The food thread

28F tonight. I picked the last of my peppers in the hope of making a batch of sauce.

Garlic
Peppers
Salt
lime juice (to drop the initial pH)
 

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The Gimp,
the ones you show aren't the same. In fact there are about 10 different types, 3 or 4 from the rain forests, the others I know about are from various paces in South America.

I meant using hot chillis thinly sliced in salads.

In northern Europe chillies should really be grown under plastic, just remember on hot days to ventilate.

Does anyone make stuffed peppers. Use the mild bell peppers, they are grown in France and Spain under plastic. Cut in half, clean out the seeds and pulp. Here's the tricky bit you need to steam them just right, if you don't they are either under cooked or go very soft, it's that fine line where the flesh is still firm but cooked.

We fill them with cooked minced beef or lamb, finely cut carrot and onion and dried herbes de provence and of course - garlic but any mixture that takes your fancy is fine.

Peppers both mild and hot (not the insane hot kind) are very healthy. I can't imagine not using virtually every day - garlic, onion and peppers and fresh and dried herbs.

Both my wife and I are watercress junkies. The French only use it to make soup. Can't grow it outside where we live in France, have to grow it under plastic like chillies. or it get's eaten by pests. Nothing like cutting a bunch to go with a steak or bolognese. Commercial watercress is'nt anything like as spicy as unforced or wild watercress.

We used to live behind the Snowy mountains in Andalucia in Guadix and on a walk to the neighbouring village (4K) of Alcudia along the dry riverbed of the rio Guadix in winter there would be run-off water from the snow melt which came from some high ground behind Alcudia.One winter's day, bone dry but cold, my wife said "look watercress". Sure enough growing in thin ice covered snow melt running water there were beds of watercress - the best we have ever eaten,really spicy. This bounty continued until the snow melt was gone by April. The Spanish would'nt touch the stuff. It was almost certainly brought to Andalucia by the Arabs from the mountains in North Africa and it was almost certainly banned for eating by the Catholic church - it is green the colour of Islam. The Spanish throw away any leaves of any veg that are green except lettuce - bizarre but true.

Apparently the samurai used to eat big bunches every day - it is loaded with lots of nutrition and minerals and it was supposed to give them fractions of a second advantage over an enemy - the difference between life and death.
 
Arugula has taken over as the spicy green of choice in many places, essentially unavailable before the 80's.

We used 2,4-D to kill it.

Arugula, dandelion, rocket, escarole -- I can remember back many decades ago that the East European immigrants to my ancestral homeland would pick dandelion greens. I think, however, it is a bit bitter compared arugula.

Arugula -- good on pizza with basil and ricotta!
 
Do you know the name the French give to dandelion - pissenlit - translated - **** in the bed:eek: great in salads but don't eat too much at one time.
Fresh succulent prunes are great but I once bought a 1K packet of them on a cycle camping holiday in France. Like a fool I ate the lot in one evening - had to make a lot of lightning stops the next day, luckily I was cycling on the minor roads that make cycling a joy in France, imagine if I was cycling through major conurbations.
 
This is what I made today. Corn rice pancakes.

3 cups cold medium grain rice
1/2 cup frozen corn
6 beaten eggs
1/4 cup all purpose flower
1/2 teaspoon salt

Mix it all together. Let it rest 30 minutes.

I then fry them up with just enough mild olive oil to keep them from sticking to the pan. Flip when corn makes noise. If they fall apart, more flour.

Best served cold as a side to medium spicy chili.

Also did a turkey, which requires the only skill on my part to monitor the temperature. If course the thermometer will beep if it gets unhappy.
 

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I typically throw away that little thermometer that comes with the bird. I once put one in a water bath and it didn't pop until the water boiled. A deboned turkey cooked over a huge pile of stuffing (Julia Child's idea) was a huge hit, cook it to 165F at the breast and no brining is needed.

I am not sure what else comes in those birds besides the plastic pop up gizmo.
 
I am not sure what else comes in those birds besides the plastic pop up gizmo.

Right the one that cooks the breast to 100C if you wait for it, grandma's cardboard turkey. Cal no problem, just that I think the brining somewhat offsets the tendency to over cook. That is a very personal opinion, I also like my dark meat pink at the bone.
 
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