The Hostess Book of Entertaining on ‘Putting it Right’ (part 3)

More sage counsel from Marguerite Patten – tackling the main course. This is the last part of her ‘Putting it right’ section, although there is much benign didacticism in other parts of the book, which will be added at a later date.

Fish dishes

Fish slightly over-cooked and dry, also inclined to break
Use extra melted butter in the sauce or topping to counteract the dry texture. Lift the fish on to individual heated plates, so there is no fear of the fish breaking again. Garnish attractively to disguise slight tendency of portions to break

Meat or Poultry dishes

Rest of meal cooked but joint or roast poultry under-cooked
Dish up the remainder of the meal into a Hostess trolley or cabinet and allow the joint or poultry to continue cooking. If time is short, carve the poultry or joint, arrange on a flame-proof dish and cook under the grill for a short time

Pastry dishes

Pastry slightly over-cooked and burned at the edges
Take a grater and rub the fine side gently and carefully over the burned portion until removed. Dust sweet pastry with sieved icing sugar or brush the pastry on a savoury dish with a little beaten egg yolk and return to the oven for a short time to give a pleasant shine to the roughened pastry.

Pastry topping on a pie loses its shape
Gently cut the pastry into portions, then arrange on the fruit or savoury mixture. This makes an interesting-looking dish and one that is easy to serve.

Colonial Goose and Bacon with marinade sauce, duchesse potatoes and chocolate mousse.

Text and Image from  The Hostess Book of Entertaining by Marguerite Patten. (Charles and David, 1980.)

The Hostess Book of Entertaining on ‘Putting it Right’ (part 2)

After a series of culinary mis-steps (none of which involved sauce), I feel inspired to share some more of the practical wisdom of Marguerite Patten.

Sauces

Sauce made with a roux (butter and flour) has formed lumps
Whisk the sauce briskly and quite often the lumps will go. If this technique fails then rub the sauce through a sieve or put it into a liquidiser and switch on for a few seconds. This treatment will produce a smooth sauce , but one that becomes thinner in consistency, so allow it to simmer gently for a time so it will become a little thicker.

Sauce too thick
Whisk in extra liquid, but taste the sauce after doing this to make certain there is adequate seasoning and flavouring.

Sauce too thin
Either allow the sauce to cook for a longer period or allow 1 level teaspoon of cornflour to each 150ml (1/4 pint) sauce. You will need to blend the cornflour with 2-3 tablespoons of milk, cream or stock, depending upon the type of sauce. Whisk this into the hot, but not boiling, sauce  and stir until thickened. A more subtle method of thickening the sauce [it will hardly know what happened to it] is too blend an egg yolk with a little milk, cream or stock, whisk this into the hot sauce and simmer gently for a short time.

Hot sauce containing egg curdles
Whisk very hard or treat as lumpy sauce above.

Mayonnaise sauce curdles during mixing
Put an egg yolk into a basin and gradually whisk the curdled mayonnaise on to this.

Sauce burns in pan
Do not stir the sauce, pour into a clean saucepan, taste very critically [Should I also frown? Wear a mortarboard?] and you may find the flavour unimpaired. If there is a very slight taste, a little extra flavouring and seasoning (or sugar, in the case of sweet sauce) may disguise this. Put plenty of salt and cold water into the burned pan and leave it to soak.

Scalloped Salmon – tinned salmon, flaked into  scallop shell topped with white sauce, breadcrumbs and grated cheddar.

Text and image from The Hostess Book of Entertaining by Marguerite Patten. (Charles and David, 1980.)

Vintage Cocktails

Here’s a run-down of  the cocktails we drank at the cocktail and canape party.

From Vogue Cocktails by Henry McNulty (Octopus Books, 1983). This is a very eighties book, with great illustrations, (some of which I’ve scanned in).

The Godmother

1.5 ounces vodka

3/4 ounce amaretto

Serve in an Old Fashioned glass, stirred with ice.

This was niiiice. We used martini glasses instead of the proper glasses though (because martini glasses are the most practical type of glassware when drunk).

Green Treetop

2 ounces vodka

2 ounces lemon juice

Sugar to taste

Dash of crème de menthe

Mint leaves, chopped

Pour the vodka, lemon juice and sugar over ice. Serve with the mint and a drop of crème de menthe in a tall glass.

This one was odd. It left a strong impression of Listerine. And not in a good way. I had two, though I fail to see how I could have justified that to myself, even when drunk. I believe this photo of Sarah’s features the dregs of a Green Treetop.

Leave It To Me

2 ounces gin

1 ounce maraschino

1 ounce lemon juice (or lemon squash)

1 dash grenadine

1 egg white

Shake all the ingredients hard for a frothy delight and serve in a large cocktail or wine glass.

I didn’t have one of these, but Elly has a photo -

A ‘Leave It To Me’

Frothy delight? You tell me.

From The Official Mixer’s Manual by Patrick Gavin Duffy (Garden City Books, 1954). This book contains a wealth of cocktails with intriguing names like Elk’s Own cocktail, Flu cocktail, Horse’s Neck cocktail, Mr Eric Sutton’s Gin Blind cocktail, Rah Rah Rut cocktail, Some Moth cocktail, and Special Rough cocktail.

Applejack No. 2

3/4 calvados

1/4 sweet vermouth

1 dash angostura bitters

Stir well with ice and strain into glass

As far as I remember this one was rather nice. I think I had two. There was certainly no calvados left the next morning.

Damn The Weather

1/2 dry gin

1/4 sweet vermouth

1/4 orange juice

3 dashes curaçao

Shake well with ice and strain into glass.

This one comes out a murky green colour, but is drinkable. I had at least two of these. Or did I? God knows.

Church Parade

2/3 English gin

1/3 dry vermouth

1 dash curaçao

4 dashes orange juice

Stir well with ice and strain into a glass. Serve with a cherry.

Another murky green one, if memory serves me correctly (unlikely). Not sure what kind of church parades Patrick Gavin Duffy was going to in the fifties. Communion curaçao anyone?

A ‘Church Parade’

Sherry and Egg

Carefully break one egg into a cocktail glass, leaving the yolk intact. Fill the glass with sherry.

This ‘drink’ was attempted when the party was well and truly underway. As you may be able to infer from the above list of cocktails tried (and the increasingly incoherent tweets I appear to have sent) I was in a state of advanced refreshment when I ‘went rogue’ and assembled this monstrosity.  I admit I never expected to enjoy it, and this was a true experiment to see if I was able to actually even drink it, when everything about it made me want to run a mile in the opposite direction, vomitting all the while. After making it we spent some time poking the intact yolk that was suspended so enticingly in the sherry -

- until I plucked up the courage to, well, retire to the bathroom with the cocktail, and Sarah and her camera. At this point I had a huge attack of the misgivings and spent a fair 5 minutes saying ‘no no I can’t I physically can’t I can’t drink this no’.  This looked like this:

It really did seem impossible to even raise the glass to my mouth. But, dear reader, in the name of Science and this blog I did. I knocked the contents of the glass back into my mouth and I swear that vile stuff, that tainted sherry, that crucially intact yolk were in my mouth for all of half a second before I’d ejected them from my being, into the bathtub, creating a horrendous splatter of yolk/ sherry all up the side of it.  Then there was some retching (happily there are no photos of this part). Actually, casting my mind back, this was the point at which I opted to make myself another Green Treetop. I wanted that minty freshness!

Pirozhnoe Zavarnoye s Zavarnin Kremom (Russian Cream Puffs)

Baked for the Vintage Cookbook Trials Canapé Party by Cis NS.

“I realised in the run-up to the canape party that while I had a lot of “vintage” cookbooks, the majority of them were by writers like Elizabeth David and Edouard de Pomiane and somehow… not quite right. Luckily I was saved by the discovery of my mother’s copy of Nina Nicolaieff and Nancy Phelan’s 1981 Russian Cookbook, which promises that “all the romance and variety of th[is] vast country is contained in [Russian] cooking – a fusion of the exotic tastes of the East and the more familiar flavours of the West”. And so it is with this recipe! — okay, okay, actually these are pretty straightforward choux-and-crème-pâtissière cream puffs, nothing in the least exotic about them. But the name’s in Russian and that’s got to count for something.

I halved (and somewhat metricised) the original recipe and still ended up with too much crème pât– but, well, one can always find a way to use that up. (e.g. a spoon)“

PASTRY
half a cup of oil (i used a mix of grapeseed oil and unsalted butter)
1 cup boiling water
125g plain flour
half teaspoon sugar
pinch salt
three eggs

BOILED CREAM FILLING
two cups milk (i used whole milk)
two eggs
200g sugar (i.e. caster)
60g plain flour
half tsp vanilla extract
(50g butter that i forgot about)

icing sugar for dusting

First make the pâte à choux:
1. boil together oil and water, whisking; 2. remove from the heat, swiftly add the flour and mix it in, plus salt and sugar; 3. beat in the eggs one by one while the mixture is still hot; 4. Let it cool: let it stand in the fridge for a couple of hours. (a later attempt suggests you shouldn’t, however, let it stand overnight)

Then make the crème pâtissière:
1. boil up one and a half cups of the milk in a heavy-bottomed saucepan; 2. beat together eggs and sugar, then the remaining half-cup of milk, the vanilla, and the flour; 3. add sugar-etc mixture to the boiled milk, and bring the lot of it back up to the boil, stirring it as it thickens; 4. let it cool, then beat it until creamy, adding butter. Then fridge.

(I skipped the butter bit and the mixture did not suffer: on a later attempt at the recipe where I remembered this stage, the extra beating and butter made it go runny. I suspect that if you’ve been reasonably diligent about stirring it in the saucepan it won’t go lumpy and need the butter to smooth it out.

What I did add at this point was a few tablespoons of cocoa, because I thought the whole thing was way too sweet – not sure if I’d accidentally upped the sugar content or just don’t have a sweet enough tooth. )

Then make some CREAM PUFFS!
1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees centigrade, or a bit higher (i have a fast oven).
2. Grease a baking sheet: drop on here spoonfuls of the choux pastry, “about the size of half an egg or a large walnut”. You can make slightly prettier puffs if you use a forcer or piping bag.
3. Bake for 30-40 minutes and make sure you don’t open the oven at all in the first 20 minutes – even if they look cooked, they aren’t. (if they look burnt, you probably have the oven too high). They generally seem to be done after half an hour – the ideal we’re going for is “not wet in the middle or burnt outside”.
4. Let ‘em cool.
5. FILL THEM! This is another place where having a forcer or piping bag comes in useful: it’s kind of cute if there isn’t a visible place where they’ve been cut open and filled.
6. Dust them with icing sugar just before serving.

The Hostess Book of Entertaining on ‘Putting It Right’ (part 1)

In which home economics legend Marguerite Patten lists rectifications for the last-minute culinary disasters which can befall a cook who has over-refreshed themselves or spent too long in front of the mirror or with their guests. Or, as she reassures us:

From time to time even the most accomplished and experienced cook has a failure in the kitchen. What appears at first glance to be a spoiled dish amy well be disguised, or the fault remedied, with a little ‘know-how’. I hope the following hints will be helpful.

H’ors d’oeuvre

A fish cocktail sauce tastes dull
Add a few drops of Tabasco, soy or Worcestershire sauce, plus a little cream.

A pate has been over-cooked and is dry and crumbly
Put the pate into a bowl, stir in cream plus a little sherry or brandy until of the desired consistency. Add extra seasoning plus chopped herbs to taste.

Soup

The soup is over-salt
Add a little milk or cream and taste again. If this has not remedied the fault, peel and dice one or two potatoes, simmer in the soup for 10 – 15 minutes, the lift out the potatoes, add more cream or milk. By this time the soup could have become too thin in consistency so a little extra thickening may be necessary.

The soup lacks flavour and time is short
Add a little garlic and/or celery salt to a creamy soup; a pinch of curry powder and a little Worcestershire sauce to a meat-based soup; tomato puree is another excellent ingredient to add to meat or vegetable soups.

The soup looks dull
Add an interesting garnish such as yoghurt and diced fresh or canned red pepper to a dark-coloured soup; browned blanched almonds are an ideal topping for creamy soups. Try tiny balls of cream cheese on a bortsch.

Turkey Tarragon Soup

The Hostess Book of Entertaining by Marguerite Patten. (Charles and David, 1980.)

Spinach Cannelloni

Here’s one I cooked about a month ago – the stodge was perfect at the time but now it’s salad weather and the idea of a creamy pasta dish is less appealing, so please cast your mind’s back to chillier times in order to give this recipe the attention it deserves.  It’s from The Sainsbury Book of CHEESE -  including Cheesecakes and Fondues by Rhona Newman, first published 1982 (this ed. 1983), so a fairly recent resource, with generally sensible recipes .  The difference between this book and Make A Meal of Cheese from 10 years previous is notable – where MAMOC was cheddar-centric here we have recipes for a range of cheeses (unsurprising really, given the publisher).  There’s still some slightly icky recipes (Sardine Fish Cream?) and some where you feel you’d have liked them to try a bit harder (I’m looking at you Garlic Sausage Spears, aka slice of garlic sausage wrapped round cream cheese on a cocktail stick).

Spinach Cannelloni

500g frozen chopped spinach, thawed

175g matured Cheddar, grated

50g fresh breadcrumbs

salt and pepper

grated nutmeg

8 sheets lasagne

25g butter

25g plain flour

300ml milk

1 teaspoon made mustard

Drain the spinach thoroughly and mix with 50g of the cheese, 40g of the breadcrumbs and salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste.

Cook the lasagne in plenty of boiling, salted water for 15 minutes or until just tender. Drain and rinse with cold water. Cut each piece in half and lay on a clean tea-towel.

Divide the spinach mixture between the lasagne and roll up. Place in a greased shallow ovenproof dish.

Melt the butter in a pan, stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute. Slowly blend in the milk, then heat, stirring until the sauce thickens . Add 75g of the cheese, the mustard, and salt and pepper to taste.

Pour over the cannelloni. Mix the remaining breadcrumbs and cheese and sprinkle over the sauce.

Bake in a moderately hot oven (190°C/ 375°F/ Gas Mark 5) for 20 to 30 minutes or until the topping is golden.

Serves 4.

Results

Notes etc

• This was really really delicious – it’s a very acceptable vegetarian main course that I would happily serve friends
• I didn’t bother making up mustard; I just sprinkled powder into the mix. I couldn’t decide whether this would be more or less potent than mixing some up properly, but looking back I think I could have put more in. But then again I appear to like things flavoured very heavily, so perhaps that’s not to everyone’s taste.
• The assembly of the lasagne and filling is messier than you’d think. Have a decent sized worktop free!
• If you are hungry whilst making this the urge to just eat some of the spinach and cheese mix will be strong. Resist!
• I used up more of the shop-bought breadcrumbs from the Welsh Eggs – this worked alright, but I’m pretty sure that it would be worth the effort of making your own breadcrumbs for this recipe.
• In conclusion – really tasty, pretty darn easy, generally a winner.  Perhaps the old ones aren’t the best after all….

Nommed by Alix

Herbed Carrot Salad

a) apologies for the delay; b) ph34r the fusion of herbed carot salad, mashed potato, sook choo na mool and SAUSAGES! This is what happens when you cannot make salads for one, have urgent leftovers in need of eating and yet CANNOT refuse yourself sausage and mash after a tough day. Hurra?!

Ingredients

450g carrots
peeled clove garlic
1/8 – 1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp paprika
pinch cayenne pepper
juice of one lemon
1/8 tsp granulated sugar
olive oil to taste
salt
freshly chopped parsley to garnish

wash, peel and dice the carrots. cook in boiling water (and there I was wondering why ice water wasn’t doing the job), to which the peeled garlic has been added, for 10-12 minutes or until barely tender. drain, set aside.
combine the spices with the lemon juice, sugar and salt. Mix until blended, add to carrots, chill.
Just before serving, sprinkle with oil and chopped parsley.

results

notes:
- 10-12 minutes!! Holy Tegoshi Batman. I expect, dear readers, you can use your own judgement as to when carrots are done and if you feel that is too long, “until barely tender” is the best guideline.
- Hate hate hate measuring things in eighths of teaspoons, also hate spice jars too tiny to fit a teaspoon in.
- How do you all juice lemons if you don’t have a juicer? My friend has a Philippe Starck one, has never used it. Anyway, I slice the lemon into rounds and squeeze each one into a cup and then make a mess scooping out the pips. I guess I got about a quarter of a US cup of juice. Juicy!

conclusion:
Hurrah but where are the herbs!! The only herbs are the parsley garnish! And guess what, I didn’t use any. I never have parsley, it didn’t say flat or curly and frankly I usually ignore garnish suggestions anyway because they – are just irritating, even if they DO look good. I don’t have a garden or any living herb plants and object to the 75% mark-up supermarkets put on those awful plastic packets arghhh SO ANNOYING. Anyway – all the lovely lemon in this was a little overpowering on first scoff, but I found myself craving the dish again in a few days time. Lemon craving?? I’d like to experiment with this some more – I’ve had good results with lemon juice, nanami (or shichimi) seasoning (japanese 7 spice basically), a bit of salt, extra pepper and some paprika. But nothing AT ALL to do with herbs!!

SERVING WITH S&M OPTIONAL

Sook Choo Na Mool (korean bean sprout salad)

Salad number two from week of salad: Rosalie Swedlin, World of Salads. Serves 6. Six!! Good job I can eat a lot of beansprouts. Never scale down, never surrender! Or er something or other…

ingredients

225-275g (mung) bean sprouts
4 spring onions, chopped
1 small red pepper, cored, deseeded, finely chopped up
1 minced clove garlic
4tbs veg oil
2tbs white wine vinegar
2tbs soy sauce
salt and pepper
2 tbs toasted sesame seeds

to make dressing: mix the oil, vinegar, soy sauce, garlic and freshly ground pepper. Soy sauce is quite salty so spare the salt. Place bean sprouts, red pepper and spring onions in a large wooden salad bowl. Pour dressing over the salad and toss gently. Chill for at least an hour. Just before serving, add toasted sesame seeds and toss again.

results

notes:
- So did anyone sprout their “mung” the other day when I gave you the heads up?
- More commonly spelt ’sukju namul’ (숙주나물), but at least you know the “u”s are long! – I looked up some comparison recipes and it doesn’t appear this usually includes the red pepper, but heck, it adds some nice colour and I like raw peppers (as long as they’re not green – indigestible). The internets tells me also that the bean sprouts are generally blanched first til they turn translucent as opposed to the zero cooking we get here. here’s a companion recipe fyi. incidentally, it says you have to eat immediately as the sprouts don’t last – done this way, they were fine when I ate some next day.
- I didn’t add any extra salt, and neither did I toss in a large wooden salad bowl, because I don’t have one. Do any unmarried people have large wooden salad bowls? They are only ever given as wedding gifts! I used a red plastic bowl from IKEA and if that makes a huge difference – whatevarrrrrr.

conclusion

Dude, despite all the oil and vinegar and soy sauce, it still tasted like cold bean sprouts, and if it weren’t for the delicious sesame seeds this would be a bit of a chore by itself. But this is a side dish and should accompany a bunch of stuff – I had mine with chicken and udon noodles (i realised why udon noodles are so grate – they’re basically *long gnocchi*). This book is kind of annoying me because you have no idea whether things are stand alone meals or side dishes, or if they’re side dishes what they’re good served along with. Growl. I’d make it again but i don’t think there’s much need for all that vinegar. And why not add a tbs or two of sesame oil instead of the veg? And I think blanching would make it feel a bit less like… grim faced cold bean sprouts. Serve with hot carbohydrates! Mmm, hot carbohydrates…

The next and final salad of the week is herbed carrot salad! Can you stand the excitement. Watch out for its incorporation in the new style of fusion I call “idiotface”!

Rosy Baked Chicken

This is from Family Circle Home Entertaining published by Albany Books in 1980.  With chapters such as ‘Wine Sense’, Giving a Cheese and Wine Party’ and ‘A Wedding Buffet Planned at Home’ it offers everything necessary  for one to entertain on a large scale and if this sample recipe is anything to go by it also offers everything necessary to make sure that your guests will think twice before accepting an invitation to future soirees.

Rosy Baked Chicken

4 chicken joints
1 small (200g) can sliced pineapple

Sauce
50g margarine
1×15ml spoon plain flour
2×15ml spoons tomato ketchup
2×5ml spoons dry mustard
1×2.5ml spoon salt
Pepper
1×5ml spoon Worcestershire sauce
1×15ml spoon vinegar

1 (200g) pack frozen peas
1×10ml spoon cornflour

1. Remove skins from chicken  joints. Wipe joints with kitchen paper and place in a large roasting tin.
2. Drain pineapple, reserving syrup in a small basin. Chop pineapple.
3. Place margarine in a basin and beat until soft and creamy. Beat in remaining sauce ingredients and half of chopped pineapple.
4. Spread mixture evenly over chicken joints. Pour pineapple syrup over and sprinkle with remaining chopped pineapple; cover with foil, If possible , leave in fridge until ready to set in oven.
5. Remove the foil and place on shelf just above centre of oven. Set oven control to moderate (190°C/ 375°F/ Gas Mark 5) and bake for one hour. Ten minutes before end of cooking time , cook peas, as directed on pack. Place chicken joints on warmed serving dish and keep hot whilst making gravy. Blend cornflour with a little water and stir into juices left in roasting tin. Cook gently for 3 minutes; pour over chicken joints. Arrange cooked, drained peas on a dish around chicken or serve separately.

How this looked before cooking:

After cooking:

Notes

• I used butter instead of marg
• I made half the amount, and used thighs and drumsticks as I couldn’t get joints
• I didn’t have the peas, and omitted the gravy as I couldn’t find cornflour
• Pre-cooking the resemblance to puke was uncanny.
• The juices left in the dish afterwards were really offputting, and the leftovers that I removed from the fridge the next day were encased in an orange  lump of solidified fat. Mmmmm.

Conclusion

Despite smelling like a nice barbeque whilst in the oven, it tasted a little weird, and the coating didn’t really adhere to the meat well at all. I think it would have been much nicer had the skin remained on. The combination of butter and ketchup and pineapple is not quite to my taste, it’s a little sweet. Overall this wasn’t particularly nice, the coating didn’t compliment the chicken, and my general feeling was that I was eating some nice chicken which was being spoiled by an odd sauce. I suspect that if cooked at a higher heat, with the skin on it may have a) looked more like the photo, and b) tasted alright.

Kyuurimomi – Japanese cucumber salad

From Rosalie Swedlin’s World of Salads, 1980, Book Club Associates. (picture will come – promise)!

The intro starts with “I have always been fascinated by salads”. And at that point I put the book down. For about two years. On a scale of “it was a dark and stormy night” to 10, that rates a miserable squib of a starter. But now I’m older, and wiser, and OK – I’ve been eating crap for the past weeks, and it’s summer. Perhaps it’s time for me to be… fascinated by salad too? Or at least have good intentions before you find me face down in a Tuc cheese sandwich coma next week…

Therefore! This week I shall be having THREE salads from this book, picked fairly randomly. I’ll admit now that it is some humble pie (salad is a pie of all the salad obv) I am also chowing down on, as once you get over “uh!! salad! booo-RING, grandad!!”, there’s actually a huge variety of salads, but also sauces, dressings, SO many vegetables, and a section called ‘exotic, expensive and eccentric’ salads, which is a bit heavy on the truffles for my taste.

First up, we have kyurimomi – that’s the author’s spelling, the dicky gives きゅうりもみ so I’ll go with that. Over to the blurb.

Says Rosalie: The western distinction between cooked vegetables and fresh salads is larghely ignored by the Japanese. When cooked at all, vegetables are only cooked briefly and even then, often served cold.

many vegetables are marinated in vinegar and dressed with shoyu sauce. this recipe is topped with toasted sesame seeds and makes an excellent accompanient to grilled fish or as a side dish with the Japanese “sashimi”, sliced raw fish.

ingredients

1 large cucumber (note to non-UK bloggers – this is a UK book and I cook in the UK, so I use an “English cucumber”! I hear from my global correspondents that American cucumbers are different in some [nasssty] way. I’ve seen recipes call for ‘Japanese cucumbers’ rather than American ones – from what I can see and what I’ve had in Japanese restaurants, Japanese cucumber isn’t so different to an English one. I am so curious to know what on earth passes for a cucumber in the US now. Share your horror stories!).
5ml (1 tsp) salt
150 (1/4pint) vinegar
30ml (2tbs) sugar
30ml (2tbs) light shoyu sauce*
15ml (1 tbs) white sesame seeds.

*(confusing) BOOK NOTE: soy sauce can be used as a substitute for shóyu sauce, which is the same thing (BUT IF…??). However, soy sauces produced in the West are much thicker and stronger than the Japanese varieties. Usukuchi, a light and delicately flavoured shóyu, is best for this recipe. Supermarket soy sauce can be substituted, but it should be used more sparingly.

Wash the cucumber and slice, unpeeled, into paperthin rounds. Sprinkle lightly with salt and place in a colander or sieve to drain for 30mins. If a plate is placed on top of the cucumber and occasionally pressed down hard, even more liquird can be removed. Place cucumber in a clean tea towel and pat dry. Transfer to a bowl or dish. Mix together the vinegar, sugar, shóyu (or soy) sauce. Pour over the cucumber and toss gently.

Toast the sesame seeds in a dry frying pan, skaking constantly until they begin to jump (they can also be toasted under the gril). Remove from thehat and crush with a mortar and pestle. Sprinkle over the cucumber and serve.

Results

with pan fried chicken and lettuce for today’s lunch.

Notes:
- If you’re going to call it shóyu, for goodness sake use the right accent! shōyu ! Friends – the MACRON!
- I used Kikkoman ‘all purpose seasoning’ soy sauce which is dark (koikuchi), but this is an usukuchi type – I’ve not had a ‘light’ Japanese soy sauce before – but I had a litre of a ‘light’ Chinese brand (i thought pearl river bridge – will check next time i’m in loon moon) and – oh – so salty and kinda nasty. I ran straight back to dark Kikkoman after that… Maki blogged that Japanese people lol at those Kikkoman dispensers like “Americans lol at own brand cola” (or words to that effect), but, you know – whatever! Dude I have no issues with Kikkoman all purpose.
- Cucumbers were still pretty damp after their draining – give them a good squish with your hands. A quick look up of “momi” gives meaining of rubbing/shoving, so I think we can read that into the recipe rather than the genteel pushing down on a plate. SQUISH THEM.

Conclusion

It’s pushing it a bit to call this a salad – it’s pickles which make an excellent side dish! The only difference between this and tsukemono (if you ask my totally uneducated opinion) is that tsukemono is actual pickled/fermented stuff whereas this stuff is eaten whilst it’s fairly fresh. There’s still a hefty kick from the vinegar, mind. On saying that though, there’s no harm in leaving some sitting about for another day (or two). I do think this recipe drops the ball by not getting you to squeeze the cucumbers! Squish these together a lot and they’re great, but if they’re still sitting in a puddle of water when they’re on the plate, something’s not great there. Go to town on them! What really makes this delicious is the toasted pounded sesame seeds – don’t skimp on the sprinkles!

Next up: sook choo na mool, or the internet seems to suggest sukju namul as a better english-ism. It’s a super korean bean sprout salad. Hold onto yr mung beans. In fact – start sprouting some now and you can follow the recipe for yrself in a few days!

Pickled by Sarah