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FIRETHORN1

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Everything posted by FIRETHORN1

  1. I too like to make my own pizzas, but can never be faffed to make my own pizza base dough - too messy and time consuming, too much faffing about with all that kneading and stretching. You can buy plain pizza bases in most supermarkets, but I never liked them much either - they are more like dry, spongy bread than proper "doughy-tasting" pizza dough. However, my local supermarkets now sell ready-made raw pizza base dough - it's usually in the chilled cabinet, with the ready-made pastry and various cookie and croissant doughs. It's brilliant! It tastes just like a proper pizza base and takes only a couple of minutes to prepare ....you just get it out of the packet, roll and yank it about a bit to get the thickness that you prefer, add your own toppings.... then slam it in the oven to cook. Dead quick and easy!
  2. I've made chicken zigni stew a few times since a colleague of Eritrean heritage introduced me to it a couple of years ago. I'm surprised you found it unpalateably hot & spicy though, because the version I've made has only a mild kick and is more aromatic than hot and spicy. I didn't buy the berbere spice mix though, I made my own from the recipe that my old workmate gave me. I'd be happy to share the recipe with you if you want to try making zigni stew again... a milder version.
  3. I agree with andrejuan. It's the consistency that makes all the difference. Tomato dip is basically just ordinary tinned tomatos, simmered down very, very slowly, into a rich, concentrated consistency. All I add is a pinch of salt, a grind of pepper and a pinch of brown sugar - just a tiny pinch between my thumb and finger- then I slowly reduce it over a very low heat until it's rich and thick. Spread a bit on your bread or toast when you're making a bacon/sausage/fried egg sarnie for Sunday breakfast - or add a bit of olive oil, a bit of minced garlic, a bit of finely chopped anchovy and a bit of fresh basil/oregano (or both), to make a lovely tomato-based sauce for your home-made pizza and pasta dishes.
  4. Yep. I agree with Taxman. I'm not really cooking or trying much new stuff lately - partly due to lack of time, motivation and inclination - but mostly because I've just plain run out of ideas! Oh dearie me......
  5. I dip in to the Sheff Foodies forum quite often, either trying to pick up new recipe ideas, cooking tips, etc - or just out of pure curiosity - but it's all gone very quiet on here lately. Pure tumbleweed! Is no-one in Sheff eating anything.... cooking anything... or trying anything new these days?? Have we really all exhausted our foodie-favourites and recipe repertoires??
  6. I made the ginger curd yesterday and although it's perfectly pleasant, I thought it turned out a bit bland, compared to the more zingy citrus fruit curds. I used tons of fresh ginger in it, but the gingery flavour was quite mild, whereas I was expecting it to be a bit hotter and more ...er...gingery! I'm glad I did it, it was fun experimenting and it's certainly a bit different - but I think I'll stick to citrus fruits for my future fruit curd experiments.
  7. Oooh! Ta for the idea Huxley! Much appreciated. Very timely too.... Ginger curd is something I never, ever thought of doing...but it just so happens that I have a big surfeit of fresh root ginger my fridge right now! Coincidence....or what? I bought it last week - from one of those shop-front stalls, where they put all their fruit, veg etc in plastic bowls and you can have any bowl for a quid. I bought a bowl of ginger... and there was nearly a kilo of it! I hate wasting stuff, but there was so damn much of it, that I was wondering how the hell I was going to use it all. Thanks to your suggestion, I now intend to have a go at making ginger curd over this coming weekend. I'll let you know how I get on....... (gulp)!
  8. I've been making my own lemon curd for many years now - it's fairly quick, simple and inexpensive to make...and much, much nicer than shop-bought versions - even the all-butter lemon curds you can buy in posh, expensive delis and at trendy Farmers' Markets. I'd never made any other sort of fruit curd though, until recently, on finding myself with a surfeit of fresh limes, I decided to experiment with making lime curd. It was absolutely delicious - not as sharp and zingy as my lemon curd, but with a lovely, delicate, aromatic, limey, buttery sort of flavour. I'm now wondering about experimenting with other citrus fruit curds. Orange curd anyone? Grapefruit curd? Satsuma curd? And what about using "berry" type fruits -raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries, blackberries, blackcurrants...etc, etc? Oooh.....the possibilities are endless! Does anyone else out there make their own fruit curds? If so, please share your ideas with me.
  9. I don't think I've ever seen lamb fillet on sale in a supermarket, but it's often available in "proper" high street butchers' shops. It's a nice cut of meat, very tender and tasty, but it's also a very expensive cut - a bit like fillet steak tends to be the most expensive cut of beef. I suppose it depends what sort of meal you want to cook with it. I have seldom bought lamb fillet. because I tend to use lamb for recipes that require slow-cooking - like stews, hot-pots, curries, shepherd's pies, plate pies, ragus, bolognese sauces...etc. I find that the cheaper cuts are better for these slow-cooked dishes, so mostly buy best end of neck or lamb mince. I also like lamb ribs....they make a lovely stock for hearty winter soups...and if you can find some nice meaty ribs, they are delicious if you just slow-roast them with a bit of salt, pepper, garlic and rosemary ...then just gnaw the meat off the bones.
  10. There's a South Indian restaurant in Hillsborough. I can't remember for the life of me what it's called, but it's on the same side of the road as that big BM Bargains store - just turn to the right as you have your back to BM Bargains... and it's a couple of hundred yards along the road....very near the Tram stop. This restaurant does dhosas, sambals....the whole South Indian works. I've never yet been in there myself, so I can't comment on the quality of the food, but I've had lots of positive comments so far about the quality and authenticity of the food, the generous portions, the nice atmosphere and decent service, etc, etc. Maybe this one is worth a try?
  11. Ooops! Sorry if I offended you Max. I really didn't mean to. The truth is, I have nowt but respect for vegetarians and I'm happy to cook and eat vegetarian dishes myself. I like my meat, poultry, fish and shellfish, but I try to eat healthily and I eat purely "veggie" on at least 2 or 3 days out of every week. I have quite a few vegetarian friends and family members and when I cook for gatherings of friends and/or family, I always try to pay as much attention to what I cook for the veggies as to what I cook for the carnivores. Over the years I've learned to cook a mean nut roast or lentil loaf, I do veggie lasagnes and various other pasta dishes, I do decent veggie curries and chillis, cook quiches, pies, frittatas, omelettes, huevos rancheros etc. I even do stew and dumplings ..but without the meat and with dumplings made of vegetable suet instead of beef suet! No - I am absolutely not "anti-veggie" at all! As LexLuthor kindly said, I just meant the comment to be a bit tongue-in-cheek. So Max, please accept my apology for inadvertently offending you ....and if you have any of those good ideas for veggie Christmas dinners, please get down off your high-horse now.. and share your ideas with me! ---------- Post added 10-12-2016 at 20:17 ---------- ....I can cook loads of good veggie rice dishes too! My fresh peas, green beans and asparagus risotto always goes down well....as does my vegetable biryani. And I make loads of good, meat-free home-made soups too! Carrot and coriander, leek and potato, roast butternut squash, roasted red pepper and tomato, with or without lentils.... celery, spicy parsnip, country vegetable... the list is endless......
  12. .......and whilst I'm on the subject of cooking Christmas dinner, I'd be really grateful for any ideas on cooking a vegetarian main course that's a bit "special" and fitting to serve up for Christmas dinner. One of my sisters-in-law is a vegetarian (there's always at least one, isn't there ) She doesn't eat any kind of meat, poultry or fish.... and to complicate matters even further..... she doesn't eat any kind of cheese or mushrooms either! She'll happily eat any kind of vegetable, pulse, grain, or legume. She eats most herbs, fruits, nuts and seeds - she loves eggs of any kind and enjoys most "meat substitutes" - like tofu, quorn or soya mince/chunks etc. Any "Christmas-dinner-veggie-style" ideas will be much appreciated!
  13. I guess it's the inevitable question at this time of year, but I'd be interested to know what poultry or meats my fellow foodies cook at Christmas. My family almost always go down the route of cooking a boiled or roast gammon joint on Christmas Eve, then we have a turkey and a joint of pork for Christmas dinner. We've only broken with tradition a couple of times. One year we had a goose - which none of us liked - and most of which either got fed to the dogs or went to waste. One year, we had a lovely big capon, which I really enjoyed and thought was much nicer than turkey - but the rest of my family disagreed, so I guess it's going to be the old tried and trusted gammon/turkey/pork combo yet again this year!
  14. I tried a new cheese this week - one I'd never even heard of before, let alone tasted. It's called Fourme D'Ambert - a French blue cow's cheese. It's stinky, pungent, strong and tangy, but also soft, creamy and velvety at the same time, when served at room temperature. I got it in a posh specialist cheese shop and it's bit pricey - £18.50 a kilo - but you can spread it quite thinly because it's so strong and 100grams goes quite a long way. I like it spread on warm, crusty french bread or hard crackers - e.g water biscuits -accompanied by a handful of grapes and washed down with a nice glass of either a robust red or a zesty white wine. Pure bliss and self-indulgence!
  15. I don't know of any restaurants in Sheff that specialise in lobster dishes, but it is possible to buy lobsters relatively inexpensively these days if you want to try it at home. Lidl quite often sell whole fozen lobsters for a fiver. They are pretty small and you don't get a great deal of meat from them, but they are quite tasty and quite simple to cook. Lidl, Aldi and Iceland often do pre-cooked, pre-prepared lobster tails in their "chilled food" cabinets. They are more expensive - around a tenner for two very small portions - but worth splashing out on for a special occasion, or an odd rare treat.
  16. Thanks for the tips everyone. The Italian-style rabbit dish sounds delish and I may well have a go at doing that in the future, but this time, I'm just looking to do a plain old British type rabbit stew. I like the idea of doing herby dumplings with it. I get your point, Spider1, about herbs "spoiling" the flavour. I think this is very true if you use too much, or the wrong type of herb, but I just can't imagine doing any kind of stew or casserole without using some sort of herb to flavour it - and I think if you use the right herbs in the right proportions, it enhances the flavour of the base ingredients, rather than ruins it.
  17. I've tried Stinking Bishop for the first time this weekend and I was quite impressed! It's delicious - a proper pungent "stinky" cheese. It stunk my fridge out and when I took it out of the fridge, unwrapped it and let it reach room temperature, it made my whole flat smell like rank, sweaty socks! It's bloody expensive though...like £40 a kilo! I paid £4 for a tiny 100g wedge at my local posh, trendy cheese-shop. It goes a long way though. It goes very soft and spreadable when at room temp and it's so strong and pungent that you only need a small amount spread on your cracker, bit of bread or toast. I'm now putting Stinking Bishop in 3rd place on my list of favourite "stinking, pungent" cheeses. My all-time favourite, Epoisses, is still in 1st place..... and Roquefort in 2nd! (These are expensive cheeses too, but nowhere near as dear as Stinking Bishop)!
  18. I'm going to cook a rabbit stew for a friend who absolutely loves it, but as I don't like rabbit much myself,I've not cooked it before and I need a bit of advice. I've looked online and found plenty of recipes, but they all seem to involve alcohol - beer, cider, wine, port - and/or fruits, like juniper berries, redcurrants, blackberries etc. I'm looking to do a more plain, traditional rabbit stew, like our mums and grandmas used to make. I should imagine that the basics of making rabbit stew are much the same as making a classic beef, lamb, pork or chicken stew - a decent stock, plenty of carrots, onions, celery etc, but I need some help on what herbs to add for flavouring. I use Rosemary with lamb, Sage with pork etc, but what herbs go well with a rabbit stew? I'm thinking Tarragon or Thyme? Any advice would be much appreciated.
  19. I'm particularly nostalgic about toffee! I used to love Thornton's toffee - before they went all nasty and "Corporate"! Their "special" toffee, treacle toffee and fruit and nut toffee were to die for! And what about Callard and Bowser's toffee? It used to come in a sort of flimsy metal tray - with a little metal hammer to smash it up into bite-sized bits. Oooh! Those were the days!
  20. I was out with an old friend today, both of us born in the late 50's, and we got to talking about the gloriously tooth-rotting old fashioned sweets and confectionary items we spent our pennies on as little kids in the 60's. A lot of the "chews" that we used to get 4 for a penny - like Blackjacks, Fruit Salad etc, and a lot of the boiled sweets that we used to buy in "quarters" from jars lined up in the sweetshops - stuff like cola cubes, pineapple chunks, sour apples etc, are still available, but there's plenty of stuff that I never see these days.... Coltsfoot Rock...Tiger Nuts...Penny Arrow bars - and my absolute all-time favourites -Lemfizz Cubes! What old sweets do you fondly remember from your childhoods? Would you still happily eat them now? I would if I could manage them - but my teeth are just too bad to be able handle most of them these days...unsurprisingly!
  21. Lambs' testicles Taxman?? Is that the same thing as what I call "sweetbreads"? If so, it's a coincidence you mentioned them, because I used to really like them too, when I was a kid growing up in the '60'-early 70's. My old dad used to get them by the bucketload on Saturdays, from some local farm in High Bradfield, and we always had them for Sunday breakfast, lightly fried, with bacon, egg and fried fresh tomatos. He'd simmer them in a light vegetable stock on the Saturday night until they were cooked through, chill them in the fridge overnight, then on the Sunday morning, he'd dip them in seasoned flour and quickly fry them in the same pan as the bacon, until they were brown and a bit crisp on the outside. Delicious! I haven't had sweetbreads since...oooh!...maybe the early 70's! I wouldn't have a clue where to buy them these days.
  22. I find it interesting how our tastebuds and preferences change and develop down the years. As a kid, I hated gravy. I'd eat my Sunday roast dinner - including the Yorkshire pudding - completely dry. I'd even eat sausages, mash and onion gravy without the onion gravy - I just wanted a pile of very browned fried onions instead. These days, I'm completely the opposite - I can't get enough gravy - I like everything drowned in it... so much so that the gravy is swilling off the edge of the plate! I also disliked strong cheese - I liked plasticky stuff like Edam - or bland, mild cheddar....these days, the stronger, the stinkier, the mouldier the cheese, the better. As a little kid, I loved meringues, marshmallow and candyfloss. These days, you couldn't pay me enough money to eat any of those things. Even the thought sets my teeth on edge. Ugh!!
  23. Thanks rothschild. By pure coincidence, I bought some Aldi frozen prawns last week and although they're not quite the "perfect prawn", they are definitely a lot nicer than most other supermarket frozen prawns that I've tried. (Considerably cheaper too...which is an added bonus)! I also totally agree that prawns - and most shellfish in general - seems to be a lot more tasty and flavoursome when you buy it from seafront stalls at the seaside. I also accept buy-truffles point that "tasting fishy" is often a sign that it's a bit "off", but the point I was making was about flavour.. These days, so many things that I remember being really tasty in my childhood, seem so bland and flavourless now. Maybe my tastebuds are old and jaded too - or maybe it's because I'm a heavy smoker - but to me, meat should taste meaty, chicken taste chickeny, fish and shellfish taste (a bit) fishy... fruit should taste fruity, bread taste yeasty and doughy, chocolate taste cocoa-y, tomatos taste tomato-y. Yet they don't seem to taste of very much at all these days!
  24. I don't cook Chinese-style food that often - mostly because it's often the kind of food that has to be cooked and served there and then, rather than prepared in advance to be warmed up later.... and if I'm having friends over for dinner, I'd much rather be in the living room, swigging beer and listening to music with them, than be slaving over a hot stove in the kitchen!! However, I had some Chinese food-loving mates over for dinner last night, so I thought I'd give it a go. I got a slab of belly pork - about 900g - put it in a pan, barely covered it with cold water, brought it to the boil, then simmered it for about an hour and a half. I put some grated ginger, garlic fresh chopped chillis and onions in the pan, to flavour the meat. I took the meat out of the pan and allowed it to cool, then cut it into slices about 3 quarters of an inch thick. I marinaded these slices for a couple of hours, in a concoction of soy sauce, oyster sauce, chilli, ginger, garlic and five spice...and a splash of dry sherry. I then flash-fried them in a bit of sesame oil until they were nicely browned and the skin/crackling nicely crisp. I served these twice-cooked belly-pork slices with a vegetable stir-fry of beansprouts, chinese leaves, water chestnuts, sliced red and green peppers, spring onions, diced cucumber, baby sweetcorn and bamboo shoots - accompanied by a pile of crispy fried noodles and prawn crackers! It all went down rather well with my friends - especially as it was all washed down with numerous bottles of Tsing-tao beer....(if I've spelt that correctly)!
  25. I've recently tried mature Cheddar with Blacksheep's Riggwelter ale. I bought it simply because it was on special offer on the Sainsbury's deli counter -and cheaper than most of the "conventional" cheddars! It sounded interesting, so I thought I'd try it. I first tried it by just cutting a little chunk off and tasting it. It has a lovely flavour, strong, pungent and tangy - but a weird, dense "clarty" sort of texture that I didn't like very much. It's not all that good "raw", as in cheese-and-crackers, a cheese sarnie, etc, but it's a fantastic "cooking cheese". It's good for plain old cheese-on-toast, makes a fab Welsh rarebit and makes a lovely light bechamel/cheese sauce - to go with cauliflower cheese, macaroni cheese., lasagne, moussaka, etc. Yes- I'd definitely buy this one again....but for cooking purposes only!
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