Personal Recipes

Nope… not for us… no need, the whites fluff up beautifully…

Oh yes what a twit I forgot the salt. And wiping the whisking bowl out with a bit of lemon :slightly_smiling_face:
@Bettina I never add sugar.

2 Likes

but you are in France making this for French people - try serving this to the sugar loving Scots without the extra bit of SWEET… :smiley:

1 Like

It is indeed here :grinning:

1 Like

This is actually my Scottish granny’s recipe (only pudding she ever made).

2 Likes

My recipe for Lemon Pasta… a quick, comforting plateful.
1 Lemon (juice + zest), 2 spoonfuls of good olive oil, finely grated parmesan cheese…
Blended together then stirred into the drained, hot pasta (sphaghetti/tagliatelle/whatever)…
and of course, lots of black pepper…
Delicious either as it is… or topped with avocado chunks and/or anything which comes to hand… and of course… more parmesan is always good, depending on one’s diet.

I have replaced parmesan with other cheeses with lower salt content… works well.

2 Likes

That sounds great.
I often make something similar but use a lot less lemon juice,plenty of chopped fresh parsley,walnuts, garlic,olive oil,and parmesan.(occasionally I,ll blend them to make a sort of parsley pesto)I love this and could (and still do)eat it as often as possible.
I will definately try your recipe Stella

2 Likes

Ah… you have fresh parsley… excellent (sadly, I don’t). Your pesto-oil sounds similar to what I achieve with lemon/oil etc…

Each of us has our own “regular” bits and bobs, I reckon. It makes sense to use what we have to hand/prefer… and trying something new is always fun.

We have a large bowl of salad more or less every day and that’s a mix of walnuts, mâche, avocado, radishes (and anything I find) … and this I serve on its own or alongside a fish/meat/cheese/whatever depending on the mood.

Incidentally, OH regularly zests/juices lemons and the mix goes into the ice-cube tray. Once the cubes are frozen solid I transfer them into a sealed box or bag and pop the lot back into the freezer. That way, lemon is always to hand…

1 Like

Do you make verjus Stella? Utterly delicious, just pick lots of grapes at the size of a petit pois extrafin and juice them, you can freeze it, fantastic in eg poulet au verjus.
Edited to say Actually it’s marvellous in anything you want a blast of intense fresh tartness :slightly_smiling_face:

Don’t have any grapes nowadays… but that is certainly an idea if I get offered some.

Every year I stock up on Seville oranges (once by picking them up from beneath trees in Seville) quarter them and freeze them. Great with skinned jointed chicken, leeks, toms and Camargue, or paella rice, all cooked in chicken saffron stock with some fennel seeds .

My other favourite use for Seville oranges is in a stock and wine based sauce when using duck sausage to make bolettes de canard (French avoids predictable titters) ,

2 Likes

While we are going a bit orangey…
I make Christmas Marmalade (the family named it) from Corsican clementines… (usually in the shops around Christmas).
Those Clementines have a superb flavour.
We generally buy a box of them and I brew and brew… the house smells wonderful and everyone smiles in anticipation of the delicious stuff yet to come…

2 Likes

There are some interesting recipes here but could I ask a question? Why do we still use confusing units when passing on a recipe. Just scanning through this thread I noted the following units:-

60cc Olive Oil
5 tsp chilli flakes
8oz ground almonds
450ml/16fl oz whipping cream
300g/11oz dark chocolate
Walnuts (not too many)
a tiny amount of salt
2 spoonfuls of good olive oil

How do you measure a CUP of flour? Do you scoop it out of a bin with a cup or do you pour the flour from a bag into the cup? Do you just tip the filled cup straight into your mixing bowl or do you scrape it level first (messy job!)? Do you sift your flour to get an even distribution of flour or do you compact the flour into the cup to make sure all air gaps are filled? Do you even think about it?

What sort of cup are you talking about? Do you mean an English cup, an American cup, a European cup or even a Japanese cup? If it is an American cup, does that mean an American Standard Cup or an American legal cup? Does it matter?

Well a Japanese cup is 200 millimetres and an English cup is 284 millimetres. The difference is roughly one third in volume

Would it not be a sensible idea to ONLY use grams as our unit of measurement? That way the recipe is not ambiguous. It is accurate (when it is important) and you can do away with all those measuring jugs, spoons, etc. and save on a lot of washing up.

The recipe given by Bettina sets a good example of this. She even gave the weight of egg whites in grams.

You buy US cup measures and hope the ingredients are the same which they are often not so messing up the finished item.

I hate recipes that use cups as a measure, and never use them! Everything else is fine as I roughly know what the stated quantities should look like, so can do it on eyesight (I very rarely measure). But a cup? No idea.

It’s one of the reasons that I dislike Jamie Oliver - everything seems to be measured in glugs and handfuls.

I often use handfuls, bits the size of (insert common item) or even vaguer measurements :grin:
If explaining properly it’s grammes all the way, ounces etc mean nothing to me.
I have a beautiful set of American ceramic measuring cups, see photo, specifically for US baking recipes. I put the flour in with a spoon or shake it from a bag.

3 Likes

Many of my favourite recipes are from the NY Times cookery section and Epicurious; I use a set of US metal measuring cups that cost about a $ and have given good service for over thirty years.

Also happy to work in metric or imperial whether cooking, ‘carpentring’ or doing lay-outs in Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop. Ôften it’s 'horses for courses, 'depending on whether one wants to divide something into multiples of three, four or five.

1 Like

I have cookery books which date back to before the Ark… and they are in ounces… so when using those… I measure accordingly.
More modern stuff is mostly shown in grams but often with ounces shown as well…

Until OH bought me an electric weighing device (which I now adore) I was using an elderly set of scales which work perfectly but which are in lbs/oz.

The electric magic machine can weigh using either and has lots of tricks up its sleeve. I hated it at first, but now have succumbed to its charms.

With the Internet, I’ve found it easy to translate “cups” to whichever measure I prefer…

I have so many recipes from all over that by now the most used are ‘translated’. Spent time to calculate all the measurements into metric and if handing out recipes use grams/kg and ml/litres.
But at home I have american measuring jugs, UK measuring jug, scales that work in lb/oz/kg. Even the measuring spoons are different by country.
however, I cannot work with cups of flour. Always have to convert into grams - or my baking does not produce a desired result.
But then - cooking is not a precise science (unless you are Heston Blumenthal) and a pinch of this and a handful of that sometimes produces a great dish.

2 Likes