Fish pies, traditional and otherwise, are a varied lot. There are elegant lobster pot pies, frozen fish pies from the supermarket, and “stargazey” pies with rings of cold eyed fish faces to challenge even the hungriest diners.( You can see a scary picture of one, below.) This fish pie is none of these. It is humble, but not entirely so, because, at least in my book, nothing with shrimps in it can be counted as…
Lindy's stories:
Nothing is so delightful as coming upon one of these combinations, where a few simple ingredients meld in a delicious and unexpectedly special fashion. I felt like this when I learned about Mudjadarrah, and when I first baked an egg inside a tomato. Jane Grigson was a person with an especially fine nose for this sort of thing, and I am very attached to my shabby, dog-eared Penguin edition of her Good Things, from 1973.*…
Apparantly rugelach, made with a cream cheese pastry, is primarily an American phenomenon. Sometime ago I posted about a savory rugelach recipe I made for a boxing day party, and I learned some things about rugelach from comments: In Israel, a croissant-like dough is most widely used. There are variants made with schmalz, rather than butter and/ or cream cheese. Some cream cheese style rugelach also use sour cream. Claudia Roden, Joan Nathan, and Mimi…
This is one American classic I thought I’d never try to do at home. At the Platonic Diner in the Sky (Home of the “Pie in the Sky” and other ideals-you know the one) these are prepared perfectly and an optional side to every suitable main dish. There, the batter is crisp, brown and light, the onions soft and not the least stringy, but not mushy either. The rings are round, distinct, and never stuck…
I came home from Cleveland after Christmas replete with holiday goodies, and feeling as if (ha) I might never again be very hungry. I know from experience that this sort of bloat can vanish suddenly, and leave a person rummaging for crusts, but it hasn’t happened so far. This is a good thing, because there was just not much food in the house, and I haven’t been in the mood for hauling a lot of…
I grew up, like most Americans, eating a tomato meat sauce on my spaghetti which had no real Italian source, except in the imagination. In my neighborhood, it was sometimes called “Jewish spaghetti”. I later learned that the same dish, more or less, was called “Irish spaghetti” in my husband’s family.This is a dish which has been so assimilated that it is hard to believe it was ever seen as foreign, even exotic. But it…
I have done some nattering here about buffalo meat, which I like very much, despite my irrational aversion to most meats not familiar to me from childhood. I think it tastes very like beef, only even better, sweeter, cleaner. Until recently, though, I’d only had the ground meat, which was all that was available to me locally. Recently, I found a “minimally processed” (whatever that means), “additive free” 2 pound buffalo chuck roast (it magically…
This year my friend Ellen had a really good Christmas idea. Those of us who have dinner together most every Friday night, and usually buy each other Christmas presents, would forego the gifts, and spend our Christmas dollars on a fantastic dinner together. We made reservations for seven at Davio’s, and this was a very, very good choice. I was the only one among us who hadn’t been there before, though I’ve been hearing about…
It cannot be denied that my culinary heritage inclines to the, well, leaden. It comes most directly from Eastern European Jews on the one side, and the East End of London on the other, but most of all it comes from poor people and hard times. All of my grandparents were genuinely, seriously hungry pretty regularly, and my parents, later reasonably prosperous, did not have all they wanted to eat as children. People who are…
I have been keeping a lid on (ack, involuntary, sorry) my cookware acquisitions for some time, for several reasons. The most pressing is that I am not rolling in money, and am saving for a trip to England this summer, for a family wedding I don’t want to miss. More obvious reasons include the fact that I don’t need any cookware, and there is no room in my apartment kitchen for a single thing more….
