Banana Possibilities.

I am taking a shortcut today. Life is busy so the post will be short. I give you, in its slightly edited glory, some highlights in the form of banana recipes from an article from the Times of India of March 2, 1914.

Banana Porridge.

Mix one tablespoonful of cornflour with a little cold milk, then pour over it one pint of boiling milk and stir in six mashed bananas. Pour into a lined saucepan, add sugar to taste, and boil for five minutes stirring all the time. Turn into porridge plates and serve very hot.

Curried Bananas. – Soak one teacupful of fresh or desiccated coco-nut in the same measure of milk for one hour. Peel and cut into large cubes five fine bananas, fry these in butter; sprinkle with curry powder, and remove on to a hot plate. Put thee soaked coconut and any milk that has not been absorbed into the frying-pan, add a dash of cayenne pepper and anchovy sauce, a teaspoonful of meat sauce, and mix well. Beat an egg, stir it into the sauce, lay the curried bananas in the pan and cook until they are thoroughly hot. The contents of the pan must not boil after the egg has been added. Serve with the usual curry accompaniments of boiled Patna rice and chutney.

Spinach and Bananas. – Wash two pounds of spinach and cook for twenty minutes; then pass through a sieve. Add one ounce of butter, season with pepper and salt, and pile in centre of an entree dish. Peel four bananas, divide them into quarters, dip each piece in beaten egg, then roll in fine breadcrumbs, flavoured with coralline pepper. Fry in deep boiling fat and and arrange the golden brown fritters round the spinach and serve.

Quotation for the Day.

I think nothing is more exquisite than beef in Kummel, garnished with slices of banana stuffed with Gruyere or pureed sardines with Camembert or whipped cream with tomato sprinkled with brandy or a chicken with lily of the valley.
Chef Jules Maincave (1910)

Bacon Bits.

I have realised this week that one girl’s strange and intriguing may be another’s ordinary and uninteresting, so it may be that you have not been excited by the examples of unusual ideas for using up everyday ingredients. Today may be one of those ho-hum days for some of you, as bacon is my theme. If I may judge from the number of articles and blog posts on it, and the intensity of the passion in those articles, it seems that there is a vast number of folk for whom bacon is – dare I say it? – almost a religion. Sadly, I cannot compete with the concepts of bacon ice-cream and bacon cocktails, to which I have recently been enlightened thanks to the mysteries of cyberspace. Nevertheless, I hope you like my choices for the day.

Strips of bacon are a natural wrapping material. Some time ago I posted on the topic of Angels on Horseback (or Pigs in Blankets), which in my world of the early ‘70s were prunes wrapped in bacon and grilled. In some of your worlds, they are oysters similarly wrapped and cooked. To a few lucky or indecisive souls, the bacon wraps around prunes stuffed with oysters. The idea of wrapping something sweet or savoury (or both) in bacon is not new, of course, a good idea is always an old idea tweaked.

Substitute the prunes or oysters with cherries or eel, and you have a couple of nice new-old takes on the concept of bacon wraps.

To roste Eels with Bacon.

Take great Eels, and scour them well, and throw away the Heads, gut them, and cut them into pieces, then cut some fat Bacon very thin, and wrap them in it, and some Bay leaves, and so tie them fast to the Spit, and roste them, and baste them well with Claret Wine and Butter, and when they are enough, dredge them over with grated bread, and serve them with Wine, Butter, and Anchovies. Garnish your Dish as you please.

Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet, (1672) HannahWolley.

Cerises au Lard, Cherries with Bacon.

Use bright red tinned cherries; stone them and macerate them two hours in Worcester sauce. Roll two of them in finely cut back of bacon, skewer them together with wooden toothpicks. Grill them till bacon crisps and serve the rolls on fried oblong croutons. Garnish dish with bouquet of parsley.

The Times (London, England), June 16, 1939

Quotation for the Day.

Well, art is art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now, uh... Now you tell me what you know.

Groucho Marx.

Lettuce, to Cook.

Lettuce: A cool green decoration for the more interesting chunk of protein on the plate, or a pleasant bit of crunch for a sandwich, or an edible wrapping for a savoury mix of some sort – that’s about it, for lettuce, isn’t it?

Once upon a time, lettuce often had a starring role, as the recipes below, from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries show. Both recipes specify ‘cabbage lettuce’ which appears to have been a rather more substantial, dense globe with thicker leaves than the types we use today for our lightweight salads.

To make a Lettuce Pie.

Take your Cabbage Lettuce and cut them in halves, wash them and boil them in water and salt very green, then drain them from the water, so having your Pie in readiness, put in Butter, then put in your boiled Lettuce, with some Marrow, Raisins of the Sun stoned, Dates stoned and sliced thin, with some large Mace, and Nutmeg sliced, then put in more Butter, close it and bake it; then cut it open and put in Verjuice, Butter and Sugar, and so serve it.

Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet, (1672) HannahWolley.

To Farce Lettuce.

Take Cabbage-Lettuce, scald them a little, drain them; then mince the Flesh of roasted Capons and Chickens with boil’d Gammon, Mushrooms and Savoury Herbs, Cives and Parsley, the Crumb of a French Roll soak’d in cream and the Yolks of three or four Eggs; and a little scalded Bacon; season all with Salt, Pepper, sweet Herbs, and Spice. Pound all together in a Mortar; squeeze the Lettuce one by one, open the Leaves, cut out the Knob in the middle, fill the Hollow with your minc’d Meat and Seasonings, then tye them up. Then take Slices of Bacon and Veal, and lay them in the Bottom of a Stew-pan with some slic’d Onion, cover your Pan and set it over a Furnace; when it begins to stick, put in a little Flour, and stir about with a Spoon, to brown it: Moisten it with an equal quantity of Broth and Gravy, season it with Salt, Pepper, Cloves, a whole Leek, Parsley, Basil, and a Bay-leaf. Lay your farc’d Lettuces in a Stew-pan, and pour this Braise upon them. When they are stew’d enough, take them, unbind them, drain them, and put them into the Stew-pan again, with a white Cullis. Let the Lettuces simmer in this, dish them and serve them for Outworks.

If you would have a brown Sauce, make use of the Essence of Ham.

You may also serve them with a Ragoo of Truffles and Mushrooms.

Cook’s and Confectioner’s Dictionary, (1723) John Nott.

Quotation for the Day.

I worry about scientists discovering that lettuce has been fattening all along.

Erma Bombeck.

Rolls and Loaves.

Have you ever over-ordered bread rolls for your barbeque, picnic, or hot-dog feast? You know you have. Haven’t you?  Sure, the leftover bread can be frozen, but have you room in your freezer? You know you haven’t, if you are normal. It is already full of the prawn shells and lemon wedges from your last party, isn’t it?.

So, what to do with these untouched specimens of the Staff of Life? You can keep the bread rolls in the pantry until they are stale and/or mouldy, whence you can throw them out with a clearer conscience of course, but there are other options. If I may continue with my theme of odds and ends of ingredients (and bread is surely the ingredient par excellence), then perhaps some of the following ideas from past times, when such profligate waste was considered sinful, may give you inspiration.

Asparagus, forced in a French Roll.

Take three French rolls, take out all the crumb, by first cutting a piece of the top crust off; but be careful that the crust fits again in the same place. Fry the rolls brown in fresh butter, then take a pint of cream, the yolks of six eggs beat fine, a little salt and nutmeg; stir them well together over a slow fire, till it begins to be thick. Have ready a hundred of small grass [asparagus], boiled, then save tops enough to stick the rolls with; the rest cut small, and put into the cream; fill the loaves with them. Before you fry the rolls, make holes thick in the top crust, to stick the grass in; then lay on the piece of crust, and stick the grass in, that it may look to be growing. It makes a pretty dish at a second course.

The Female’s Friend and General Domestic Adviser (London, 1837)

The following idea for a savoury bread-pasta pudding, also from The Female’s Friend, specifies a roll hot from the oven. I presume this means hot and fresh, or perhaps it means re-heated – but as the bread is soaked in wine, I cannot see the necessity for the bread to be hot or fresh. Perhaps there is a scientific explanation for the instruction, so if you know it, please let us all know in the comments.

Drunken Loaf (to make a)

Take a French roll hot out of the oven; rasp it, and pour a pint of red wine upon it, and cover it close up for half an hour; boil one ounce of macaroni in water, till it is soft, and lay it upon a sieve to drain; then put the size of a walnut of butter into it, and as much thick cream as it will take; then scrape in six ounces of Parmesan cheese; shake it about in your tossing pan with the macaroni till it be like fine custard; then pour it hot upon the loaf; brown it with a salamander, and serve it up.

Quotation for the Day.

Poverty is an anomaly to rich people. It is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.

Walter Bagehot (1826-77) Literary Studies.

Odds and Ends.

From time to time, as I browse old cookery books and other sources, I come across unusual ideas for using up ordinary, everyday ingredients. Usually, at the time I am on a specific search mission and do not want to get side-tracked, but the recipes are too good or too interesting to pass over, so I toss them quickly into my computer or my head. The trick then, of course, is to find them again – an especially tricky problem if they are in my head, where the folder and file system is not so visible.

This week I do want to find some of them again, to share with you. I thought we would have a week of stories about odds and ends of ingredients. 

Have you ever hard-boiled too many eggs? I have. Sure, they will keep for a while in the fridge, but much as one likes them, a diet of egg sandwiches and egg salad pales somewhat after several days. There are other well-known ideas too: devilled eggs, Scotch eggs, the very old tradition of eggsauce with fish, and the almost infamous Anglo-Indian concept of curried egg (with apple.) I would never have come up with the idea of using hard-boiled eggs to make a cheesecake, however, but the following recipe shows how it can be done.

Egg Cheese-cakes.

Twelve eggs, boiled hard and rubbed through a sieve while hot, with half a pound of butter; then add half a pound of pounded loaf sugar, half a pound of currants, and a little nutmeg. Brandy may be added, which flavours them nicely; or, if preferred, a few drops of essence of lemon or almonds.

The Peterson magazine Vols. 55-56 (Philadelphia, 1869)

Quotation for the Day.

Let me tell you, sisters, seeing dried egg on a plate in the morning is a lot dirtier than anything I've had to deal with in politics.
Ann Richards