Let The Recipes Begin!

[Tommie Milwaukee]

Buy a turkey
Have a glass of wine
stuff turkey
have a glass of wine
put turkey in oven
relax ... have another few glasses of wine
turk the baster
wine of glass another get
ponder the meat thermometer
glass yourself another pour of wine
bake the wine for 4 hours
take the oven out of the turkey
floor the turkey up off the pick
turk the carvey
get yourself another wottle of bine
tet the sable, and pour yourself another glass of turkey.

[dmann]

Made hundreds (yes, 100s) of latkes today in anticipation of my family & friends Hanukkah party on the 30th. Regular potato and sweet potato. If you are in my neighborhood and notice it smells like a deep fryer, you have me to thank. A day of frying latkes will do that.

Regular potato:
4 cups shredded potatoes (russet or yukon gold or a combo of the two)
Several heaping tablespoons of shredded onion (we like sweet yellow onions)
3-4 eggs
Flour or matzo meal to keep it all together. Start with a few tablespoons and adjust as needed.
Lots of salt and pepper

Squeeze as much water out of the potatoes as possible before mixing with other ingredients. When everything is combined, fry latkes in hot oil until golden brown on both sides. Best when eaten IMMEDIATELY from the fry pan, but when you're cooking for 70 people, you make 'em in advance, freeze 'em and heat 'em up before the party.

Still trying to perfect the sweet potato latke but we mix the potatoes with onions (green and sweet yellow), zucchini, eggs and matzo meal or flour. Spice them up with cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper and salt.

DM

[mrlynn]

@ Tommy Milwaukee

Thread winner! o

Reminds me of this old Johnny Bond bit, "10 Little Bottles":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYS9FalmdkI

Sorry. Back to your recipes, folks.

/Mr Lynn

[eustacetilley]

mrlynn wrote:
Re Apples Melbourne: Not for me. I love cinnamon; I detest cloves.

Now don't tell me you're going to desecrate your ham with those godawful cloves, as so many evil folk do. . .

/Mr Lynn

Oh, Mr. Lynn, I am thoroughly evil. It's so much fun.

******************************
About Ham

When I was growing up, we had great ham. We also had great bacon. Both were kept side by side hanging in the larder; you could just carve a slice off of either, and cook it up, if you so wished. Say whatever you want about the Staten Island Meat Mafia- they knew their meat.
About the time that we came out to California, things changed. One hot day in May of 1966, our new larder started to smell _really_ bad. You see, Agribusiness had redefined ham and bacon. It has gotten at least an order of magnitude worse since then.
There are two main ways of preserving Porkus Gluteous Maximus: the slow, expensive, dry heat method, and the quick, cheap, brutal brining method. Agribusiness prefers the latter. (The Danes have a thing about canned ham. Just right, for just the right occasion. The right occasion being many miles from any sort of civilization, and incipient starvation.)
But if you want to taste the best ham, ask your local hitman. He will direct you to just the right deli, and after much furtive discussion, you will be given a sliver of Prosciutto to savor. The Good Stuff. The Good Stuff is technically illegal here, but your local hitman knows all about that.

Ham, as it has been historically known, is a preserved product. It is meant to stay edible at roomish temperature for at least a couple of months. Long enough to cull a few Spring lambs for variety.
If you go looking for ham, real ham, nowadays in a Supermarket, you will be disappointed. All those blister-packed jammed full of salty water and who knows what else bloated already contaminated on sale products are _not_ real ham.

But, that is the ham world that we live in, so what do we do about it?

Take a store-bought 10 pound ham, and just accept that it is really a 8 pound ham with a bunch of really profitable salty water.
Stick it in a decent sized pot with around two quarts of apple juice and enough water, and boil the hell out of it. An hour should do nicely. Discard the now arguably poisonous apple juice, and bake or grill the now definitely smaller ham, with no more than a few cloves of clove for company. (Never any pineapple. If you must have pineapple, make a pizza instead. Or a pineapple upside down cake. Or just eat a can of sliced pineapple. Have you ever had the pineapple tongue buzz?)
You did save those leftover cloves from making Apples Melbourne? They are just right for studding the ham. The remaining absorbed apple juice will reluctantly ooze out out of the ham and make a delightful clovish hammy crust while baking/grilling, and the drippings below will jell when cool. Just the perfect substitute for butter the next day when slicing out a generous ham sandwich.

The ham should be dry when presented; that is what all the waterlogged potatoes and cabbage and carrots are there for. Contrast.
There is some debate about mustard. There is no debate about whether mustard is needed or not, just about what _kind_ of mustard. Traditionalists go with powdered Colman's, made up on the spot with a slug of vinegar. I like a good balsamic vinegar. But I have also gotten to be fond of the seedy variety of mustard as well. Afterwards, it gives one a chance to practice one's toothpicking skills. I prefer the hardwood toothpicks.

There is some kind of cultural Holy pact among pork, apples, and cloves. They can be used in just about any combination. Omit the pork, and you have the makings of a terrific desert.

Now for another little secret: you know about all those mounds of corned beef that go on sale just before March 17th, and go on even greater sale the day after?
Just pretend that it is ham, and treat as above.

Eustace

[mrlynn]

Interesting approach to supermarket ham, Eustace; we just baked a budget spiral-cut ham from Stop and Shop, and if you bake it long enough and slowly enough, it's not too bad.

But next maybe we'll try the apple juice. I will avoid anything that looks or smells like a clove, of course. I do like mustard on ham (and apples with it); any old mustard will do; we've got Grey Poupon in the 'fridge.

I think my aversion to cloves stems from young adventures in the dentist's chair. In those days clove oil was used as a pain killer. I expect it worked by numbing the nerves with its nasty emanations.

Now if you want real ham, head down to southern Virginia or North Carolina and have a slice of genuine country ham, the kind that comes in a tight cloth sack, along with biscuits and gravy for breakfast. Most northerners find it way too salty; like bitter beer, it's an acquired taste.

/Mr Lynn

[eustacetilley]

dmann wrote:
Made hundreds (yes, 100s) of latkes today in anticipation of my family & friends Hanukkah party on the 30th. Regular potato and sweet potato. If you are in my neighborhood and notice it smells like a deep fryer, you have me to thank. A day of frying latkes will do that.

Regular potato:
4 cups shredded potatoes (russet or yukon gold or a combo of the two)
Several heaping tablespoons of shredded onion (we like sweet yellow onions)
3-4 eggs
Flour or matzo meal to keep it all together. Start with a few tablespoons and adjust as needed.
Lots of salt and pepper

Squeeze as much water out of the potatoes as possible before mixing with other ingredients. When everything is combined, fry latkes in hot oil until golden brown on both sides. Best when eaten IMMEDIATELY from the fry pan, but when you're cooking for 70 people, you make 'em in advance, freeze 'em and heat 'em up before the party.

Still trying to perfect the sweet potato latke but we mix the potatoes with onions (green and sweet yellow), zucchini, eggs and matzo meal or flour. Spice them up with cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper and salt.

DM

Dammit DM, that was a damn fine recipe, and it was beautifully written.

I wrote a while back about Colcannon. My recipe twisted the definition of Colcannon beyond reasonable bounds, but it still just fits in. You can find that recipe if you wish, just use the search function. But that is not really important, what is really important here is the morning after, the morning after Colcannon.
Since we always made too much Colcannon, (Making too much is part of the recipe.), we were stuck the morning after with a rather unappetizing congealed mound of potatoes, leeks, butter, and unassigned packets of aluminum foil. Remove the packets. They may prove useful elsewhen.
Set a large saucepan to a heady boil, a saucepan filled with lard, but I'm open to more recent, and arguably more healthful alternatives. Flour up your hands, and toss a chunk of Colcannon back and forth until it has the appearance, if not the authenticity, of a Latke.
Carefully lay the patty in the boiling, roiling oil, and stand back. It takes less than a minute. When it is safe to get closer, your Oirish potato pancake is done. Ladle out, and consume at a pace suitable to prevent too many tongue blisters. I think that a dab of sour cream would be just grand, and I may try that the next time.

Eustace

[mrbigstuff]

eustacetilley wrote:

There is some kind of cultural Holy pact among pork, apples, and cloves maple syrup.

Eustace

you may not be a New Englander.

it really is great to cook some tasty pork sausages with apples in a skillet, teased with a little maple syrup, either in the sauce or in the sausage filling.

[eustacetilley]

mrlynn wrote:
Interesting approach to supermarket ham, Eustace; we just baked a budget spiral-cut ham from Stop and Shop, and if you bake it long enough and slowly enough, it's not too bad.

But next maybe we'll try the apple juice. I will avoid anything that looks or smells like a clove, of course. I do like mustard on ham (and apples with it); any old mustard will do; we've got Grey Poupon in the 'fridge.

I think my aversion to cloves stems from young adventures in the dentist's chair. In those days clove oil was used as a pain killer. I expect it worked by numbing the nerves with its nasty emanations.

Now if you want real ham, head down to southern Virginia or North Carolina and have a slice of genuine country ham, the kind that comes in a tight cloth sack, along with biscuits and gravy for breakfast. Most northerners find it way too salty; like bitter beer, it's an acquired taste.

/Mr Lynn

I like what you said, and it bears some thinking.
Now about cloves... I too have a certain aversion to cloves. It comes up every time that I'm around some dimwit poseur who lights up a clove cigarette. I've had to put up with four decades of this.
Every spice has its time, and its place.
My aversion to cinnamon is due to its ubiquity; it's as if a conspiracy was formed a while back that concluded that this particular recipe needs some spice, and let's just use cinnamon. Everybody else uses cinnamon. And cinnamon is cheap.

Now let's get back to Ham. I ignored the presence of some really superb Southern hams, because I was on a delightful rant, and I felt that this particular subject should be dealt with elsewhere.
This is elsewhere.
Two years back, I was invited to a Thanksgiving dinner catered by Safeway. It was a sad occasion; the food could have only made it worse. But it didn't. There was a noname-brand Southern smoke-cured ham in the center, surrounded by the usual forgettable Safeway sides.
It was a really good ham, and so it was obviously a mistake.

Eustace

[eustacetilley]

Tommie Milwaukee wrote:
Buy a turkey
Have a glass of wine
stuff turkey
have a glass of wine
put turkey in oven
relax ... have another few glasses of wine
turk the baster
wine of glass another get
ponder the meat thermometer
glass yourself another pour of wine
bake the wine for 4 hours
take the oven out of the turkey
floor the turkey up off the pick
turk the carvey
get yourself another wottle of bine
tet the sable, and pour yourself another glass of turkey.

That this is a superb rendition of a classic theme is not in dispute.
Now, let me tell you about Pot Roast...

Eustace

[eustacetilley]

mrbigstuff wrote:
[quote=eustacetilley]

There is some kind of cultural Holy pact among pork, apples, and cloves maple syrup.

Eustace

you may not be a New Englander.

it really is great to cook some tasty pork sausages with apples in a skillet, teased with a little maple syrup, either in the sauce or in the sausage filling.
What you say is most welcome; I'm not a New Englander, unless spending a few formative years on Staten Island qualifies. Apples and pork are a united thing, in all their offspring.

There are some subtleties to Maple syrup. It is rather amazing how just enough changes things completely, and how much a little bit more ruins things entirely.
(I'm talking about the Real thing, where ounces are traded for dollars.)

Here is a recipe, (After all, this is supposed to be about Wintery recipes.)

Take a full handful of finely steel-cut oats and...

Eustace