Recipe Thread

[Karen]

A Pet Talk potluck would be SOOOOO much fun! Moldovan and Belgian and Aussie and Yankee and Middle Eastern and so many different dishes!

What are folks traditional "spring" dishes? I keep seeing asparagus in the stores, but I cannot believe it will be any good yet, as there's still snow on the ground! Isn't that silly of me? In actual spring, when the asparagus was up, but the leaves weren't yet out on the raspberry bushes, we'd have asparagus on toast at dinner. That sorta meant it was REALLY spring!

No recipe needed for that, just boiling water with a little salt, fresh asparagus, and toast to put it on!

[Cataholic]

Karen,
If you don't mind...I would like to suggest another way to enjoy asparagus....

glass dish....place the spears in the dish, lightly coat with sesame oil, add some 'crazy salt' and broil! Yummy, yummy, yummy. Little lemon juice would be fine, too.

[Vio&Juni]

Nettle!!! (yep, stinging nettle)
It's the first green in the spring and it contains a lot of vitamin C and iron too. For those with spring depression (there's another scientific term for this ) helps very much.

Ingredients:
young nettle leaves - 1 kg of leaves or more
few potatoes
2-3 onions
2 eggs
some oil
pepper
salt
red hot chili pepper
(you can add meat to this, but it's very good as a vegetarian dish)

Process:
clean and wash thouroughly the nettle leaves, boil them well. Cut the boiled leaves very small (I cut them in the blender). Don't throw the water away, keep it.
Cook the onion in the oil, add the leaves, add the spices and the potatoes in small cubes and some of the nettle water. Cook until the potatoes are very soft. Add the beaten eggs. It's ready!

With the remaining water you can wash your hair. Esp after the cold winter, the hair is a littlle fragile and deteriorated. It makes the hair softer. My father washes his hair with this for more than 15 years (with shampoo too of course) and still has the intact "chevelure" . Actually, the nettle is best for this after it had bloomed.

[Freckles]

I borrowed this from Euell Gibbons, might give you a little more insight.

The Common Stinging Nettle

by Euell Gibbons

A surprising feature of herbal research is that it is seldom the rare, exotic, and beautiful plant that proves the most interesting; more often it is some common, familiar, and despised weed that it discovered to have undreamed of virtues. The common nettle is a good illustration.

Nearly everyone who has ever run arefoot as a child knows and hates this plant, but it is only a stinging acquaintance.

Nettles are common along roadsides, n waste places, and on vacant lots where barefoot children like to play, nd when contacted by a bare ankle it causes a painful smarting followed by a red rash.

I was recently picking nettles on a nearby farm, and the puzzled farmer wondered aloud why anyone would want to gather "them damn weeds." I started to explain some of the uses of this wonder plant, but he interrupted and said, "All I want to know about nettles is how to get rid of them." This is the attitude that most people have oward this herb.

And yet, this detested weed is one of the finest and most nutritious foods in the whole plant kingdom. Unlike many health foods, nettle greens are really good, as well as being good for you.

In addition to their good taste, nettles are rich in vitamins A and C, amazingly high in protein, filled with chlorophyll, and probably exceedingly rich in many of the essential trace minerals.

No grazing animal will eat a live nettle, but when nettles are mowed and dried, all kinds of livestock eat them avidly and thrive on them. Horses get shinier coats and improve in health when fed dried nettles. Cows give more and richer milk when fed on nettle hay. Hens lay more eggs when powdered nettle leaves are added to their mash, and these eggs actually have a higher food value. Even the manure from nettle-fed animals is improved, and makes better fertilizer.

Nettles furnish one of the most valuable of all plant substances to use as a mulch in your garden, or to add to your compost pile. Having approximately seven percent nitrogen, figured on a dry-weight basis, this plant is richer in this essential nutrient than many commercial fertilizers.

Old-Time Herbal Remedy

All this would seem enough to ask of one common weed, but in addition to these virtues, nettles have also long been used in home remedies and herbal medicines to treat mankind's ills. Any efficacy the nettle may have in this area is probably due to its high content of vitamins and minerals.

A lively soft drink can be made of nettles that is reputed to cure the aches and pains of the aged, but it also makes a pleasant beverage for people of all ages. Eating nettles is not at all the unpleasant experience you might expect it to be, for this plant, when gathered at the right stage and properly prepared, is a very palatable vegetable. It is said that a good French cook can make seven delicious dishes of nettle tops. You can do as well, once the general principles of nettle-cookery are known.

Nettle Greens: Gather Only Early in Season

Like asparagus, peas, and many other vegetables, nettles must be gathered at just the right stage to be good. The common nettle has perennial underground rhizomes, and from these the tender shoots spring up as soon as the weather is warm. It is only these first nettles, gathered when less than a foot high, that are good to eat.

Take only the tender tops of young, first-growth nettles, before they begin to bloom. Wear leather or plastic-coated work gloves while gathering nettles. Wash the greens by stirring them in water with a long-handled spoon, then use a pair of kitchen-tongs to put them directly into a large saucepan with a tight cover. The moisture that clings to the leaves will furnish ample cooking water. Cover and cook gently for twenty minutes; drain, but save that juice.

You can chop the greens right in the cooking pot by using a pair of kitchen shears. Season the vegetable with butter and salt to taste, and it is ready to serve. A more wholesome vegetable never came to the table. Cooking completely destroys the nettles' stinging properties, and actually converts the venom into wholesome food.

There were some receipes in the artilcle, but left them out here, because Vio&Juni gave us a receipe.

Thiis is the link to the Euell Gibbons

[gini]

Freckles, thank you for all of the information on nettles! I learned a lot that I did not know before.

Also, you share a birthday with my younger brother. So I offer you (a tad early) a month in advance birthday wish! Happy Birthday!

[zippy-kat]

*bump*

(that's a hint! all of these sound soooo yummy! lol )

[koxka]

This recipe is dedicated to the soup&cod lovers with a dutch background

Fish Stock Soup ( Visbouillon)

300 gr.(10 oz) fish heads and bones
200 gr.(8oz) haddock or cod
1 medium onion
1 large carrot
1 leek
piece fennel bulb
3 spring parsely
1 finely chopped stick celery
the rind of 1 lemon
1 tps ( ½ tsp) white peppercorns
pinch thyme
salt

1-Put the cleaned fish heads and bones, the cod or the haddock and ½ (2 ¼ pts) (6 coups) water into a largepan and bring slowly to the boil.
2-Peel and roughly chop the onion and the carrot.Clean and roughly chop the leed and the fennel .Wash the parsley.
3-Add the prepared vegetables and herbs to the pan, together with the lemon rind (well scrubbed), peppercorns,, thyme and salt to taste.
4-Reduce the heat once the stock has come to the boil, cover the pan and simmer very gently for 30-40 minutes.
5-Strain the stock through a fine sieve or a piece of muslim and use as required.

Tip
A good way of storing leftoer meat, chicken, fish or vegetables stock is to reduce it over a fierce heat and then freeze it in a small container ( ice cubes trays for example). Use the concentrated stock to flavour soup and sauces.

From THE DUTCH COOKBOOK by Barbara Bloem

Enjoy!!!

[Miss Meow]

Gee, I wonder who you mean! Thank you

[zippy-kat]

Zippy’s Bunny Bread
(Ok, this is more like food art than a recipe. lol)

Mix up a batch of your favorite bread dough. Let rise. Punch down.

On a floured surface, divide the dough into half. Cover and rest each half for approx. 10 minutes. Roll one half into a circle. Cut into 6 wedges.

Tails
From 4 of the wedges, snip a small amount of dough. Form into tails.

Bodies
Gently shape the four wedges into ovals. Place ovals on lightly greased baking sheet. Flatten slightly. Take the tails and press on to one end of the dough ovals.

Heads/Ears
Divide the remaining 2 wedges into half, making 4 small wedges total. Shape each into a tear drop shape. Cut approximately 2.5inches into the pointed end of each. Lay each set of ears on top of an oval shape, opposite the tail. (Brush with water if the dough doesn’t stick together.) Gently half-twist the ears so that the cut edge shows.

Repeat with other half. Cover. Let rise until nearly double in size.

Preheat oven to 350. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until done.

~ Makes 8 bunnies ~

PS. I owe you guys some cookie recipes too.... >completely forgot<

[Miss Meow]

Zippy, I printed it off to do some very abstract food art on the weekend but ran out of time - hopefully this weekend!

Last night my mum and I made Easter triple choc muffins with a choc caramel egg in the centre - I cannot tell you how yummy they were (and I will not tell you how many calories are probably in them!) I'll grab the recipe and post in the next few days.

[kingrattus]

fish heads ewwwww

[Miss Meow]

These are rich, decadent, calorie-laden, warm, tasty, yummy little muffins of love There is an Easter egg in each muffin, so perfect for this time of year. Makes 12.

1 1/2 cups self raising flour
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
250g good quality dark chocolate, chopped
125g butter
1/4 cup cocoa powder
300ml carton sour cream
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla essence
12 small caramel filled chocolate Easter eggs
1/4 cup drinking choclate, sifted

Preheat oven to 180C. Line a 12 hole muffin pan with paper cases.

Sift flour into a large bowl, stir in sugar, drinking chocolate and cocoa.

Gently melt chocolate and butter in a heavy-based pan or double boiler. Set aside.

Whisk sour cream, vanilla and eggs in a jug.

Make a well in the dry ingredients. Stir in chocolate and sour cream mixtures until just combined (any small lumps with disperse during cooking).

Spoon batter into pan so each hole is half full. Press a chocolate egg into the centre of each. Spoon the remaining mixture to two-thirds fill each hole.

Bake for 15-20 minutes. Cool on a wire rack, but taste test while they're warm!

Beautiful for morning tea the next day warmed in the microwave

[Karen]

This is for Neko1 (who got a cookie press at her bridal shower) and All Creatures Great And Small who has one but has never used it:

Cookie Press Cookies (Mom's recipe)

Cream 1 cup butter

Add 3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
3/4 teaspoon vanilla
and optional 3/4 teaspoon of peppermint, lemon or some other extract if you want)

Cream these together until light and fluffy.

Add 2 1/4 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt

At this point you can add food coloring if you want, to some (or all) or the dough.

Use your cookie press, experiment on a piece of tinfoil until you get the knack of whatever shape/size you want. Mistakes/blobs/incomplete ones can just be smooshed back into the rest of the dough.

then press away onto UNGREASED cookie sheets. Bake cookies for 7-10 minutes at 375 degrees - until the edges just barely begin to brown - it depends on what size you make your cookies.

To make chocolate Cookie Press cookies, use only 2 cups of flour, and add 1/4 cup of cocoa powder.

Enjoy!

[koxka]

These are rich, decadent, calorie-laden, warm, tasty, yummy little muffins of love

Yea, it's all I need .


Karen , your cookies sounds like pretty taste and easy to make. I shall try these with my nefew Marc "The Cookiemaker"

[Karen]

They are easy, and fun to make!
For St. Patrick's day, I make green mint Shamrocks, for Valentines, pink cinnamon buttery hearts, for spring, lemony flowers - there's no end to the varieties!