One of my readers wishes that I would post more food stuff, as apparently my attempts to provide an answer to life, the universe, and everything, are complicated and too long.
[In case you were wondering, the answer to life, the universe, and everything, is 42. Which is six times nine in base thirteen. Proof positive of a plot. Proof.]
The previous several hundred posts all provided answers to life, the universe, and everything. Or so I have been told. It was boring.
--- --- ---
Very well. Food. Two recipes for fish.
Both are from the Netherlands.
FOREL IN MOSTERD SAUS
Trout in a mustard sauce
A largish trout, gutted and scaled, with the head and tail left on.
A cup of sliced mushrooms.
One or two shallots, sliced.
Chopped parsley.
Salt, pepper, butter and olive oil, good mustard, sherry, lemon juice.
Boiled quartered potatoes.
Flour.
Fry the shallots in a little olive oil and butter, add the mushrooms and gild. Then add more butter, one or two tablespoons of mustard, and stir around about to break up and cook the mustard. Add the sherry and lemon juice. Keep warm.
Dredge the trout, fry golden on both sides. When done place in the centre of a platter rimmed with the cooked potatoes.
Now pour the mustard sauce over the fish and garnish with chopped parsley. Parsley, by the way, is good for the digestion.
PALING OP BIER
Eel in beer
Two pounds cleaned and chunked eel.
Two onions, coarse chopped.
Plenty carrot and celery, ditto.
Two bottles of amber ale or Anchor Steam Beer.
Plenty of chopped parsley.
Salt, pepper.
Butter and olive oil.
Marinate the eel with the onion, carrot, parsley, and celery in the beer for half a day. Sieve, reserving the liquid, vegetables, and fish separately. Gild the vegetable matter in the butter and olive oil. Add the reserved liquid, raise to a boil, simmer for about fifteen to twenty minutes.
In a separate pan seethe the eel in butter and oil till the flesh is opaque. Pour the flavoured beery broth through a sieve over the eel. Simmer for twenty minutes. Garnish with chopped parsley. And serve with new potatoes.
Bon gusto.
MORE FOOD
There are, in mittn drinnen, some recipes that you might like here:
http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2009/01/treif-in-four-plates-palakpak-panggarap.html
[PALAKPAK: Mixed vegetables cooked soupy with shrimp-paste. PANGGARAP: Mixed vegetables cooked soupy and tangy. MANOK TJEAP KARE / KUI TJEAP KARE: Scant-sauced curried chicken chunks. SU-ONG BA: Simmered fatty pork with mushrooms and tomato.]
There is a nice recipe for chicken here:
Bulelitja
[A whole chicken, pale-cooked for presentation. The coconut broth is barely tinged with turmeric, to the faintest of yellow. Traditional ]
For other recipes, see my other blog: http://cookingwithalizard.blogspot.com/
I haven't updated it in while, but one of these days, one of these days.
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A LACK OF PROPELLANT
Rereading my old posts reminds me that I used to be immoderate. And at times over the top. I've calmed down and grown up since then. Now...
4 comments:
Of course, in base ten, we all know that the Golgafrinchian-corrupted answer to the question of life, the universe, and everything, is: "what is six times eight?".
"Fry the shallots in a little olive oil and butter, add the mushrooms and gild."
To gild is to apply gold leaf or gold paint to a surface. Usually that surface would be a bookbinding, a picture frame, or furniture. No one has had much success gilding the lily, and shallots with mushrooms also seems an unlikely candidate.
To gild is to apply gold leaf or gold paint to a surface.
Ah, but in the context of cooking, to gild is to fry or seethe till the edges are golden, but not browned.
One has to gild stuff like sliced or slivered garlic. Anything more, and it will acquire a bitter taste.
Certain vegetables benefit from such a light hand also, developing a hint of caramelization and a deeper flavour, after which one can sprinkle a pinch of salt and seethe with a little cooking sherry (or stock, or water) in order to let them finish cooking in moisture.
So, to clarify:
Gilding = to lightly colour by cooking in grease.
Frying = to cook in grease to a degree greater than frying.
Pan-frying = to cook fully till done.
Deep-frying = to immerse in boiling oil.
Flash frying = to cook on high temperature, either partially or fully.
Slow-frying = to cook with grease on low heat, allowing heat to fully permeate the ingredient, but without excessive colouration.
Chinese, predictably, is a more precise language for cooking. There are over two dozen different terms that more or less translate as 'frying', of which about ten occur on every menu as part of the name of the dish - many names are cooking technique, main ingredient, and how it is cut.
For instance: pan-fried fish slices, braised meat chunks, seethed diced chicken and mushrooms, etcetera.
Frying, of course, is also a catch-all term for any application of heat facilitated by a cooking grease. A very broad spectrum of meanings.
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