Maggie's Farm

And is fish-oil "healthy"?

Pancakes are for fun, not nutrition. Little ones like pancakes. So do adults - if with bacon and fried eggs on the side. Bacon just makes everything better.

Pancakes are no more nutritional than bread, but fun with real maple syrup. Fact is, as a kid, we sometimes used molasses instead. 

We make them many ways: with a little corn meal and canned corn; with sliced apples, with our stash of frozen cranberries (best), or with blueberries. All good. 

The only ones I do not like are the doughy diner ones.  I like them thin, with edges dark brown and crispy.

How do our readers like their flapjacks? 

Creamed Chicken with Peas

Mac and Cheese

Cacciatore

Easy Chicken Casserole

Shepherd's Pie

Meat Loaf

Pot Roast

Beef Stew

Pasta Fagioli

Stroganoff

Tetrazzine

Stuffed Bell Peppers

Corned Beef and Cabbage, aka New England Boiled Dinner

Chili

Spaghetti and Meatballs

Chowder

Beans: Black Bean Soup, and Red Beans and Rice

Moussaka

Tuna Noodle

Chicken and Dumplings

Stuffed Cabbage

Shrimp and Grits

Codfish Cakes

Cassoulet

As you may know, cassoulet is basically French baked beans with meat. The real original of hot dogs and baked beans. It is country home cookin, but it can be great stuff. Dutch oven cooking. Crock pot? Why not, as long as the meats are browned first, but it will not brown the top.

It's a good way to cook some wild game meat, especially the less-tender parts.

Any meat, but not beef - strong red meat is too strong for cassoulet. We have, over time, used various mixes of duck, snow goose, chukar, venison, chicken, pork, wild boar, and pheasant which we have killed. Mix the meats - it adds to the flavor. There should be some source of pig fat or duck fat in it. Some venison sausage, or any sausage, because it is a necessary traditional ingredient. The meat-to-bean ratio is supposed to be fairly high - 30% - but I like beans and prefer a lower ratio. I think every village in southern France has its own recipe and method. I figure roughly one hunk of sausage and one hunk of meat per person.

A few tips about Cassoulet:

1. Make it at least the day before. Like beef stew, it improves overnight.
2. Serve with salad, toasted garlic bread with a pile of stinky and gooey cheeses on the side, and then fruit for dessert. And a Cote Rotie or Cotes du Rhone.
3. You need to use large white beans, ideally French haricot beans. Use the canned beans, don't bother with dried beans.
4. Make sure you push the bread crumbs down into the surface of the mixture when baking.
5. Sprinkle chopped fresh parsley on top when done - it looks better that way.

It's worth reading a few approaches to get the general idea. Here's an easy American version. Here's one French version. Here's another.

With or without kidney beans? The classic is chunks of beef, but it's all fine with me as long as it is hot enough, has some sour cream, and chopped scallions or red onions on top.

If it's too mild, just put some hot sauce on the table or a bowl of chopped jalapenos. 

Here's a no-bean chili, but with ground beef:  Easy No-Bean Chili. Chili, without the beans—just beef, tomatoes, onions, and lots of great spices. Make it ahead, freeze the leftovers, and eat it for days.

Another one, with the beans:  Originally, it was simply meat, sauce, and chili peppers. Eventually, cooks added beans and tomatoes to the dish, although some people are purists and insist that beans do not belong in real chili con carne.

I've visited Scotland a couple of times, and we are headed there again this year. May I say that Scotland (England too) is not known for cuisine?

OK, they do cook good fresh fish, and mutton. Clootie pudding is ok with ice cream, and kippers are fine but too big. Haggis is not terrible as part of a breakfast, but it's not the greatest. 

Haggis Recipe.  A chef friend recommends barley instead of oatmeal. Where do you buy a cow or sheep stomach? 

It's Bobbie Burns' birthday. What's the Highland Fling?

"Leeks were eaten in ancient Rome and regarded as superior to garlic and onions."

Nothing "healthy" about them, but it's a nice flavor.  Sure, you can eat the green parts.

Some leek recipes. 

This production should hold together tightly, almost like a firm 6-10" deep lasagna. Macaroni Pie. It's really a Primo, but could be a meal in the US, with a salad. You serve it in clean slices.

Meats in it? Any or all fowl including duck. Needs ham too. Chunks of mortadella are great. As for the eggs, you can include the cooked egg yolks as in this recipe, but it's good to throw in some whole hard-boiled eggs. The Quail eggs are not required, but Quail eggs are good things.

The recipe below is inspired by di Lampedusa's book , which I highly recommend reading.

The photo in the recipe below is not right - the thing should hold together firmly: Timballo recipe . It might get a couple of tries to get it right.

Here.

Parsnips are good winter food. They were more popular before potatoes took over. 

Here's a bunch of Parsnip recipes. 

We had 22 for Thanksgiving. It's a cheerful chaos. Our prayer was for gratitude, of course, for family and friends. Little else matters. My only mistake was not getting the pianny tuned. Musicians are senstive about that. 

Two turkeys as usual. Lots of leftovers.  This is the one on the grill, cooked over firewood:

One Southern and one from New England:

Spoonbread 

Indian Pudding 

It's not just for turkey. I have a friend who will not eat chicken without it. Excellent with pheasant too.

This has a zippy flavor:  No-cook cranberry sauce. 

Of course, an array of pies are needed. We like squash pie. We like all pies.

Can you make a proper Tarte Tatin, fully-caramelized when you flip it? I have failed many times. Gotta let it cool before flipping.

7 apples, 9-10" pan, and do not use water in the below recipe. Instead, use 3-4 tbsp. of butter. Sure, you can use a frozen crust thing.

 French-Style Apple Tart (Tarte Tatin)

Fennel grows like a weed - and literally as a roadside weed - all over Europe. A celery-like thing, with a cool licorice flavor. You can munch on it raw, sautee it, or pickle it either as refrigerator pickles or real pickles. Fenuil in French, finocchio in Sicily and Italy.

It's perfect with simple seafood. Here's my first course (lousy photo): Warm salad of sliced octopus on a bed of sauteed fennel.

Main course (which was not really needed) -  a rare filet of French beef with a jus with olives, not mushrooms. And usual Euroland runny mashed taters.

Readers know that my idea of a healthy breakfast is two coffees and sometimes a little nicotine. For adults, the idea that "breakfast is the most important meal of the day" was debunked long ago. Growing kids, of course, need food all the time including protein at breakfast. 

If you do heavy labor all day, it's another matter.  All I do is to work out at the gym for an hour or so every morning, and some yard work on weekends (as little as possible because I have become bored with it), and take good walks on weekends. That is sedentary.

Sometimes, though, there are occasions for a hearty breakfast.  

I have always liked kippers with some eggs. In Scotland, the kippers are about a foot long. Too much. The canned kippers that you find in US supermarkets are barely OK.

Another breakfast that some hate but I love: Creamed Chipped Beef on Toast (aka shit on a shingle). A classic prep school, and military, breakfast. 

Moving a bit south in the USA, there's Shrimp and Grits. Delicious. 

And the ultimate American breakfast (South and Midwest especially): Biscuits and Gravy. Every family has its own recipe, so I won't link one. Those Bob Evans restaurants make a fine one, but I don't think they let you in unless you weigh over 250 pounds. Grits on the side are good.

To stay multicultural, I can't omit the English Breakfast. Blood sausage:

For pottage and puddings and custards and pies
Our pumpkins and parsnips are common supplies,
We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon,
If it were not for pumpkins we should be undoon."

Pilgrim verse, circa 1633

Pumpkins are just one variety of winter squash. Winter Squash have the virtues of being harvested in the fall, and easily storable for keeping through the winter in a root cellar as long as they do not freeze. All winter squash (Butternut, Acorn, etc) taste pretty similar and are more or less interchangeable in recipes.

Winter Squash, along with string beans, maize (which we call "corn" in the US, and many other foods like peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes) were first genetically modified for agriculture by American Indians.

Eastern Indians had large fields in which they grew winter squash, maize, and beans (which climbed up the corn stalks) together. In fact, one of the reasons the Pilgrims decided to stay in Plymouth was for the 50-acre and 100-acre planting fields that the Indians (recently dead probably from European diseases brought in by explorers and fishermen) had prepared there.

The Pumpkin of the Americas quickly became a popular crop in many parts of the world. Our Philippino nanny rarely made a Phillipino stew without pumpkin chunks in it. (Loved that Oxtail stew with peanut sauce, potato, and pumpkin, or her winter squash and string bean stew with coconut milk plus some shrimp or chicken chunks.) And people who have read Alexander McCall Smith's series, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, know how popular pumpkin became in the African diet. As for Pumpkin pasta recipes, there are tons of them.

Here's 41 Yummy Pumpkin Recipes.

Mashed pumpkin with salt, pepper and butter is great. Same with steamed pumpkin chunks. A little chopped fresh Sage is good with them. Never boil winter squash. Steam or roast, or it will get too soggy.

As for the olde standbys, Pumpkin Pie and Pumpkin Soup, those are OK too but the spices tend to obscure the subtle flavors of the winter squashes used. (Re Pumpkin Pie, the Maggie's Farm advice is to go very light on the sugar, and serve with a spoonful of whipped cream, then drizzled with 100% Maple Syrup.)

Megan McArdle wrote this: Yes, Some of US Really Like Pumpkin

Kenyan Pumpkin Curry Recipe

EAST AFRICAN PUMPKIN STEW

I love calamari in a seafood risotto or anything else. However, fried calamari is a great treat. I like it with some hot pepper flakes, and I like the tentacle parts too.

The danger is over-cooking. Squid can turn into squid chewing gum if overcooked.

Best pizza I've ever had, at least recently. Pupette and I took Mrs. BD out to a fancy Italian dinner for her birthday but I just ordered the pizza there. Not ordinary pizza.

Very thin crust pizza, like a cracker, burned black on the bottom as I like it, with melted chunks of goat cheese and chunks of peanut-sized chopped and sauteed white truffle, (no sauce), cooked over firewood, then sprinkled with some dandelion greens and thinly-sliced fresh figs and the whole thing splashed with hot white truffle oil.

The smell of it was a meal in itself. I usually prefer a pizza bianco with wild mushrooms, but I suppose I am, unfortunately, a pizza snob. This was better than that.

Mrs. BD had their beef carpaccio as an antipasto. It was as good as you can get in Todi, but without the view. Pupette had their tuna carpaccio with dill and cucumber as her antipasto, then ate half my pizza with a bottle of Moretti. She lost 15 lbs. on her 14 hr/day film job, need to fatten her up before she returns to school.

Truffle oil - and truffle - is one proof to me of God's existence. My hope is that Obama or Bernie will make truffles free for us all, when Utopia arrives. I can't wait.

Pic is a beautiful White Truffle. Cost around $125./ounce.

That is actually "Shrimp-Shrimp", because "Scampi" is the Italian term for cooked shrimp or prawns.

In Italy and Sicily, it's just "Scampi." Not a common item over there though.  More common are mixed seafood things with shrimp or prawns, squid, clams, fresh anchovies, cuttlefish, etc. 

Anyway, American "Shrimp Scampi" includes, garlic, butter, wine, and parsley.   Tasty, even for a shrimp-bored person like me. I'd eat dog kibbles with enough garlic and parsley.

Readers know that the Soft-Shelled Crab (ie moulting Blue Crab) in all of its forms is perhaps my favorite food. My friends and I would catch them at the shore with bacon tied to string and bring a bucket of them home to Mom. She'd steam the hard-shelled ones, and sautee the soft-shells.

I love the soft-shells fried, sauteed, in a sandwich with mayo, Chinese-style - or anything. A perfect combination of juiciness and crunchiness, and you just eat the whole darn thing feathers and all.

Here's an easy one: Soft-Shelled Crabs on Toast.

Methods of crabbing.

Delicious photos of soft-shell crab recipes.

Soft-shells are often frozen for use through the crab season.

Even in a bad tomato year people get plenty of Cherry Tomatoes.

 CHERRY TOMATO TART