Foodlexi's Profile
Your Favorite Frozen Food Products
I don't even dry mine out in the oven. Once the bread has got past the really fresh stage I just whizz it in a processor and put it in a bag and thence into the freezer. I suppose that is because I generally use fresh rather than dried breadcrumbs anyway. That's because I am English (?) and so I don't do Southern Fried Chicken type dishes - more things like escalopes dipped in egg and breadcrumbs or I might grate courgettes (zucchini) when there are masses of them, mix it with egg and Parmesan cheese and then roll balls of the mix in 'fresh' breadcrumbs and fry them - or left over risotto, again, boudn with egg and then rolled in 'fresh' breadcrumbs and fried - oh heaven. The remains of asparagus risotto after a night in the fridge. Mmmm.
Your Favorite Frozen Food Products
Peas, peas, peas. Great to add to Thai dishes, risottos (risotti?), or have as a salad mixed with peanuts and mayonnaise. I *always* have frozen peas in the freezer. The other thing I always have is a selection of berries so I can run up a summer pudding if I suddenly find loads of people coming for supper. The juice runs fast from frozen fruits, so they are ideal. Oh. And ice cream....... I always seem to have bags of frozen breadcrumbs, which I couldn't live without. I live in a town that has no decent baker, so when I see good breads I buy them and cut them up and freeze them. The rest of the freezer seems to be home made stock! But that's different. Peas, peas, peas for me!
I also (though I shouldn't admit to this) keep a pack of my husband's cigars (well, cigarillos I suppose). He occasionally wants one late at night and without warning, so it's nice to go there and fish them out. It keeps them fresh as it might be six months before he wants one and can't find one. So there's usually a packet of Hamlet lurking among the blackberries and redcurrants. Not what you want to hear I suspect!
Mystery fish
Carp is traditionally eaten in Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe on Christmas Day and in Austria it is fried for a Christmas meal, so it really is a favourite in this region. Good luck with your preparations.
Another mystery fish
Ah ha! I think @gmm might be right. These in your picture look like gurnard, which I by chance photographed yesterday in Cornwall - attached. I think the strange angle didn't help, but your picture suddenly alerted me to the possibility. @sunshine842, it was Venice, Italy. Sorry to be so eurocentric - it didn't occur to me to say. I will remember in future. @PorkButt and Cheese Boy, I think I am going for gurnards, tubfish too. I think the white underside of the fish disappeared into the ice and made it look more like a ratfish shape than it really is. Thanks Quine for tips on what to do with it. Thanks everyone. As ever, I have enjoyed it.
I attach yesterday's picture of gurnard below - and the boat it came off.
Another mystery fish
I occasionally get stuck on identifying fish. This (not great) picture was taken in Venice. It would be really great if anyone could let me know what they think it is? Look forward to hearing from some of you amazingly knowledgeable people.
What areYour Non-Asian Cooking Uses for Soy Sauce/Tamari?
Following on from this, I often use fish sauce in savoury dishes. If I am roasting lamb and have no anchovies, with which (with garlic) I 'lard' the joint, I might just use garlic and sprinkle it with fish sauce instead. Works a treat.
Bengali Food [split from LA]
Sorry for the belated response to this nice comment Sam Salmon. I have now updated the Bengali food list on http://www.whatamieating.com with a lot of help from wonderful Suvro. If you are interested in seeing any of the foods he sent me yet more pictures after a recent visit to Kolkata and has added the Bengali script to all my phonetic entries. The Bengali list is in pretty good shape now. It is used by a group of medical workers, nutritionists and so on at The London Hospital who are conducting a study of diet and disease in a Bengali population based in the East End of London and for whom they have had great difficulty working out what they are eating. They know now!!
What are "short ribs" in the UK?
Late as your reply was I have finally discovered it and found it really useful. You sound like a real meat expert, and I like your description which doesn't use terms like "primal round" which means nothing to a me!! Can I seek your help in the future when I get onto meat cuts again? At the moment I am working on Bengali and Finnish food terms..... Meat cuts are a rather distant dream.
Lao "dok peet" - can anyone tell me what it is?
I have only just come across your reply and am really delighted. Many thanks Gio. I will explore this a bit further. All I need now is to work out how to get my Lao script into html I have 36 different scripts on my website and the only one I cannot fathom out is Lao! It will come.
Bengali Food [split from LA]
@suvro - Many thanks indeed. How would you like me to acknowledge you under the images?
Bengali food - some things I am having difficulty in identifying
I love thinks. Thanks so much Pia and Rasam. I shall add this information to http://www.whatamieating.com
Bengali food - some things I am having difficulty in identifying
Thanks Rasam. I appreciate it! It's so difficult sometimes trying to work out what things are. I still have pictures I took in Laos of foods I have never yet been able to identify. But this is a start. Many thanks for your help.
Bengali food - some things I am having difficulty in identifying
Many thanks for this information Rasam. Are all those pictures various parts of arbi? I thought the roots were smaller - these were about the size of my arm. And then there were these various things which they said were shoots of eddoe (arbi), which they called 'lota' and 'data' - and then there were the leaves as well?
Bengali food - some things I am having difficulty in identifying
Oh - Forgot the eddoe leaves!
Bengali food - some things I am having difficulty in identifying
I was recently photographing fish and vegetables, mainly, in Shadwell and Whitechapel in east London, where there are sizeable Bengali populations. While I was there I photographed some vegetables I don't recognise. Each time I enquired what they were I was told "eddoe". Eddoe shoots, eddoe leaves, eddoe. Can anyone help with these identications? Here they are:
Bengali Food [split from LA]
These are great pictures. Would you mind very much if I use them on my website http://www.whatamieating.com? It is a free on-line food dictionary. I have about 550 Bengali food terms, though I would love to increase thisl I have just been photographing Bengali fish in East London where there is a large Bengali community, but the fish were all frozen and so the pictures are rather dull - unlike the ones you have posted!
Bengali Food [split from LA]
I have been working on identifying them...... The pictures are not great as they were all imports from Bangladesh and frozen. Adobe has been helpful in injection a little colour into them, but hey are not the same as the pictures by Suvro on this thread..
Bengali Food [split from LA]
I am off to Whitechapel Food Market in London on Saturday to talk to Bengali market traders and photograph fish which they import especially and various foods. Can't wait!
The cicadas are driving me insane with their seduction chatter . . . so, I got to wondering, how do they taste?
I am very grateful indeed for this information, and that they are nymphs rather than larvae. Are you Lao? And, if so, do you know the Lao names? or the Thai or Cambodian? These came from the environs of the Mekong up around Luang Prabang.
The cicadas are driving me insane with their seduction chatter . . . so, I got to wondering, how do they taste?
Like Wasabi Woman in a previous post I have eaten chapulines in Oaxaca. They are deep fried crickets, very tiny. Not unlike tiny fried shrimp really. There's a picture here: http://www.whatamieating.com/chapulin.html
We had a go at flying ants called chicatanes as well: http://www.whatamieating.com/chicatanes.html but the unpalatable ones for me were the raw larvae I ate in Laos and which I never identified. I thnk these sorts of creatures are fine as long as they are deep fried and crunchy. I just think 'shrimp' (actually prawn, as I British) and then munch. The raw ones are more of a challenge. Does anyone know what these larvae are? I attach a picture.
Can anyone clarify what 'pezzogna' is?
Jen - This is wonderful. Thanks so much. The Davidson comment about the younger specimens having blue spots is particularly useful as that is what seems to have caused some of the problems. In Frascati, at a rather good restaurant called Nef, they were very determined that their fish was a 'pezzonia' (their spelling). However, it was clearly an adult fish - big and full-bodied - which explains why it had no blue spots.
The Italian information is also very useful, though the second paragaph is horrible. As with fish everywhere, different people use different names for the same fish or, worse, the same names for different fish. It doesn't mean, unfortunately, that they are wrong! So in my food dictionary I try to cater for misuse of a name or meaning as well as with the 'proper' meaning. Erk. And who in the end is to say what the 'proper' meaning is, if most people are calling it something different......
But it's really nice to tie this fish down as the claim that it is entirely local to Campania increasingly seems to be not the case.
By the way, it was *very* good to eat! In most places in Campania and Lazio where I saw it it was being cooked 'in acqua pazza' which I like anyway.
Thanks so much for all the help.
Can anyone clarify what 'pezzogna' is?
Thanks Bob96. I shall have fun exploring that one!
Can anyone clarify what 'pezzogna' is?
I'd already had a go at Alan Davidson. He's usually my first port of call when I am stuck. I live close to where his archives are now and have been given permission to use them if I ever wish. This might be the time! I have found a reference in 'Il Libro del Pesce' by Donatella Nicoló and she does give pezzogna as a Campanian name for Pagellus bogareveo, which brings us round in full circle really. 'Les Poissons de Mer des Pêches Françaises', by Quéro and Vayne, which also has some Italian names of fish, has no mention. And Fishbase seems to have nothing either..... Ny table is now awash with fish books. Which reminds me; I had better go now to buy some to cook tonight! (It's 4.15 pm here.)
Can anyone clarify what 'pezzogna' is?
This is really helpful. Many thanks indeed. I certainly couldn't see any blue spots on my fish anyway. I will try to write something for http://www.whatamieating.com which encompasses these issues.
Fish are a *nightmare* everywhere. I always think that those early travellers, often escaping from unforgiving regimes at home in Europe, travelled the world, landing in the US, the Antipodes and Africa and gave, willy nilly, the name they knew for some extraneous flatfish to the first flatfish they saw. Their preoccupations were hardly culinary at that stage! And so we end up with the ghastly confusions over turbot, halibut, flounder and the rest even in English. And then when you start looking at Spanish, French and Italian regional names, goodness, there is a lot of sleep to be lost.
Thanks everyone for great help with this.
Can anyone clarify what 'pezzogna' is?
Many thanks for this Gio. There does seem to be a blue-spotted seabream (Pagrus caeruleostictus) which likes the cold waters of the Gulf of Gabes in the central Mediterranean. I will add this to my on-line food dictionary with next upload. I think that looks pretty conclusive. I saw that link, but was lazy and didn't read on. Thanks for making me do it!
Can anyone clarify what 'pezzogna' is?
I was recently in Italy, south of Rome, and eating a fish called 'pezzogna' or, in some cases, 'pezzonia'. Here is a picture below. Everywhere we were told that it is a fish only from those waters, but to me it looked remarkably like a straightforward (and delicious) red sea bream (Pagellus bogaraveo). Can anyone shed any light on this?
The picture isn't great as it was low light, no flash and no tripod. Sorry about that!
Geoduck Clams
I'm fascinated by all this information. I have an entry at http://www.whatamieating.com/geoduck.html with a rather unpalatable picture. I will do some more work on this entry as a result. I always find this on Chowhound. I think I know about something, and then I come here only to find out just how little I know! I also always seem to come on just as a thread is winding up! Very frustrating.
Italian meat name
The Tafeslspitz is a cut containing the sacrum. In Italy this might be a sezione di coscia, or a cut from the scamone. Meat cuts are a nightmare. Wish I had been with italtrav in the freezer!
