Gallimaufry: "a confused jumble or medley of things" Oxford Langauges
"a meat stew called galimafrée" Merriam-Webster
There's your new word for the day, although you may possibly know it. I sort of did, but wasn't quite sure what it meant. Nevertheless I had a vague feeling that it was indeed some kind of a mixture, with a touch of lightness or fluffiness about it. Anyway it's my chosen word this time for an oddments post - one from which I shall try to leave out any mention of Nigel Slater or Ottolenghi as this is a definite vow for the week.
It's a lovely sounding word for what is probably a lovely dish, although I did see one option from Vienna which was a stew made from hearts and lungs. But it is to France that we must turn, and here is a rather nice etymological explanation from Dictionary.com, that rather supports that.
"Gallimaufry is an unusual but delightful word for 'a hodgepodge; jumble; confused medley.' It was borrowed into English in the mid-1500s from Middle French galimafrée, a kind of stew or hash, apparently concocted from a mishmash of ingredients. Galimafrée may be its own etymological jumble, probably a conflation of French galer 'to amuse oneself' and Picard mafrer (Picard is a language spoken in northern France) 'to gorge oneself.'" Dictionary.com
Sort of 'have fun and stuff yourself with food'. Well I'll try and have a bit of fun at least, although, ironically, today is a fasting day for me.
Before I leave my title word however, here is a little more from Useless Etymology - what a lovely name for a website. Amongst other things they provide a recipe in what I am guessing is Middle French rather than Old French because I can sort of understand it - having read a few medieval French texts at university.
"Galimafrée
Pour galimafrée soyent prinses poulailles ou chappons rons & tailles par pieces et apres fris a sain de lart / ou doye et quant sera frit y soit mis vin & vert ius & pour espices mettes en la pouldre de gingembre & pour la lier cameline & du sel par raison." 14th century French recipe
Basically it's a chicken stew, fried in lard and stewed in wine and verjuice. Add ginger and a vegetable oil and salt, to bring it all together. There is no mention of vegetables. But the same site also gives a recipe from the Larousse Gastonomique of 1961:
“Take a leg of mutton freshly cooked, and chop it as finely as possible in a dish of onions. Stew these ingredients with a little verjuice, butter, and ground white ginger mixed together and seasoned with salt.”
Well the ginger and verjuice are still there, and there are still no vegetables, though the meat is now lamb. So I'm guessing it's just a meat stew of any kind flavoured with verjuice and ginger. Not so tempting as the word itself. And not nearly as much fun.
A Christmas card
This is all about marketing. The very first Christmas card we received this year is from our State member of Parliament - Vicki Ward - a Labour MP. Why would I bother with this you ask? Well because on the back is a recipe:
It's not a particularly wonderful recipe but it's very homely, which is reinforced by the fact that it's a recipe from Vicky's grandmother who appears in a happy snap with her politicial granddaughter. Inside is another picture from the same school, a more professional photo of Vicki together with her contact details and a low-key Christmas message:
"Wishing you and your family a joyous Christmas! May the festive season fill your days with relaxation, happiness, and wonderful moments with your loved ones. Have a great summer."
I thought it was a rather wonderful bit of marketing and the recipe is a minor stroke of genius really. A fancy recipe would have been all wrong. This one is very Country Women's Association/Margaret Fulton kind of stuff. And the happy snap is also genius - look she's real and she has a grandma. The kids' art is heart-warming and rather beautiful as well. Today we received a card from her fellow Labour State MP Kate Thwaites, with art from a different school, no recipe but a plea to support two different local organisations that provide food to the needy. I'm guessing it all came from the same marketing company - or indeed from Labour HQ. It's transparently trying to give you a warm glow - but nice nevertheless.
Western uses for Asian Greens
Following on from my Asian experiment with baby buk choy, I spent an hour or so the other day trying to find some western-style recipes for them. There were very few. Hardly any in fact, and sort of ironically, the best one I found was from The Woks of Life website which provided me with the Asian pork chops. This is Sarah's recipe for Creamy roasted choy sum pesto pasta, and you'd have to say it looks pretty nice and pretty Italian. Her description?:
"I roasted these leafies in the oven until the stems were tender and the leaves bore a resemblance to that most faddy of foods—the kale chip. Then I puréed it with lemon juice and garlic into a kind of pesto. Combined with cream, sweet onions, crunchy sunflower seeds, and fettuccine, it’s just about as far away from those Chinese rice plates and soups as you can get. By the way, I fully expected this to be a massive failure. It wasn’t. Why make “kale pesto” when you can use this infinitely sweeter, more tender vegetable?
Yes indeed, why not? As I roamed I came across a couple of Reddit conversations on the subject, in one of which MannyVanHorne had this to say:
"You're way overthinking this. It's a member of the cabbage family, which also contains things like broccoli and kale. Assuming you can cook any of those things Just do whatever you want with it and it'll be fine. The Asian Cuisine Police have bigger fish to fry."
Which I have to say pretty much summed up my feelings with that phrase "The Asian Cuisine Police" socially unacceptable as that may be, and also did sort of state the obvious with the cabbage remark. The only problem is the more solid stems I suppose, but then again, that's a bit like either broccoli, silver beet and cauliflower stems or maybe even celery - different family, but similar structure I suppose.
Vegetarian lasagne anyone? I cannot find a recipe that uses them but why not? If you can use it as a pesto following Sarah's method, then surely you can use it in any other reciepe that involves puréed greens. I might give it a go. After all, they're always around and always cheap so we really ought to be thinking of ways of using them other than stir frying with garlic and chillies - good though that may be.
A milk chocolate taste test
In the Australian Guardian recently, Nicholas Jordan did a taste test of supermarket milk chocolate. He assembled a group of 10 friends and they did a blind taste test of various supermarket brands. We're not looking for the artisan stuff here:
"Before the taste test, I reminded myself this wasn’t the domain for snobbery – this is supermarket milk chocolate we’re talking about. Instead of seeking single-origin nuance and bean-to-bar depth of flavour, I remembered how I felt as a kid reading about Charlie Bucket eating a chocolate bar once a year on his birthday, and how uncomplicated and overwhelmingly delicious it must have been. This was the closest to that feeling."
Now I too am a fan of milk chocolate. I mostly find dark chocolate just too - well dark - and bitter too. Unless it surrounds some mint flavoured cream. Then it just has to be dark chocolate. Jay Rayner when talking about suffering with COVID also praised milk chocolate - in his case -Cadbury's Dairy Milk:
"For being ill provides a double-stamped, fully watermarked, gilt-edged licence to eat what the hell we like. Perhaps, in non-viral times, you’re avoiding the carbs? Sod that. Your body needs bread, potatoes and pasta, ideally together. Fat is no longer a food group to be fretted over. Now it’s an imperative. And chocolate, by which I mean Cadbury’s Dairy Milk rather than any of that artisanal nonsense, is renowned for its profound medicinal qualities."
Our team of Australian testers, however did not rate Cadbury's Dairy Milk very highly. It got a mere 5 out of 10 points. So what did win, and what came out bottom?:
Maybe it's not a surprise, but Aldi's Choceur brand came out top with a score of 8 - their more expensive brand - Möser Roth, on the other hand scored a measly 6. The Koko Black Moreish Milk came second with a score of 7.5 with Nicholas Jordan saying:
"I would bet on Choceur to be liked by the most people but I’d pick Koko Black if I needed to impress a snob. As a part-time snob, I can tell you we like to think we’re experiencing something special or different."
And last with a mere 4 points was Simón Coll Xocolaters Xocolata Amb Llet, which is only available in select supermarkets, which probably means places like Leos. The testers apparently grabbed all the samples of the best ones before they left, leaving the losers behind. But when his partner came home, this one was the one she went for because it was beautiful even though Nicholas said that only the bad ones had been left behind:
"she pointed at the packet and questioned how it could be so bad when it looked so beautiful. I don’t know, Alice. I’m unsure how a chocolate that costs double most of the others can have such minimal cocoa flavour and instead tastes like “plasticine” and “oil”.
Of course it was a small sample, and yes, we all have different tastes, but nevertheless maybe we should give Choceur Milk a go - if you can face the snobs despising you for going for milk chocolate at all.
A new black pepper
Speaking of food snobbery. In a recent Melbourne Food and Wine Festival newsletter - an excellent source of everything food trendy and snobby - I saw an article on a new product PEP - which is 'premium black peppercorns'.
For me the packaging has a Mexican feel about it but apparently the pepper is "a single-origin peppercorn grown in Cambodia’s Memot district." an area blessed with volcanic soils and a tropical climate. It is the venture of three young men, who when discussing the ingredients in an excellent meal of Pepper steak at France Soir, realised that whilst they knew about gourmet brands of salt, meat and so on, they knew of no such distinctions when it came to pepper. And so we have PEP:
"Generous grinds of fragrant, herbaceous black pepper with notes of chocolate and citrus which can elevate everything from eggs to salads to a bloody Mary."
You can buy it online, if you are looking for something to go in a foodie Christmas hamper, or in one of a dozen or so trendy food shops in places like Northcote and Brunswick. Not around here. It will set you back $19.95 for the filled pepper grinder, $29.90 for the grinder plus a refill. As I say - a good present for a foodie friend perhaps, but otherwise? Who knows. Do you have discriminating enough taste buds to be able to appreciate them?
Foodie presents
Hampers are great Christmas presents, whether it's filled with ingredients, recipes or things to eat, kitchen equipment or a mixture of all of them. You could choose a theme - pasta, picnic, Asian, comfort, bbq, coffee, chocolate, ... Use your imagination. Your local supermarket has expensive versions of everyday things - though beware - expensive is not always the best as we have seen. But a sardine lover for example - I'm talking about me here - might appreciate a tin of 'real' European sardines in 'real' olive oil. Go to your local Leos or equivalent - and expensive deli I guess. Or make stuff. There are endless recipes out there, and the supermarket magazines often have many. The November Coles edition had two slightly different ones: Honey, sesame and sea salt lavosh and Crispy chilli oil.
A recipe
It was Rachel Roddy's turn to write this weeks' Guardian Feast Newsletter, which she headlined with her own recipe for Potato and tomato frittata. I always find it difficult to combine tomatoes and eggs in something that is relatively solid like a quiche or an omelette, and so I am quite interested in giving this a go. The potatoes are boiled and mashed, and then combined with onions and tomatoes which have been cooked together, before being mixed with eggs and cheese. And this being Italy - and tomatoes - there is basil too - but no garlic - which is a tiny bit odd. Fry the whole thing until browned on the bottom when you do that thing of flipping it over - a technique, that somebody I read recently described as needing grace and nerve. Sounds like Rachel herself, but I'm not sure and too lazy to look it up. Anyway it does look good, so I'm going to give it a try sometime. Maybe it could be my vegetarian meal of the week.
BACK THEN
December 2
2023 - Burrata - beauty or taste? - that would be a good thing to put in an Italian or a picnic hamper
2021 - Quickies - just a few
2017 - Indian food and the British
2016 - Cooking up a storm
For the first item (Gallimaufry), Je prefer une MELANGE de Saveurs or whatever). or just simply melange or mixture!😏