Be Excellent To Each Other

I used to hate celery but now we get through loads, I think I had a particularly awesome Thai dish that had it in and it turned me.

Cream of Sum Yung Gai.

*glargle*

Photos of Thanksgiving!

What is "posh salt and pepper"?

It looks like practice for Christmas dinner, which is a good thing. Though two cakes seems extravagant. Also, I think at least fifteen types of potato and some yorkshire puddings are needed at Christmas.

I think posh salt and pepper is not shaken or ground onto the dinner like some crazed animal, but shaken in a single pile from a dainty spoon to give one very salty bacon-wrapped sausage and leave the rest unseasoned.

Hope you had a nice meal, Richard - was it just the two of you or were there other people helping to work their way through the food mountain? One cake per person.

Pigs in blankets are without doubt my favourite thing about Christmas. I was pretty drugged up last Christmas and don't really remember much of the end of December so I really can't wait for Christmas this year

Normal (well, fresh-ground, of course) salt and pepper, but served in Danielle's incredibly posh lead crystal cellars with teeny-tiny silver spoons.

It's actually quite different, apart from the roasted turkey (and even then, most Americans do things we don't, like brining it). The only other element that was the same were the pigs in blankets, but those were my own addition and wouldn't be served normally[1].

Thanksgiving only has one type of potato[2], for example, and Danielle had no idea what a Yorkshire pudding was until I made her eat one.

Danielle got her new mixer today and was trying it out, so she made a few different things. That coffee cake is with my in work today for my colleagues to eat.

Nope, just the two of us! Lots of leftovers in the fridge is an important Thanksgiving tradition too. The meal is usually served at lunchtime and the leftovers grazed off throughout the rest of the day (and over the long weekend, in fact.)

I might do a post later with each of the things in that I cooked.

[1] at least, in the Mid-West; different bits of America seem to have quite different traditions.
[2] but then so does my Christmas and Sunday dinners; I fail to see how anything can top roast potaotoes.

My yank friend wished me a 'Happy T Day' yesterday. I wrote back saying that I always enjoy Thursdays.


Your meal looked awesome, Doc.

You have my Axe.

Mashed / boiled potatoes are so boring in comparison.

It's potatoes btw

Garlic roast potatoes are one of the best inventions ever.

So you didn't attempt the turkey fryer? Slightly disappointed, though I wouldn't be totally surprised to find out that they were banned over here. They sound a special kind of American crazy.


Oh, never top, but compliment. Roast potatoes, hasselback garlic and rosemary potatoes, mash and some new potatoes, sautéed. I like to make the mash the day before and pipe it into little walnut-whip like spirals with a star piping bag, then put them in the oven the next day - make them nice and crispy on the outside but fluffy on the inside. Nomnomnom.

So for people here who make Christmas dinner, what soup do you do? My parents always do Lentil and Bacon so I have stepped in this year and said I'll do the soup. Going to make Sweet Potato, Red Pepper and flavour it with some chilli. Does anyone have a good recipe? I think I'll have a trial run sometime int he next few weeks. My mum has said she doesn't think she likes that soup though (although I'm convinced she'll eat it and be happy) so I'm also thinkin about making my favourite Wild Mushroom soup as a back up.

I, oddly, dislike pigs in blankets.
I like bacon and I like sausages, but... Nope.
I mean, I'll eat them. But I'd rather have them seperatly.

...Soup?

You've lost me.

Soup? That'd take up room for actual food!

I can't eat soup, myself, Two spoonfuls and I feel absolutely stuffed. don't know why, but I've never been able to eat sop without it making me feel full immediately. But, I have never thought of it as part of the Christmas meal, to be honest. I don't think we were ever served soup when I was younger, either.

I'm interested to hear if lots of people do serve soup as part of the Christmas meal.

...WTF?

I bet you'd eat Miranda Hart if she was in a blanket, you sick fuck.

Can I make a Christmas meal thread?

Dunno, man. But I'd much rather have sausages and bacon than sausages wrapped in bacon.

Only if you don't get confused and put stuff about soup in it.

No. We're running out of threads and must ration them.

Damn, I forgot I was going to make that soup.

Can you pick up Tom yum paste at a supermarket?

Also: Christmassy!

Lentil soup or gtfaftk

PS. As is traditional I am inviting myself round to eat the rest of your turkey after I finish Christmas dinner at my maw's/granny's (No managed round the last few years, but still...)

I make it a lot.

Started adding in chopped peppers and also found a lemongrass in oil paste that tastes great and keeps well (Barts - Tesco sells it ) and jars of shredded Kaffir Lime leaves too, use a tablespoon full of each.

Soup is ace, especially the French Onion soup I had at my favourite local restaurant. Their Wild Mushroom one is nice, too. But! Soup on Christmas Day?? I never even finish my main meal, so any starters would be a daft choice.

Next year, I'm skipping this malarkey and eating my Christmas dinner somewhere else. It's £60 a head for a four-course meal in the restaurant I mentioned, which is stonkingly good value for the quality they put out, and will avoid the hassle of having to cook the bloody thing myself. I like cooking, but Christmas just stresses me out.

Yeah, Tescos sell it anyway.

We had a Soup starter for Christmas last year. Just a small amount of butternut squash and carrot to get the stomach rumbling.

What does that even mean!


As is traditional we will be playing board games and drinking wine. Although we are going to try and not stay up too late as we're making our pilgramage through to Fife on Boxing Day morning.

Get the fuck away from the kitchen. I'm bringing round some mental soup in a flask if that's the kind of nonsense you're up to these days.

Excellent, I'll look forward to smashing everyone with our l337 mindreading "Cranium" skills then

Last night I made calzone with some left overs from the fridge. It was damned tasty.

I had a cereal bowl of bolognese left over from a couple of nights ago, so that went in, with some chopped mushrooms, a load of mozzarella and some smoked sausage.

I made a couple of large pizza bases, put everything in, folded them over, glazed with egg and 20 mins at 200C we had two huge tasty pasties!

Calzone is the balls.

Especially if there are meatballs in there.

I made Calzone once with leftover Chicken curry (Rogan Josh I think) and mozzerella.

It was one of the greatest days of my life.

So, part of my Thanksgiving dinner then: cheesy potatoes.


Cheesy potatoes by PenLlawen, on Flickr

Take one pound of shredded potato. In America, they sell this chilled for making hash browns and rostis with; I couldn't find that here so I had to resort to frozen hash browns defrosted in the microwave then shredded with a fork. That worked fine, although I was dubious. Put them in a big bowl. Edit: Mimi points out you can just shred raw potato with the largest grade holes on your grater, if you have time (I didn't but I didn't say that).

Add one tin of Campbell's condensed cream of mushroom soup, 4oz of grated sharp mature cheddar, 115g of melted butter (one stick in American parlance), about 200ml of sour cream, plenty of pepper and a little salt. EDIT: and "one cup" of finely diced onion, I forgot that. Works out to about half a largish one. Mix well, transfer to a baking dish, about 9"x7".

Bake for 45min or so at 190degC, until the top is good and crispy (the grease from the butter and cheese rises up and fries the top layer of potato!). It's incredibly rich; these proportions would serve 4-6 people.

Yes, I cook in a bizarre mix of ounces and grams now. Stupid American recipe sheets.

"And serve in a dog's bowl"

I might try making that tonight.

That's not a calzone it's a pizza turnover. A calzone is fried.

That's not even slightly true.

Last night I had Philly cheese steaks. This consists of a piece of cheap steak (blade for me only about £1.50) sliced as thin as you can get it with a really shit knife that won't hold its edge even though it's fucking mental sharp after about two months.

you then fry those very very thin pieces in a pan and when they're cooked you throw in some cheese. Now there are two types of cheese steak. There is a true Philly cheese steak and there is the New York bastardised one. The Philly cheese steak uses white american cheese. The closest match in colour and flavour you will get here is the white Dairylea slices. The New York fucked up one uses squeezy cheese (the horrible yellow gunk).

OK, once the steak is cooked you throw cheese slices over the top and make sure all the steak is covered. Then get a wooden spoon and work the cheese into the steak until it's all bound in sticky gooey love. Then you simply put it into a nice semi soft semi crusty roll and choose your topping. Styles vary but they go like this.

1. The Buffalo cheese steak. Once done you drown it in Buffalo sauce or you can use Louisiana hot sauce (bright orange, makes you sweat).

2. The regular. Either plain or with ketchup.

3. The pizza steak. Just add marinara.

Yeah, but I'd like to hear more about fried Pizza.

That sounds rather nice!

I sadly missed thanksgiving, though we were invited to a friends celebration, and I was looking forward to it, had great food last year.

A true real calzone is fried. A bastardised yankee or british one is baked.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/bake ... index.html

See how it covers both? however, the true original one came from Sicily and was fried. In the USA the immigrant Italians will call a baked one a pizza turnover. This is so the real Italians and people who know that a calzone is fried will know what they're getting.

No, it isn't. There is a similar item that's fried, but it ain't a calzone.

They do them here in chip shops. Basically, your cheapest supermarket refrigerated pizza, usually cheese and onion, folded in half and deep fried for 5 minutes. I have heard tell that they will batter it as well if you ask.

You seem to have missed some ingredients out of your cheese steak.

Also, squeeze cheese is awesome.

You go, man.

There's a place on Aigburth Road in Liverpool that claims to be the 'home of Phillie Steak'

"Fried versions typically filled with tomato and mozzarella, are made in Puglia and are called Panzerotti"

Quite.