*FOOD* Post your Recipes

[AndyMH]

I've been eating lots of pickled eggs as well.

I have to have a lot of pints inside me before I find them tempting

Have to say I don't think of Kanata as somewhere to raise chickens (best man lives up the road in Stittsville, so I driven past/through many times).

[kelevra]

Have to say I don't think of Kanata as somewhere to raise chickens

Kanata is an Iroquois word ('slanged' by Jacques Cartier into "the great white north"), we grow many chickens in this western 'village'.

I too needed a few to start on the pickled eggs, I even ventured a try of a pickled sausage a time or two.

[bobpace]

Was going to get all serious about the recipe, then having chuckled my way though it;
there are things that *must* be said to help anyone looking to evolve their own Irish stew.

1 lb praties (potatoes) (from Lady Fitzerald's post)
Please ensure that potatoes are a mix of Floury and Waxy varieties. The waxy are required to have pieces with bite as you eat. The floury will dissolve into the general soupy stock.

Meat. Lady Fitzgerald suggests *any* meat. Traditionalists like myself with swear "it's not Irish if it's anything other than Mutton". Lamb will do if you are totally divorced from civilised butchers.

Irish Stew


Ingredients:

2 lb stew meat (any kind of meat will do; road kill must be fresh)
1 lb praties (potatoes)
6 large carrots
1 bunch green onions
1 white onion
1 can tomato sauce
2 cups chopped mushrooms
1 12 pk Guinness beer

[Collapse recipe for brevity]

[MurphCID]

So here is my chicken soup:

4-6 chicken breasts (depending on size), cut in small chunks.

1 Onion, diced small

1 shallot, diced small

2 containers of chicken broth

1 cube of chicken bullion.

2 tablespoons of soy sauce

1 can of Rotel tomatoes and green chili (mild)

Small red potatoes quartered

1 head of cabbage, sliced as you like it (I slice it relatively thin)

4-5 stalks of celery sliced small.

3-4 green onions sliced small including the green tops

2 cups cubed butternut squash

1 package of spinach

1 teaspoon of crushed red pepper

Black pepper and salt to taste

2 cans Cream of Chicken soup (Optional)

1 cup heavy cream (Optional)

Cook the chicken, shallots and onion will a little done, then add the
chicken broth and cube of chicken bullion. Let cook on simmer for an
hour. Quarter the potatoes and add them, cook for 30 minutes. Then
add everything else, top off with water as needed. Cook for 15-30
minutes more. Serve over noodles or rice. You can add any other
vegetables since it is a kind of make your own.

[MurphCID]

Salmon surprise:

One slab of salmon
six pats of butter (3 on the bottom, 3 on the top)
Dill (to taste- use gently)
Garlic powder (same directions above)
Cracked black pepper
Pink salt
2 lemons sliced thin and placed on top of the salmon with the butter placed under the lemon slices.

Broil until desired degree of done is achieved.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

How to cook carp.

Many people turn their noses up at carp, saying it tastes too muddy or it has too many tiny bones but it actually can be quite delicious and, if prepared properly ahead of time, such as by pickling or smoking, even the bones are edible. The following is a method I've found that works well.

As soon as possible after catching the carp, to avoid having the meat go bad, clean and scale the carp, discarding the fins, tail and head.

Make a breading mixture from the following (depending on the size and number of the carp, it may be necessary to increase the amounts):

1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp table salt
1/4 cup white flour
1 cup corn meal

Mix the dry ingredients and place in a shallow bowl or deep plate.

Take three eggs and whisk them together in a shallow bowl or a deep plate.

First dredge the carp through the whisked eggs, then through the flour mixture until it is thoroughly coated.

Place the carp on a clean, cedar plank or shingle, the bake in a 350° oven for one hour. Allow to cool in the oven. After cooling, remove from the oven, throw away the carp, and eat the plank or shingle.

All "seriousness" aside, carp can be tasty if taken from clean water and the bone problem can be eliminated by pickling or smoking the carp.

[Olaf2020]

I put this link, which is how I make pasta alla carbonara, because I can't explain to you personally how I do it in English (i'm Italian)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvO8UPbIH30

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Catfish (this one is serious)

The secret to good catfish is to prepare it properly. As soon as a cat is caught, put it on a stringer by poking it through the lower jaw, not through the mouth and gills, then keeping it in the water, or by putting it into a live well with circulating water. The idea is to keep the fish alive as long as possible. Fish starts to go bad the minute you catch it so it's important to keep them alive and fillet them as soon as possible.

Note that I said fillet them. Skinning a cat(fish) is too much work and merely gutting them results in too many bones to deal with. To ensure freshness, I always filleted them while they were still alive (mostly because the buggers were so hard to kill by just hitting them hard on the head). The species of cat determines how to fillet them. Filleting them while alive also allow more of the blood to drain from the meat, improving the taste.

Channel cats are the easiest. Just lay the critter on its side on a cutting board. Using a filleting knife, cut straight down behind the head, fin, spine, and gill flap at a slight angle to the spine, with the angle of the cut going slightly forward at the bottom of the fish. When the knife reaches the spine, turn it toward the tail and slice the meat off the fish, holding the knife flat against the ribs until the spine is reached, then along the spine to the tail. Repeat for the other side. Avoid cutting into the entrails although it's not the end of the world if you do; just quickly soak up the juices with a paper towel.

The belly meat on catfish usually has a lot of yellow fat in it, which will taste horrible if not removed. On channel cats smaller than five pounds, there isn't enough good meat in the belly to be worth the effort so I always skipped it. On larger channel cats, I would carefully cut away the belly meat and trim away the yellow fat but it was a chore.

After separating the fillets from the fish, discard the fish carcass, then pat the fillets dry, using paper towels. It's perfectly normal, and is desirable, for the fillets to bleed. Do not rinse with water! Lay the fillet skin side down onto a clean cutting board (just wiping off the cutting board you just used to cut away the meat from the fish with a paper towel is fine). Hold onto the fillet at the tail end with the tips of your fingers and slice into the meat at an angle until the filleting knife is flat on its side on the skin, then, using a sawing motion, slice the meat off the skin. It takes a bit of practice but isn't difficult once you get the hang of it. Also, the knife has to be razor sharp! You have to remove the skin; otherwise the meat will not taste as good.

After removing the meat from the skin, pat dry with paper towels (never, ever, rinse with water; you will rise off much of the taste!), then lay the fillet flat onto the bottom of a deep plate or shallow pan, cover with whole milk (not low fat or skim milk!), then place in the refrigerator overnight. The milk fat will remove the wild taste from any remaining fat in the meat (and, trust me, you will not get out all the fat while filleting).

In the morning, remove the fillets from milk, pat dry, and wrap each one in cling wrap to exclude air. If you are going to cook and eat the meat that day, just put it back into the refrigerator. Otherwise wrap a serving's worth of the cling wrap wrapped fillets with aluminum foil, label the package with with the date the fish was caught, then put the packages in the freezer. They will keep up to a month or two that way. After that, you may start getting freezer burn.

Flathead catfish, also called mud cats or yellow cats, depending on where you live, are a bit different than channel cats. Around half of the meat is in the belly so, after filleting as described above, you will have to carefully carve away the remaining meat and slice it off the skin. There often is more yellow meat in this kind of cat, the reason people often complain that flatheads do not taste as good as channel cats, so more trimming is needed. Otherwise, you finish up the same way you do channel cats. I haven't prepared any other kinds of cats, such as bullheads, so you're on your own there. I know the above sounds gross but is necessary to get the best tasting catfish. Store bought catfish meat is prepared differently and will not taste nearly as good (it is bland).

Now for the cooking. Frying is NOT the best way to cook any fish but is especially true for catfish! Besides, you don't need your fish greased or oiled to taste good or to slide down your throat. Broiling works best. If the fillets had been frozen, I just move them from the freezer to the refrigerator the night before. The fillets need to be coated with some kind of breading before cooking to keep them from shrinking and drying out. There are various kinds of breading recipes but dry breading, breading that don't use milk or egg to get it to stick onto the meat (check the "interwebz" for recipies), is best because you only want a thin layer of it; you want to taste the meat, not the breading. The best I ever found was traditional Shake and Bake, the original one used for chicken (they made one for fish but it tasted nasty) but it can be hard to find (if they even still make it; it's been a long time since I caught and cooked fish). Forget the bag; just put the breading mix on a plate and roll the fish around in it, then lay the fillet onto a broiling pan. I like to add some seasoned pepper to the mix.

I broiled them at 350°F but I don't remember how long. It will vary from oven to oven and also depends on the size of the fillets so some experimenting will be needed. You want the meat to be completely cooked (this isn't sushi!) but not overdone, which will make the meat tough. I always cooked fillets that were all around the same size whenever I could.

I used to make a casserole out of small fillets. I would layer the bare, salted and peppered fillets in a casserole dish with enchilada or spaghetti sauce and bake it in the oven. Shortly before taking it out of the oven, I would sprinkle some grated cheese on top.