"Cheap and Easy", Rose Elliot
21 September 2019 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI picked up a second-hand copy of a later cookery book by Rose Elliot to go with the 1970s volumes I already have, and have been very favourably impressed by the two recipes I tried, both of which 'simply worked'; the rice croquettes were crisp on the outside and tender on the inside, just as advertised, in spite of the fact that my attempts at meatballs, latkes, etc. have always fallen apart in the frying pan, and the cheese and onion pie was a success despite the fact that I made it in a small casserole in the absence of a four-inch flan dish. The recipes use rather a lot of cheese, but that comes with her being a vegetarian, I imagine. I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm quite happy to cook vegetarian dishes if I like the taste and the recipes are convenient.
(I really don't get on with modern cookery books; they tend to have gigantic pictures, vast amounts of whitespace, bullet-pointed lists of instructions, weird and wonderful ingredients from the food culture du jour, and generally take up six times as much space as necessary for very little useful content. I grew up on unillustrated recipes that simply give you a list of ingredients, in the order in which they are to be used, and a paragraph of directions as to how to use them.)
This particular book also gives very practical instructions for reducing quantities to feed one or two people instead of four, e.g. for the croquettes you use half an egg to coat the outside of the balls and the other half to bind the mixture with, or a soufflé mixture for one person can be cooked inside a beefsteak tomato. And it makes the recipes sound interesting so that you actually want to try them (even without pictures), which is always a good sign!
(I really don't get on with modern cookery books; they tend to have gigantic pictures, vast amounts of whitespace, bullet-pointed lists of instructions, weird and wonderful ingredients from the food culture du jour, and generally take up six times as much space as necessary for very little useful content. I grew up on unillustrated recipes that simply give you a list of ingredients, in the order in which they are to be used, and a paragraph of directions as to how to use them.)
This particular book also gives very practical instructions for reducing quantities to feed one or two people instead of four, e.g. for the croquettes you use half an egg to coat the outside of the balls and the other half to bind the mixture with, or a soufflé mixture for one person can be cooked inside a beefsteak tomato. And it makes the recipes sound interesting so that you actually want to try them (even without pictures), which is always a good sign!
no subject
Date: 2019-09-24 03:00 pm (UTC)ON a totally different subject, I recommend her non-cookery book "I met a monk". A very readable introduction to Buddhism and meditation.
I got it from the library and enjoyed it so much I bought my own copy.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-24 09:35 pm (UTC)I also have Full of Beans by Peta Lyn Farwagi, which has the advantage that unlike most 'how do I use my dried vegetables?' books, it is not vegetarian. Likewise the Sunset Ideas for Cooking Vegetables, which gives ideas for serving vegetables as accompaniments (and what different vegetables go well with what other dishes), as opposed to assuming that you're a vegetarian striving to make your given vegetable into the main dish of the meal. Their prescription for 'butter-steaming' various items (add 2-3 tablespoons of water for every tablespoon of butter as required, cut vegetables small, and simmer with the lid on the saucepan until water has almost evaporated and contents are cooked) has become my default method of cooking courgettes, cabbage, broad beans, celery etc. as a side vegetable, since it's quicker and much more fool-proof than boiling in enough water to cover, as well as producing a lovely buttery sauce :-)
The main trouble with that book is that I picked it up from a second-hand box (as normal), and it's American; not only are all the quantities in cups where applicable, but you have to be able to translate the names in the index (e.g. marrows are 'summer squash'), and some of the vegetables listed aren't even available on this side of the ocean: chayote, nappa or jicama, for example. Its main advantage is that it's organised by vegetable -- with an inevitable degree of duplication where different vegetables are prepared in the same way or in similar dishes -- such that you can say 'I need to use up these leeks' and look up the leek section to find out all the different things you can do with them.