quantity.servings@mennonite.cooking.ca

It's a treasure. The Mennonite Treasury of Recipes with its coil binding and tabbed sections. And with entries with bylines featuring the name of the contributor and their location, it is like reading an exchange of correspondence. The section on Quantity Servings (for 100 persons) has a recipe for Apple Pie that yields 15 pies. Did you know that Macaroni and Cheese for 100 takes 10 pounds of pasta?

The Treasury is a committee effort and was first published in 1961 and has gone through many printings — the sixteenth printing dates from November 1974.

vegetables@combo.ca

The Incredible Potato by Agnes Toews-Andrews offers up a simple recipe calling for small new potatoes, baby onions and peas. The new potatoes are boiled until tender. The peas and onions are done together. The vegetables are combined with butter and marjoram.

soy@scrapple.ca

Linda Haynes gives instructions in The Vegetarian Lunchbasket for the making of "Soy Scrapple". Begin with making a soy puree (2 1/2 cups of soybeans soaked overnight in 2 1/2 cups of water and then pureed in a blender or a food processor) and then add lots of ingredients to add taste including cornmeal (1 cup) and nutritional yeast (1 1/2 cups). Liquids added include 1/3 cup of tamari, 1 cup oil and 4 cups water. The mixture is packed into greased cans, steamed for 1 and 1/2 hours and unmolded when cool. Sliced and fried.

I have found similar recipes in a cookbook of the Seventh Day Adventists.

spinach@sesame.seeds.ca

Jean Hewitt's International Meatless Cookbook provides a recipe for spinach stir fried with with green onions, garlic and ginger. The dish is dressed with a sprinkling of toasted sesame seeds. Instructions on toasting are given:

Sesame seeds can be toasted in a d small dry skillet over medium heat while shaking frequently to prevent burning.

The smell is glorious and the taste divine.

salade@marguerite.ca

In La Cuisinière [a cookbook from the makers of Five Roses flour] there is a salad that derives its name from the shape it takes. The yolks of hard boiled eggs are bound with a salad dressing or mayonnaise and placed in the centre of a bed of crisp lettuce. The halved eggs (the white portion of the hard boiled eggs) are then arranged in a circle to give the impression of petals.

soup@serving.suggestions.ca

The charm of the following suggestion by Majorie Winn Ford, Susan Hillyard and Mary Faulk Koock is in its flexibility.

Serve Malaysian lemon rice soup in demitasse cups in the living room before dinner. You will find it a delicate appetite teaser.

No living room? The small teaser can still be served at table. No demitasse cups? Small sherry glasses or shot glasses will do too.

Gleaned from The Deaf Smith Country Cookbook: Natural Foods for Family Kitchens

yeast@methods.ca

Michael Smith in The Afternoon Tea Book has some "Guidelines to Successful Bread Making" which contain these remarks on the various ways fresh yeast is incorporated into dough.

Fresh yeast can be added to the flour in any one of three ways: (a) blending it with the warm liquid, then adding it to the flour; (b) the batter method, in which one-third of the flour is mixed with the yeast liquid, left in a warm place for 20 minutes until frothy, then added to the rest of the flour; or (c) the yeast can be blended with part of the liquid, then added to the dry ingredients, and the remaining liquid.

The book goes on to describe the activation of dry yeast.

italian@potato.pie.ca

She provides more than just recipes with ingredients available via coupon saving or vouchers. There is in the Coupon Saver's Cookbook by Beryl M. Marton a number of useful tips. For example, after the instructions on how to assemble and bake a potato pie, one finds this good advice:

Most pies, pastries and tortes, like roasts, are easier to cut and serve if they are allowed to rest before being sliced. Pastries, pies and tortes settle somewhat, resulting in a firmer body.

The recipe for the potato pie calls for the layering of sliced potatoes in pastry laid out in a deep pie plate. The layers are seasoned with garlic and parsley. The top crust is draped over the top, the edges crimped and a slash made in the centre through which good, rich, heavy cream is poured (a half cup). The pie is brushed with an egg wash (to give the crust golden colour) and baked for an hour.

apple@savoury.bake.ca

Sonya Richmond's International Vegetarian Cookery provides as the cover indicates "Gourmet Recipes from Beirut to Brussels, Moscow to Montevideo, All Without Meat or Fish". There is for instance a recipe for "Apple Savoury Bake" which is a casserole of layers of onions, apples, nuts, liquid (4 tablespoons of flour stirred to a thin consistency with a quarter cup of water) topped with a generous layer of breadcrumbs, dotted with butter and baked until tender. Simple and scrumptious.

eggplant.red.pepper@terrine.ca

Vegetarian Gourmet in the Cole's Cooking Companion Series (1995) has a fine illustration of a dish of grilled eggplant layered with roast red pepper. Very attractive once unmolded and sliced. I don't know why but the Cole people call it a "Red Pepper Terrine" — I think the eggplant deserves mention in the name of the dish — perhaps under its other name "aubergine".

lentils@chestnuts.ca

Translated by Barbara Flower and Elisabeth Rosenbaum, The Art of cooking by Apicius is a treasure trove. In the chapter on pulses there is a recipe for lentils with chestnuts which are seasoned with a mixture, pounded in a mortar, of pepper, cumin, coriander-seed, mint, rue, asafoetida root, and pennyroyal moistened with vinegar, honey and fish sauce (liquamen). Unfortunately we are not given proportions. Trial and error will prove which is the best combination.

steep@macerations.ca

Dover reprint of M. Grieve Culinary Herbs and Condiments has a chapter devoted to herb liqueurs. The basic principle is simple. Although the method is not described in general terms it consists of the following: herb allowed to stand in sugar and grain alcohol anywhere from a number of days to months. The result is strained and delectable.

corn@contents.ca

The Totally Corn Cookbook by Helene Siegel and Karen Gillingham has the most suggestive table of contents:

Soothing Soups, Bright Salads & Party Foods
Corn Salsas, Relishes & Sides
Entrées
Glorious Corn Breads
Candied Corn & Other Grown-Up Sweets

milk.toast@child.recipes.ca

When Mother Lets Us Cook by Constance Johnson (1908 rpt. 1909) is a gem of a book for its instructions and for its illustrations. The subtitle is very explanatory: "A book of simple receipts for little folk with important cooking rules in rhyme together with handy lists of the materials and utensils needed for the preparation of each dish". For example, the recipe for "Milk Toast" instructions account for access to a toaster by giving instructions for toasting bread with a long fork ("Take off one of the stove covers and toast your bread over a hot fire until one side is brown, and then toast it on the other side") or using the oven ("If the fire is not hot the toast will be tough and hard. This is generally the trouble when toast is made in the oven, or when it is made before you want to use it."). The buttered toast is placed in a dish, salted and peppered and then hot milk is poured over the toast. A simple dish with elaborate instructions. Makes one long for a wood stove just so one could use a long fork ...

chamomile@cauliflower.ca

A piece of ephemera: printed inside the cover flap of the box of a package of Celestial Seasonings Perfectly Pear (Poirissime) White Tea copyrighted 2002 is a recipe from the Cooking With Tea cookbook by Jennifer and Mo Siegel. It basically calls for the cooking of cauliflower in chamomile tea and sauté some onions and celery in butter, blenderize. I suspect this is a soup that can be served hot or cold.

nut@soups.ca

Dorcas S. Miller The New Healthy Trail Food Book can be inspiring for the stay at home cook. There are two intriguing soup recipes that would be fabulous on or off the trail. "Cashew and Carrot" is one; the other, "Almond".

bulgar.gorgonzola@artichokes.ca

The California Artichoke Cookbook edited and compiled by Mary Comfort, Noreen Griffee and Charlene Walker has a recipe for "Stuffed Artichoke with Bulgur and Gorgonzola". The soaked bulgar is mixed with an herb dressing, garbanzo beans, walnuts, red pepper and the cheese. The walnuts by the way are toasted — lovely way to bring out their flavour.

persillade@parsley.shallots.ca

John Midgley invokes Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking in his entry on "persillade" in A Sprig of Parsley: Twenty-five Classic Recipes (Tabouli is not one of the twenty-five.) One of the dishes referenced is fried aubergines dressed with olive oil and persillade. And, of course, there are the instructions to take a small bunch of parsley, washed and shaken dry, 2 shallots or 3 cloves of garlic and a half teaspoon of salt. The herbs are chopped as finely as possible. Midgley suggests an Italian mezzaluna as a suitable chopping tool. The chopped herbs are mixed with the salt. "Stir the persillade into hot, cooked stews and braises, or serve it separately in a little dish."

paradigm@measures.ca

There are recipes that call for a "suspicion of cayenne" in Elizabeth David's French country cooking — a trace of the French "soupçon". In a piece by Mimi Sheraton in The New Yorker, "One Fish, Two Fish: in pursuit of an Adriatic specialty", one finds the whiff of a "whisper of garlic". And to the list let's add "hint", "pinch" and "dash".

new@word.ca

You can expand your vocabulary as well as your culinary repertoire. Julia Child The French Chef Cookbook has a section of photographs reproducing tips from the television show. Describing the icing of a traditional bûche is this memorable caption: "Spread on butter cream, scumbling it to give a bark effect."

milanese@style.ca

The entry in Auguste Escoffier Ma Cuisine for Florence fennel suggests that it be cooked in salt water and prepared like cardoons and celery. At the cardoon entry under "Cardons à la milanaise" one finds a reference to asparagus so prepared. And there one discovers that such a dish consists in sprinkle grated Parmesan cheese over the cooked vegetable and liberally drizzling brown butter and setting it to brown under the grill. The celery entries give one the idea of a purée...

tumeric@potatoes.ca

Jill Norman Spices: roots & fruits offers instructions for an "Indian dish that is very simple to make and can be served as part of a western meal." Small onions are cooked whole for about 20 minutes by frying over low heat. The heat is turned up and tumeric, asafetida and cubed parboiled potatoes are added to the pan. About 3 or 4 minutes later, a couple of tablespoons are added and the heat turned down. Cook for a further 5 minutes and then turn up the heat to evaporate any remaining liquid.

This strikes me as a type of recipe developed in a kitchen with a gas stove since it relies on turning the heat up and down. A gas stove would give the required control.

celery.seed@dressing.ca

Jill Norman Spices: seeds & barks provides a recipe for celery seed dressing which recommended as a "good dressing for a winter vegetable salad". It oil and vinegar are whisked into a mixture of celery seed, dry mustard and cayenne. The whisking continues until "the dressing thickens a little before using."

crepes@muffin.tins.ca

Mable Hoffman in Crepe Cookery in the "Shape Your Crepe" chapter illustrates many folds and roll ups. This one is particularly original:

CUPS — A real surprise shape, yet so easy to do! Use crepes as liners in muffin pans. Then there's no limit on what you can choose for fillings. Be sure to select crepes free from holes or cracks so egg-and-cheese mixtures won't leak out.

wheat.berries@thermos.ca

Edyth Young Cottrell The Oats, Peas, Beans and Barley Cookbook at the end of the Breakfast Breads and Cereals section provides an easy method for cooking wheat berries overnight in a thermos. Soaked wheat is brought to a boil then placed in a heated thermos and left for at least 8 hours.

cookies@galore.ca

There is in The Milk-free and Milk/Egg-free Cookbook by Isobel S. Sainsbury, M.D. a whole chapter devoted to cookies (much of the book is dedicated to explorations of eggless and milk-free baking). I like how the brief introduction to the chapter champions a greater place for the cooking in daily nibbling.

THESE DELIGHTFUL SNACKS are the great treats of childhood. Most adults, too, enjoy a freshly baked cookie as a breakfast bit, a lunch supplement, a coffee or tea treat, a snack, or even for a dinner dessert.

And the first of the cookie recipes is one of my favourites, one that I learnt from my mother, we called them Chocolate Macaroons. Here they are called "Unbaked Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies" and they are made without milk (and include raisins which my childhood treats did not). And are just as easy. One basically creates a chocolate sauce, adds oatmeal, coconut (and raisins) and then spoons out the mixture on a tray to cool.

food.work.@comment.ca

Stewart Lee Allen author of In The Devil's Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden Food in the Chapter devoted to "Sloth" remarks "American workers now pay more money for worse food so they can hurry back to jobs they hate." Hyperbole from 2002. :)

soubise@bechamel.ca

It is Len Deighton's French Cook Book Où est le garlic that put me onto a different way of making sauce soubise i.e. without incorporating onions into a rice purée. The technique that Deighton offers is to incorporate the chopped onion cooked soft in 1/2 pint of dry white wine in a b&eactue;chamel sauce.

yogurt@cheese.ca

Thick and stabilized is not necessarily desired...

Yogurt cheese is very similar in taste and texture to cream cheese, but without the calories! Drain yogurt overnight, and in the morning you will find a ball of creamy cheese ready to be used for tasty appetizer spreads or sandwich fillings. this is an excellent way to use leftover or aging yogurt. The older the yogurt, the tangier the cheese. Some commercial yogurts are not satisfactory for making yogurt cheese. They are overly-stabilized, and the whey may not drain off fully. Best results will be achieved with homemade yogurt or a dairy yogurt not highly thickened.

from Susan Mintz. The Complete Yogurt Cookbook (Nitty Gritty, 1978)

frozen.egg@hard.boiled.ca

Gary Lee in The Wok (Nitty Gritty, 1970) mentioned the interesting texture that can be achieved by freezing hard boiled eggs along the same principles used to freeze dry tofu. He did this with boiled egg. The egg comes out spongy. Lee cooks the frozen then thawed egg in a sauce and calls the result "Eskimo Eggs".

soba@slurp.ca

Russ Rudzinski (Ryoichi Kokku) in Japanese Country Cookbook (Nitty Gritty 1969) under the rubric "Summer Soba" has a charming description of stands that sell buckwheat noodles

It seems that summer soba stands appear at every turn of a road in a small town. Soba in this fashion is very refreshing since it's served cold. The summer soba stands are particularly inviting in hot weather. They are roughly of simple gazebo construction with a clean, earth floor. In addtion to the setting, 4 people or so slurping soba (it isn't a delicate process) makes a joyous symphonette.

And after instructions on preparing the cold noodles and a dipping sauce, more about the slurping...

Eat by picking up a chopstickful of soba, lifting it high and dipping it into the sauce (keeping it on the chopsticks) and then begin to inhale. Usually served with cold wheat tea.

charcuterie@quiche.ca

Depending on how you hold the book, it's Quiche and Souffle or Souffle and Quiche. Either way it's a two-in-one cookbook authored by Paul Meyer who splendidly offers instructions for "Frankfurter Quiche" and for "Frank & Bean Quiche". For the latter:

Open 1 small can of baked beans, place the beans in a strainer and rinse away all the sauce. Dry the beans on paper toweling. Place a layer of thinly sliced frankfurters in the prepared shell. Place the beans on the frankfurters and top with another layer of frankfurter slices.

self.made@sesame.sauce.ca

In a section on basic seasoning, Gary Lee The Chinese Vegetarian Cookbook (Nitty Gritty, 1972) provides instructions on how to flavour oil with sesame.

Sesame oil is for garnishing. If you cannot find it in your stores you can make your own easily, for a little will go a long way in garnishing. Brown a cup of sesame seeds in a dry skillet or toast them in the oven. Try medium heat for browning or 300 degrees in the oven. When you catch the smell of lightly burning it is time to stop. Put the seeds and one cup of oil in the blender and run at high speed for one minute. Strain, and the oil will bear the aroma of sesame. The strength of the aroma and taste will depend upon the degree of toasting — the longer the toasting the stronger the flavor. Not only are you able to satisfy your own taste but you now have a by-product of sesame paste which you can use in cold mixing — or try as peanut butter.

eggplant@fried.ca

Hester Harris Cast Iron Cookbook (Nitty Gritty, 1969) provides a recipe for fried eggplant. The vegetable is sliced and then the slice are dipped in milk and seasoned corn meal before being fried until golden brown.

class.diet@quality.ca

When in Rome...

Reay Tannahill. Food in History in the "Imperial Rome" chapter reports:

The basic diet of the Roman poor consisted of grain-pastes or coarse bread bristling with chaff, and a polenta-like porridge made from millet.

The source is Carcopino, Jerome. Daily Life in Ancient Rome: The People and the City at the Height of the Empire (London, 1941; rpt 1967)

mousse@avocado.ca

Maxine Atwater The Natural Foods Cookbook (Nitty Gritty, 1972) provides a recipe for Guacamole to be presented as a molded salad. The cook is given a choice of gelling agents: agar agar or gelatin. The recipe could easily be adapted to the production of a mousse.

By the way, the paper upon which this book is printed is most remarkable. It is like a textured blotter paper and it is light brown, unbleached. Characteristics meant to suggest a "natural" product.

pears@wine.poached.ca

Beverly Cox and Dale Whitesell in Classic Italian Cooking for the Vegetarian Gourmet (1984) offer a recipe for Pears Poached in Red Wine and the following advice

As they poach, the pears take on the ruby red color of the wine. Ripe pears are the most flavorful, but if the pears are a little hard, increase the cooking time.

olive@eyes.ca

A clipping tipped into an Italian cookbook ...
Madeleine Greey in the Foodsmarts column under the rubric of "An olive guide" in the Toronto Star of Sunday March 8, 1998 writes

The martini craze has put olives back on the map. Usually only brine-cured green olives are plunged into this alcoholic creation. Some martini lovers shun the pimento-stuffed variety, saying a drink should never stare back at you!

molded@custard.ca

Colin Spencer in the egg section of Gourmet Cooking for Vegetarians (1978) features a number of recipes for timbales. These are prefaced with this marvellous description that is tantalizing:

No vegetarian book that I know of mentions timbales, but they are very good, either hot or cold, and can be flavoured in many ways. Essentially, a timbale is a kind of egg custard which is turned out of the dish and cut like a cake. It is light and delicate, and simple to make.

asparagus@gratin.ca

Simca's Cuisine by Simone "Simca" Beck is organized by menus. One to the spring menus offers a dish of asparagus purée with cheese. The purée is cooked in butter and thickened with flour before being placed in a baking dish and covered with breadcrumbs and grated cheese. Here are the instructions for the thickening of the pur&eactue;e:

Melt 4 tablespoons of the butter in a skillet, add the asparagus pur&eacatue;e, and cook over medium heat, stirring often, for about 5 minutes. Sprinkle with the flour [1 1/2 tablespoon], and cook, still stirring, for about 2 minutes longer. Gradually stir in the cream and season very highly with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

pie@filling.layers.ca

Robin Howe in Russian Cooking remarks that the main differences between a Russian and British pie are the shape and the filling. "A typical Russian filling would be: 1 layer of boiled rice, or kasha, 1 layer of meat, or fish, 1 layer of hard-boiled eggs" I suspect that one could substitute texturized vegetable protein for the the meat.

cocoa@sans.milk.ca

Revisiting Suzanne Rodriguez-Hunter's Found Meals of the Lost Generation and the chapter on James Joyce which ends with a recipe for cocoa, I am here recording my preference for cocoa without the addition of milk but with hot water and a generous spoonful of honey. Nicely bittersweet.

maple@hermits.ca

If you can obtain a supply of maple sugar, you might try Maple Hermits from the recipes collected by Helen and Scott Nearing in The Maple Sugar Book, Together with Remarks on Pioneering as a Way of Living in the Twentieth Century. The recipe calls for a 3/4 cup of maple sugar beaten into a half cup of butter that has been creamed. Along with the maple sugar one beats in 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and a half teaspoon of soda dissolved in a tablespoon of water. To this mixture "Add 1 well-beaten egg. Then add 2 1/2 cups flour, 1/2 teaspoon soda, and 1/2 cupful currents. Roll out an inch thick and cut in squares. Bake in a hot oven 12 minutes."

found.meals@appealing.menus.ca

Suzanne Rodriguez-Hunter supplies recipes and anecdotes from 1920s Paris in Found Meals of the Lost Generation. On the menu for the Salon of Gertrude Stein are

Lapsang Souchong Tea
Nameless Cookies
Visitandines
Black Current Liqueur

The Visitandines recipe is derived from The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book. They are describe thus by Ms. Rodriguez-Hunter:

Visitandines were first prepared for the Stein/Toklas household by an early femme de ménage, Léonie, who claimed the name derived from the cakes' original inventors, the Visitation order of nuns.

They are glazed with apricot jam.

rice@diversity.ca

In the rice chapter from Much Depends on Dinner Margaret Visser reports:

Many scientists are now saying that hybrid rice, grown uniformly on millions of hectares, presents too great a risk from pest hordes; a wide variety of rice-types should be grown in order to keep depredations down. The rice farmers of Thailand, for instance, have grown modern hybrids only in the dry season on 10 per cent of their planted land; hundreds of traditional varieties were raised in the rainy season on most of the fields. As a result Thailand has suffered no major epidemics during the past twenty years, and has also managed to maintain its position as part of what is called "the rice-bowl of Asia."

whey@lemonade.ca

Storey/Garden Way Publishing Bulletin A-57 Making Cheese, Butter, and Yogurt (1980) by Phyllis Hobson has a recipe for lemonade made with whey which is given reluctantly.

Whey has some protein and B vitamins but is inferior to milk in both taste and nutrition. My own preference is to feed whey to pets and livestock. Some people use it in soups, stews, and as a milk substitute in baking. It is my feeling that whey adds an undesirable yeasty flavor. [There follow two recipes] you might try, if you find you hate to throw whey away.

cilantro@preference.ca

Dorothy Childs Hogner in A Fresh Herb Platter (1961) expresses a dislike for the leaf of coriander:

The fruit (seeds) of coriander resemble peppercorns. They are one of the ingredients used in making curry. The seeds germinate well. Coriander is easy to raise and not given to disease or bugginess, perhaps because of the extreme, shall we say "fragrance" of the leaves? On a hot, humid day they literally stink. Because of this, we never thought of using any part of coriander, except the seeds, in the kitchen. [Ms. Hogner does document the use of the leaves in Spanish and in Chinese salad making but she remains steadfast in her distaste] [...] We tried it. We shall stick with the common parsley, thank you, for to our palates, as much as we like the seeds, the leaves of coriander taste just like they smell.

There is a recipe for corn in the jacket served with an herb butter that incorporates thyme, upon which Ms. Hogner comments "The smoked-corn-and-herb flavor is a perfect combination."

caesar.salad@coddled.egg.ca

A most interesting way of preparing Caesar salad. Joel Rapp Mother Earth's Vegetarian Feasts charmingly illustrated by Marvin Rubin provides a recipe for Caesar salad that incorporates a coddled egg in the dressing.

[...] (For effect, this dressing can be prepared at table.) Break coddled egg onto top of lettuce, add Parmesan cheese and croutons, and toss until egg is fairly well absorbed and leaves are coated with egg-cheese mixture. Add dressing, toss thoroughly, and serve.

celery.root@marinated.ca

The decorations by Barry Zind to The Garden of Eternal Swallows: A Natural Foods Cookbook (1980) by Karen Elizabeth Gordon are exquisite. They match beautifully the charmingly named recipes. Take for example, "Uprooted" which features celery root and the following instructions for variations: "Or marinate the cooked celery root in oil, lemon juice, and parsley for several hours or overnight, and eat cold on a bed of lettuce, with tabouli, olives, and other solemnities. Or mash and spread on warm pita bread."

mushroom@pate.ca

Tucked into Cooking your own Mushrooms by Jo Mueller is a newspaper clipping of a recipe for mushroom pate by Nettie Cronish from her cookbook Nettie's Vegetarian Kitchen. The recipe adds finely ground almonds or sunflower seeds to a mixture of cooked mushrooms and onions.

watermelon@pickle.ca

The recipe for watermelon rind pickles A Good Heart and A Light Hand: Ruth L. Gaskins' Collection of traditional Negro Recipes (1968) begins with the following instructions

Trim the dark green and the pink flesh off of the watermelon rinds. Cut the remaining rind into small even cubes.

empty@pie.ca

Ralph E. Barker in Small Fruits (1954) writes about how to grow and train various plants. He also at times offers a paean:

Like many of us, you may associate blackberries and dewberries with your childhood. Perhaps you can remember getting your mother's consent to let you scamper off with the other kids to the wild briar patch along the creek on the promise that you'd bring home enough berries for a pie — and of coming back after sundown, your hands scratched like a tom cat's ears, your clothing in shreds, your syrup bucket pitifully empty, your face stained a deep purple, and your stomach gorgeously full!

textures@soup.ca

Vegetables (Chronicle Books, 1985) by the illustration and writing team of Delphine Hirasuna, Kit Hinrichs, Tom Tracy and Diane J. Hirasuna has a brief introduction to the soup section which reads:

The liquid nature of soup forces our attention on flavors, without the imposing distraction of textures. Soups allow us to discover the pungent essence of endive, the sweetness of carrots, and the starchy quality of peas.

This intro doesn't claim that soups are without texture. And indeed the four soup recipes that follow (endive featuring walnut size balls of vegetable bound with egg and cheese; mustard green soup with slices of ginger root; a pureed watercress soup with potatoes and garlic and a wintermelon soup) of course contain textures. Whether they distract or not depends upon the tasting...

vermicelli@fried.ca

Vatcharin Bhumichitr Thai Vegetarian Cooking has a recipe for fried vermicelli with eggs. Important to note that the vermicelli is soaked and drained before frying. If you have tried frying vermicelli that has not been soaked you will recall that the noodles puff up.

peanut@sauce.ca

Christine McFadden in New Vegetarian Food pairs a quinoa pilau with peanut sauce. The peanut sauce is a two step procedure. Chopped nuts are added to a mixture of fried onion, bell pepper, garlic and tomatoes, this is then liquidized in a blender. The liquidized ingredients are then returned to heat with milk and allowed to simmer uncovered. For an unctuous vegan version, one could substitute coconut milk for the milk.

baked@potatoes.ca

I used to prick potatoes before placing them in the oven to bake. After reading the entry in the Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker, I have changed my habits.

[...] The present rage for wrapping potatoes in foil will not allow them to become flaky as too much moisture is retained. [...] Bake the potates for 40 minutes to 1 hour depending on their size. When potatoes are 1/2 done, pull out rack, quickly puncture skin once with fork, permitting steam to escape. Return to oven and finish baking.

sour.cream@rice.ca

"Rice with Ripe Olives and Dill" in the Rice & Pasta section of The Spice Islands Cookbook (1961) by the Spice Islands Home Economics Staff [Recipe development by Louise Driggs] features sour cream. The reader is instructed to "Fluff with a fork and add olives, sour cream, and Dill Weed" and decorated the dish with slivered almonds.

frozen.dough@convenience.ca

Jean Hewitt's International Meatless Cookbook (1980) which by the way contains an extensive section on poultry provides the following tip for Pissaladiere (French Pizza)

Frozen bread dough eliminates a lot of work when making this French variation of a pizza.

endive@braised.ca

Clarissa Dickson Wright in Food: A 20th-century Anthology under the heading "Endives" collects a passage from Simon Hopkinson Roast Chicken and Other Stories which concludes with this description:

The Normandie's braised endives were cooked in plenty of butter, which was heated until light brown before the endives were added, gently coloured, seasoned and finished with lemon juice. They were then covered, and cooked in a moderate oven for a couple of hours. The resultant vegetable was golden brown, almost gooey, and had an aroma that was very agreeable.

wine.reduction@sauce.ca

Elizabeth David has a chapter in French country cooking devoted to "Wine in the Kitchen" where she insists that the wine is to be cooked.

The fundamental fact to remember about the use of wine in cooking is the the wine is cooked. In the process the alcohol is volatilized and what remains is the wonderful flavour which perfumes the dish and fills the kitchen with an aroma of delicious things to come. In any dish which does not require long cooking the wine should be reduced to about half the quantity originally poured in the pan, by the process of very fast boiling. In certain soups, for instance, when the vegetables have been browned and the herbs and spices added, a glass of wine is poured in, the flame turned up, and the wine allowed to bubble fiercely for two or three minutes; when it starts to look a little syrupy on the bottom of the pan, add the water or stock; this process makes all the difference to the flavour and immediately gives the soup body and colour.

pheasant@well.hung.ca

In Food: An Oxford Anthology editor Brigid Allen has collected a number of exquisite passages of which the following is an excerpt by Jean Rennie who worked at a time when it was "[t]he belief that game should be well hung to the point of rottenness" which Allen indicates "is no longer the article of faith that it was before the days of universal refrigeration."

Certainly I had seen maggots before, had even enjoyed throwing them on the hot stove and watching them wiggle before they were swept into the flames.

But this teeming, crawly heap of obscene life was something I'd never seen before, or since.

[...]

He [the chef] raised his eyebrows and his eyes twinkled.

He picked up his sharp little knife and rubbed it on the steel which he wore at his side from his belt, as he walked in front of me to the scullery where the horrible things lay.

[...]

With about two slashes on each bird, he cut away the breasts, cleanly and decisively.

"There," he said, as he threw the bodies on my paper, "put them out — I've got all I want," and away he went, with the four little pheasant breasts in his hand.