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Urid Dal, Umeboshi and You (pronounced U)…

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If you have seen my Theme Reveal for the A2Z Challenge 2022, then you will know that I am writing about becoming Vegetarian gradually as a response to the crisis in food supply chains sparked by the pandemic and made worse by the WAR in Ukraine. As well, I am keeping to the theme I originally planned of food which can be eaten in its own right as well as becoming an ingredient in other dishes…

www.theedgyveg.com/2018/01/08/instant-pot-dal-indian-dal-recipe/

It turns out, that to meet my criteria of foods that can be eaten on their own or used as an ingredient, “U” is the most difficult yet! I had to resort to searches for food beginning with “U” and Urid Dal and Umeboshi were the only two. Now Umeboshi is a Japanese salty pickled plum which, though eaten on its own as well as a central ingredient in Japanese cuisine, and which I have tasted, I cannot claim any knowledge of recipes, so your google search is as good as mine! What I can say, is that of the five basic tastes, Sweet, Sour, Salty, Bitter, and Umami, it hits Sour and Salty spot on! Although Umeboshi is often described as a salted Plum, it is more nearly related to an Apricot. If you are a super-taster and enjoy new flavours, I urge you to try it – it grew on me and I really ought to try finding and trying some recipes.

Urid Dal is one of the many varieties of lentils so popular in Indian cooking, it is a white lentil and I decided to give it a try in my new pressure cooker. I found a recipe (pictured above) by the lovely Candice aka The Edgy Veg! It was an InstantPot recipe and since my Ambiano pressure cooker is not, and cannot achieve the same pressure, I had to adapt the recipe by adding 1/3 extra minutes according to instructions from this site – intriguingly called The Aisle of Shame – those of you who frequent Aldi or Lidl supermarkets will know what this alludes to…. It is in fact a site which promotes Aldi goods despite the name!

So using sixteen minutes and substituting a can of tomatoes for fresh, I can report that the lentils were absolutely, perfectly cooked! Not so my next attempt with the pressure cooker – to cook butter beans – always a good test because they are a large bean and prone to losing their skins aka turning to mush… There is a slow cooking setting on the Ambiano pressure cooker which runs for two hours, I soaked the beans first with a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda – it helps to soften pulses – and after rinsing them well, covered them liberally with water, chose the high pressure option and crossed my fingers. The Butter Beans were al dente and I foolishly decided to try another short period of cooking at full pressure – mushed! Ah well, a pressure cooker of any description has a bit of a learning curve…

You! Pronounced “U”

I know – it’s a stretch but, as Archy, the cockroach, reincarnated from a free-verse poet used to say “wot the hell – wot the hell” (Archy and Mehitabel by Don Marquis)

Tomorrow I am going to summarise all the diets from full-on Carnivore to payed-up Vegan and I would please like to know YOUR story and where you are both in reality and aspirational on the spectrum if you care to share in the comments and I will feature tomorrow… Why do you eat what you eat, are there health reasons or other necessitations or do you roam freely through foodstuffs purely on taste…

Idaho Potatoes, Ice Cream and Inventiveness…

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If you have seen my Theme Reveal for the A2Z Challenge 2022, then you will know that I am writing about becoming Vegetarian gradually as a response to the crisis in food supply chains sparked by the pandemic and made worse by the WAR in Ukraine. As well, I am keeping to the theme I originally planned of food which can be eaten in its own right as well as becoming an ingredient in other dishes…

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/281921/basic-hasselback-idaho-potatoes/

Dang! Another difficult letter when it comes to food items. Cheating a little bit, I am going for the Idaho Potatoe because (apart from the fact there is an I in there) – the Idaho is a floury, or mealy potato and this is perhaps the most useful type as an ingredient. Waxy potatoes are great for salads and they will hold together in a stew, but floury means mash, roast potatoes with rough, crisp outsides, soups and purees.

Ice cream – well I manage an ice cream, or rather gelato factory so some room for disambiguation there…

This site, though American, is a pretty good guide to the main types of potato eaten in the US and Europe but let’s not forget that the potato originally came from South America. Here is an excellent book telling the history of the spud – and it is truly a fascinating one…

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Potato-Humble-Rescued-Western-World/dp/0571199518

To understand why floury potatoes do what they do, I turn to my culinary bible “McGee on food and Cooking – an Encyclopedia of Kitchen Science, History and Culture“. He says “Mealy types […] concentrate more dry starch in their cells, so they’re denser than waxy types. When cooked , the cells tend to swell and separate from each other, producing a fine, dry, fluffy texture that works well in fried potatoes and in baked and mashed potatoes.”

I am tempted to give you the recipe for Greek Lemon Roast Potatoes which I discovered when we hid from Covid in Crete for the winter of 2020 – I had never imagined pairing lemon and potatoe but whilst amazing, it is hardly the potato as ingredient, but you can find it here. Instead I give you PatataFagusta – a Maltese dish which translates as “drowned potatoes”. I discovered this on holiday in Malta some 43 years ago and found it to be almost a whole new method of cooking…

Patata Fagusta
1. Fill a medium saucepan with 50% Potatoes and %0% Onions – both cut into one inch cubes
2. Add plenty of chopped garlic and mixed herbs fresh or dried – a Provencal mix is great
3. Por over 1/2 a pint of water and a good shot of olive oil
4. Bring to the boil slowly under a tight fitting lid, stir and reduce the heat to the lowest for some 25 minutes and stir once or twice.
This is the basic recipe and produces a sort of stew, but much more quickly than normal and once you have the method down, you can embellish it with small amounts of Chorizo or prawns, or a tin of chopped tomatoes, orcurry paste instead of herbs – you get the picture…

Which leads me nicely on to Invention or should it be Improvisation? I rarely follow recipes exactly, except perhaps for baking, but even with baking, once you have done it for long enough, you can start to invent – otherwise, how would any new cakes emerge? No, what I do is to look for principles or methodologies in cooking which I can adapt to what ingredients I have in my part of the world, what equipment I have in my kitchen. Hence with the recipe above – it is definitely not a conventional stew where different things are added to the hot pot in sequence and then stock added and the whole cooked off. No, everything goes in cold and is brought up to temperature and then reduced to a slow cook with the water and oil at the bottom, preventing sticking. and the modifications you can make bring it into the realms of invention.
I put my inventiveness down to my mother’s cooking, she was a classic English housewife cook of her time, but she read the cookery sections of Woman’s Weekly and would try out things like Sweetcorn Bake, or for the rare dinner parties, Beef Olives (thin slices of beef flattened further and wrapped around stuffing, tied up, browned and cooked in a casserole – nothing Mediterranean to be seen here!). I don’t remember ever having olives till after I left university and moved to Brixton in London. My mother’s cooking was sufficiently inventive to give permission to follow suit. At university, I caught the bug for cooking and devoured cookery books (not literally) Chinese cookery, the Penguin Indian Cookery and most inspiring of all Elizabeth David’s Mediterranean Coookery. This reputedly racy woman is credited with changing the course of cookery in England and she certainly did it for me with her beautiful descriptions of the food she found as she travelled around Europe. She also wrote one of the definitive, scholarly works on English Bread and Yeast Cookery.

Oh! I promised to disambiguate Ice Cream v. Gelato… Well, Gelato is denser, more intensely flavoured than Ice Cream, the latter having more air whipped into it during the manufacture. The ingredients are much the same. Ice cream will melt more quickly in your cornet but who is to say that that lighter quality is not just as nice on a hot day. Gelato is to be enjoyed with a small spoon, summer or winter, day or night…

Have you invented a dish you are proud of and what influences have you absorbed into your cooking style?

Ginger and Grow Your Own…

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The Tribute to Jeremy Badge

If you have seen my Theme Reveal for the A2Z Challenge 2022, then you will know that I am writing about becoming Vegetarian gradually as a response to the crisis in food supply chains sparked by the pandemic and made worse by the WAR in Ukraine. As well, I am keeping to the theme I originally planned of food which can be eaten in its own right as well as becoming an ingredient in other dishes…

Photo by Lawrence Aritao on Unsplash

Ginger is, along with garlic, the base ingredient of South asian cooking just as olive oil and tomatoes might be said to be the base of say Mediterranean cuisine. It nearly doesn’t qualify for this year’s theme, but you can eat ginger in it’s own right – albeit candied or crystalised. As an ingredient it comes in many forms fresh (for that savory cooking base), dried and ground (think – sprinkled on melon), pureed for the lazy, and the aforementioned sweet stuff can be used in all sorts of desserts – Rhubarb and Ginger Crumble (or jam). Ginger is so ubiquitously available around the world, that if global supply lines are forced to prioritise, I sincerely hope that Ginger will be a top priority.

The other part of this post is about Growing You Own – be it a garden or an allotment, in the WAR that we all find ourselves in, with food prices rising, we can remember the British World War 2 exhortation to Dig for Victory – or at least, dig to save your bank balance!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zwscng8/revision/4

Unfortunately, unless you live in the tropics, you cannot grow ginger outside, all year around but this site tells you how to manage it between indoor and outdoors… Back in 1968 when I was 14, we visited Australia and in the holiday between the two terms we were there, we did a 4000 mile round-trip by car, and we visited what claimed to be the largest ginger plantation in the southern hemisphere at Bundaberg. Decades later, courtesy of globalisation, I can buy Bundaberg Ginger Beer here in England! I once talked to a sales rep. for Stones Ginger Wine about the difficulty of extending this warming drink beyond it’s traditional Christmas slot when it is often consumed in the form of a WhiskyMac. I mentioned the Australian connection but he said that they had to be careful of that because ginger wine is sold in six-packs of “tinnies” in Australia and often represents young Australians first experience of drinking. (Confirmation please from any Australians reading this?) I believe in California, the same slot is filled by Thunderbird Wine (made from pears?).

My partner and I have had an allotment for some three years now and have brought it back from a weed-strewn wasteland to a productive neatness and pride forces me to show it you!

New raised beds completed last year!

Recipe wise I have one tip today – when making jam with rhubarb – a favourite from our allotment – try and pick early, thin stalks – they are tender and less acid. Now, instead of chopping and boiling the fruit before you add the sugar, as you do for most fruit, chopt the stalks into 1/4 inch lengths, weigh and put into a bowl. Add an equal weight of sugar poured over the fruit but not mixed and cover overnight. the next day you will find the sugar will have pulled a lot of juice out of the fruit, leaving it tougher when you gently bring the jam to the boil – in other words it doesn’t all go to a mush, as rhubarg is prone to. And do try it with ginger added – to your own taste of course…

A to Z Challenge 2022 Theme Reveal…

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For my third year of the A2Z Challenge, I am reverting to one of my passions in life – Food! Two years ago, I only discovered the challenge on April 1st, the day the challenge started, so I had no time to prepare and plunged into the effects of the burgeoning pandemic. Last year, I decided to try and finish a novel and write around its theme – I didn’t finish it within the month but it gave me enough impetus to have finished it since and if any of you readers from last year want to read it – please let me know and I will send you a pdf.

DISCOVERY APPLE

The aspect of food I was going to tackle is ‘Foods that can be used as an Ingredient’ – so for example, Apples can be eaten in their own right as well as being an ingredient in other dishes. Tumeric cannot really be eaten on its own so it doesn’t make the list… There will be recipes of mine, links to other peoples’ recipes and odd food facts.

However, the world finds itself in a crisis due to the war in Ukraine and so I am going to add substantially to this theme – shades of the 2020 challenge when Covid was on the rise… Here are two things to consider -Ukraine is seventh in the league of worldwide wheat producers (but not for the next year). 50% of the Wheat imported into Germany, is fed to Pigs – it takes 7kg of wheat to create 1kg of pork. Imagine the price hikes coming down the line, from the price of wheat ‘feeding’ through to the price of pork (and other meats). What better time to consider choosing to eat more vegetarian meals. Note that I didn’t suggest becoming vegetarian, but at least increasing the amount of meat-free meals. There are other reasons for considering this, principally the Environment – less land use to grow all that food for animal feeds, less farting animals contributing methane to greenhouse gasses (methane is worse than CO2), less expensive, refrigerated transport of meat around the world. More grain for everyone around the world – poor countries in Africa will be hard hit by Ukraine being unable to plant this year, and not just wheat…

I have had in mind, for a long time, writing a book to be called ‘The Gradual Vegetarian…” I imagined a family where the progressive (probably) females in the house desired to go vegetarian for all the good reasons – ethical, environmental, health – and the (probably) males are resistant to the change. So the book would be vegetarian by stealth – gradually introducing recipes that give the lie to the idea that vegetarian food is bland and boring. Also, you don’t want to rush out and buy lots of new equipment and ingredients before you’re sure the change will take, so the idea of a book that gradually introduces vegetarian recipes, equipment, and ingredients, always seemed a good one to me and I am going to inject it into this year’s challenge…

There will be some jam recipes and so as a ‘taster’, I give my generalised method below, little wrinkles may appear with further recipes…

Making jam is simple, you need fruit and sugar in equal parts plus jam jars…

Making jam is simple, you need fruit and sugar in equal parts plus jam jars. Almost all jam jars these days can be recycled because they have a silicone seal inside the lid edge so you don’t need to mess about with acetate covers, rubber bands and waxed disks – unless you want to!

  1. Weigh the fruit so you know how much sugar to add.
  2. Cook the fruit in a large saucepan – some fruit needs chopping into small bits.
  3. When the fruit is mushed down, add the sugar and stir till dissolved and bring to a roiling boil.
  4. Take a spoonful of jam out and put in the fridge till cold, if you can draw your finger through the cooled jam and it wrinkles, you have a set – if not repeat until you do.
  5. Meanwhile boil a kettle, stand the jars and their lids on a newspaper and fill both to the brim with boiling water.
  6. Once you have a set, carefully empty the jars and lids and use a heatproof jug to pour the jam into the jars. Immediately screw the lids on tight. It’s good to have a couple of smaller jars in case there is some left over.
  7. As the jars cool down, you should hear a pop as the vacuum forms and sucks the lids in – then your jam is properly sealed and will keep forever! This whole process can take as little as half an hour…

I am trying to write as many as possible in advance so that I can spend more time reading other bloggers’ posts, connect with old friends and make new ones. I have had to come out of semi-retirement and go back to four days a week as the company I work for (Gelato and Puddings) – is moving to a larger factory so it is all hands on deck! But by April, I hope the worst will be over and I can put the effort in here…

There is a hard-working team behind the scenes of the A to Z Challenge and this year, Jeremy, the graphic designer responsible for all the badges and banners, sadly passed away, so the badge below is to honour him…

Train Wreck Completed

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If you were following this blog during last April’s A to Z Challenge, you will remember that I was attempting to finish a novel, and although I didn’t succeed in that goal, it nevertheless gave me a huge impetus and ten months later, the job is done. The cover, above, I made using photoshop and 3D AutoCAD, and it shows the climactic action at the end of the book, taking place at the LaGrange point where everything hangs in the balance.

‘Train Wreck’ is science fiction, but like much sci-fi, it is really about human beings and in this case, it sets out to explore the Utopian dream through the lens of a sci-fi setting, framed as a mystery/thriller…

Some of you were good enough to leave very helpful comments last April, and should you wish to receive a pdf of the finished book, then please let me know how I can send you a file. I would truly value feedback at this stage as I contemplate how much editing is required – where to expand, trim or omit…

If you don’t want (sensibly) to share your real email address, then here is a place to get a temporary email address…

Ideal Inspiration Blogger Award

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Thank you Jamie of uniquely maladjusted but fun for this nomination – I “met” Jamie through the 2021 A2Z Challenge this year where she wrote an intriguing story in instalments following a double date with a twist at the end – give it a whirl… Challenging questions Jamie!

https://uniquelymaladjustedbutfun.blogspot.com/

Rules for the Award

  • 1. Thank the person who has nominated you and provide a link back to their blog.
  • 2. Answer their questions.
  • 3. Nominate up to 9 other bloggers and ask them 5 new questions.
  • 4. Notify the nominees through their blog by visiting and commenting on their blog.
  • 5. List the rules and display the “Ideal Inspiration Blogger Award” logo.

Jamie’s Questions…

  • 1. If an employee under extreme stress says (verbally or written) something that is construed as insensitive to a group of people (age, gender, religion, orientation, etc), should that employee be terminated/ not have their contract renewed, or should they be given one more chance if they agree to some sort of approved sensitivity training reeducation program? 
    • There are two issues to be addressed here – “If an employee (were) under extreme stress…” such that it is implicated in anti-social behaviour, then the nature of that stress needs to be examined and if it is in the remit or ability of the employer to ameliorate that stress then that should be done anyways. As for the insenstive comments, then certainly a second chance should be given but surely subject to that person satifactorily undertaking ” approved sensitivity training reeducation program”. It’s not just a “give a second chance” principle but with the exception of a few gross misdemeanors, employment rights – certainly here in the UK – mean there are a whole progression of warnings which have to be applied before you can fire someone.
  • 2. At what age is it no longer appropriate to Trick-or-Treat for yourself? (Meaning exceptions are in place if accompanying a younger child, such as taking a younger sibling ToT so parents can stay at the house and give out candy.)
    • I think that the age at which children stop believing in Father Christmas should be the guide here! After that you only get to Trick or Treat when you have children of your own (below the age of Santa disbelief) then again when you become a Grandparent you get another bite of the cherry. Stealing other people’s children (Kidnapping – Ho! Ho! Ho!) to go Trick or Treating is not to be recommended!
  •  
  • 3. Would you support or oppose a mandate that 75% of the human population be required to be vaccinated against Covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2 including variants and mutations)? Would your answer change if this mandate were global, your country only, or your local area only? Is there a number or percent of deaths that would influence your support or opposition of such as mandate?
    • I would consider myself to be Libertarian, but the thing which which many objectors to vaccination (and certainly mandatory vaccination) forget, is that Libertarian means you should be allowed to do whatever you want but only if it doesn’t hurt other people! If we didn’t have vaccinations, we would still have Smallpox. The anti-vaxxers have been responsible for an unwelcome return of measles and mumps – diseases which some doctors had never encountered, so successful had immunisation become and these are serious diseases for pregnant women and for causing infertility respectively. I blame Trump and the unrestrained spreading of misinformation on social media, but I also think we have missed an opportunity during Covid, to spread some positive social behaviour. In China and Japan, wearing a mask whenever you have the “Common” Cold (which can be another form of coronavirus) – is quite normal behaviour so that you don’t spread it to your fellow human beings – that’s just the kind of societies they are! People who think they haven’t got Covid 19 don’t know – that is the whole reason why it has inevitably become a pandemic – and wearing a mask to protect others (and hoping they do the same) is at one end of the scale and at the other is an even better example of the “selfish” benfits of altruism. The UK government crows about how successful it’s vaccination programme has been, but until they, and all the other first world countries make sure the whole world is vaccinated, then variants will multiply and we shall never be free of the disease. So I am happy to have 100% mandatory vaccination but few governments will go there let alone the right wing idiots who tout it as an issue of right-to-choose…
  • 4. Should celebrities be given exceptions to laws, rules, and terms of service? If so, how famous does one have to be to get that exception?
    • Get away! If anything – celebrities should be held to a higher standard of account since what they do influences lots of other people so – its tough love, or just say no to being made into a celebrity…
  • 5. What is your favorite recipe to use with leftover cooked turkey? Or, what is your favorite summer pasta salad recipe?
    • I love to make a good stock from the carcass and then make a Christmas Dinner Soup with all the tiny bits of tukey but also leftover potatoes, gravy, sprouts, stuffing – Yayyy!!! 

Nominations

All of my nominees commented on my blog during the April A to Z Challenge 2021. So in no particular order and many nationalities…

  1. Tamara – https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.com/
  2. Anne M Bray – https://www.anne-m-bray.com/blog
  3. Sara Zama – https://theoldshelter.com/
  4. Frédérique – https://quiltingpatch.blogspot.com/
  5. Zalka Csenge Virág – http://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com/
  6. Sharon E. Cathcart – https://sharonecathcart.wordpress.com/
  7. Pooja Priyamvada – Second Thoughts First

My five questions to my nominees:

  1. Have you ever met anyone online (blogs, dating sites – whatever) and then taken it from the virtual to the “Real” World and what happened?
  2. If you could meet anyone – Historical or Present Day – who would it be and why?
  3. Who would you want as a Creative Writing Coach?
  4. What is the Blog Post of which you were most proud but which got less of a response than you hoped – (please link to the post)?
  5. Do you agree with the idea that we make a choice as to how we are going to die at quite an early age and do you think that choice influences whether that death will come to pass oh, and if you have made such a choice – care to share?

PLEASE let me know if you make a post with your answers! I don’t want to miss reading it.

Roadtrip 4 AtoZ 2021 Challenge

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A trip round some of the blogs I didn’t manage to visit during the Challenge in April!

Farida at Chapters From my Life, writes about her struggle with cancer. But she also writes poems, campaigns against child abuse and about her own family. Her reflections will resonate not just with others who are struggling with the big C, but the thoughts will inspire anyone who is struggling with Life in general. This will not be everyone’s idea of a blog they want to read, but blogging is a broad church and you never know the day when you will be struck down by something, and if you are, having bookmarked this blog might be the best thing you do today…

Big Wheel…

Lisa – Musings of a Middle-Aged Mom writes about American Recipes and I know not whether you would call these “Classic” American Recipes or not but I can tell you – if you want an insight into the nature and flavours of American cooking – Lisa fits the bill. The link I have made, is to W is for Wheel – Big Wheel and big is the word – a compound sandwich made from a whole loaf of bread and baked in the oven (pictured at right).

Another recipe leaves me pondering ingredients such as Oyster Crackers, Cheez-its, Goldfish Crackers and Hidden Valley Dry Ranch Mix – it’s another language! But Lisa will be your guide if you step her way…










Beth at Through my Looking Glass reflects (see what I did there) on what she has learned from participating in the 2021 challenge – and has come to the conclusion that its the photographs rather than the travels that should have been her theme. The selection provided in her reflections piece are just that – pictures of reflections and they show a definite style. Now I know photography, like all art, is subject to personal taste but I have seen blogs with very poor photographs and these are quite the opposite!

Beth also writes a Dog Blog…

Road Trip 3 A2Z 2021 Challenge…

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A trip round some of the blogs I didn’t manage to visit during the Challenge in April!

Janet’s Smiles – subtitle Life is One Big Adventure, made San Francisco and some of its more favourite landmarks. It is great when someone who lives in or near an iconic city acknowledges that they haven’t seen it all as they might and sets out to rectify it! And Janet takes us around a city we all know bits of from the many films that have been made here – in fact, I sometimes wonder whether a trip to America might not find one constantly beset by deja vu… Anyway, Janet gives us an entertaining and well-illustrated account of her journey!

HSD (Home School Dad) gives us in the post I dipped into, a post about Racial Recognition through the stories (and picture) of Branch Rickey, Jackie Robinson and Rosa Parks. A great way to imbibe history…

The eponymous Cathy of Curious as a Cathy was someone I got hooked on during the 2020 Challenge and although she has popped up in my inbox all year, I didn’t manage to visit her this year when she chose Looney Tunes characters to reproduce in her own inimitable style. As well as her pictures, Cathy writes a lot – taking up various challenges…

Road Trip 2 A2Z Challenge 2021…

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A mini review of some of the blogs I didn’t manage to visit during the April month of the A2z Challenge…

Sue’s Trifles gives me a problem -as a Humanist who is atheist, I am not usually interested in sites that base their theme around issues pertaining to belief in God but fortunately, Sue has included links to all the years she has participated and whilst 2021’s theme is about Words of Biblical Significance, in previous years she has written about Musical Instruments, Jobs, Physical Space and Rhyme whilst for those of a religious persuasion, Sue has also covered Names of God and the Bible. So plenty for everyone…

In Content Creative by C.E. Flores, the theme this year was Women Writers many of whom were helped by the blog’s author, to promote their books. C.E. Flores gives very good advice on self-publishing and how to then promote your work. This was of particular interest to me as my challenge – unsuccessful – was to finish a book that may well end up going down that route, so I will definitely be back…

This, That and the Other is the kind of site I love and you had me at the title! The pseudonymous author Fandango is a prolific blogger as the email links in my inbox will attest, there are serious posts, flash- fiction and various challenges besides the A2Z. A septuagenarian, self-confessedly cantankerous at times, the main point is that the writing is cogent and entertaining – I thoroughly recommend…

Are you on the Road Trip – what gems have you found?