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Corned beef is a strange beast. I suspect it, and other corned and pickled things, were much more widespread before refrigeration was commonplace. There seems to be a significant lack of Salted pork, Corned lamb and other corned things at the butchers and supermarkets, and yet corned beef is one of the most inexpensive meats available there. (I had a look at the supermarket, and the only cheaper meats were heart, liver and 3 star mince)
This is a surprisingly easy kind of meal to cook. It would also be super easy in a slow cooker as well.
CORNED BEEF.
INGREDIENTS. - Pickeld round of beef.
METHOD. - The beef may be bought ready pickled, or pickled, and, if like, afterwards spiced according to directions given for SPICED BEEF. Put it into a stewpan with sufficient warm water to cover it, boil up, and afterwards simmer very gently until done.
If required for immediate use, allow it to remain in the water until cold, as this will improve the flavour and render the meat more juicy, but it will not keep fresh quite so long.
TIME. - To cook, 8 or 10 lb., about 3 1/2 hours.
My husband really likes this one... Really really. It's almost as good as my lamb roast (and that's saying something)
You can add a little brown sugar and some malt vinegar to the water, or apple cider, or apple cider vinegar, cloves, garlic, onion, bay leaves, peppercorns - anything you like really. Also the vegetables - carrots and parsnips and brussel sprouts can be cooked in the same pan. Just add them about 1 hour before serving.
Cucumber Sandwiches - they seems to be quintessentially British. The main staple (ha ha) of afternoon teas and delicate luncheons. I say ha ha because they are nutritionally pretty useless, and therefore only the upper classes could afford to eat something that is essentially water.
But who know there is actually a recipe for them?
Here it is:
CUCUMBER SANDWICHES.
INGREDIENTS. - 1 large cucumber
creamed butter
white or brown bread
salad-oil
lemon-juice or vinegar
salt and pepper
METHOD. - Peel the cucumber, slice it thinly, season liberally with salt, drain on a hair sieve for about 1 hour, and dry thoroughly.
Now put it into a basin and sprinkle with pepper, salad-oil, lemon-juice or vinegar, liberally or otherwise according to taste.
Have ready some thin slices of bread and butter, stamp out some rounds of suitable size, place slices of cucumber between 2 rounds of bread and press parts well together.
Dish lightly overlapping each other in a circle on a folded napkin, and serve garnished with parsley.
It's actually surprisingly hard to find quotes about lamb that aren't religious... so I went with one - but I'm actually more familiar with this quote from Buffy so there you go. I also refuse to do the Twilight thing so that quote was also out -although the idea of snacking on Bella could be rather tempting.
Anyway... back to the subject, which is LAMB, of the roast kind. It is delicious. And super easy to cook... and also super easy to ruin. My favourite tool - the meat thermometer - it lets you know just when your lamb is done enough... Here's what Mrs B has to say on the subject
ROAST LAMB.
Lamb, when roasting, requires more attention that any other kind of meat. No part of it must be underdone, and to secure this result without drying and hardening the thinner portions to an undesirable degree, much care is necessary.
The intense heat to which all meat must first be subjected to for a few minutes is applied for too short a time to affect the colour of a hjoint, and the subsequent browning and over-cooking of any part may be obviated by covering the meat with 2 or 3 folds of well-greased paper, and by frequent basting.
The amount of heat applied to any part may be regulated by careful turning of the joint in the oven, and the rate of cooking by judicious use of the dampers.
See also NOTES ON ROASTING - to follow
Serve with gravy and mint sauce.
Salmon is a popular food. Classified as an "oily fish", salmon is considered to be healthy due to the fish's high protein, high Omega-3 fatty acids, and high vitamin D content.
It also happens to be delicious. I would totally be one of those bears who fish for salmon in some remote mountain stream. Mmmm, mmm.
SALMON, BAKED
INGREDIENTS. - 2 slices of salmon
about 2. oz of butter or good dripping
1/2 a teaspoonful of chopped parsley
1 shallot
salt and pepper
grated nutmeg
METHOD. - Lay the salmon in a baking-dish, place the pieces of butter or dripping over it, and add the other ingreients, rubbing a little of the seasoning into the dish.
Baste frequently, and when done place the salmon on a dish, and serve.
TIME. - About 3/4 of an hour. SUFFICIENT for 6 persons.
Sometimes I agree with Nigella. Sometimes I think she's just a little too excited by food. But Nigella hits the nail on the head with mashed potato. Mashed potato is essential... and as if they read my mind - an article in the Times describes all different varieties of ways to produce the perfect mashed potato.
So here's how Mrs Beeton suggests you make them. How do you make yours?
POTATOES, MASHED.
INGREDIENTS. - 1 lb. of potatoes
1 oz. of butter
1 or 2 tablespoonfuls of milk
salt
METHOD. - Peel and steam the potatoes over a saucepan of boiling water, or boil them in their skins, and afterwards peel them.
In either case, pass the potatoes through a wire sieve, or mash them well with a fork.
Heat the butter in a stewpan, add the milk, stir in the potato, and season to tastes with salt.
Beat well with a wooden spoon, pile lightly in a hot dish, then serve.
TIME. - To steam, 30 to 40 minutes. SUFFICIENT for 3 persons
Sometimes you just make things for fun. Like this fish - it is a coffee fish - actually it is COFFEE CREAM but for some unknown reason I decided to put my cream in my fish mould et volia - COFFEE FISH - swimming in a mint leaf sea.
COFFEE FISH
INGREDIENTS.- 1/2 a pint of cream
1/2 a pint of milk
coffee essence
2 1/2 oz. of castor sugar
3/4 of an oz. of gelatine
the yolks of 2 eggs.
METHOD. - Beat the yolks of the eggs, ass them to the milk when nearly boiling, stir until they thicken, then put in the sugar and cool slightly.
Now dissolve the gelatine in 1 tablespoonful of water, and add it to the custard.
Whip the cream stiffly, stir it into the custard when nearly cold, add the coffee essence, and pur into the prepared mould.
Let the mould remain in a cold place until firm.
TIME. - About 1/2 an hour.
From The Times
March 24, 2010
Chris Smyth
Jesus Christ and Ronald McDonald may seem to have little in common. But both are presiding over the supersizing of their followers’ eating habits, according to researchers who found that the portion sizes in paintings of the Last Supper have piled up over the past 1,000 years.
American academics analysed 52 of the most famous depictions of the Last Supper and found that the appetites of the Apostles have become increasingly prodigious. The size of the main dish grew 69.2 per cent and bread portions by 23.1 per cent over the millennium, while the plates grew by 65.6 per cent, they found.
The findings suggest that today’s obesity crisis may have deep historical roots, according to the researchers. “I think people assume that increased serving sizes, or ‘portion distortion’, is a recent phenomenon,” said Brian Wansink, director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University, New York, who led the study. “But this research indicates that it’s a general trend for at least the last millennium.”
From the austere repast laid on by the early 14th-century Tuscan artist Duccio, through Leonardo’s lively party of 1495, the supper became a feast in Titian’s depiction of 1544. When Tintoretto painted the Last Supper in 1592-94 the table was groaning with dishes.
Professor Wansink, with his brother Craig, a Presbyterian minister and Professor of Religious Studies at Virginia Wesleyan College, examined dozens of artworks including modern depictions by Stanley Spencer and Salvador Dalí.
Using computer design software, they scanned the meals and calculated the portion size relative to the head size of the average apostle. They found a big upwards trend, in research published in the International Journal of Obesity.
The Bible, being more concerned with its religious import, does not dwell on the amount of food consumed at the Last Supper, and it was a “tertiary matter” for most artists, Professor Wansink said. “The ampleness of the food is coming from the mind of the artist, showing what he thought was reasonable and appropriate in the time and place he was living,” he told The Times.
Professor Wansink, whose book Mindless Eating studies how social and environmental forces affect how much we eat, argues that the increasingly meaty Christianity on display is an indication of improvements in agriculture.
“The last thousand years have witnessed dramatic increases in the production, availability, safety, abundance and affordability of food,” he said. “We think that as art imitates life, these changes have been reflected in paintings of history’s most famous dinner.”
The New Testament mentions only bread and wine, but Professor Wansink discovered that fish was the most commonly depicted main course, featuring in 18 per cent of canvases. Considering the symbolism of the fish and Jesus’s injunction to his disciples to become “fishers of men”, this is perhaps unsurprising. Lamb was the main course in 14 per cent of the pictures and, more puzzling for a gathering of Jews on the eve of Passover, 7 per cent of the paintings featured pork.
Jeff Brunstrom, Reader in Behavioural Nutrition at the University of Bristol, described the research as “very interesting”. But he said: “The obesity epidemic is a relatively modern phenomenon and it’s really only in the past 40 to 50 years that you’ve seen big changes in body mass index (BMI).”
The researchers needed to show whether the larger portions had been making people fatter, he said. “If people were really eating 70 per cent more calories than they used to we would be rolling around,” said Dr Brunstrom. “Whether we have seen an increase in BMI historically is unclear.”
That will have to remain among the divine mysteries: the Wansink brothers did not assess whether Christ and his disciples themselves were getting bigger.
