The Cooking Thread

[Steve Bullman]

4 minutes ago, htb said:

Had a Lloyd grossman ready sauce once, god it was gross. Who eats shite like that?

PeteB apparently!

[Guest Gimlet]

8 minutes ago, htb said:

Had a Lloyd grossman ready sauce once, god it was gross. Who eats shite like that?

They are shite. Last one I had was the Thai green curry. Didn't taste remotely like a green curry and had slices of bamboo shoot in it. Total crap. 

 

Pataks Indian sauces are probably the best of the ready-mades IMO but even they need pepping up with extra flavour and spices. 

[Conor Wright]

39 minutes ago, Gimlet said:

They are shite. Last one I had was the Thai green curry. Didn't taste remotely like a green curry and had slices of bamboo shoot in it. Total crap. 

 

Pataks Indian sauces are probably the best of the ready-mades IMO but even they need pepping up with extra flavour and spices. 

These guys do decent thai style sauces. Their online recipes are good to

Green Curry with Chicken - Thai Gold

WWW.THAIGOLD.EU

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Thai food products and recipes.

 

[Guest Gimlet]

I made my own green curry paste from scratch once (and only once). It involved pounding an entire sack full of ingredients for hours with a pestle and mortar to produce one jar, but it tasted astounding.   

[Peasgood]

On 01/04/2020 at 21:34, Gimlet said:

Yep wild garlic is wonderful stuff. I picked a massive bag last week and I've been using it lots. keeps well too. Better get another bag this week. 

The flowers are coming out now. I love chucking them over a salad. Looks nice and they've got a softer sweeter taste. 

 

Been living on wild salads of garlic leaves, bramble tips, primrose leaves and flowers and hawthorn tips.

Looking forward to Jack-in-the-hedge, dandelion and beech leaves coming out.

I read your post a while back when you posted it. Yesterday I saw a young fresh bramble shoot and remembered your post and decided to have a taste.

Well I shan't be doing that again. I would describe it as slightly more astringent than a unripe sloe (ie. horrid!)

I now see the date of your post was April 1st.

[AHPP]

Most jars (Dolmio, Lloyd Grossman etc) are horribly sweet and just generally artificial. I also concur that Patak's jar sauces are marginally less bad but they're still pointless. Doing it from paste/scratch takes little extra effort and is far cheaper and better. Patak's paste was my old curry method but I've learnt how to do it from scratch now and it's far cheaper. I'll post next time I make one.

Edited April 14, 2020 by AHPP

[Guest Gimlet]

8 hours ago, Peasgood said:

I read your post a while back when you posted it. Yesterday I saw a young fresh bramble shoot and remembered your post and decided to have a taste.

Well I shan't be doing that again. I would describe it as slightly more astringent than a unripe sloe (ie. horrid!)

I now see the date of your post was April 1st.

It wasn't a joke. I picked more on Monday, together with some dandelion and plantain leaves and some hawthorn tips. 

Don't give up. Most wild leaves are much sharper or more bitter than cultivated varieties and many have a medicinal taste. That's why people started producing cultivated alternatives. The secret is to have a mixture.

 

I've never found bramble tips astringent. I can detect a faint blackberry taste in them, but they are quit dry especially as they need to be picked young when they have a downy texture.

 

Primrose leaves are really bitter. You wouldn't want to eat a plateful of them, but mixed with wild garlic there's a nice balance. 

Try young beech leaves when they've only just opened they're not bitter, or some ground elder which cooked is like spinach but with a hint of parsley. To add sweetness to a wild salad chuck in some pineapple weed.

 

You could try sweet cicely which has a aniseed taste like fennel, or some wild chervil (cow parsley - just the young leaves) but both being members of the carrot family there's a number of poisonous species like wild parsnip and hemlock they don't want to be confused with. 

[PeteB]

Just doing a paprika sausage stew!

[gary112]

3 hours ago, PeteB said:

Just doing a paprika sausage stew!

Are you adding the Harringtons for a bit of crunch?

[htb]

1 hour ago, gary112 said:

Are you adding the Harringtons for a bit of crunch?

That thought crossed my mind as well