumbs. Anyway I'll give it a go. Maybe a litle bell pepper and celery? What do you think? And the sour cream

[limey]

One cup breadcrumbs, 2 tbsp parsley, pinch of dried thyme, grated rind of half a lemon, 2 oz melted butter, 1/2 tbsp lemon juice mix it all together, add a little beaten egg to bind.
1lb monkfish tail - remove the bone down the middle and stuff with the above stuffing.
Lay a little proscuitto on top.
Wrap it all in foil and bake at 190C for 40 minutes.
Deeeelishus!

[wolf]

Do any of the Brits hereabouts have a really good recipe for Bubble and Squeak?

[Clodfobble]

Bri, that's a classic recipe in my husband's family, except they use 8 oz. of sour cream instead of buttermilk.