I live in South Africa, but in my youth was tantalized by my mother's aunt, Mama Sylvie's, amazing pumpkin and banana cream pies. She had married and lived in the South of America for some years, but returned to South Africa after her husband died. Her pies were the best in the world to me, and she refused to serve them in any smaller slices than quarters, but their recipes have been lost. I have found and used many good recipes since, so I'm not looking for recipes, but suddenly fascinated by the notion of where banana cream pie started. Does anybody have some serious historical information about the origins of the most delectable Banana Cream Pie?

what are the latest findings about how much alcohol in a dish/cake/etc is driven off by cooking, and how much remains. i suppose the longer you cook it the more is lost, but i have heard some very conflicting opinions

I am doing three small meals, one on Saturday for a friend, one Sunday night for my sister and her daughter, and one on Monday for another friend.
Saturday : start with
spicy sausage meat patties and chipotle hummus,

mains grilled tuna with a salty-sweet glaze and a ginger-miso sauce (from epicurious) with a Japanese potato salad

and Christmas pudding with rum butter;

Sunday

a cold pickled tongue with salads (we are in hot Africa) and homemade Christmas cake and true vanilla ice cream

Monday

chilled peach soup
grilled matured rumpsteaks with harissa & green beans with lemon - Nigella & oven-baked carrots with sherry and black pepper
Christmas tiramisu (made with Christmas cake crumbled and triple sec)

I will be cooking like a madman, but it will be fun!

another great way for a whole fish is cut three diagonal slits in the descaled skin both sides and stuff them with fennel and lemon butter (just chop fennel finely, and mash it into the butter with some lemon juice) and put a knob of the butter inside, then grill over coals - when the slits turn opaque the fish is done

if you have access to Cooks Illustrated, their recipe for buttermilk biscuits really works well - they also have a good method of shaping the biscuits by hand

certainly adding the cooked crumbled bacon sounds right
you could substitute bacon fat for some of the shortening or lard if your recipe calls for it, but certainly not for butter
just patting the dough into a rectangle on a lightly floured board should be just about enough kneading
dipping your very very sharp knife in flour before doing a fast cut down would help

This is another meek request from a cookery-book-less hound (you should hear me howl when I try to contemplate the loss)for a recipe for what is the best anchoiade I have ever tasted, which appears in Alan Davidson's book of Mediterranean fish cookery. If I remember correctly he calls it a "grand anchoiade" (like a "grand aioli") and suggests serving it surrounded by little black olives, quoting the French description - "en couronne d'un velours sombre et chatoyant": something like "in a crown of sombre and scintillating velvet". If you have the recipe, make it anyway - the flavours are rich and complex!

I did the same and found only five recipes in the first ten pages, and none of them the same as Escoffier's. Interesting information about puddings in general though. Thanx.

Thanx that's great!

I am looking for Escoffier's recipes for Saxon Pudding and its variations - I have lost my Guide Culinaire translation and it is very difficult and time-consuming to replace it here. Can somebody help me, please?
Greetings from Africa
Tjaart

I think it will come and go as did nouvelle cuisine and all the other food fads, and maybe leave behind a few interesting ideas. I must say I find the molecular stuff particularly decadent in its most negative sense - rich people playing with their food.

Of course I eat the rind! If it tastes bad, there's something wrong with the whole cheese.

In Southern Africa mealiemeal porridge (maize meal cooked in water with salt - polenta) is a poor man's staple, eaten with soured milk and sugar, or with morogo: stewed wild green leaves of any (edible)description, or with stewed tomato and onion sauce. Meat only on special occasions. Weddings and especially funerals are times to indulge in as much meat as possible (goats, sheep and oxen slaughtered at home)cooked over charcoal or boiled in large pots. Tripe is a great favourite. Softer meats like liver etc are reserved for children and the elderly. Chilli has become a favourite flavouring. In her book on Chinese Gastronomy Lin Yutang's wife writes that peasant food is often more highly spiced because that is more filling (Witness also Madhur Jaffrey in East Asian Cooking that a bowl of rice with the fiery sambal oelek chilli paste is a poor man's meal). In Chinese cooking a small portion of stir-fry helps 'to make the rice go down'.