Cold duff

[igenlode]

I've discovered that cold potato duff eaten in slices direct from the fridge is very much more appetising than the same dish served hot with custard ;-)
In fact so much more appetising that it might be worth making again for that specific purpose; it becomes much more solid, with the texture and flavour rather reminiscent of Russian cheesecake, with the lemon (which becomes detectable) and peel dominating, and the jam just discernable as an added delicacy. Very more-ish.

I wonder if the original recipe was intended to be chilled before serving. It really doesn't sound as if it was! http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/Potato_Duff.htm

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The Great Clothing Changeover has been completed again, almost certainly the latest ever (it's now June!) due to a very cold spring; this time last week I was in full-length thermal underwear. I did get down the contents of the smaller trunk at least a couple of weeks ago and refilled it with heavy jumpers, so it doesn't entirely count, but I have been very short of lightweight summer clothing these last couple of days of heatwave.

My wretched mesembryanthemums flopped again after being out all day in the sun, despite having attained a really quite vigorous size -- the main stem/root is terribly slender. It's not even as if the compost looked dried out, which some of the other pots definitely did; the strawberries needed emergency first aid, but seem to be perking up again.

On the other hand, the 'secret' mesembryanthemum that germinated in a quite different pot months ago, and had been sitting growing very small and tough for a long time before I realised what it was, has put up a sudden spike with a yellow bud on the top which is presumably about to open -- even though the whole plant is only about an inch tall otherwise! So I shall have a 'Livingstone daisy' after all.

(The last of the putative yellow poppies that were growing over the winter have come into flower... and are also red! But I have had a brave display of red ones as a result; they are very ephemeral, and only two still remain this evening of the half-dozen or so that were in bloom this morning.)

Comments

[erimia]

Russian cheesecake??? Do you mean zapekanka, or vatrushka, or something else?

[igenlode]

I've only ever known it as "Russian cheesecake" (it's one of the few recipes in Lesley Chamberlain's book where the original Russian term isn't mentioned, and I have a similar recipe for "Ewa's Polish cheesecake" copied out by a friend in the family scrapbook), but it seems to be the same as what the BBC calls "Russian breakfast pudding" -- and Chamberlain does mention that Soviet hotels tend to serve it to foreign tourists for breakfast, much to their distaste.

So, zapekanka (which, as I understand it, just means 'a baked thing' anyway).

Russian Breakfast Pudding (BBC Good Food)

The cold mashed potato mixed with egg, lemon and dried fruit really does distinctly resemble it, although minus the layer of sour cream baked on top in my cheesecake recipe.
I have an English recipe (source unknown) copied into the scrapbook for a dessert known as "Good-God Pie", which uses sugar, lemon, eggs and mashed potato to form a lemon pie filling, so the resemblance in texture was evidently noticed earlier.

"Good God Pie". This pudding is so called because when you tell your friends what's in it, it's the most likely phrase they'll say (and they will ask for the recipe. It's delicious!) You'll need:

• an 8-inch pastry case (bought or baked blind)
  
• 8oz of really smooth mashed potato done with cream and butter [or crème fraiche & margarine] (NB I used evaporated milk in the absence of cream!)
  
• 2 organic eggs
  
• The juice and zest of 2 lemons
  
• 4oz caster sugar
  

Whisk the eggs with the sugar, whisk into the mash, little by little add the lemon juice, fold in 3/4 of the zest. Pour the entire mixture into the pastry case and bake in a medium oven, Gas 6, 180C, for 30 minutes (or until set), decorate with the rest of the zest. (for a variation use 6 limes instead of lemons).

[erimia]

Ahh, this. Really hard to think about it as a "cheesecake", because tvorog isn't considered a sort of cheese in Russia. It seems was served in many Soviet public eating places, not just hotels, and also post-Soviet ones - I remember eating it in school, where it was one of the few tolerable foods.

I don't even know what looks more wild: making a sort of pudding out of potatoes or mixing potatoes and lemons. And it even turns out alright at the end! :D I have a problem of not bothering with ingridients that I don't like to eat, potato being one of them, and this woefully limits my knowledge of cooking.

[igenlode]

Tvorog doesn't really fit into any of the English categories of cheeses either -- it comes somewhere between 'cottage cheese' and 'cream cheese', neither of which are particularly common nowadays (though cottage cheese gets marketed as a slimming food; as the name suggests, it's the easiest kind to make domestically, as you just curdle milk with vinegar or lemon juice and collect the curds).

I usually use Philadelphia cream cheese for baking cheesecake with, as it's the easiest thing to get hold of (albeit it tends to come in teeny little pots for use as a spread, rather than half a pound at a time). It seems to work perfectly all right.

Potatoes are so bland that it's hard for me to imagine anyone actively disliking them :-p In this context I think they are basically being used as a source of starch; it's an economy dessert where the eggs are thickened with starch rather than with butter, and here with potato rather than flour. I'd guess that the reason for using mashed potato (apart from creating a smooth paste that can be mixed in) is so that you do have some butter content to enrich the result.

(I also have a recipe for 'Irish custard', which appears to be similar; in that case you grate the potatoes into 'new milk' (i.e. milk fresh from the cow) before adding eggs and sugar and baking into a custard.)

I find that cooking with ingredients that I don't like on their own (carrots being one major example) often makes them quite unexceptionable, or at least undetectable; I draw the line at bananas, however, because just the smell from mashing them up turns my stomach ;-p