Approaching the weekend (not that it makes so much difference in lockdown days, but let’s keep a festive mood!) I was browsing this thread and have a few questions:
what skillets can you use to cook welsh cakes if you don’t have the proper thing?
@CatrinLliarJones: what is an “individual veg steam bag”? I can’t picture it my mind!
(and @novem, cause inspired by tortilla and pasta e ceci recipes, but question for anyone outside Italy reading):
can you find chickpeas flour there?
@HuwJones can you post again you bara brith recipe here?
and (not about cooking) @robbruce or anyone ever been to Brertagne: ever ordered galette with andouille imagining it would be cheese or fish?
I haven’t tried to look very hard (although I was thinking about it when I wanted to make Falafel) so I’m not sure! I don’t think it would be easy to find in supermarkets (still possible though!) but I could imagine them selling it at some special health/organic stores
Yeah I thought it was common anywhere in Italy but looks like it’s very much a Liguria and Toscana (and extended to Piedmont where, apparently, most of the first pizza places here came from.
And they all cooked pizza in a pan and farinata and only later came pizza alla Napoletana (or at least, more or less successful attempts! )
It’s basically just chickpeas flour, water and a bit of salt and can be cooked either in the oven (as the traditional one) or in a pan, in which case often adding other ingredients.
And lots of freshly ground pepper on top!
I can look for exact proportions and instructions if anyone’s interested.
I love it!
It looks like this:
ever been to Brertagne: ever ordered galette with andouille imagining it would be cheese or fish?
Every year for Christmas and my birthday, M orders andoulliettes (the sausage version of andouille). This year the supplier has shut up shop for the duration of La Peste so I’ll have to go without. We have friends who are pig farmers South of St Brieuc / San Briag. I have a photo of Maureen and la fermière standing up to their knees in a stream washing pigs’ intestines in preparation for making andouillettes. That’s my girl!
Funnily enough, we always use a crepe pan purchased from a supermarket in Brittany. It’s big and flat and heavy, so perfect for the job. Remember to take them off the pan just before you think they’re ready, because they’ll continue to cook in their own heat for some time after. That’s the trick to prevent them from being too dry.
Diolch yn fawr iawn, @CatrinLliarJones oddiwrth Maureen a fi. I made this and we both enjoyed it. As usual I made some minor changes - dried sage and mustard seeds and no milk (I forgot it) in the meat balls and less cream in the sauce (for the sake of our arteries ). The end result was really yummy
Anyway Maureen filmed the final stage of adding the soy sauce, Dijon mustard and cream before slurping it over the meat balls. My performance was inspired by Sesame Street. Here it is
I know we can’t compete with Muppet Huw cooking Köttbullar!
Anyway, from the Wales-Piedmont Friendship series, here’s the…Tajarbligu!
Mixing a Dave Datblygu favourite and Piedmont/Italian ingredients:
Cook the “Tajarin” in boiling water for about 3 minutes (Piedmont classic egg/flour pasta you can make at home following recipe above, like lasagna or tagliatelle but then cut into thin stripes)
In a non-stick pan:
Olive oil (olew olewydd, I love that name, so gotta usa that here!)
Mushrooms: dried and previously rehydrated, or fresh - depending what’s available - and cut into thin slices
Spinach: if fresh (depending on size, pre-boiled for 1-2 minutes or straight into the pan). If frozen boiled and drained as necessary
In a bowl:
Parmigiano sauce loosely inspired to Roman “cacio e pepe”, put a generous amount of grated parmigiano in a bowl, add a ladleful of water in which pasta is boiling and stir so that it looks like cream, then a little grated pepper
When pasta is cooked, drain, put it in the pan with the spinach/mushrooms and…I can’t remember the exact English words for this!..stir?..it in the pan for a few seconds and then off the stove add the parmesan sauce. E buon appetito!
Getting back to the “depleted” aspect, here’s some bread I’ve just cooked using potatoes to make my flour go further. It is Potato bread / Kartoffelbrot from a recipe picked up by the Hairy Bikers in their tour of Germany. I’ve made it before and M & I really liked it. There is no discernable taste of potato and it seems to stay fresh longer than my usual home made bread. The only caution I would offer is that the recipe’s oven temperature is a bit fierce. Here’s tonight’s loaf which you can see is beginning to burn. You will also note that I’m not very good at “plaiting” as my granddaughter will certainly confirm.
Lockdown project: Pizza oven for the garden. Probably not the greatest idea while our local shops are having to ration bread flour, but, as a self-confessed pizza snob (Neapolitan style margherita only, please, with an occasional addition of funghi), this has been on my to-do list for some time. I could get used to three day weekends, in all honesty.
If you think that’s bad - how about “Popty Ping” for “Microwave Oven” instead of Popty Microdon.
Mind you, I should talk. In the mid 80s I was working in a very francophone laboratory in Quebec. I wanted to say microwave in French and guessed at “Microvague” There was much hilarity all round because, although “vague” does indeed mean “wave,” it refers exclusively to waves on the sea, etc. I now know the right word for Popty Ping in French is “micro-onde”
Building a Pizza Oven is also on my bucket list. Can you share your plan? Are you going to use Clay?
I have to content myself with a good, 15" oven stone and an oven which can reach nuclear reeactor temperatures. I’ve also though of putting some wood shavings in the bottom of the oven to give the smoked effect.
I can and do put anything on my pizze, BTW with the obvious exception of pineapple
(I do make my own passata, too )
)
so I’ll have to go without. We have friends who are pig farmers South of St Brieuc / San Briag. I have a photo of Maureen and la fermière standing up to their knees in a stream washing pigs’ intestines in preparation for making andouillettes. That’s my girl! 
). The end result was really yummy 
)