Cooks' Corner

[Hoy]

Since I stayed with Ian and Maggi 4 years ago I've been a tea snob. No more PG Tips or Punjana. My current favourite is Oolong tea. This is what it looks like dry and after a couple of minutes in hot water. The tea is yellow and smells a wee bit like sugar puffs - to my nose anyway

I am no tea connoisseur but when I trekked in the Atlas Mts in Morocco I was served sweet mint tea all day by the Berbers - very refreshing. It was easy made: squeeze a handfull of fresh mint, leaves, stems and all,  into the pot and pour boiling water over, add huge amounts of sugar and it is ready!

[Kristl Walek]

Perhaps its the "gatherer" in me....with seed being one expression.

I have been gathering/drying leaves and flowers for tea most of my life (mint, chamomile, linden, rosehip, various rubus leaves, monarda, etc. etc). It's easy, and fun. Mint has always been a favorite and I too, like it sweet, as it tends to intensify the mint flavour that I am so fond of.

This is the first year that my cupboards/freezer have not been well stocked with gathered fruit/berries and I recently ran out of fruit sauce to top my yogurt (dessert for me most nights). But a quick trip to buy some dried Turkish figs (no sulfides) and within 30 minutes I was well stocked again.

While I love fresh fig jam/sauce as well---there is no source for them here. In many respects, I like the flavour of the dried better--as the fig flavour is intensified in the end product. The nuttiness of the seed is lovely too.

Dried Fig Jam or Sauce
Finely chop up dried figs.
Cover with water and simmer until soft.
Cool.
Chop fine in food processor.
Add back to pan with the juice of a lemon.
You can add sugar, if desired; but it normally tastes
quite sweet without.
Slowly simmer until desired thickness.
Can, or keep in fridge & use up to a couple of weeks.

[mark smyth]

I like mint tea also

[Lesley Cox]

Lemon verbena tea is very nice, leaves either fresh from the tree or dried for winter use.

[Lesley Cox]

One of my fruit vendors on a Saturday morning is very skinny and short (shorter than I), but his wife is a little taller and about as wide as he is tall. He says she keeps him under control by telling him that in the event of an international famine, she will live much longer than he does. Some of us here can take great heart from that thought.

[Paddy Tobin]

The best tea of all is coffee.

Paddy

[mark smyth]

instant or ground, Paddy? My favourite just now is Tesco's Finest Colombian. I sometimes do to the local Whittard for fresh ground coffee.

McBeans in Edinburgh supply excllent tea and coffee http://www.macbeans.com/ but no job has stopped that 

[Paddy Tobin]

What's "instant", Mark?


Just joking. Ground.

Paddy

[mark smyth]

Actually now that I think about it Ian Y put me on to real tea. Margaret Glynn changed my mind on coffee.

[mark smyth]

Velvet chicken

I tried velvet chicken last night - chicken dipped in a mix of egg white, salt, pepper and seasame oil and coated in flour. It's then shallow fried.

Mine didnt work very well. Maybe I didnt have enough flour or used the wrong one. The recipe said corn flour but I used plain flour.

Any ideas?

[ranunculus]

Velvet chicken

I tried velvet chicken last night - chicken dipped in a mix of egg white, salt, pepper and seasame oil and coated in flour. It's then shallow fried.

Mine didnt work very well. Maybe I didnt have enough flour or used the wrong one. The recipe said corn flour but I used plain flour.

Any ideas?

If I had tried to make it, Mark ... it would have ended up as Black Velvet Chicken!

[annew]

Use cornflour, Mark.

[Kristl Walek]

is corn flour the same as North American cornstarch, because that is what i use when velveting chicken.

[Maggi Young]

Yes, Kristl, I believe so.
Much nicer for coating any type of meat or veg. for frying, Mark.   

[johnw]

Velvet chicken
I tried velvet chicken last night - chicken dipped in a mix of egg white, salt, pepper and seasame oil and coated in flour. It's then shallow fried.
Mine didnt work very well. Maybe I didnt have enough flour or used the wrong one. The recipe said corn flour but I used plain flour.
Any ideas?

Mark - You should have used corn starch (i.e corn flour in the UK if the recipe is from the UK) for velveting.  Velveting works better is you drop the coated meat into deep oil. The velvet covering protects the meat from over-cooking.  Very strange the coating contains sesame oil as it is very apt to burn badly.

An easy enough mistake and quite unlike my uncle who, having left the baking powder out of a cake recipe, just sprinkled it atop.

johnw