Fortsätt till huvudinnehåll

Cooking for many

I sometimes cook for a dozen or more. It is easier than cooking for one. Mostly I do some kind of vegetarian stew such as a ratatouille or curry. People have asked me for a recipe. They are all prepared in much the same way, the differences being the herbs and spices.

To bring out the best of the flavours, plenty of oil is needed and the stew should stand, half-cooked, for several hours to allow the oil to draw out the flavours of the herbs and spices, which are mostly terpenes of some kind which dissolve in oil but not in water. With the exception of turmeric, do not use powders. Once ground, the flavours soon vanish.

To serve a dozen people you need a 10 litre saucepan. You also need a frying pan.

Depending on what is in season and good value, the ingredients list goes something like this.
  • 3 large onions
  • 3 - 5 cloves garlic
  • 1 kilo mushrooms
  • 5 large courgettes
  • 1 large aubergine
  • 3 peppers
  • Sunflower or corn or soya oil.
For an Italian flavour 3 cartons crushed tomatoes, a tablespoonful of paprika and about 2 tablespoons oregano, fresh if available.

For an Indian flavour use 500 g lentils plus the following herbs and spices
  • Turmeric powder
  • Cumin (Jeera) seeds
  • Fennel seeds
  • Fenugreek (Methi) Preferably leaves, otherwise seeds
  • Coriander seeds
  • Cardamom (Elachi) seeds
  • Cinnamon stick
  • Ginger root
You will need about a desert spoonful of each.

Chop the onions and peppers and fry gently in a frying pan for a few minutes. Cumin and fennel seeds may be added at this stage. Their flavour is brought out if they are well heated but not overheated therefore continue to fry gently. When ready the onions will be translucent. Put the contents of the frying pan into the saucepan.

Wash and dice all the other ingredients and put in the saucepan over a low light, stirring continuously for about 10 minutes. Garlic should be crushed.

For an Indian flavour Wash the lentils and cover with plenty of water. Add turmeric powder and simmer gently until they have disintegrated. Do not use too much turmeric or the taste will be bitter.

Then add the cooked lentils to the saucepan, grind all the other spices to a powder and add to the saucepan. Then simmer for about 20 minutes. Finish with freshly grated ginger root.

For an Italian flavour Add the crushed tomatoes, paprika, and oregano and simmer for 20 minutes.

Leave for a couple of hours for the flavours to infuse and warm before serving.

For 10 portions serve with a kilo of pasta or rice or a large wholemeal loaf.

Kommentarer

Skicka en kommentar

Populära inlägg i den här bloggen

Importing people to sustain demand

I got involved in a discussion with a Youtuber called “Philosophy all along”. This was in connection with criticism of Trump’s policy of deporting illegal migrants, which he argued would be bad for the economy as it would reduce demand. This implies that there is a need to import people to sustain demand. There is no obvious reason why a population should not be able to consume everything that the same population produces. If it can not, then something else is going on. It is a basic principle that wages are the least that workers will accept to do a job. Wages are a share of the value added by workers through their wages. The remainder is distributed as economic rent, after government has taken its cut in taxes. Monopoly profit is a temporary surplus that after a delay gets absorbed into economic rent. Land values in Silicon Valley are an example of this; it's like a gold rush. The miners get little out of it. Rent and tax syphon purchasing power away from those who produce the g...
Skicka en kommentar
Läs mer

The dreadfulness of British governance

I wrote to my MP on two entirely separate issues recently. The first was to do with the replacement for the Inter City 125 train, which at £2.6 million per vehicle, is twice as expensive as it ought to be. The second concerned the benefits of a switch from business rate and Council Tax to a tax based on site values. In both cases, the replies were full of spurious, unsubstantiated assertions and completely flawed arguments. This is typical. You will not get an iota of sense from the government on any area of public policy at all - finance, economics, trade and employment, agriculture, housing, health, transport, energy. All junk. If you write to your MP you will invariably receive answers that are an insult to your intelligence, no matter what subject you are writing about. Of course they cannot understand statistics. They are innumerate. Whitehall is staffed with idiots with a high IQ. Look at their IT projects. And mind your purse, they will have that too.
Skicka en kommentar
Läs mer

How much more will the British tolerate?

The British are phlegmatic, tolerant and slow to rouse. Thus there was no great reaction after the terrorist attack in July 2005. The murder of Lee Rigby created a sense of outrage, but nothing more, since it appeared to be an isolated incident. Two serious incidents within a fortnight are another matter. Since the first major terrorist incident in 2001, authority has tried to persuade the public that Islam is a religion of peace, that these were isolated events, or the actions of deranged "lone wolves", having nothing to do with Islam, or to reassure that the chances of being killed in a terrorist attack were infinitesimally small. These assurances are are beginning to wear thin. They no longer convince. If government does not act effectively, people will take the law into their own hands. What, however, would effective action look like? What sort of effective action would not amount to rough justice for a lot of innocent people? Given the difficulties of keeping large n...
Skicka en kommentar
Läs mer