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Peanuts

"Peanuts: something so small it is not worth considering, especially an amount of money" Cambridge dictionary

"an insignificant or tiny person" Merriam-Webster Dictionary

I confess I hadn't thought of Charlie Brown and friends when I decided on 'peanuts' as the title for an oddments piece. Charles Schulz - the creator of the Peanuts cartoons hated the name - he thought it was derogatory because at the time it was a derogatory term for children - insignificant or tiny persons I suppose, so I've taken the concept of tiny and probably insignificant as well but I hope it won't be 'not worth considering'. Well the cartoon strip - Peanuts - is definitely not tiny or insignificant - it's big business and a cultural touchstone. And surely peanut is a term of endearment for a child, not derogatory even if it is a touch patronising I suppose?


There are other meanings for peanuts too - polystyrene foam bits, something to do with drugs, and sexual slang as well which I did not pursue. It seems to me that these days - maybe always - almost any word can have a sexual connotation if you try.


Peanuts themselves are of course a food - and one that we probably all love in some form or another. Not a nut of course - they're a legume, but we love them as nuts, and they deserve a whole post for themselves - a few probably, because their uses are so various.


Happiness, after all, can be peanuts.


Kouign-amman

No it's not some exotic Middle-Eastern dish. That language is Breton and it's a very sugary and buttery pastry from Douarnenez in Finistère - and now I'm wondering whether I have done this before. I shall assume not and continue.


"The legend goes that around 1860 a baker in Douarnenez found himself running out of goods. Flour was scarce, but butter was not. He modified recipe ratios and relied heavily on sugar and butter to fill his bakery with products. The result? The Kouign Amann. The recipe is still strict: 30% butter, 30% sugar, & the rest flour."  Gourmandise


The flour, by the way is combined with yeast because it's a yeast dough, comibined with all that sugar and the butter, somewhat like puff pastry - or as Broadsheet says:


"the dough’s only really there to keep the whole thing together – making it one of the sweetest and fattiest pastries out there."


And Broadsheet will tell you where all the best ones are in Melbourne. Traditionally it is made into a kind of cake, but these days you are rather more likely to find it is an individual pastry and both Catherine Adams on the Gourmet Traveller website and David Lebovitz - will show you how.



Not good for you though - The New York Times called them the fattiest pastry in the world. That wonderful name, by the way, simply means butter cake.


I saw this in The Guardian newsletter in an article by Helena Garcia on various foraged foods. Now I knew about dandelion leaves in salads - indeed I have even done that, and I was also vaguely aware of dandelion root sort of coffee in times of stress. But dandelion flowers - well I just thought they were pretty. When I saw this I also thought that it must be a fairly unique idea but I just now found that lots of people are into dandelion ice-cream. You need 60g of dandelion petals for this particular recipe, which is a heck of a lot of petals I think. A recipe for the dedicated forager.


The taste? - "a subtle, floral taste that’s reminiscent of springtime' says one of the foragers although the honey or maple syrup that you will always find in the recipe is there to take away a slight taste of bitterness.


Smashed parsnips

I love parsnips but they are so expensive I rarely buy them. This recipe, in the June Coles Magazine, however, looked so gorgeous that I made a note to myself to (a) share it around and (b) make it some time soon when I have family around for dinner. It's barely a recipe really - indeed it's not online, but if you click on the picture it will enlarge and you can read the instructions. They say to top with caramelised onion relish, and there is a side dish of something brown which probably is that, and yet, the topping is pink, so I confess I'm a bit confused. It doesn't look like bacon either - the other ingredient you are told to sprinkle over the finished parsnips. Curious. It's probably just the lighting.


Spice bags

In the last Melbourne Food and Wine Festival newsletter, which is all about the latest hot spots to drink and dine in Melbourne, there was a piece about Spice bags. Or rather it linked you to a short video on Instagram in which some guy in fairly ridiculous gear, checked out three spice bag venues in St. Klda.


A spice bag, is not a bag of spices, and moreover it's not from a country famous for its spices, but rather from Ireland - specifically Dublin - although it is thought that it originated in a Chinese restaurant there. So what is it?


"A spice bag (or spicebag, spicy bag, spice box or spicy box; Irish: mála spíosrach) is a fast food dish, popular in most of Ireland and inspired by Chinese cuisine. The dish is most commonly sold in Chinese takeaways in Ireland. Typically, a spice bag consists of deep-fried salt and chilli chips, salt and chilli chicken (usually shredded, occasionally balls/wings), red and green peppers, sliced chili peppers, fried onions, jalapenos and a variety of spices. A vegetarian or vegan option is often available, in which deep fried tofu takes the place of the shredded chicken. It is sometimes accompanied by a tub of curry sauce." Wikipedia


It's called a bag because you get it in fish and chip shops, and its served in a bag, and always it seems to me, a tub of curry sauce, which you then pour over the whole lot. The version above is an Irish one, and looks almost OK.


Here in Australia and specifically St Kilda it looks as revolting as poutine - that Canadian dish I recently featured.



I actually don't have too much problem with it before the gravy gets poured over the top, but why would you do that?


"The dish is typically served in a paper bag, to be eaten on the go, or ripped apart and placed in the middle of the table." says Elizabeth McDonald of delicious.


I must ask my children if it has made it to the trendy inner Northern suburbs yet.


Three recipes from Smitten Kitchen

I'm enjoying my weekly newsletter from The Smitten Kitchen. Yes it's American, yes the writer Deb Perelman is pushing her books and other ventures, and the recipes are not always that amazing, but actually there is generally at least one that is worth considering, and she also links to other people's articles and recipes. So here are three recipes you might like to have a go at - they're pretty easy - two are hers, and one is from Emily Nunn of The Department of Salad, which she links to. It is of course summer over there in the US of A but spring is not that far off - is it? Please not. For the Blistered peas-in-the-pod with lemon and salt you need actual peas in a pod - and young ones at that, but you might grow your own, and I also think that this would be great with sugar snap peas. Summer squash pizza - really means zucchini - of all kinds - I think, The last, and not hers is Fresh peach vinaigrette. Now peach is summer so it's a long time before we shall be having a go at that. But it does sound nice. It's got champagne in it too.



I know I have written about chowder before, so this is not about the whole chowder thing. This is inspired by one of Nigel Slater's wonderful small pieces of prose in an article he wrote about clam chowder (the link is the title of this piece) in which he describes a bowl of clam chowder he ate in Boston, Massachusetts:


"the flavour was like someone had stirred cream into a white-crested wave."


Wonderful words which followed on an equally evocative setting of the scene:


"Before leaving Boston for Chicago I found myself with a bowl of clam chowder in front of me. It was a lazy choice; a knee-jerk order from a tired and homesick diner too exhausted to even read a menu. What came to my table was a wake-up call as clear and piercing as a police siren. This was a soup of depth and potency, the very essence of the sea, a suave, salty, piscine delight."


And further on he mentions the crackers - as shown in the picture above. I remember those crackers.


The article contained his recipe for Clam chowder but no picture. You have to feast your imagination on his words. Elsewhere he does have a slightly more complicated recipe for Clam and leek chowder which you could try or Leek and mussel chowder.



Now chowder is entirely appropriate for our current Melbourne weather, but it doesn't have to be clams. It can be any other kind of shellfish or fish or corn is another favourite. Seriously delicious anyway.




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