Be Excellent To Each Other

Jesus, there's a lot of food talk on here today. I'm starving.

I'm going for lunch!

I'm eating!

Hang on. Wasn't it a very well known fact on Beex that Wikipedia was full of shit?

Funny how when I posted a link from there it was dismissed as bollocks.

I was married to an Italian Sicilian for ten years. Her parents were born in Sicily. I lived in an Italian community for about six of those ten years.

So I will take their word for it.

Actually, it's the 'New Home', but still...

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&sourc ... .73,,2,2.5

Yup full of shit. The cunts can't even spell my feckin name right

I'd be very interested to see what their interpretation is !

Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. Usually it isn't.

Italian American != American, and while we're at it, in terms of food terminology, Sicilian != Italian either. Consider the enormous numbers of differing names and differing ingredients for the "fried ground beef in tomato sauce" dish usually called Bolognese in the UK.

And calzone isn't Sicilian, it's from Naples. It'd be like asking MaliA about the correct way to create a Lancashire Hotpot.

There's an awful lot of "!=" going on lately.

Plus, anyone considering a frozen three-bird roast from the master butcher's at Iceland for Christmas lunch has surrendered their Knowing About Food card in my book. Although at least JC didn't call it a "turducken", a horrendous deep South portmaneau that doesn't do the dish's Edwardian heritage justice.

It also has 'turd' in it.

That's what Ryu shouts when he curls off his Sunday morning shite.

My eyes are watering at my own post, is that wrong?

Spray some air-freshener. Or open a window.

LOLpish

Here's a couple of Calzone recipes & funnily enough they use an oven.
http://www.alimentipedia.it/Ricette_Ita ... polle.html
http://blog.saporideisassi.it/2010/03/c ... -pugliese/

Here's a couple of recipes for Sicilian Panzerotti (fried)
http://www.gustoblog.it/post/4249/la-ve ... i-pugliesi
http://cosacucino.style.it/oggi-preparo ... ic=ricetta

Burttank's Fascist Operatic Arch Enemy.

FUCKING YES!!!

I like his headwand cannon.

hahah awesome. you've still got it, z

Look at his expression

Next bit of my Thanksgiving dinner:

Home-made bread stuffing by PenLlawen, on Flickr
Warning: I've made this twice, and both times, it's come out far too salty. I think we have the recipe written down wrong. It's fine apart from that. I think it just needs to use unsalted butter.

Here's the recipe as I have it, with my notes in blue.

Someone come up with an Inception pun name for it. I'm rubbish.

Celery can be used as a seasoning akin to salt and has a similar effect on the palate. Also there's quite a bit of salt in it. I'd halve the salt content and forget about the salted butter being a problem.

[Edit] and re-reading there's a lot of celery in there. It's saltiness might be attributable to the fact that it's supposed to be baked stuffed in the bird, as well.

I did; first time I obeyed the recipe as printed, last night I halved the salt and it was still too much.

I've edited my original post. Don't know if that could be that much of an issue, but stuffing and the ingredients of said stuffing must be affected by being cooked in the bird.

I'd try removing all the salt seeing as there's so much celery in it.

This has occured to me; maybe the salt is washed through by fat leeching out of the turkey, or ends up soaking into the meat. Danielle says her sister has cooked it separately but I wonder if she varies the recipe for that.

Another thing is that it's baking in a dry atmosphere so reducing for want of a better expression which is likely to attribute to it's saltiness, no?

Thanksgiving post III:

Roasted butternut squash and sweet potato; roasted sausages wrapped in bacon by PenLlawen, on Flickr
This was pure pre-made cheating on my part. I cooked this meal as a surprise for Danielle, who (until I came home at 6pm laden with shopping bags) had no idea she was getting a Thanksgiving. As such I was very much against the clock for prep time. I cut corners by buying some bacon-wrapped sausages pre-made (from M&S) and a mix of squash and sweet potato, pre-diced, pre-seasoned, and in a little ready-to-roast foil tray (again, M&S).

I considered making a sweet potato and squash mash, which I think would be more normal for Danielle's dinner. However at the time I wasn't sure if I was making mashed potatoes or not and I didn't want two mashed root vegetable elements.

The sausages are not a traditional American thing, that was a token British addition because I freaking love them.

Danielle did comment it was a bit dry, perhaps she meant "compared to when it's baked in a turkey". Perhaps a modest amount of boiling water added would help.

Is there a reason why you can't just shred some potatoes for this step? I've made hash browns and rostis before, and have always just grated potatoes on the larger of the two grater gauges.

Yes. Time See my later post about why I cheated on the roasted veg too. Because I was in work, and surprising Danielle, I couldn't do any prep until 6pm, and I wanted to eat sometime before 9! You're quite right though.

Oh, OK. I would have thought the 120 seconds or so that it takes to grate a few potatoes would be less of a faff than defrosting and dissecting a load of hash browns, but I was more asking to find out if it was for the added fat/onion content in frozen hash browns and if it was done that wa for teh flavour.

Looks like a nice meal, though the amount of butter, etc would make it very filling, I presume.

KaPow!

In hindsight, I think you're right, and I don't know why I didn't think of that myself

Yeah, most of it is still in my fridge!

Too busy with the "!=".

I lived a 5 minute walk from there for 4 years. Never went.

Thanksgiving IV:


Roast turkey by PenLlawen, on Flickr

Again, due to time constraints, I needed something that would cook quickly. But it had to be turkey. I'd originally settled on a thigh portion -- preferably bone-in -- but my butcher didn't have any so I made do with the smallest (1.5kg) crown I could. Nothing complicated: I brushed it with melted garlic butter, seasoned, put some streaky bacon across it, and roasted it for about two hours at 190 deg C (until my meat thermometer said it was done). It rested for about half an hour covered in foil before being served. Done!

That turkey looks beeeeeeeeeeyutifuw lovely.

So, my Thanksgiving spread, summing up:


The spread by PenLlawen, on Flickr

Was made up of:

• Cheesy potatoes.
• Bread stuffing with onions, celery, sage, and thyme.
• Roasted butternut squash and sweet potato (with bonus pigs-in-blankets).
• Roasted turkey.
• Salt and pepper in very posh cellars.
• Gravy (no picture) -- I cheated on this too; bought some Asda Extra Special premade stuff, enriched it with the turkey's roasting juices (with most of the fat skimmed off) and a teaspoon of caramalised onion chutney to sweeten and thicken it. It was very good though.
• Appropriate table decorations.
• Two cakes (no picture): one of Danielle's Grandma's coffee cake (confusingly, this is cake to be eaten with coffee, not with coffee in it) and one of vanilla sponge topped with custard and Chantilly cream. Actually, there's a pic of the coffee cake on flickr. It's made like a sweetened bread dough, allowed to rise then pounded down, with holes poked in it before baking and evaporated milk poured into the holes.

Prep started when I came in from work at about 5:50pm and we ate at just before 9pm.

I like that you basically "pimped" the hash browns and the gravy

Rather like my Bishops finger pie. Hold on, no that is the right way.

I'd let you cook it all for me, looks and sounds like it was awesome.

I saw an interesting method for cooking turkey the other day - basically whack it in the oven for a really long time ( 8 hours, or something stupid ) at a really low heat - about 70c , constantly basting to stop it drying out. Then up really high for 30 mins to colour it and crisp the skin. Someone should give that a go, but there's no way I spending an entire day cooking a turkey, only to find it's still raw and cold inside, but as dry and tough as an old boot outside.

That's low-rent sous-vide cooking, but less reliable, I'd say.

I am making a casserole.

Browned the beef and onions, added the gravy + red wine. Its now in the Aga. I will start adding veggies in about an hour (otherwise they disintegrate). I think the Aga is currently running about 160 degrees so I'm allowing 4 hours in total.