Pound cake is the workhorse of the tea cart, able to withstand drowning in fruit syrups and whipped cream, or it can be easily tarted up with a citrus glaze. It’s the perfect thing to toss in the oven when you find out the new vicar is coming to tea in a couple of hours. [...]
Archive for the ‘recipes’ Category
From the Emergency Baking Department: Pound Cake
Posted in Food History, Traditional Foodways, recipes, tagged cooking with a scale, cooking without a recipe, Food History, pound cake, recipe on June 28, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Raclette, No Fancy Equipment Needed
Posted in Farmers' Market Cooking, Food History, Ingredients, Traditional Foodways, recipes, tagged Food History, Raclette, Swiss Food, cheese, Raclette without a machine on June 23, 2010 | 3 Comments »
In the past, I have expressed my withering disdain for single-use kitchen gadgets like garlic presses, shrimp de-veiners, and pineapple slicers. Today I’m adding another one to the list, the Raclette Machine. I’m bowled over that people are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for an appliance that makes a dish created by Swiss livestock [...]
A Mixture of Several Things in No Particular Order: Chimichurri Sauce
Posted in Food History, Ingredients, Traditional Foodways, recipes, tagged argentinean food, Chimichurri sauce, Food History, recipe, using leftover parsley on June 21, 2010 | 1 Comment »
It has happened to all of us. You buy a bunch of parsley so you can chop up about a tablespoon of it to use for garnish, and the rest languishes forgotten in the fridge, where it eventually turns to sludge. Well, dear reader, it doesn’t have to be that way anymore. The gauchos of [...]
Baked Cucumbers with Cream
Posted in Farmers' Market Cooking, Food History, Ingredients, recipes, tagged Food History, recipe, Baked Cucumbers with Cream, Julia Child, Julie Powell, Julie/Julia Project, cooked cucumbers on June 18, 2010 | 2 Comments »
You know those recipes you hear about and then tuck away in your mental “must try that” file? Today I’m pulling one out from way back in 2003. At that time I was an avid reader of Julie Powell’s groundbreaking blog, the Julie/Julia Project, in which she cooked all 536 recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering [...]
The Kind of Pickle You Want To Get Into
Posted in Farmers' Market Cooking, Food History, Ingredients, Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2010, Traditional Foodways, recipes, tagged Food History, recipe, jewish food, kosher dill pickles, homemade pickles, cucumbers, Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2010 on June 15, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Next month I’ll be attending the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery in the UK. Each year, this conference on food, its culture, and its history focuses on a different theme; this year it’s Cured, Fermented, and Smoked Foods. Living in a New York City apartment, the temperature and humidity of which is difficult to [...]
Fresh (and Fashionable) English Pea Soup
Posted in Cocktails, Farmers' Market Cooking, Food History, Ingredients, recipes, tagged Food History, recipe, English Pea Soup, garden peas, green peas, English peas on June 10, 2010 | 1 Comment »
What was the latest fashion at court of Versailles in 1696? Why English peas of course, hadn’t you heard? The ladies of Versailles knew a good thing when they tasted it. In the late 17th Century fresh, green English peas were all the rage. It may seem odd to us, since today peas are seen [...]
Scottish Shortbread: Gluten-free Baking Ahead of Its Time
Posted in Food History, Ingredients, Traditional Foodways, recipes, tagged gluten-free, oat flour shortbread, recipe, Scottish shortbread on June 7, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
The current popularity of gluten-free foods has prompted the creation of many wheat-free versions of traditional baked goods, including Scottish shortbread. It turns out that this actually isn’t an innovation at all. Historically shortbread was a food of the poor in Scotland and was made with oat flour, which is (usually) gluten-free. While looking for [...]
Is Slow Food Really Slow?: Granola
Posted in Food History, recipes, tagged Food History, granola, history of granola, recipe on June 1, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
“Is Slow Food Really Slow?” is a series here on Comestibles in which we explore the hypothesis that some of the processes many modern home cooks have declared too time consuming are a lot easier than the admen would have us believe. If your house is anything like ours, you’ve got a pantry full of [...]
It’s a Potluck and a Talent Show: A Brief History of the Picnic
Posted in Food History, recipes, tagged Food History, history of the picnic, James Gillray, London Pic-Nic Society, picnic loaf, recipe on May 27, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Prior to the 1860s a pic-nic (yes, that’s how they spelled it), was not the ant-filled, outdoor revelry many of us will enjoy this coming holiday weekend. The original meaning is closer to what we would call a potluck meal, with each guest expected to bring a dish; and it was held indoors. In 1802 [...]
Jeweled Rice for a Persian Wedding
Posted in Festival Cooking, Food History, Traditional Foodways, recipes, tagged cooking with rose petals, Food History, Jeweled Rice, Persian food, Persian wedding food on May 24, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
I find there is no better way to get to know a culture than by cooking some of its festival food. When I saw a recipe in Margaret Shaida’s absorbing historical cookbook, The Legendary Cuisine of Persia, for a special rice dish, traditionally served at weddings in Persia, I couldn’t resist. Not only does it [...]
