Comfort food for a cold winter day

Great for me… OH hates bananas… I’ll have to find an alternative for him… perhaps caramelised “ready to eat” apricots… :grinning:

I love throwing together things like this… takes only moments and gives such pleasure… :grinning:

apricots perfect.
pear.
Pineapple.

Surprisingly tartiflette was invented only in the 1980’s as a marketing device for Reblochon. There was an earlier dish from Savoie called pela which was much the same but without the lardons. Pela was cooked in a longhandled frying pan rather than au four.

1 Like

Very interesting. Another dish I’ve learnt to cook and love is ham and endive gratin. Also a lovely winter meal.

1 Like

very French …my friend Bernard loves it.

I posted a link about that yesterday, an interesting fact.

i didn’t catch your post Dominic. If I had I wouldn’t have duplicated most of it. The pela I refer to as a long handled frying pan I suspect may have been called because it resembled (vaguely) a spade or pelle. Pellegrue a town not far away from me has a spade (pelle) and a crane 'grue) on its crest.

Pellegrue is a town not far from me too.

Every region seems to have a potato and cheese dish of their own and there’s only so much you can do with the basic ingredients. I’ve always found the Tartiflette story interesting since getting hooked on it on ski holidays. I smile when I’m in Lidl, Tartiflette is a dish invented by the Reblochon producers to promote their product but Lidl sells a cheese called simply, cheese for Tartiflette, I presume it is Reblochon.

1 Like

Today’s Stella-Special… involved potatoes, onions, sausage-meat, herbs and spices, pastis and … finally, a little parmesan sprinkled over the top… wow, did that smell good… and, yes, it tasted just great. OH was well chuffed.

The sausage meat/farce comes from the local butcher… recipe from his grandma or some such…really tasty. The pastis adds a subtle zing. .(sadly, the alcohol cooks out :wink: )

Sounds yummy, apart from the pastis. I really don’t like aniseed in savoury dishes but that’s just me. Glad you enjoyed it.

I managed to make the worst sauce I’ve ever made in my life. It was supposed to be a creamy mushroom sauce with cumin and mustard but I managed to curdle it (no idea how) and it tasted only of salt. It’s in the bin! The pork steak was lovely though, all the way from Scotland and absolutely worth it. Thankfully I made a lovely rice pudding today so going to have some of that.

I have found a potato popped to cook in a salty “anything”… seems to take the salt into itself (chuck the potato away afterwards).

Re the pastis… apart from when I first add it to the pan… I defy anyone to actually name it as one of the ingredients of the finished dish.

OH hates certain things, which I consider essential and delicious… so I disguise them and he happily munches on…:heart_eyes: (makes me sound like Baldrick with my cunning plans…)

1 Like

I would happily spend the winter consuming soupy things, laksa and phó and my granny’s soup ( recipe below).

Make stock from the carcase of that roast chicken you had yesterday. If there was more than one, so much the better.
Bung the stock through a colander into another pan, pick any bits of meat off the bones and sling them in. Also that spare breast or leg you put in the fridge, shredded.
Add the leeks sliced into coins and a handful of rice.
Simmer for an hour or so.
It is ready when the rice looks like chromosomes.

Bonus, your kitchen will smell heavenly.
(I stick a lemon inside my roast chicken, my grandmother did not, the soup is good either way).

2 Likes

Mmmmmm… that sounds good. The simple recipes always are.

My Grandmother was from the East End of London and lived in poverty for most of the first half of her life. I remember she used to make a suet pudding that she would serve with the roast dinner on Sundays even though they were much better off by that stage. It was a basic dumpling recipe that she would wrap in muslin to steam. It sounds nasty but it was delicious when covered with her sublime gravy made from the meat juices. A recipe from a time when people need their stomachs to be filled cheaply. Remembering some of her stories makes me realise that people now don’t really know what real poverty is.

Hi Mandy,
my grandmother made something similar as a main course that was always a treat. The suet was rolled flat, then she added onions and bacon that had been sweated together, rolled, wrapped in muslin and steamed.
Her treacle puddings were also a special treat.

This year I managed to treat myself to a real ‘bubble and squeak’ with cold turkey. Just so good.

1 Like

Love bubble and squeak. My Grandmother (same one) always made an extra portion of Sunday roast - she called it “the tramps dinner” - and they would make bubble and squeak the next day with the leftover meat. She was always very careful with meat and very respectful of it because they had so little of it when she was younger. She also used to make a “batter pudding” which was thick and doughy and nothing like Yorkshire puddings. Again, something to fill you up.

I also remember rice pudding made with water and evaporated milk added at the end to make it creamy.

She was an amazing woman.

1 Like

Can’t work out how to reply to 2 posts in one, I’m not a technophobe :thinking:
So I will say to both Mandy and Ray your posts certainly brought back memories. My grannie made that steamed pudding too and I adored it, I was always asking is it pudding day yet ? She always made a little extra one for me and mum.
The batter pudding too, we used to have any leftovers cold with jam on top.
Bubble and squeak, oh dear you have got my mouth watering.
I think that maybe we are from roughly the same era. :slight_smile:

1 Like

School Dinner… favourite pudding was a long narrow tin… lined with suet pastry and with whole lemons inside…and a suet lid tucked down all around.

Wow, when we cut into that… all the lemon juice had soaked into the suet… and it was to die for.

That lemon dessert and the chocolate crunch. (yummy traybake)… we got both those just once every term… it made school almost fun :hugs:

1 Like

Ours was reheated and then we put the jam on. Don’t remember complaining…
I remember my father frying slices of the previous days spotted dick. Jury’s out on that one I think…can’t remember if he put something on it after it’s cremation or not.

1 Like

Is that not called a Sussex Pond Pudding? Sounds amazing.

1 Like