General Chat

That drive me mad!!

:-|

grated rind & juice of 1 lemon...... how big is the lemon? How much juice? 1/2 cup? 1/4 cup?

1 cup grated cheese........ how fine is it grated? What weight?????

I could go on and on and on.......

Why can't they give real weights and measures?

:-|

Approximate is probably okay for cooking (unlike baking, which needs to be more precise). Night, night: I'm admittin' defeat 'n' goin' ta bed! x

A cup of; a teaspoon of; a tablespoon of; a knob of; a pinch of - were what my Gran & my Mum used when cooking or baking, they never used scales :-D

I think America adopted volume rather than weight measurements because it was difficult for pioneers to use scales on the wagon trains whereas any cup would do as long as it was the same cup throughout the recipe.

The size of the lemon means is always the size that produces the flavour you like.

I usually cook using the chuck and dollop method and, making a sponge, managed to produce the world's biggest biscuit!

I have lots of recipe books, and two hand-written ones of my Mother's. They all have decent measurments (either weight or cups).

It's some of the recipes on the internet that annoy me... juice of a lemon etc etc.

Mum's books are interesting, with her notes...... cook such&such for an hour with the lid on, at a wee peep.

Mum's Scottish way of saying have the gas just on :-D

One recipe I found (and made yesterday) was for little lemon puddings. If I make them again I'll use more lemon juice & rind..... must write that one in my own book. I often make a "lemon delicious" but I get a bit fed up with recipes that use two or more mixing bowls (OK, I'm lazy!)... the little puddings only uses one bowl, and the "sauce" is made with lemon butter/curd. Easy Peasy :-)

Baking (pastry for example) you should be precise, but for cooking anything else I have it on Chef's authority that a recipe is a guideline only and doesn't have to be taken literally....adapt it how you will, to suit your own taste he's always telling me :-)

My chef is always amazed, and so am I, that the stuff I chuck casually into the food processor always turns into good pastry.

Generally, almost anything I chuck in the food processor turns into pretty fine pastry, whatever I am trying to make.

I know how to cook! I've been cooking since I was eight years old.... younger if you include making toast :-)

Wish I could. I'm getting fed up with pastry!

lol...... change the recipe...... cut it into strips & call it spaghetti :-D

Pastary.

There is a cookbook "Action Cook Book" written by the novelist Len Deighton which deals with all essential recipes in a sensible way with line illustrations and normal measures, pint oz etc. Highly recommended.

He has another one called Ou est le garlic. I have never been able to get hold of a copy and in any case with a French wife I don't have to look far for the garlic.

Your French wife uses pints & ounces?

:-S

Stop it now!

I can see a trip to the naughty step coming up!

Of course not Len Deighton's action cookbook was my survival guide through girlfriends beyond count and two or three wives most of whom couldn't cook.
It is accurate and doesn't faff around with a cup of this and a pinch of that and above all has line drawing how to pictures not silly color photos.

As an engineer I use metric for work but have never really connected with metric in the kitchen.

I don't like pies. No surprises there then.

"His first collection of French recipes was "Ou est le Garlic?" (reissued as "Basic French Cooking")." - that's why you can't find Len Deighton's original book.

Mind you, the newer book could be slightly different

ou est le garlic is about £20 on eBay too much IMHO.

I'm bilingual in the kitchen.

I have old recipe books in lbs & ozs and new ones in metric....... and some that have both :-D