Tortilla? Soften onions in the pan, add diced cooked potato, once they begin to brown a little, pour over beaten egg. Once set on the bottom, finish under a hot grill.
That's the basic, but obviously you can add cooked veg, slices of tomato, chopped ham, cheese - whatever you have knocking about.
Also red lentils cook to a mush quite quickly and can form the basis of various bakes or loaves. I used to a vaguely Mexican one with breadcrumbs, chilli and a great deal of cheese.
Which brings me to vegetarian chilli. Or ratatouille. Or shakshuka.
Quick cook polenta made up with vegetable stock, spread on baking tray, topped with parmesan goes well with a lot of things eg mushrooms, roasted tomatoes.
Red lentils are also great in dhal, which just needs some rice (steaming it in a small amount of water rather than having to drain it like pasta means less strain on your wrists) and maybe some raita or chutney alongside. Baked risotto is another good option that doesn't need stirring like normal risotto, I think Delia has a recipe for a mushroom one.
Have you considered getting an electronic pressure cooker? They are excellent for reducing time and faff spent on cooking, and are better for vegetarian food than slow cookers. You can cook beans in bulk from dried in under an hour for example, then freeze in portions for later use. Just use a wooden spoon or similar for releasing the pressure so you don't need to get near the steam. You can also use them as slow cookers and rice cookers.
I made shrimp and grits for supper tonight, which makes me think of and miss Rossweisse. (Of course, given her Charleston roots, she called the dish hominy and shrimp.)
@ Nick Tamen, Are you sure you and Miss Rosseisse were speaking of the same thing? Southern girl here thinks not. I eat both hominy and grits and they are two different things. Both are made of corn but hominy is a dried large corn kernel that has been treated with akali, while grits are ground and fine.https://leonbistro.com/hominy-vs-grits/
@ Nick Tamen, Are you sure you and Miss Rosseisse were speaking of the same thing? Southern girl here thinks not. I eat both hominy and grits and they are two different things. Both are made of corn but hominy is a dried large corn kernel that has been treated with akali, while grits are ground and fine.https://leonbistro.com/hominy-vs-grits/
Yes, I’m sure we were talking about the same thing; we discussed it more than once.
I know what you (and I) mean by “hominy,” which I love. But it’s a Charleston peculiarity that what the rest of the South calls “grits,” they traditionally call, or at least until a few decades ago called, “hominy”—short for “hominy grits,” because they traditionally made their grits from hominy.
Thing about grits is people have no issue with cheese, stock and gravy, but when you tell someone you do that with porridge they throw up their hands in horror.
Yes, as the article says, polenta and grits are similar and in some ways interchangeable, but not the same. (Contrary to that article, while white grits are more common, yellow grits can be found in the American South. Our favorite brand of grits are yellow grits, milled at a near-by mill and can only be bought directly from the mill.)
Thing about grits is people have no issue with cheese, stock and gravy, but when you tell someone you do that with porridge they throw up their hands in horror.
Gravy? The only kind of gravy I’ve ever encountered on grits (or would want to encounter) is red-eye gravy, and that’s only if country ham is accompanying the grits.
Meanwhile, it’s probably 50-50 whether cheese will be in grits around here. And the standard way make grits, at least in my experience, is just with water, or with with an equal mixture of water and milk, unless they’re for a dish like shrimp and grits or a baked grits casserole.
Buy ready grated cheese for the cauliflower cheese? Grating things is indeed hard work for arthritic hands - stirring less so.
I’d also suggest you get a perching stool (i.e. a stool high enough for you to sit on it while doing tasks on the hob) unless your kitchen is too narrow for this to be a safe option.
You can, of course, buy packet sauce mixes, but as far as I recall they still require stirring or whisking and I don’t personally find them any easier.
Every time we mention grits, I remember our Shipmate G.R.I.T.S. (Girls raised in the South)!
The first solid food Daughter-Unit ate was grits. Her eyes went wide, and she tried to take the spoon from me to make sure she could get that awesome food in her mouth!
Where I grew up, there was no place that sold grits. My Floridian mama kept asking the grocer to please order some for her, and he finally did. Everyone else found out what a treat it was, and soon, we had a northern grits loving area.
Hominy/masa harina/nixtimalised corn can be purchased in the UK but only generally at specialised stores (online, the Sous Chef website is a good source and also stocks other Mexican/Southwestern US ingredients). Even the corn tortillas in supermarkets here are a mix of corn and wheat flour, the gluten free ones are made from other starches like sweet potato. As you may have seen from the reaction to the Mexican episode of Bake Off, Mexican food in the UK is...not good. We just don't have the cultural references for it.
Just had grits this morning for the first time and thought of y'all, and Rossweisse too. Not bad. Though they were fine as they sat, no need for the extra butter they gave me. (And why did they taste salty when the waitress assured me no salt went into them? We puzzled over that.)
@Puzzler I would recommend subscribing to Meera Sodha's column in The Guardian - it's vegan rather than vegetarian but would be easy to add eggs or dairy to. There is a recent recipe for Malaysian dhal which sounds good. Rachel Roddy also has an excellent and very vegetarian-friendly column, focusing on Roman food (so lots of beans and hearty peasant food).
Just had grits this morning for the first time and thought of y'all, and Rossweisse too. Not bad. Though they were fine as they sat, no need for the extra butter they gave me. (And why did they taste salty when the waitress assured me no salt went into them? We puzzled over that.)
Hmmmm. I never salt grits, since we both have to be mindful of sodium intake. But least here, grits in a restaurant that weren’t cooked in salted water would be very odd indeed.
But in any event, glad you had a chance to try them, and that you liked them—or at least found them “not bad.”
Ah! That explains a lot. (I gave up halfway through because I found them incredibly filling. I gave them to Mr Lamb and addressed myself to the rest of my rapidly cooling breakfast.)
@Puzzler I would recommend subscribing to Meera Sodha's column in The Guardian - it's vegan rather than vegetarian but would be easy to add eggs or dairy to. There is a recent recipe for Malaysian dhal which sounds good. Rachel Roddy also has an excellent and very vegetarian-friendly column, focusing on Roman food (so lots of beans and hearty peasant food).
Another fan of Meera Sodha's columns for the Guardian's new vegan series. I made the Malaysian dal a couple of weeks ago, leaving out the star anise and using more lemongrass and tamarind as well as some freshly ground coconut. Delicious and adaptable recipe.
This one is especially for Lamb Chopped - but I hope any meat eaters who enjoy sweet and sour taste tries it.
Tangy Slow Cooker Pork Shoulder Roast
4 lb bone in Pork Shoulder (Boston Butt)
2 tsp Kosher salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
2 Tbsp olive oil
12 cloves of garlic smashed
2 bay leaves
1 onion cut into wedges
3/4 a cup of firmly packed brown sugar
3/4 a cup of salt reduced soy sauce
1/2 a cup of white or white wine vinegar
2 Tbsp flour
2 Tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
Sprinkle the roast with salt and pepper. Cook in a large frying pan over med to high heat, 3 minutes on each side until lightly browned.
Transfer to slow cooker and add garlic, bay leaves and onion.
Whisk together brown sugar, soy sauce and vinegar until sugar dissolves.
Pour mixture over pork and cook on low for for 8 hours.
Then transfer the pork to a serving platter .and cover with foil to keep warm.
Pour cooking liquid through a sieve into a medium saucepan - discard solids.
Bring the liquid to the boil over a medium to high heat and boil for 8 minutes.
Spoon 1/4 a cup of cooking liquid into a small bowl and whisk in flour and lemon juice until the mixture is smooth.
Return flour mixture to pan and boil, whisking constantly for 1 to 2 minutes or until slightly thickened.
Serve sauce over the pork.
After I had typed this out I searched and found the recipe on a site called Southern Living. It can be printed off from there too.
This one is especially for Lamb Chopped - but I hope any meat eaters who enjoy sweet and sour taste tries it.
Tangy Slow Cooker Pork Shoulder Roast
4 lb bone in Pork Shoulder (Boston Butt)
2 tsp Kosher salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
2 Tbsp olive oil
12 cloves of garlic smashed
2 bay leaves
1 onion cut into wedges
3/4 a cup of firmly packed brown sugar
3/4 a cup of salt reduced soy sauce
1/2 a cup of white or white wine vinegar
2 Tbsp flour
2 Tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
Sprinkle the roast with salt and pepper. Cook in a large frying pan over med to high heat, 3 minutes on each side until lightly browned.
Transfer to slow cooker and add garlic, bay leaves and onion.
Whisk together brown sugar, soy sauce and vinegar until sugar dissolves.
Pour mixture over pork and cook on low for for 8 hours.
Then transfer the pork to a serving platter .and cover with foil to keep warm.
Pour cooking liquid through a sieve into a medium saucepan - discard solids.
Bring the liquid to the boil over a medium to high heat and boil for 8 minutes.
Spoon 1/4 a cup of cooking liquid into a small bowl and whisk in flour and lemon juice until the mixture is smooth.
Return flour mixture to pan and boil, whisking constantly for 1 to 2 minutes or until slightly thickened.
Serve sauce over the pork.
After I had typed this out I searched and found the recipe on a site called Southern Living. It can be printed off from there too.
Thank you! Saving this to try when my kid comes home...
Not in the US, at least. Rock salt is larger and courser than kosher salt and is unrefined, so it typically has impurities in it that make it inedible. Rock salt is used here for things like melting ice on pavement or in an ice cream freezer to melt the ice around the cylinder.
I copied the recipe as it was written, which is why it lists kosher salt. I used the salt I always have on hand which is iodised NZ salt (from the sea). I've never seen kosher salt on sale here, but it may be in more specialised shops, no doubt at much higher price. I must investigate further.
I’ve now done some googling, and the results I’m getting are telling me that what is called kosher salt in the US may indeed be called rock salt, or perhaps coarse salt or flake salt/salt flakes, in the UK. Does that sound right?
I just checked my local supermarket (NZ) and there were some large salt crystals labelled rock salt, but also stating it came from the sea. I thought rock salt was mined. When I was a child the only two types of salt were table salt (which had iodine added because a lack of it naturally occurring led to goiters) and common salt, which wasn't iodised.
I’ve now done some googling, and the results I’m getting are telling me that what is called kosher salt in the US may indeed be called rock salt, or perhaps coarse salt or flake salt/salt flakes, in the UK. Does that sound right?
Which suggests to me it might be specified more in US recipes as ingredients are often by volume - and the coarseness of the salt effects weight per measure. (I.e. a teaspoon of kosher salt would be less grams of salt than a teaspoon of table salt.)
The only time I've used kosher salt was when a friend was being treated for thyroid cancer and was told the only salt she was allowed was kosher salt. As most shop-bought bread used ordinary salt I offered to make her some bread using kosher salt.
I don’t think it made any difference to the taste, but I was never quite sure if I was getting the volume right, as it came in big, hard crystals rather than the fine-flowing salt I was used to.
I don’t think it made any difference to the taste, but I was never quite sure if I was getting the volume right, as it came in big, hard crystals rather than the fine-flowing salt I was used to.
If I use kosher salt in a recipe that just calls for “salt,” like bread or cake, I use a mortar and pestle to grind it down.
The only time I've used kosher salt was when a friend was being treated for thyroid cancer and was told the only salt she was allowed was kosher salt. As most shop-bought bread used ordinary salt I offered to make her some bread using kosher salt.
I don’t think it made any difference to the taste, but I was never quite sure if I was getting the volume right, as it came in big, hard crystals rather than the fine-flowing salt I was used to.
In which case the solution would be to grind the salt (mortar and pestle or a mechanised spice grinder) to reduce the salt to a similar grind. I normally buy coarse sea salt, and grind x amount to fine for some uses (e.g., making bread) and leave it coarse for others (e.g., seasoning a steak before searing). This approach also reduces storage demands in a small kitchen: One box of coarse salt, amounts treated as required.
Got the slow-cooker out yesterday and made a tasty pork casserole.
Still not sure about the point of a slow cooker. By the time I have browned the meat in the frying pan, and deglazed the pan, I might as well have done it in a casserole and bunged it straight in the oven. Then there's the thin watery gravy - I like a nice thick sauce with my meat, so how do you get that without straining off the liquid from the slow cooker and reducing it by boiling on the stove, or thickening with cornflour? The pre- and post- cooking probably adds more to the energy consumption than slow-cooking saves, especially if also cooking veg on the hob that could have gone in the oven at the same time as the casserole.
Can somebody convince me that it is worth hauling it out from the back of the cupboard?
It’s mostly useful for days when you can’t be there to do the cooking. Seriously. Work days, or when you’re too sick or tired but have to produce something nonetheless.
I usually thicken a casserole by flouring the pieces of meat before browning.
If you're not out of the house a lot, then there probably is no point. If I want a casserole I have only to think about it a few hours before dinner time, not when I get up.
If a slow-cooker casserole hasn't thickened as much as I want it to, I turn it up to high if it isn't already, stir in a buerre manié - a heaped teaspoon each of flour and butter worked to a paste - and give it an extra 15-20 minutes, and that usually does the trick.
If I'm going to use the slow cooker, I avoid recipes that require browning. If I can't just put everything in the pot and walk away, then it's not a great slow cooker recipe for me. There are many recipes that do let me dump everything in and walk away. One of my favourites is a simple chicken tikka masala recipe that impresses guests.
It’s mostly useful for days when you can’t be there to do the cooking. Seriously. Work days, or when you’re too sick or tired but have to produce something nonetheless.
Our slow cooker has high and low settings. We usually use the high - great on a winter day when you make your casserole, put it onto high, then head off to watch the rugby, have drinks with friends, do a thousand of other bits of living and come home to a dinner near ready to serve. It takes 3 to 4 hours.
I usually squirt a little spray oil and wipe it round the inside of the crock with kitchen paper before I start using the slow-cooker to make it easier to clean. It also helps that it's small enough to fit in the dishwasher.
I ate something delicious last night and I'm trying to work out what it was.
It was a mushroom gnocchi dish with toasted pine nuts. I bit into a small chunk of something I thought was boiled potato, with an almost perfumy taste. It wasn't until I was on the third of these chunks that I realised it was one of the varieties of mushroom.
What sort of mushroom is aromatic, dense, light coloured and has an almost dry, floury texture ? Each of the chunks was maybe 2cm cubed, and solid. They had more of a "bite" than the gnocchi.
The flavour might be a red herring as it might have been marinaded. There were other sliced mushrooms which looked and tasted as I'd expect mushrooms to look and taste.
Parkin recipe and method - after several trials and errors as documented on the British thread.
Plan ahead - make it at least 5 days before you want to eat it to allow for the essential maturing process (see below).
Preheat oven to 160 degrees C; gas mark 3.
Line and grease a 22cm square cake tin (I use a silicone one which works well).
200g butter
200g golden or maple syrup
85g black treacle
85g light soft brown sugar
1 large egg
4 tablespoonful milk
100g medium oatmeal (I use oat bran)
250g self raising flour
1 tablespoonful ground ginger
Mix the egg and milk together.
Melt the butter, syrup, treacle and sugar together. Remove from the heat.
Add the dry ingredients, then the egg and milk mixture.
Bake for 50 minutes - 1 hour until firm and slightly crusty on top (but not burnt... it's easily burnt... ask me how I know...) and a skewer poked into the centre comes out clean.
Allow to go completely cold in the tin.
Remove from the tin and double wrap - uncut - in greaseproof paper and foil and leave to mature for at least 5 days.
The maturing process transforms a slightly dry, crumbly and pretty tasteless cake into moist, delicious goodness.
Apparently it can be kept for up to two weeks; it never lasts that long at Casa Nen.
Comments
That's the basic, but obviously you can add cooked veg, slices of tomato, chopped ham, cheese - whatever you have knocking about.
And there's always omelettes.
Which brings me to vegetarian chilli. Or ratatouille. Or shakshuka.
Quick cook polenta made up with vegetable stock, spread on baking tray, topped with parmesan goes well with a lot of things eg mushrooms, roasted tomatoes.
Have you considered getting an electronic pressure cooker? They are excellent for reducing time and faff spent on cooking, and are better for vegetarian food than slow cookers. You can cook beans in bulk from dried in under an hour for example, then freeze in portions for later use. Just use a wooden spoon or similar for releasing the pressure so you don't need to get near the steam. You can also use them as slow cookers and rice cookers.
I know what you (and I) mean by “hominy,” which I love. But it’s a Charleston peculiarity that what the rest of the South calls “grits,” they traditionally call, or at least until a few decades ago called, “hominy”—short for “hominy grits,” because they traditionally made their grits from hominy.
ETA: See this post by Rossweisse, as well as some further down.
https://allrecipes.com/article/polenta-vs-grits/ Grits are always around you
Gravy? The only kind of gravy I’ve ever encountered on grits (or would want to encounter) is red-eye gravy, and that’s only if country ham is accompanying the grits.
Meanwhile, it’s probably 50-50 whether cheese will be in grits around here. And the standard way make grits, at least in my experience, is just with water, or with with an equal mixture of water and milk, unless they’re for a dish like shrimp and grits or a baked grits casserole.
Sorry. I can get a bit passionate about grits.
I’d also suggest you get a perching stool (i.e. a stool high enough for you to sit on it while doing tasks on the hob) unless your kitchen is too narrow for this to be a safe option.
You can, of course, buy packet sauce mixes, but as far as I recall they still require stirring or whisking and I don’t personally find them any easier.
The first solid food Daughter-Unit ate was grits. Her eyes went wide, and she tried to take the spoon from me to make sure she could get that awesome food in her mouth!
Where I grew up, there was no place that sold grits. My Floridian mama kept asking the grocer to please order some for her, and he finally did. Everyone else found out what a treat it was, and soon, we had a northern grits loving area.
Half American living in UK here, I use polenta for shrimp and grits and for cornbread and it works well
@Puzzler I would recommend subscribing to Meera Sodha's column in The Guardian - it's vegan rather than vegetarian but would be easy to add eggs or dairy to. There is a recent recipe for Malaysian dhal which sounds good. Rachel Roddy also has an excellent and very vegetarian-friendly column, focusing on Roman food (so lots of beans and hearty peasant food).
But in any event, glad you had a chance to try them, and that you liked them—or at least found them “not bad.”
Another fan of Meera Sodha's columns for the Guardian's new vegan series. I made the Malaysian dal a couple of weeks ago, leaving out the star anise and using more lemongrass and tamarind as well as some freshly ground coconut. Delicious and adaptable recipe.
Tangy Slow Cooker Pork Shoulder Roast
4 lb bone in Pork Shoulder (Boston Butt)
2 tsp Kosher salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
2 Tbsp olive oil
12 cloves of garlic smashed
2 bay leaves
1 onion cut into wedges
3/4 a cup of firmly packed brown sugar
3/4 a cup of salt reduced soy sauce
1/2 a cup of white or white wine vinegar
2 Tbsp flour
2 Tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
Sprinkle the roast with salt and pepper. Cook in a large frying pan over med to high heat, 3 minutes on each side until lightly browned.
Transfer to slow cooker and add garlic, bay leaves and onion.
Whisk together brown sugar, soy sauce and vinegar until sugar dissolves.
Pour mixture over pork and cook on low for for 8 hours.
Then transfer the pork to a serving platter .and cover with foil to keep warm.
Pour cooking liquid through a sieve into a medium saucepan - discard solids.
Bring the liquid to the boil over a medium to high heat and boil for 8 minutes.
Spoon 1/4 a cup of cooking liquid into a small bowl and whisk in flour and lemon juice until the mixture is smooth.
Return flour mixture to pan and boil, whisking constantly for 1 to 2 minutes or until slightly thickened.
Serve sauce over the pork.
After I had typed this out I searched and found the recipe on a site called Southern Living. It can be printed off from there too.
Thank you! Saving this to try when my kid comes home...
It seems to be a US recipe thing. Don't recall a UK recipe asking for it.
Lamb Chopped - I hope he enjoys it.
I found this https://www.thekitchn.com/kosher-salt-where-it-comes-from-why-its-called-kosher-ingredient-intelligence-219665
Which suggests to me it might be specified more in US recipes as ingredients are often by volume - and the coarseness of the salt effects weight per measure. (I.e. a teaspoon of kosher salt would be less grams of salt than a teaspoon of table salt.)
Which is the long way of saying yes I think so.
I don’t think it made any difference to the taste, but I was never quite sure if I was getting the volume right, as it came in big, hard crystals rather than the fine-flowing salt I was used to.
In which case the solution would be to grind the salt (mortar and pestle or a mechanised spice grinder) to reduce the salt to a similar grind. I normally buy coarse sea salt, and grind x amount to fine for some uses (e.g., making bread) and leave it coarse for others (e.g., seasoning a steak before searing). This approach also reduces storage demands in a small kitchen: One box of coarse salt, amounts treated as required.
Still not sure about the point of a slow cooker. By the time I have browned the meat in the frying pan, and deglazed the pan, I might as well have done it in a casserole and bunged it straight in the oven. Then there's the thin watery gravy - I like a nice thick sauce with my meat, so how do you get that without straining off the liquid from the slow cooker and reducing it by boiling on the stove, or thickening with cornflour? The pre- and post- cooking probably adds more to the energy consumption than slow-cooking saves, especially if also cooking veg on the hob that could have gone in the oven at the same time as the casserole.
Can somebody convince me that it is worth hauling it out from the back of the cupboard?
If you're not out of the house a lot, then there probably is no point. If I want a casserole I have only to think about it a few hours before dinner time, not when I get up.
Our slow cooker has high and low settings. We usually use the high - great on a winter day when you make your casserole, put it onto high, then head off to watch the rugby, have drinks with friends, do a thousand of other bits of living and come home to a dinner near ready to serve. It takes 3 to 4 hours.
It was a mushroom gnocchi dish with toasted pine nuts. I bit into a small chunk of something I thought was boiled potato, with an almost perfumy taste. It wasn't until I was on the third of these chunks that I realised it was one of the varieties of mushroom.
What sort of mushroom is aromatic, dense, light coloured and has an almost dry, floury texture ? Each of the chunks was maybe 2cm cubed, and solid. They had more of a "bite" than the gnocchi.
The flavour might be a red herring as it might have been marinaded. There were other sliced mushrooms which looked and tasted as I'd expect mushrooms to look and taste.
Googling porcini brought up this product -
https://www.ccfinefoods.co.uk/wholesale/porcini-cubettati-cubed/
so I think that's it.
Thank you.
I'm still not sure about the aromatic taste - perhaps it was marinated in something. It wasn't the sauce, just the cubes.
Plan ahead - make it at least 5 days before you want to eat it to allow for the essential maturing process (see below).
Preheat oven to 160 degrees C; gas mark 3.
Line and grease a 22cm square cake tin (I use a silicone one which works well).
200g butter
200g golden or maple syrup
85g black treacle
85g light soft brown sugar
1 large egg
4 tablespoonful milk
100g medium oatmeal (I use oat bran)
250g self raising flour
1 tablespoonful ground ginger
Mix the egg and milk together.
Melt the butter, syrup, treacle and sugar together. Remove from the heat.
Add the dry ingredients, then the egg and milk mixture.
Bake for 50 minutes - 1 hour until firm and slightly crusty on top (but not burnt... it's easily burnt... ask me how I know...) and a skewer poked into the centre comes out clean.
Allow to go completely cold in the tin.
Remove from the tin and double wrap - uncut - in greaseproof paper and foil and leave to mature for at least 5 days.
The maturing process transforms a slightly dry, crumbly and pretty tasteless cake into moist, delicious goodness.
Apparently it can be kept for up to two weeks; it never lasts that long at Casa Nen.