Fish and Chips

There is a lot of misunderstanding on the surface about the subject of British cuisine. This is mainly because British cuisine varies widely, depending on what part of the country you’re visiting. The cuisine of London, for example, is far different from the cuisine of Yorkshire, or the cuisine of tiny, unfamiliar regions scattered across the country and virtually unknown to Americans. In my opinion, the true cuisine of the British is not what is found in the big cities, but the unknown treasures of the table that are hiding in the farmlands and countrysides and old villages across Great Britain.

If you are ever wandering the British countryside, and you stop at a local pub or restaurant for breakfast, prepare yourself. The classic British breakfast is a large meal, bigger than what we’re used to as Americans, and most of it tends to be fried. Fried bacon and eggs, fried bread, and fried tomatoes are standards. The true British country experience involves a breakfast heavier than your knapsack.

Asking for coffee with your breakfast in the UK is just no fun. Give the tea sensation a try. British cuisine leans heavily on tea, served with milk and sugar, the latter of which is usually coarse, brown, and unrefined. Tea is served for any meal and any time in between. It’s just as classically British as it sounds.
Any typical British meal, whether it’s breakfast, lunch or dinner, tends to consist of some form of potatoes. Especially in the countryside, the British rely heavily on potatoes, and serve them in very traditional manners. A wonderful British treat is something called a pasty. Meat, potatoes, vegetables and warm gravy are wrapped in a flaky bakery crust and sold ready to eat. Pasties are treated like take-out sandwiches or fast food, walking down the street with a paper cone or napkin wrapped around them. They keep your hands warm too!

The other major staple of typical British food is, of course, fish and chips. Fish and chip shops abound in all cities in England. British fish and chips are amazingly crackly, cooked until the coating is rich brown and salty, and the meat inside tender white and flaky. Chips, or potato wedges, are served hot and crispy on the side, and generally the whole thing is smothered in as much vinegar and salt as the consumer can stand. There is something distinctly British about that malt vinegar- left on the tables at restaurants like American ketchup.

Countryside on a great day
Countryside on a great day

The smells and flavors of traditional British cuisine are well worth experiencing. If you find yourself in England, take time out to explore the sites, the back pathways and rolling fields. And stop at a bakery for a pasty, stop for fish and chips. Order tea instead of your usual coffee. The British experience just isn’t the same if you miss out on this marvelous tradition- authentic British food!

About the author:
This article provided courtesy of http://www.recipes-low-carb.net

Finding delicious has just become easier since you found our website. There are many wonderful low fat salmon recipes that will please your palate plus the palates of your dinner guests or family.

This first low fat salmon recipe uses yummy ingredients such as low or non-fat sour cream and low or non-fat mayonnaise to create a delectable creamy salmon recipe that is perfect for any occasion.

For this recipe you will need:

2 pounds of salmon filets,
¾ cup of low or non-fat sour cream,
1/3 cup of low or non-fat mayonnaise,
2 tablespoons of all purpose flour,
2 tablespoons of lemon juice,
8 ounces of low or non-fat cream cheese,
1 minced clove of garlic,
1/3 cup of your favorite white wine,
salt, pepper, and paprika to taste.

Pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Wash the salmon and pat it dry with a paper towel.

Use a non-stick spray such as Pam and spray your 9×13 inch baking dish. Place the salmon filets in the baking dish with the skin down in a single layer. In a medium size bowl, blend together the sour cream, mayonnaise, flour, lemon juice, cream cheese, garlic, and wine until smooth and well blended.

Now, with the back of a spoon spread the mixture over the salmon. Sprinkle with the salt, pepper and paprika to your liking. Do not cover and bake for around 20. You can use a meat thermometer to ensure your salmon is done and not overcooked. The internal temperature should be 140 degrees Fahrenheit. The salmon will still cook once you remove it from the heat source. Do not go by color alone.

You can also prepare low fat salmon recipes on your grill or barbeque and create some wonderful low fat sauces to enhance the flavor of your salmon.

A great sauce to serve along side grilled salmon is a low fat lemon dill sauce.

For this sauce you will need:

2 tablespoons of non-fat mayonnaise,
2 tablespoons of lemon juice,
1 teaspoon of Dijon mustard,
¾ teaspoon of dill weed,
salt and pepper to taste.

Blend together all ingredients with a wire whisk and refrigerate until ready to serve.

About the author:
Hans loves seafood and is author of
Seafood
Recipes at Steaks-Guide.com

Sea air, crisp apples, the brisk, spice of fallen leaves – there are few things that say autumn in New England like the scents that seem to buffet the senses from everywhere. Among those marvelous treats for the senses are popular dishes from appetizer to dessert that you just won’t find – or at least won’t find quite the same way – anywhere else in the country. If you doubt it, there’s always an ad that was popular this past autumn – after the Red Sox won the World Series. In it, a man was explaining, “Son, when you live in New England there are three basic truths… clam chowder is white…”

And the other two truths don’t matter. We New Englanders take our clam chowder seriously. Up and down the New England coast throughout the autumn, nearly every town and township has its Chowder Festival. Throughout the six states, restaurants cook up pots of chowder from their best recipes and compete to be named Best Clam Chowder. The granddaddy of all New England Chowder Festivals is held in Newport, Rhode Island, where dozens of area restaurants compete for the title of ‘America’s Best Clam Chowder’.

It’s a simple enough dish, but like chili in Texas and crab cakes in Maryland, every cook has their own special twist on the recipe. There are the basics: clams, potatoes and milk. From there, it’s every chef for himself. Some swear that clam chowder without salt pork is just potage. Others insist that clam chowder can’t be made without onion. Chefs nearly come to blows over whether heavy cream should ever be used and why a butter and flour roux is a better base than clam liquor. Secret recipes abound – and everyone has their favorites.

My own personal favorite is the thick, creamy, eat-it-with-a-fork variety of clam chowder served at Legal Seafood and Au Bon Pain in Boston. Rich and laden with chunks of potato, meaty bits of clam, onions, garlic and salt pork, it’s a meal rather than an opener for one. Served with a slab of homemade bread slathered with butter, it’s guaranteed to raise your cholesterol level and please your taste buds for hours.

While many chefs cry sacrilege, others believe that fresh corn adds the perfect touch of crisp sweetness to the rich broth and pungent bits of clam meat. Corn isn’t the only bone of contention when it comes to this regional specialty. Purists insist that the only real ingredients in clam chowder are clams, water, milk, onions, potatoes and butter. They argue whether chowder should be made with mussels or littlenecks (if you’re in Maine, it’s littlenecks – in Connecticut, mussels. Anywhere else – it varies), whether to add the clam bellies or just the necks, even whether clams should be steamed ‘virgin’ or with garlic, wine or beer.

Whether you like your chowder thick or thin, with or without corn, flavored with salt pork or bacon or something else entirely, there is one thing on which all New Englanders agree – clam chowder is white. We’re not sure what it is that they serve in Manhattan – but it’s not clam chowder.

After all, what is so hard about going to the store, skimming over the one you need ie. the simple one that is, a reasonably good brand and off to the checkout line?

Thinking that it could be a simple buy, must have been my downfall.
Per my previous post, I cook rice many ways and instead of finding a simple rice cooker and went home, I was a little overwhelmed by the variety of settings or features available in the line of electric rice

cookers nowadays.

When the time has come for you to buy an electric rice cooker, consider these things in mind…

The size: would an 8 cup be good for you and the family or a 5 cup would be enough for one sitting or the whole day? Bear in mind the measurement cup is small and should be viewed properly before purchase.

Durability: Pick the brand you trust and make sure the warranty covers a certain important things such as LED batteries and availability of spare parts. We sure wouldn’t want to be buying one every 2 years.

Your requirement for settings such as timer and keep warm function, cooking brown rice or sticky rice. Mine have all of them and more.

I love doing rice for meals.

No matter whether it’s going to be porridge or congee, fried rice, coconut rice, packed rice cut into cubes or any shape you like, a side dish, as filler in soups or just simply steamed to perfection, rice would be staple for me and the family.

Now, I know that some people think it’s unhealthy due to all the carb.  I’d say, its the volume that makes the difference.  I have had rice almost all my life and I am a normal 5′3″ and 125lbs.  Furthermore, rice is considered an organic food compared to other processed carbs.

Back to the many ways one can enjoy rice dishes, with the advent of new technology, there are a few appliances that could be used to cook rice as you wish.

For porridge/congee, the slow cooker or crock pot is a  good choice, where one could even add pieces of chicken to simmer to perfection while you tend to other things.

For packed rice, the way I do it is to cook manually and ensure it’s cooked further than you would eat as your main meal with other condiments, drain the excess water and press the rice into containers and let it chill before cutting into cubes or into cookie cutter shapes.

For normal cooked rice and even coconut rice, the best almost hands-free way to do so would be using the electric rice cooker.

For fried rice, the best cooked rice to do this would be normal cooked rice leftovers from the meals the day or night before and chilled in the fridge overnight.  And just before I add the chilled rice into the wok for frying, I would gently break the clumps without mashing them up, so that the flavor or seasoning of the fried rice would be evenly distributed.

Good thing is that now, I can do rice in many ways by using my electric rice cooker, the one with multi-settings, of course.

Risotto – which we should not over stir or be stirring too often seems a breeze to make, and rice puddings turns out well too.

In the next post, I will indulge more on what features are available on the new-age electric rice cookers. Till then…

So, having searched for something nice and simple, I found one on an article.  Rather than pointing you to the website, I have decided to get it the recipe to this same page.  Save you a click!

The first thing you need to know is how to make your own 100% healthy and natural vanilla extract for your homemade vanilla ice cream. Vanilla extract is a basic ingredient in almost any homemade ice cream, but is essential in homemade vanilla ice cream.

You might buy the vanilla extract from a good quality store if you can find an unadulterated brand. But to make your own you’ll need about a quart of milk, a vanilla bean (available at most health food stores), and a teaspoon of honey.

You pour the milk in a saucepan and heat on high while you slice the vanilla bean lengthwise and in half.

Then put the halves of the vanilla bean into the milk. Boil for around 15 to 20 minutes, then cook on medium heat for a half hour or until the milk has a thin sheet of film on top.

Stir the mixture constantly as it cooks to prevent burning. Cool the extract and freeze in several small plastic bottles or containers.

This extract will last you for quite awhile since recipes call for only a few teaspoons each. You should-if you plan to make the homemade vanilla ice cream anytime soon- save a half cup of the extract in a container in your refrigerator.

Whenever you want to make more homemade vanilla ice cream (or any other kind of homemade ice cream) just get the vanilla extract out of the freezer and thaw in the refrigerator until a few tablespoons or so are thawed, then refreeze the rest of the vanilla extract before it completely thaws out.

Now I’ll give you my homemade vanilla ice cream recipe, follow the instructions carefully and you’ll get wonderful results.

Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream

You’ll need: 3 eggs, with the egg whites and yolks separated, 1/2 cup honey, 4 cups light cream, and 2 teaspoons vanilla extract.

1. In a medium size bowl beat the yolks until smooth. Gradually add honey, beating until well-blended and thick. In a different small bowl beat the egg whites until stiff, stir beaten whites in with the yolk and honey.

2. Then add the cream and egg mixture together in a saucepan, cook on medium heat, stirring constantly for 15 minutes.

3. Stir in vanilla extract, and either process in an ice cream maker or just freeze in a bucket container overnight, stirring the vanilla ice cream every few hours at first and then allowing the vanilla ice cream to freeze on its own.

Serve with an ice cream scoop.

This homemade vanilla ice cream is rich, creamy, natural, and very healthy I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.

Recently I looked into the subject of green tea and got so bored with reading all things about drinking the green tea, it’s health benefits and so on.  And I started wondering how else could one use green tea apart from having it in ice cream, cake and so on.

Immediately I thought of Cooking with Green Tea and discovered to my pleasant surprise that there is actually a book by the same name, authored by Ying Chang Compestine.

So, I just went off and practically devoured the information in the book.  It really was a great way of learning how to treat (for a better

Green Tea Anyone?

word compared to ‘use’) this ingredient called tea, be it for drinking or cooking.

If I were to choose the one information that makes the most impact to cooking green tea from this book, it would be the tips imparted regarding the way we brew the tea; ie. the optimal temperatures required for different types of tea to draw the best flavor out of every cup for drinking or cooking.  Knowing different types and forms of green tea is also important so that we know which would be best for cooking.

Next would be the wholesome tas-tea recipes.  I love the fact that I could use green tea in cooking as a seasoning (just like salt, pepper or paprika) or something like a base stock.  My favorite menu incorporating green tea is in soup form and the green tea rice, not forgetting the spring roll.

So to start our culinary journey using Green Tea, we should get them out of the bag so to speak, and into bottles as you would with other seasoning ingredients.

Eversince then, there were chef/artist Paco Contres who was Adria’s apprentice/technical partner, and an Japanese American young chef working at Mandarin Oriental Tokyo.

We could be mistaken to think that this type of food style just started quite recently, whereas in truth, we could find some elements of it from early 19th century.  Such as Georges Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935).

Author Escoffier in the book Le Guide Culinaire encourages new style of cooking.  In the last few years,

leading chefs all over the world has begun to incorporate such technique.  Like using N2O or nitrous oxide to foam up liquids.  Good idea, because when you volumise the liquid you stretch the amount you pour for yourself and guests. Saves money for restauranteurs too.

Another scientific way to thicken liquid without heating is usage of Xanthan gum powder.  Just whisk the liquid in a jar or bowl and pour in xanthan gum, all this without altering the taste of the liquid.

Chef Michael Smith of the show “Chef at Home” also dedicated an episode to shed a little light on this type of food preparation.  Here’s what he demo-ed on the show: Poach salmon in olive oil infused with herbs like rosemary and lemon zest and this must be done so in precisely 200 deg Celcius which is just below boiling water. Use a remote thermometer to check the exact temperature.

Chef Smith also showed a bottle, quite like your spray pump, where you can foam up any liquid for desserts.  Wonder where we all could get one so we could save time instead of whipping up mousses.

Fancy serving chocolates throughout your party?

When we mention chocolates, we immediately think of the sweet treats that comes in individual pieces like the image here, or the bar.  And most of the time it would be the cocoa brown color, not the white chocolate variety.

So, chocolates for events? Or even the main course of the party? Does that mean we need to serve only the ready-made, high-sugar, unhealthy variety?

You could, if you want to.  Take caution, however that the sweet chocolatey things we serve to guests can only go as far.  Besides the other reason – people tend to get bored having the same thing in one sitting and would not be able to appreciate the beauty of chocolates.  Just like the handful of boys and girls invited into Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.

The point I am trying to impress upon you is, we could use chocolate or cacao products in other ways.

Speaking of which, I recently watched a TV show on Willy’s Wonky Chocolate Factory.  And the show focused on his thousand-acre cocoa farm in Venezuela, how he cooked lunches for the workers during harvesting season using, yes – grated pure chocolate or cocoa bar – as if it were curry paste.

Later on, when his chocolate factory was set up, he was shown fete-ing his family and friends with baked chicken doused with cocoa or chocolate sauce / gravy.  His product is available in England and online Williescacao.com .

I took cue from this idea and experimented with some of the recipes he has in his cookbook.  Anyone may access a few select recipes from the book online at Williescacao.com/cookbook/ .

I tried the vegetarian Porcini and Chocolate Risotto.  Not bad at all.  Never knew mushrooms go with chocolate.

In between making some good bites, he interlaced the show with some historical background on the huge city and the fact that having been conquered among others, by a Sultanate in 1500s, the British Empire (pre 1600s) and lastly the Dutch before gaining independence, you would and should expect a glorious assortment of food influenced especially by the Dutch.  (As the Dutch ruled the longest).  At the same time retaining some of the traditional ways of the Indons.

Among the recipes shown were Semur Daging which is beef cooked in soy sauce infused with various herbs and spices, and Gado Gado – the local blanched vegetable salad with spicy peanut sauce for dressing/dipping.

Semur Daging

Use 1lb/600g of beef – knuckle and slice thickly.  Get 2 large potatoes sliced thickly and half-fried.  This is done to harden the potatoes and avoid crumbling when stewed later with the beef.  Finely slice 5 shallots and saute on about 2 tablespooon of oil.  Add in pounded ingredients – 1 candlenut, 1 inch fresh ginger, 4 cloves of garlic, 2 sticks of lemongrass until the mixture gets fragrant.   Then throw in 2 fresh bay leaves, about 2 tablespoons of coriander powder and the Indonesian thick soy sauce to taste, along with a pinch of grated nutmeg, a few cloves, an inch of galanga (bruised usually using the mortar and pestle), 1 cinnamon stick and the meat.

I was also glad that the episode had something on Rijkstaffel as some years back I had the pleasure of dining in such a manner in the Sheraton Hotel at Bandung, a high-ground resort city south of Jakarta.

And so the story goes, while under the Dutch ruling, Rijkstaffel – a way of serving dinner was invented, purportedly because the Dutch found the traditional way of the Indons eating together in groups, using hands from a huge platter, offensive.  Rijkstaffel is basically having let’s say 7 people lined up in waiting, each bearing dishes in pretty woven baskets, lined with banana leaves, to be served to the diners, one by one.  Usually the first person will carry cooked rice, followed by chicken curry, spicy sambal prawns, stir-fried veggies and so on.  Rijkstaffel is generally applicable for entrees.