The Commonsense Cookery Dalek

I am skipping a very late dinner to post this instalment of the Dalek Game while it is still today. This is for the classic cookbook The Commonsense Cookery Book.

Everyone I know My family likes big glossy cookbooks with detailed instructions and beautiful photos (this was edited because a number of my friends reminded me they were in fact food historians or sitting at that very moment surrounded by vintage, unillustrated cookbooks). I do not. I like useful, dense books with few pictures and lots of good information, adaptable recipes and first principles. Ones which you can go to and find out what rules of thumb to use to cook meats, how to make a basic soufflé (and adapt it), what are the bare essentials for a bread dough, how to replace apples, how to time an egg and which spices go best with alligator (basil, marjoram, oregano, parsley, rosemary, saffron, garlic, curry, cilantro, ginger, onion and chives).

These sorts of recipes capture aspects of society and culture beautifully. I love the assumed knowledge and lack of specificity in some (“make pastry cream, then…” “1 good sized crab”), the assumed requirements and milieu of others (“cooking for the bachelor household”, “convalescents’ and children’s cookery”, “to serve sandwiches for 200″), the variant spellings of coconut, the fascination with aspics.

The edition I have of the Commonsense Cookery Book is my grandmother’s 1964 reprint. I suspect the version linked to above has been substantially updated – mine certainly does not have risotto (or alligator – that’s from the very handy Wycliffe International Cookbook, which also has advice on keeping bats out of the pantry). It has no pictures except the advertisements: a suspiciously Betty-Crocker-like “Betty Sydney” cake mix; “look at all the marvellous things YOU can make… with DAVIS Gelatine… aspics, savouries, desserts too”; “Be a Top Class Cook with Electricity” classes; an extraordinarily young Margaret Fulton “cooking up something new and different for you each week” in Woman’s Day magazine.

The instructions are all very systematic, brief and useful (it includes several variations on how to make (brew? capture?) yeast). The staples and lack thereof I find fascinating: it is an Australia before the new staples – none of my share house standards are there. No pizza, no stir-fries, nothing recognisably a curry (beyond its name). It does, however, have: Cup of Gruel; Veal Forcemeat; “cocoanut” cake; lots of rabbit (I don’t know where to find rabbit easily now); “Economical Stock”; too many aspics; and my favourite: Brain and nut sandwiches.

In other news: I am hungry.

 

Chill-sans-carne and cornbread

Being able to have people over whenever is one of the reasons I bought a house (a related reason was to have a Spare Room), and so, since June…

 

Illustration Friday: Magnify

Pen and ink and photography. I may still add some red to her hair (but was scanning & editing while trying to run out the door this morning).

The first idea was perhaps too subtle – or maybe I need to work on a larger scale.

And in other activities…

The cookies are all from one [ETA: one double] batch of sugar cookie dough – there are: big plain cookies with yellow flowers, chequerboard (cocoa and plain) with chocolate on the back (drying upside down), plain flower with 100s&1000s in centre, little flowers with 100s&1000s kneaded in, jam and marmalade drops and cinnamon stars (little and crunchy and sweet). I’m still trying to work out if fine icing counts as a day’s drawing.

 

Breads: Kind of tangentially Vanuatu related

I had all these interesting things to say, and pictures to illustrate them with, and then I started going to the orchestra and the movies and working late and slowed down with the uploading and – I apologise!

Aimee asked for the beer bread/damper recipe and since she visited on the weekend and I turned it into coconut bread and it is thus doubly (if indirectly) relevant, here it is:

Beer Bread

• 1 can beer (375ml)  – this can be replaced with water, milk, Guiness, etc
• 2 tablespoons sweetener (golden syrup for my preference – but sugar, honey etc will do)
• 3 cups self raising flour

Mix. Bake at about 180degrees celsius for about 30 – 45 minutes. If the top gets too dark too quickly, cover with foil.

It’s a very flexible recipe. Swap things in and out. Add chopped up dried apricot (highly recommended!) or a handful of muesli. Cook in in muffin pans. Wrap it in foil and put it in a campfire. It doesn’t keep terribly wrong but that’s never been a problem. Tastes best hot with butter, but also good the next day toasted with butter. In Vanuatu I made it with Tusker beer and chopped up dried pawpaw which was amazing. If you can get dried pawpaw, it is even better than apricot. Serve it with soup or stew or cheese or avocado or (most especially) “cocky’s joy” (golden syrup).

For the Coconut Damper I added about half a cup of dessicated coconut and swapped the beer out for a can of coconut milk. I’d used some on my oatmeal the day before so I cut it with some regular cow milk and had to add a bit more because the coconut milk is thicker than beer or water. It took longer to cook through, as well, and was heavier and tasted very good, especially with a fruit salad of banana and red pawpaw (they do sell it here – I’d only every seen the regular yellow/orange kind). Aimee started the idea of putting pawpaw slices on top of the damper.

Next, I want to try the Coconut Pumpkin Bread from the Vanuatu Kwisin cookbook that was part of the thankyou present that  L&R  (SIL directors in Vanuatu) gave me. I seem to be being stalked by Wycliffe cookbooks. Or possibly just by Wycliffe. I’ve been trying to order some of the international cookbooks and while that was being set in place, I received an envelope of information and flyers and newsletters and another Wycliffe cookbook, and another envelope with another newsletter and people at church seem to have decided I am going to do the SIL course in Germany which… isn’t accurate.

But I did receive yet another newsletter, this one from L&R, about the dedication of the new NT translation in Tanna which M was baking banana bread for, and the newsletter had my picture of a Megavoice in it (the sketchbook uploads will get to this point eventually).

 

Lentil chicken and couscous

I really, really enjoyed my dinner tonight.

It’s a very quick and easy dish which has its roots in chilli con carne (chilli con pollo?) and trying to stay in budget. I made it again for Deb on Saturday.

• part of a roast chicken (usually 1/2 or 1/4 when on sale at the end of the night).
• can of lentils.
• can of red kidney beans.
• can of diced (or otherwise tortured) tomatoes.
• some salsa, and assorted spices: chilli and anything else that smells appealing.*

Heat the pan with a bit of oil and herbs. Chop up the roast chicken, put it in, stir it around, add the beans and tomatoes and some salsa and let simmer. That’s about it.

I served it on cous-cous, mixed in the bowls, with a dollop of plain yoghurt.

It reheats well and cous-cous is easier to make up at work than two minute noodles. But the best way to eat it is in a tortilla with some crumbled tasty cheese (can’t find the grater) and a glass of cold milk.

Man that was good.

———————

*You could add onion and garlic, but we’d just had the Great February Onion Cull, and I couldn’t be bothered crushing garlic.

 

Ice-Cream

On the off-chance there is actually a sustained period of high temperatures this summer, here is an icecream recipe. I don’t remember where I read it, so if it was on your blog please let me know! I made it this weekend past for my parents and Aimee.

How:
Chop up a banana per person (or thereabouts). Freeze it. Give it at least five or so hours. Put the bananas in a food processor and blend. Add a bit of other fruit (preferably frozen, but it doesn’t have to be) but no more than about 20% of the total – frozen berries are ideal. Blend. Serve straight away.

That’s it.

It is really, really easy. The icecream is soft but it doesn’t go all milky-runny like soft-serve icecream. This is because it is, at core, smooshed banana and it frankly isn’t that runny. Made with berries, it looks very pretty, tastes wonderful (though if the fruit isn’t sweet enough for your taste, you could easily mix in some honey) and is remarkably filling. I want to experiment further now – with apricots or mangoes, or passionfruit. Maybe apricots and mango and passionfruit… Or in tall dessert glasses, or as a parfait with very thin biscotti and fruit sauce or maybe wild hibiscus in syrup…