The kitchen

Oh, and this site has some other Hallowe'en food ideas.

cactus flower wrote:

Nice evening again.

Isn't Ballymun knocked down?

Auditor #9 wrote:

Isn't Ballymun knocked down?

Not here it isn't.

I'm stuffed too, but theres always room for some strawberries and cream.

Anyone know how to make potato salad ?

Is it just cooled spuds and mayonnaise

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Anyone know how to make potato salad ?

Is it just cooled spuds and mayonnaise

That's good enough Plus salt and pepper 'to taste'. I like to add some small bits of chopped spring onion too.
You need less mayonaise than you would think, so a bit at a time is a good idea until you've made it a few times.
Potatoes should not be overcooked for it: I find the only way I can be sure they're not too soggy is to steam them.

If you want patronized

http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-make-new-potato-salad

Thanls Cactus. The spring onion souns good to me.

Good site squire. I fancy this chicken curry.

http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-cook-a-chicken-curry-in-ten-minutes

Although I might try it with lamb instead.

Baby potatoes with the skins on, boiled, cooled and halved; some creme fraiche with a teaspoon of grainy mustard and some chives or spring onion. It's nicer after it's been in the fridge a while to let the creme fraiche be less runny, and then left out for ten minutes before you want to eat it so it's not so cold you can't taste it.
Yum.

I like the above, or mashed potatoes with mayonnaise so it's fairly creamy (it's the mashing, not a lot of mayonnaise that makes them creamy - with parsley and chives/spring onion. My mother has lately taken to adding chopped peppers which is very tasty.

Dug up a good crop of potatoes yesterday (sore back this morning!).

Have not long discovered how to make a salad more interesting-

Salad leaves, chopped up peppers, sweet tomatoes, olives, small chunks of Parmesan, chop up whatever else is in the veg compartment of the fridge at the time, few bits of apple, strips of bacon on top, with a poached egg on top of that. Yesterday, the dish included freshly dug new potatoes in fresh mint .....yum yum

My favourite salad has loads of Romaine lettuce, shaved parmesan, chunks of cucumber, black olives, loads of green grapes, walnuts, croutons, sliced red pepper and black pepper bound with the smallest amount of Caesar dressing. Bacon or chicken are good with it too. It's a pretty appalling mix of styles but I love it. The grapes and walnuts are the best bits.

Newly dug potatoes in fresh mint sound divine, Atticus. We have no spuds this year, sadly.

Kate P wrote:

My favourite salad has loads of Romaine lettuce, shaved parmesan, chunks of cucumber, black olives, loads of green grapes, walnuts, croutons, sliced red pepper and black pepper bound with the smallest amount of Caesar dressing. Bacon or chicken are good with it too. It's a pretty appalling mix of styles but I love it. The grapes and walnuts are the best bits.

Newly dug potatoes in fresh mint sound divine, Atticus. We have no spuds this year, sadly.

That salad sounds delicious - it's been printed off and will be filed in my beaten-up handwritten recipe book. Expect you've all got one - covered in food stains, binding in a precarious state etc etc but without which you could not do. Your potato salad sounds divine as well - a bit like a recipe for mashed potato that my cousin gave me - butter, mustard, grated cheese - salt and pepper to taste - but as you say about mash it's important to get the mashing right and then whip in the other ingredients while the mash is very hot - not too much, just enough to be able to taste them.

Which do people think are the best ready-made salad dressings - they can be a very disappointing business imo.

Avoid low fat dressings like the plague.

I usually make them up fresh on the spot - otherwise they're inclined to go off, I find. My mother buys the Lakeshore honey and mustard one and that's not bad.

The only one I could recommend is Cardini's Caesar dressing. Low fat dressings - read the ingredients and you'll wonder if it's a bottle of food or paint stripper in your hand. Life's too short to eat vile things.

Quote :

That salad sounds delicious - it's been printed off and will be filed in my beaten-up handwritten recipe book. Expect you've all got one - covered in food stains, binding in a precarious state etc etc but without which you could not do. Your potato salad sounds divine as well - a bit like a recipe for mashed potato that my cousin gave me - butter, mustard, grated cheese - salt and pepper to taste - but as you say about mash it's important to get the mashing right and then whip in the other ingredients while the mash is very hot - not too much, just enough to be able to taste them.

Glad you like that Aragon - and I'm really glad we agree on something. We must share more food thoughts...!

You're right about putting in the ingredients while the mash is still warm (I bought a ricer to mash them well, how sad is that?) - the chemistry is completely different than when it's cold.

I have one of those books - a covered hardback copybook with recipes glued in and written in, and pages torn from magazines folded into the back (like icecreams from last year's Sunday Times which I should have a go at again before this summer is over).

I also got a present of a specially designed one with sections for starters, mains, desserts and drinks but while I tried using it, the layout doesn't suit me and I'd rather my old battered one.

There are four sisters in my family and one of the others can't cook anything that she can't deepfry (and there's not much she won't deepfry), another who tolerates it and a third who really wants to cook and is mad to learn. I bought them all a copybook like mine and we spent a day, books in hand, writing down my mother's recipes as she cooked and baked in the kitchen we grew up in - drop scones (which I just can't get right), vegetable soup, her prize-winning apple tart... The third sister has only been cooking a while and her book is almost as tattered as mine after years. From the kitchen I'd save it and Maura Laverty's Full and Plenty if the house went on fire.

Have you a favourite recipe, Aragon?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's dropscone recipe has achieved some success. 125g plain flour1 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
25g caster sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
Up to 100ml milk
25g butter, melted
Sunflower oil or butter, for greasing

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Stir in the sugar. Make a well in the centre, pour in the egg and a little of the milk, and start beating, gradually incorporating the flour. Beat in the melted butter. Gradually add more milk and incorporate more flour until you have a smooth batter that drops reluctantly off the spoon.

Heat a heavy-based frying pan over a medium heat. Grease with a smear of oil or butter. Drop tablespoonfuls of the scone mixture into the pan, leaving room for them to spread (you'll have to cook them in batches). After just a couple of minutes, when they are set and have bubbles on the surface, flip them over and cook for a minute or so longer until the second side is brown, then set aside in a warm place.

Continue with all the batter, adding a little more butter to the pan as necessary. Serve warm with butter and jam, jelly, honey or syrup.

Thanks for that CM.

(I can't say it will stop me persevering in the pursuit of a childhood memory though. I will reproduce my mother's dropscones. I will.)

Until then, I'll have a go at what Hugh recommends.

Dropscones are babyfood. Nyum, nyum.

I'm very concerned about the tendancy to put mustard into everything. I YUCK mustard and all it's evil personas.

Mustard is YUCK.

See those wee jars of mustard in the super duper,, smashing label on a cute jar, all seedy and tasty, yuck I tell you.

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

I'm very concerned about the tendancy to put mustard into everything. I YUCK mustard and all it's evil personas.

Mustard is YUCK.

See those wee jars of mustard in the super duper,, smashing label on a cute jar, all seedy and tasty, yuck I tell you.

I thought so too until one day I had a revelatory experience with a hang sangwich on brown with a dab of Colman's.

I bit my nails as a child and my mother's answer whenever she saw me do so was to dip my fingertips in Colman's nasty paste the colour of wallpaper that was popular in 1977. I still can't stomach it, but a Dijon or good wholegrain mustard is hard to beat.

But as a nailbiting deterrent there's a fortune to be made should Colman's wish to diversify into that market.

Mustard, mayonnaise (sp?), milk, cheese, yogurt, anything of that kind of consistency is just wrong.

I'm told I make good potato salad, in spite of the fact that I wouldn't dream of eating it, but I think it's due to the fact that I put in the bare minimum of mayo. I also throw in some chopped spring onions. Other things I make well but don't eat include guacamole, salad dressings and chicken in a creamy mushroom sauce.

Normally mayonnaise is just for seafood.

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

I'm very concerned about the tendancy to put mustard into everything. I YUCK mustard and all it's evil personas.

Mustard is YUCK.

See those wee jars of mustard in the super duper,, smashing label on a cute jar, all seedy and tasty, yuck I tell you.

You must take classical mustard with grain. Then apply it on veal or lamb. Then it's not yuk.

Of course yuk mustard pot is yuk. Like the sugared ones.

Kate P wrote:

Quote :

That salad sounds delicious - it's been printed off and will be filed in my beaten-up handwritten recipe book. Expect you've all got one - covered in food stains, binding in a precarious state etc etc but without which you could not do. Your potato salad sounds divine as well - a bit like a recipe for mashed potato that my cousin gave me - butter, mustard, grated cheese - salt and pepper to taste - but as you say about mash it's important to get the mashing right and then whip in the other ingredients while the mash is very hot - not too much, just enough to be able to taste them.

Glad you like that Aragon - and I'm really glad we agree on something. We must share more food thoughts...!

You're right about putting in the ingredients while the mash is still warm (I bought a ricer to mash them well, how sad is that?) - the chemistry is completely different than when it's cold.

I have one of those books - a covered hardback copybook with recipes glued in and written in, and pages torn from magazines folded into the back (like icecreams from last year's Sunday Times which I should have a go at again before this summer is over).

I also got a present of a specially designed one with sections for starters, mains, desserts and drinks but while I tried using it, the layout doesn't suit me and I'd rather my old battered one.

There are four sisters in my family and one of the others can't cook anything that she can't deepfry (and there's not much she won't deepfry), another who tolerates it and a third who really wants to cook and is mad to learn. I bought them all a copybook like mine and we spent a day, books in hand, writing down my mother's recipes as she cooked and baked in the kitchen we grew up in - drop scones (which I just can't get right), vegetable soup, her prize-winning apple tart... The third sister has only been cooking a while and her book is almost as tattered as mine after years. From the kitchen I'd save it and Maura Laverty's Full and Plenty if the house went on fire.

Have you a favourite recipe, Aragon?

Here's one for your sister and speaking of deep-frying, the most sinful thing I've ever heard of is deep-fried battered Mars bars! I kid you not. Instant heart attack stuff. These were all the rage among the student population in the UK a few years back but whether or not the phenomenon made it across the Irish sea, I don't know. Perhaps we exported it to them in the first place. I wouldn't put it past us.

My favourite recipe at the moment is the Avoca chicken and broccoli gratin. If anyone is interested Ill post the recipe - I think they do this dish fairly regularly at the Kilkenny Design centre in Dublin.