Inglenook - for discussion

[Bondbug 32]

No.1 wife she say (she had not seen your latest post)...

 

"Hello, Chattius,

 

I found your account of a baking day very interesting, but I have never used millet in this way. I do sometimes buy 'mixed grain' flour which contains millet, however. I do use oats occasionally in bread, though, and have one or two rather tasty recipes for 'oatmeal bread'. The oatmeal is of course mixed with ordinary wheat flour or it would not rise, and gives a deliciously 'nutty' texture to the bread.

 

How on earth do you knead bread made from 5kg of flour and 1kg of millet (plus the extra weight of the water it's cooked in)? I confess that I usually cheat and use the food processor, which can only manage 1kg at a time, but even when I do it by hand, I would never tackle more than a couple of kg. Just feeble, I suppose!

 

What size are your cubes of yeast? I normally use 1 x 40g cube of yeast, which is usually enough for about 1 1/2 kg of flour, and make 2 or 3 different types of bread. I have once or twice used spelt flour, but it is expensive here, and the bread turns out rather 'heavy' and 'doughy'. Is the secret to use more yeast?

 

As my bread never seems to keep well, I usually freeze most of the batch for use over the next 10 days, until we have another baking day. It would be interesting to know how other people manage to make bread that keeps reasonably fresh for several days, let alone for weeks! We don't eat huge amounts of bread except when travelling: Bondbug likes to be fed sandwiches every couple of hours - he needs nearly as much fuel as the car!"

[chattius 2,526]

3-4 people work synchronous on the bread mix. Lift it, fold it,.. It is a village baking day so you are not allone.

In is done in a Brottrog, I lack the english words. Brot = bread, Trog a container to give water or food to cows, pigs. often a holed out trunk, or sandstone.

 

[Bondbug 32]

"Trog a container to give water or food to cows, pigs. often a holed out trunk, or sandstone." "Trough" in English, pronounced TROFF, and probably of German origin.

 

Did I see you somewhere suggesting a regional/national cookery thread? Sounds a good idea. A lot of recipes being posted are 'regional/national', with regional ingredient names and terminology. I often wonder how the people out west cope with translating it into there own teminology. Works both ways. American ingredients are something of a mystery to me. It is a pain to have to hunt on the web for meanings all the time. Even within Europe with its many different languages and dialects it is often even more difficult. Your stuff is not a problem, you go to great lengths to supply references and photos (don't know where you find the time)

 

How would you propose to organise such a thread? You might need a separate thread (or even sub-forum) for each region/nationality ... South American, North American, Japanese, German, French, British, etc ... hmmmm?

 

As long as the "Yanks" don't claim apple pie, pumpkin pie or pork and beans as originating in the US!

Edited January 23, 2011 by Bondbug

[Bondbug 32]

Double posting yet again ... slightly different subject:

 

"Long before the economical version of this recipe saw the inside of the famous can, pork and baked beans were a poor man's staple all over Britain. The Pilgrim Fathers took the dish with them to the New World in 1620. Within a few years it gave rise to the American delicacy of Boston baked beans and brown bread.". (from a Readers Digest publication)

 

I think most countries have a variation on this dish. French cassoulet is a sample, yet another poor people's dish now complicated by being fashionable and accepted "cuisine".

 

My daughter in London loved this when we made it here, but found that she could not get the right beans at home, and was dissappointed with the result. These are large haricot beans, but we have never found that the dried beans produce the right quality.

 

I will publish a recipe in the main kitchen sub-forum once I can be more precise about the beans. All I know is that we buy a big sack of them in season and sit shelling them for a day or two, then stock them in the freezer.

 

I wonder if it would be in line with Chattius "international cuisine" idea if people were invited to publish their own regional versions of a basic dish like this?

 

Keep tuned in to this station for the next episode ...

Edited January 23, 2011 by Bondbug

[chattius 2,526]

My oldest searched in internet for some videos: First video is very close how a baking day in our villages's baking house looks.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8_R2-1f8hY

 

Second is how to make a single Bauernbrot (farmers bread)

 

Sadly I am a dinosaur and I still do analog videos

Beaulieu 4008 bought at a garage sales 20 years back, The analog video format is hard to get nowadays but the 50000 people town where my parents live is germanies optical industry: Leica, Zeiss, Minox, ... And I know people working at Minox. Minox still produces 8 millimetre cameras. I have a 30 year old minox myself. So I have source for the black and white material which I can fix with chemicals at home.

[Bondbug 32]

Sorry Chattius. I get "The plug-in for this content has been disabled. Click here to manage your plugins" on both your videos, but no indication as to which plug-in, from a long list provided, is needed. Can you advise me?

[chattius 2,526]

Hmmm, was working for me on windows and linix, strange. Will try tomorrow on my work machine.

 

Edit: I can look videos on my work machine too and this machine has a very strange operating system, strange.

Edited January 24, 2011 by chattius

[Bondbug 32]

Apologies for absence, yet again. Podgie has been helping his doddery old Grampy to survive in the Shire, and I got slightly hooked. Incredibly complex possibilities and not to be rushed. If you don't understand that, I am ashamed of you.

 

(Nota Bene: I had written this before I saw Chattius' thread which covers a similar theme - but this is more basic so I will let it run)

 

Don't know if other people have the same problem with culinary (!) posts - vocabulary. I get the feeling that much of what I write, food, recipes, is not understood on the other side of the Atlantic, or even in other parts of Europe. Partly generation gap (several), partly terminology. Generation gap - can't do anything about that. Some people find grandma's cooking still something to dream about. They can do something about that - if they can be bothered.

 

But vocabulary!! It is almost as bad as vocabulary in jobbing building, not just national variations but regional, even town to town. I remember a time when towns like Dundee (closed shop) and Glasgow (sheer size) were more or less self supporting islands and had their own trades' vocabularies. And how about nogging pieces/dwangs .....

 

So in the food market we have turnip/swede/rutabaga all the same thing depending on region or country; cybies/ spring onions/ scallions and those are regional; endive/chicory in France and England where endive is chicory and chicory is endive, like the swede-turnip thing in GB. I suppose the supermarkets are forcing all these variations to standardise. Boring.

 

So I wondered how many different names for the same thing people here could come up with.

 

Should put a timing device on this - how many in one minute ....ready ... get set ... boing.

[Dragon Brother 619]

So in the food market we have turnip/swede/rutabaga all the same thing depending on region or country; cybies/ spring onions/ scallions and those are regional; endive/chicory in France and England where endive is chicory and chicory is endive, like the swede-turnip thing in GB. I suppose the supermarkets are forcing all these variations to standardise. Boring.

 

So I wondered how many different names for the same thing people here could come up with.

 

Should put a timing device on this - how many in one minute ....ready ... get set ... boing.

 

And now I know what a rutabaga is Read the word before, but somehow never ended up looking it up in a dictionary...bit lazy really.

 

As to many names for one thing...I know a few vegetable that I can think of two names for (eggplant/aubergine, zucchini/courgette, but nothing with 3 or more names springs to mind...I will add a forth name to your spring onion list though, I've heard them called shallots every now and again.

[chattius 2,526]

Dandelion (french for lion teeth, german Löwenzahn means lion teeth too)

Dandelion is no longer a vegetable whose kitchen usage is only known by country people. Restaurants start to serve dandelion with pork-cream sauce as a delicatesse. So you can now buy it at town markets:

 

So since dandelions are a food vegetable ican start to count some of the names for it:

 

Löwenzahn, lion teeth - named after the shape of leaf

 

Pusteblume - blowing flower because kids like to blow the little parachutes away

 

Pfaffenkopf - monk head - sometimes after blowing only a ring of parachutes was left, looking like a monk

 

Kaffeekraut - coffee plant - dandelion roots were used in after war years as a replacement for coffee in germany

 

Bienenretter - bee rescuer - after a long winter beehives were brought to places with a lot of dandelions

 

Bettnässer - person who lets its water into the bed - one of the medical uses, doing a kickstart to urine production

 

Fünfhunderter - 500 - the dandelion was on the back of the 500 german marks note

 

Butterblume -butter flower - used in northern germany

 

Regenblume - rain flower - if the blossom is still opened at evening it is said to rain soon

 

...

[wolfie2kX 528]

And now I know what a rutabaga is Read the word before, but somehow never ended up looking it up in a dictionary...bit lazy really.

 

As to many names for one thing...I know a few vegetable that I can think of two names for (eggplant/aubergine, zucchini/courgette, but nothing with 3 or more names springs to mind...I will add a forth name to your spring onion list though, I've heard them called shallots every now and again.

 

Except a shallot is not a spring onion. A shallot is sort of like a cross between a regular brown onion and garlic. It looks and tastes more like a rather delicate onion, but usually, the bulb is split into multiple parts sort of like a head of garlic.

 

 

The bulbs in the pic above have at least 2 "cloves" each...

 

However, it appears that in some parts of Australia, the word does apply to what is known to the rest of the world as Green Onions or Scallions.

 

So... I suppose you might have a point... Even if it's a limited regional kinda thing.

Edited May 5, 2011 by wolfie2kX

[Bondbug 32]

Odd that Dragon Brother. I stopped buying a well known brand of pickle - sold in GB - which listed rutabaga as an ingredient. Dishonest - couldn't include turnip/swede which the Brits would have recognised

 

I think, Chattius, that for outright honesty you have to give the French the prize - it is correctly called Pisse-en-lit here.

 

I think Wolfie that Shallot (échalotte here) is another example of a name used differently in different areas - Dragon Brother is quite right for our region.

Edited May 5, 2011 by Bondbug

[wolfie2kX 528]

Odd that Dragon Brother. I stopped buying a well known brand of pickle - sold in GB - which listed rutabaga as an ingredient. Dishonest - couldn't include turnip/swede which the Brits would have recognised

 

I think, Chattius, that for outright honesty you have to give the French the prize - it is correctly called Pisse-en-lit here.

 

I think Wolfie that Shallot (échalotte here) is another example of a name used differently in different areas - Dragon Brother is quite right for our region.

 

Yes.. I've corrected me post...

 

Now that French name... I don't think there's enough gold, money, credit in the world that would make me try anything with a name that sounds an awful lot like flammable urine... Sounds like someone's been dipping into the Everclear or something.

[chattius 2,526]

You will miss something:

[Delta! 987]

 

And now I know what a rutabaga is Read the word before, but somehow never ended up looking it up in a dictionary...bit lazy really.

 

As to many names for one thing...I know a few vegetable that I can think of two names for (eggplant/aubergine, zucchini/courgette, but nothing with 3 or more names springs to mind...I will add a forth name to your spring onion list though, I've heard them called shallots every now and again.

 

Zucchini/courgette/baby marrow

Icing sugar/confectioners sugar

 

Delta!

[Bondbug 32]

Good. Good. Sorry to interupt but the dinner gong is about to ring out and I have one or two items which Chattius may be able to expand on.

 

It being Spring (sort of) and my being busy making the annual supply of elderflower syrup, I was looking into our book of things picked in the wild at about this season, and I came across:-

 

1 Woodruff (galium odoratum/ Waldmeister) notable for its pleasant smell, and used for that reason in punch or hot 'nogs'. Familiar English names include "Kiss-me-quick" and "Ladies-in-the hay" !! So it is perhaps not surprising to find it mentioned in Mayday celebrations - "festive Maybowls". Old traditions and into the woods kids.

- I find it mentioned in connection with the liqueur Benedictine and the apparently traditional central European "Maibowle".

- Can you give us anything on the Maibowle, Chattius?

 

2 Fat Hen (Chenopodium album/ Weisse Chenopodium - sorry Chattius I don't have that sort of squiggly German 'B' on my keyboard so I give it as 'ss' which may well be incorrect). My book says "it is just as delicious as spinach and has the inestimable advantage of growing steadily throughout the hot summer months when successive sowings of garden spinach have long since tiresomely bolted". It is, normally treated as a weed, that grows "in newly tilled soil, on building sites, and bomb sites" and that "it has been estimated that the seeds of fat hen make up about half of the entire population of weed seeds to be found in the soils of the whole of central Europe".

- In which case it seems logical to give some thoughts to its availablity as a cheap, nutricious food (if you should happen to like spinach) - provided you have a nearby bomb-site or building-site which is much the same thing.

- come in Chattius!

 

3. re. your mention of dandelion leaves picked young for salads, I think I mentioned before that they have Pisse-en-lit fêtes in France with big communal meals where the main dish is, of course, the pisse-en-lit salad.

- Do you have a German equivalent? (sorry if you have already spoken of this elsewhere)

 

Munch. Munch

[Bondbug 32]

Returning briefly to terminology, I came across a book which gives recipes in English and America, and apart from cup sizes, found the following all within two recipes:

 

peppers/capsicums; plain flour/all-purpose flour; single cream/ light cream; bacon rashers/bacon slices; tomato purée/tomato paste; minced beef/ground beef; and the dreaded haricot ... navy beans, perhaps coco beans ...

[wolfie2kX 528]

Returning briefly to terminology, I came across a book which gives recipes in English and America, and apart from cup sizes, found the following all within two recipes:

 

peppers/capsicums; plain flour/all-purpose flour; single cream/ light cream; bacon rashers/bacon slices; tomato purée/tomato paste; minced beef/ground beef; and the dreaded haricot ... navy beans, perhaps coco beans ...

The term "pepper" is the english name for capsicum - which is the Latin name for the family of plants that produce such pods as the humble bell pepper all the way up to the insanity of the Habanero and Scotch Bonnet, Naga Viper Pepper and everything in between.

 

The "dreaded" Haricot bean (not so sure why all the dread) is better known in the US as a white bean, Navy bean (likely as they were served ad nauseum on Naval ships) or Great Northern Beans.

 

There are a number of types of flour - all purpose and bread being two of the most popular. It depends on the gluten content. Bread having a higher Gluten content makes it inappropriate for such things as delicate pastry and the like.

[Bondbug 32]

Oh **** I wrote a longish reply and it seems to have got lost. No time just now to redo it. For once it was not drafted on Wordpad.

[wolfie2kX 528]

Oh **** I wrote a longish reply and it seems to have got lost. No time just now to redo it. For once it was not drafted on Wordpad.

Ack! Hate when that happens...

[chattius 2,526]

Woodruff - Waldmeister (german for forest master)

We did some woodruff ice today:

http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=18490&view=findpost&p=6926055

 

WARNING - recipe contains poisonous plants

 

Mai-bowle (2.5 litres) for starters

 

2 bottles dry white wine, 1 bottle white sparkling wine, 1 citron, 50 gramm sugar, 5 young woodruff plants

 

Take 5 young woodruff plants without (best before) blossoms. Either lay the plants on a newspaper for night, or more quickly, put them in a refridgerator for around half an hour. The plants have to loose water so the wine can suck up the taste easier. If the young plants look old and dry they are just right.

You need at least a 4 litre bowle, a pole and a cord now. Fill in one bottle of wine. Tie the plants in a way that the leaves and stem are in the wine, BUT not the cut of the stem. The taste has to leave through the leaves, the cut in the stem will have bitter tastes leaving. Add the whole citron (not waxed, no pestizids at skin) and 50 gramm sugar. Let it stay for 2 hours. Remove the citron and woodruff, add cooled bottle of wine and bottle of sparkling wine.

 

Our traditional local mai-bowle had no sugar or citron but blossoms of black berries and certain early flowers.

For kids: replace wine with apple juice, and sparkling wine with sparkling mineral water

There are hundreds of variants.

 

Fat Hen

We have fantastic tasting (and healthy: anti cancer) mushrooms we call Fette Glucke (Sparassis_crispa). Glucke is german for a hen with chicks. The hen will loosen its feathers to give more volume so the chicks fit below her body and have it warm. The mushroom looks a bit like this:

 

Fette Henne (= fat hen)

You would call it stonecrop. Another german name is Mauerpfeffer (wall pepper). Even the plants have medical uses the sharp/hot taste is from a poisonous alcaloid, at least the variant growing in our area.

 

So now for your plant:

Weißer Gänsefuß (Chenopodium album)

Wiki: Chenopodiaceae is a family of flowering plants, also called the "Goosefoot Family." So the german name translates into white goosefoot, same as one of its english names. The name in our area however is Soischiss which would translate as feces of a pig (which is among the most annoying). Here we had a long tradition of wood coppicing and farming between the coppices. So the local pigs were of a wooly robust variant living from the stuff they found in the forests. People wanted them to leave the smelling stuff in forest and not at the places they had to work so the plants were quickly removed if found. So sorry mo local recipe for this plant

Funny just saw that english wiki does dungweed as alternativ name, seems it is a turbo booster for the digesting system.

[Bondbug 32]

Hmmmm. Feces of a pig!! What would they be doing on our British building sites? I will need to get a photo somewhere to be sure we are talking of the same thing. Feces of a pig - sounds so yummy.

[chattius 2,526]

I think we are talking about the same. I asked a biologist and he said that white goosefoot is a plant which has different local variations all over the world. While the cultivated variants (cultivated because of the seeds) have lost most of their not wanted contents, the old variants local to our area have a nice reproducing trick: They contain a laxative. The plant is smelly and what animals make out of it is smelly too. We live north of the limes (border fortification of the romans) and the area kept a mainly wood coppicing farming for centuries. So the old goosefoot variant wasn't mixed with cultivated species and still contains the laxative. So farmers still consider it as a weed farm animals shouldn't feed on.

[Bondbug 32]

Still have not quite digested that white goosefoot. Had a suffering gut for months.

 

Bits and pieces.

 

Mainly I am looking for advice/comment from Chattius. We have the wood oven on today, and one of the things my wife is preparing is Bäckeoffe (Beckenhof,Beckenoffe ... lots of spelling variations, and I suspect of Alsace origin). Things have been marinating in white wine since yesterday and it is to go in the oven this evening when it is cooling a bit for a substantial period of time, like all the best stews. I wondered if Chattius had a Hesse version, possibly a special Chattius family version, and could give us a few tips. Short notice for this time, but useful for the next.

 

Another unrelated thought is about the custom of adding a drop (or more) of red wine to soup, preferably IMHO a good vegetable soup. This can be done either when the soup is served, but more often here when there is just a little soup left in the bowl. The bowl needs to be of a suitable shape for drinking out of, and the bowl and remaining soup need still to be hot.

 

I first met, and practiced, this custom (not done in the best restaurants, which is another point in its favour) in the Dordogne/Lot & Garonne departments of France where it is called the "chabrol". It is a fairly general country tradition which has different names in different regions. "Godail" (spelling?) and "godale" (Béarn) are other regional names. I remember an old English folk song where the 'serving man' (town) bragged of having wine with his soup. This was part of the 19th century folk song dialogue debating the benefits of country life as against town life as publicity against the drift to the towns. You can be sure that the countryman had a better alternative, but I can't at present remember what it was.

 

So I am quite sure this practice is not purely French. Does anyone know, and better still practice, their own regional/national form of this custom, and if so under what name? My money is on Chattius for this too!

[Bondbug 32]

moved

Edited August 9, 2011 by Bondbug