Recipes from Pegasus - part 9
I just discovered a whole chapter from last year's Atlantis Christmas gift that I seem to have missed out when I assmebled it. I have no idea how I did that but I thought I'd post it up here. Sorry folks who got a hard copy that this was missing. No idea how it happened. I hope that you can enjoy it here and if you want print out this section to add to the copy.
Side dishes
A good side dish can make a fairly dull appetizer seem like a great meal. This chapter has just a few of the things you can do to brighten up a fairly stringy cut of Rushon half-cow (I'm not telling you what the other half looks like). Most of the vegetables in the mess are not so much different from those you'd get on Earth and I've not bothered to include those dishes here. We steam green beans, peas and broccoli, boil and mash potatoes, roast squash and marrows. We do the same for the produce we trade off world for, tasting and experimenting with all of them to find the best way to cook them.
The recipes here are for the dishes we take a little bit more time over than just sloshing a little soy sauce over some steamed pak choi or sprinkling toasted sesame seeds over some green beans.
*************
Native Vegetable Surprise
Even though we now have a regular supply run to Earth we are still too disconnected to rely on the Daedalus to bring us all the food we need. The hold of the ship is instead filled with luxuries and essentials, like coffee, chocolate, spices, good bread flour, Vegemite and Cheetos. Everyone has something they just can't imagine life without and we try to make sure we can provide it, even if it is something as very wrong as Pepsi Ice Cucumber from Japan.
For everything else we have to rely on what we can grow ourselves or what we can trade for. Obviously we relied, to begin with, solely on the Athosians for knowledge about the plants and animals of the Pegasus galaxy. Now we have many allies on many worlds but perhaps the biggest pool of knowledge about what's edible has come from Ronon. It's not that surprising when you consider how he spent the seven years before he joined us, but I think everyone was a little taken aback by how popular his webcasts became on the Atlantis intranet.
They started out as simple videos of the training exercises he ran for the military contingent; survival skills, tracking, hunting, detecting ambushes, that sort of thing. Over time they evolved into a much slicker format with Ronon becoming the star of the most extreme survival show you've ever seen. Besides giving us all tips about how to fight the Wraith when trapped on a planet with nothing but sand and a stick of gum, he also taught us a lot about wild food.
Not all the food items he bought back and cooked for us were tasty, in fact some were downright unpleasant, but they would all keep a person alive if they needed food. Some of them however were really good and the dish below is an Earth version of one we've served in the mess a number of times.
M’ros, which look very similar to Earth Cattails (or Bull rushes as they're called in the UK), produce a pointed shoot (or corm) in spring. Once the corms are peeled, they can be eaten raw, added to salads, or boiled for a short period like asparagus. We have them either simply with some butter and cracked black pepper or, as below, with some hollandaise sauce. Hollandaise always makes things seem very luxurious and it's something I use to disguise some of the less appetizing vegetables we trade for.
Ingredients - serves 6 as a side dish.
Corms of 3or 4 cattail roots, cleaned and peeled.
3 quarts (2.8 l) water
2 tsp salt
4 tbsp hollandaise sauce, shop bought is fine
Instructions
Cut or break the corms into bite sized pieces.
Bring water with salt to a boil. Drop in the corms and boil for 6 minutes.
Drain and either divide on to the plates and top with hollandaise or put in a bowl and stir in the hollandaise.
***************
Cucumber and peanut salad
There are some people that you expect to do dumb, macho things like eat raw chilies. There are some people you think are above such nonsense and it comes as a big surprise that they can be as susceptible to peer pressure as anyone else. I had always assumed that Richard Woolsey was one of the more sensible ones.
So it was a huge surprise to discover the the thick knot of cheering marines in my mess were in fact clustered round Richard Woolsey, Sergeant Phil Victor and a plate of assorted chilies. I'm still a little fuzzy on the details of how the impromptu competition got started because neither of the parties seemed all that inclined to talk about it. I think Richard Woolsey is slightly embarrassed by allowing himself to be sucked into something so juvenile and Sergeant Victor is still mocked by his friends for loosing the competition to Woolsey.
I am assured that Victor, a big guy from Texas who's equal parts muscle and gun oil, usually demonstrated better judgment than to make assumptions based entirely on appearances. In his defense I have to say that I don't think any of us on Atlantis would have pinned chili eating as one of Richard Woolsey's hobbies. To be fair I don't think Woolsey thought of it as a hobby.
He told me later that he'd always loved hot food, even as a child, and had adored going to stay with his Grandpa in Louisiana because he would feed him super hot gumbo. I suspect there was more to his parents disapproval of the Cajun food than an assumption that it was bad for a child to eat so much chili.
After the incident in the mess he, Sergeant Victor, and a few other chili devotes struck up an unlikely friendship based entirely on their ability to withstand food with a Scoville rating high enough to bring tears to most people's eyes. They used to hire out one of the small kitchens once a month and make food no one else could eat using chilies they bred and grew themselves. In fact, between them they grew a chili that actually scored over one million Scoville units making it the hottest chili ever grown.
This salad called Khamang Kakdi is from the area around Mumbai in India, is a a big favorite with the chili heads, who bring their own chilies to add to spice it up even more. We use kiss nuts (yes, that's really their name) from Chen, a lovely little planet that is only marred by the inhabitants' inability to trade with anyone with an R in their name. It's an unlucky sound apparently, meaning that a disgruntled Rodney and Ronon are left prowling the gate room when the other half of their team are on Chen.
This recipe isn't that hot but use as little chili as you feel happy with.
Ingredients
10oz (300g) cucumber, chopped very finely
½ tsp green chili, seeds removed and minced
4 tbsp peanuts, coarsely chopped
2 tbsp cilantro (coriander) leaves, chopped
4 tbsp coconut, grated if fresh or dessicated
2 tsp sunflower (vegetable) oil
1 tsp black mustard seeds
8 curry leaves
½ tsp sugar
salt to taste
Instructions
Mix the cucumber, peanuts, chili, cilantro and coconut together in the bowl you're going to serve in.
Heat the oil in a small pan and add the mustard seeds. When they pop add the curry leaves, stir and pour over the cucumber mixture.
Add the salt and sugar just before serving.
**********
Feta and Watermelon Salad
I know this sounds weird if you've never had it but it's one of the best, and simplest, summer salads. I got this recipe from the Israeli Ambassador to the UN, who used to make it when he worked on a kibbutz, and I've loved it ever since. The combination of the salty feta and the sweet cubes of melon is perfect, especially when combined with toasted pine nuts.
Someone, and Elizabeth was never sure who, slipped a packet of watermelon seeds into the crates the botany department brought through the gate. There must have been something in the air or the soil because they grew so incredibly well on Atlantis that no one really cared if the seeds hadn't been on the original inventory. David Parrish, who moved to the top of the list of seed smuggling suspects when he demonstrated his love of the fruit, proved to be an expert at cultivating monster fruits.
In the climate controlled greenhouses of Atlantis we could produce watermelons year round and we could probably have turned a tidy profit if we'd traded them, but somehow, no matter how many we grew, we ate them. Teyla became a watermelon addict and has even been known to resort to a little silent intimidation of marines who look like they might reach for the last slice. They all train with her so a single raised eyebrow is usually enough to make them back away from the chiller.
This salad became part of our contribution to celebration feasts on the Lantian main land, and later New Athos, and was especially good made with the newest of the Athosian dreem cheese instead of feta. You need to serve this cold and almost as soon as you make it because if it sits for too long, a problem we didn't have too often with Teyla and Dr Parrish around, the salt in the cheese starts to pull the juice out the watermelon and the texture of the fruit changes.
There's other recipes that have onion in them and no pint nuts, others with fresh mint, some with no oil but balsamic vinegar. This is my favorite but feel free to add or take away what you fancy.
Ingredients - quantities per person
1 cup really ripe, sweet watermelon, cubed and de-seeded
¼ cup feta cheese, crumbled or cubed
¼ cup pine nuts
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil (optional)
fresh ground black pepper
Method
Place the watermelon in a bowl and add the feta cheese. Stir in black pepper, and the olive oil if using, and set aside for a few minutes.
In a dry frying pan toast the pine nuts, taking care not to burn them. Once they're a nice golden brown, throw them on top of the salad and serve.
*********
Hallonan style Jeru
I am told by my niece, who is fourteen and knows about these things, that the big must-have gift this coming Christmas is going to be The Game (nicknamed the McPlay Station by some joker in the Marine Corps). Based solely on it's association with Atlantis, and a few carefully released publicity shots, the pre-orders on Amazon have pushed it to the top of the charts. When it is finally released it's expected to make it's creators millions.
McKay put together a demo of the game during a trip back to Earth on board the Daedalus, with no doubt more help than he will ever acknowledge from Sheppard. Strict doctor's orders, after their very nearly disastrous run in with the Bolo Kai, prohibited both McKay and Sheppard from any work on the trip and I imagine that writing the game stopped Rodney driving himself, and everyone else, crazy. It is of course based on the 'game' the pair played on an Ancient console, just without the prospect of actual war between real people.
Anyway, he touted the demo to a few companies when they got back to Earth but just got frustrated when all the manufacturers wanted to take the game as was and not improve on what he thought of as a very rough version. So, with a few phone calls, Sheppard collected on some family favors and founded a company that would take the demo and make it into what McKay wanted. One month's enforced R&R later and McShep Technologies was pretty much ready to produce the game on a advanced new console that the company's two founders, and the SGC, share the patents on.
On Atlantis this Christmas one of the things everyone will be looking forward to (alongside the free McPlay Stations we've been promised), is Jeru in it's many forms. It's a root, very like a parsnip, that is a delicacy in both Hallona and Geldar and forms a large portion of the trade between us. The two countries are good allies now and we give them very favorable trade terms, which seems only fair after Sheppard and McKay nearly destroyed them playing their game. Oddly, for all their focus on their military, the Hallonans managed to maintain their wonderful culinary skills and this is one of the many recipes that their chefs shared with us. We serve this one on Christmas day, along side our roast agrop and mashed potatoes.
And yes Rodney, Geldar's food is also lovely.
Ingredients
1¾lb (750g) parsnips, peeled
1 tbsp vegetable oil
knob of butter
good pinch of Chinese five spice
3-4 tbsp vegetable stock (made from a cube or powder)
1 tbsp honey
Instructions
Cut the parsnips into halves, quarters or eighths (depending on their size) length ways so you have long, kind of chunky slices. If they have slightly woody cores cut them out.
Put the oil and the butter in a large frying pan when it starts to sizzle add the parsnips, the five spice and 3 tbsp of the stock.
Cook, turning regularly, until the parsnips are cooked through and browned on the outside. Add more stock if you think you need it to stop the pan burning.
Once the parsnips are cooked, add the honey and toss together to give the a lovely caramelized coating. Season with salt and pepper and serve.
************
Chutnied Stone Fruit
There are some people who have weird, sixth sense about food and manage to invent new dishes that most of us would never dream of. They're often not chefs, in fact I think most chefs are too bound by 'rules' to let themselves just experiment. I know I am. I can invent new ways to make variations of dishes I already know and I can combine flavors know work together, but I can't put things I 'know' won't work together just to see what will happen. Fortunately I know someone who can. John Sheppard.
He doesn't do it all the time but if he's in 'one of those moods', as Rodney calls it, then watching Sheppard pick up a meal is always interesting, often entertaining. I used to think he made his wild choices based on if the colors matched, or maybe the shapes looked good together, but I have to say I have no idea if even he knows how he picks what he's going to eat.
These mad experiments are how we found that the combination of newly picked, super sweet Nittian luffum stems and hot sauce are amazing together. It's also how we found out that eating Lantian sea lettuce with grape jelly does terrible things to a person's guts. Actually I think anyone could have told us the latter was a bad idea. Seaweed and jelly, whatever the flavor, is clearly wrong.
I made this easy, fresh chutney to accompany grilled chicken and fish as we had lots of fruit and very little in the way of vegetables at the time and it seemed a good way to make a savory side dish out of fruit. Sheppard, during one of his crazy risk taking meals, saved his chutney and stirred it into his vanilla ice cream. Rodney's outraged squawk about the waste of good ice cream drew everyone's attention and Sheppard's pleased grin let them know he'd found another winner.
It shouldn't work but it does. The garam masala isn't an over powering spice and the flavor of the fruit and the sharpness of the vinegar cut through the sweetness of the ice cream. Basically, it's genius.
Rodney calls Sheppard an adrenalin addled idiot-savant, and I'm pretty sure he isn't just talking about the food thing.
Ingredients
2 large firm but ripe peaches or nectarines (about 12oz/340g total), halved, pitted, thinly sliced
2 small firm but ripe apricots or plums (about 6oz/170g total), halved, pitted, thinly sliced
1 cup quartered pitted cherries
6 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp white balsamic vinegar
½ tsp garam masala (an Indian spice mixture available in many supermarkets and at Indian markets)
Instructions
Combine all fruit in medium bowl. Add sugar, vinegar, and garam masala, then toss gently. Let stand 1 hour at room temperature to allow juices to form and to blend flavors, stirring occasionally. Serve chilled or at room temperature.
It can be made 1 day ahead and kept covered in the refrigerator. Serve it with grilled fish or meat, or with cheese, either melted or not. It's great in plain yogurt, or on cereals in the morning. Or you can serve it with vanilla ice cream just like our own food genius, John Sheppard.
********
Yorkshire puddings
When I first put these on the menu there were two reactions. The first one, the one that happened most, was bafflement as to why there would be 'pudding' served with roast Jentian not-cow. The second, mostly from the Brits, was a frantic scramble to get to the mess before the Yorkshires were all gone. I thought there might be fisty cuffs when Major Lorne discovered they'd all gone before he could extricate himself from what he considered to be Carson's overly thorough post mission medical. Evan had developed a love of them when he was briefly stationed at Lakenheath in the UK.
After the success of the first batch I had an inkling that I had made a mistake. We might have had contact with Earth again but there was only so much flour that the Daedalus could carry and these really do need proper wheat flour to work well. As I ended up explaining, in what I will admit now was a rather terse email, I couldn't make wheat flour appear out of thin air and if people wanted to suggest what should be left off the Daedalus manifest to make room for more flour then I was sure that Elizabeth would be glad to hear their ideas. Needless to say most people got the sarcasm and stopped asking. I believe Captain Sorensson only spent two months doing nothing but inventory for actually making it as far as Sheppard's office with his suggestion.
You can make one large pudding using this recipe instead of the individual ones and each person can have a slice, or you can serve the single large pudding, stuffed with slices of meat and gravy as a meal in itself. In fact you can stuff Yorkshire puddings with pretty much anything you fancy or use the batter to cover pre-cooked link sausages and make another British classic of Toad in the Hole. Ronon, once he'd gotten past the confusion over the name, became a devoted worshiper of the dish, even requesting it on his birthday instead of a cake. Rodney is appalled by this every year.
Ingredients
vegetable oil
½ pint (290ml) milk
4 eggs, beaten
9oz (255g)plain flour, sifted
salt and freshly ground black pepper
Method
Preheat the oven to 425ºF/220ºC.
Grease a Yorkshire pudding tin with a little vegetable oil. Use a muffin pan in place of the tin if you don't have one. The puddings will be smaller than with a classic Yorkshire tin but actually I like them that way. Place the tin in the oven to preheat.
Place the milk, eggs and seasoning in a bowl. Stir well to combine and then whisk in the flour.
Remove the tin from the oven. Pour in the batter, filling each case only three quarters full. It will sputter so be careful.
Place the tin in the oven and bake for 10 minutes, or until puffy and raised. Remove the puddings from the oven and serve immediately.
Side dishes
A good side dish can make a fairly dull appetizer seem like a great meal. This chapter has just a few of the things you can do to brighten up a fairly stringy cut of Rushon half-cow (I'm not telling you what the other half looks like). Most of the vegetables in the mess are not so much different from those you'd get on Earth and I've not bothered to include those dishes here. We steam green beans, peas and broccoli, boil and mash potatoes, roast squash and marrows. We do the same for the produce we trade off world for, tasting and experimenting with all of them to find the best way to cook them.
The recipes here are for the dishes we take a little bit more time over than just sloshing a little soy sauce over some steamed pak choi or sprinkling toasted sesame seeds over some green beans.
*************
Native Vegetable Surprise
Even though we now have a regular supply run to Earth we are still too disconnected to rely on the Daedalus to bring us all the food we need. The hold of the ship is instead filled with luxuries and essentials, like coffee, chocolate, spices, good bread flour, Vegemite and Cheetos. Everyone has something they just can't imagine life without and we try to make sure we can provide it, even if it is something as very wrong as Pepsi Ice Cucumber from Japan.
For everything else we have to rely on what we can grow ourselves or what we can trade for. Obviously we relied, to begin with, solely on the Athosians for knowledge about the plants and animals of the Pegasus galaxy. Now we have many allies on many worlds but perhaps the biggest pool of knowledge about what's edible has come from Ronon. It's not that surprising when you consider how he spent the seven years before he joined us, but I think everyone was a little taken aback by how popular his webcasts became on the Atlantis intranet.
They started out as simple videos of the training exercises he ran for the military contingent; survival skills, tracking, hunting, detecting ambushes, that sort of thing. Over time they evolved into a much slicker format with Ronon becoming the star of the most extreme survival show you've ever seen. Besides giving us all tips about how to fight the Wraith when trapped on a planet with nothing but sand and a stick of gum, he also taught us a lot about wild food.
Not all the food items he bought back and cooked for us were tasty, in fact some were downright unpleasant, but they would all keep a person alive if they needed food. Some of them however were really good and the dish below is an Earth version of one we've served in the mess a number of times.
M’ros, which look very similar to Earth Cattails (or Bull rushes as they're called in the UK), produce a pointed shoot (or corm) in spring. Once the corms are peeled, they can be eaten raw, added to salads, or boiled for a short period like asparagus. We have them either simply with some butter and cracked black pepper or, as below, with some hollandaise sauce. Hollandaise always makes things seem very luxurious and it's something I use to disguise some of the less appetizing vegetables we trade for.
Ingredients - serves 6 as a side dish.
Corms of 3or 4 cattail roots, cleaned and peeled.
3 quarts (2.8 l) water
2 tsp salt
4 tbsp hollandaise sauce, shop bought is fine
Instructions
Cut or break the corms into bite sized pieces.
Bring water with salt to a boil. Drop in the corms and boil for 6 minutes.
Drain and either divide on to the plates and top with hollandaise or put in a bowl and stir in the hollandaise.
***************
Cucumber and peanut salad
There are some people that you expect to do dumb, macho things like eat raw chilies. There are some people you think are above such nonsense and it comes as a big surprise that they can be as susceptible to peer pressure as anyone else. I had always assumed that Richard Woolsey was one of the more sensible ones.
So it was a huge surprise to discover the the thick knot of cheering marines in my mess were in fact clustered round Richard Woolsey, Sergeant Phil Victor and a plate of assorted chilies. I'm still a little fuzzy on the details of how the impromptu competition got started because neither of the parties seemed all that inclined to talk about it. I think Richard Woolsey is slightly embarrassed by allowing himself to be sucked into something so juvenile and Sergeant Victor is still mocked by his friends for loosing the competition to Woolsey.
I am assured that Victor, a big guy from Texas who's equal parts muscle and gun oil, usually demonstrated better judgment than to make assumptions based entirely on appearances. In his defense I have to say that I don't think any of us on Atlantis would have pinned chili eating as one of Richard Woolsey's hobbies. To be fair I don't think Woolsey thought of it as a hobby.
He told me later that he'd always loved hot food, even as a child, and had adored going to stay with his Grandpa in Louisiana because he would feed him super hot gumbo. I suspect there was more to his parents disapproval of the Cajun food than an assumption that it was bad for a child to eat so much chili.
After the incident in the mess he, Sergeant Victor, and a few other chili devotes struck up an unlikely friendship based entirely on their ability to withstand food with a Scoville rating high enough to bring tears to most people's eyes. They used to hire out one of the small kitchens once a month and make food no one else could eat using chilies they bred and grew themselves. In fact, between them they grew a chili that actually scored over one million Scoville units making it the hottest chili ever grown.
This salad called Khamang Kakdi is from the area around Mumbai in India, is a a big favorite with the chili heads, who bring their own chilies to add to spice it up even more. We use kiss nuts (yes, that's really their name) from Chen, a lovely little planet that is only marred by the inhabitants' inability to trade with anyone with an R in their name. It's an unlucky sound apparently, meaning that a disgruntled Rodney and Ronon are left prowling the gate room when the other half of their team are on Chen.
This recipe isn't that hot but use as little chili as you feel happy with.
Ingredients
10oz (300g) cucumber, chopped very finely
½ tsp green chili, seeds removed and minced
4 tbsp peanuts, coarsely chopped
2 tbsp cilantro (coriander) leaves, chopped
4 tbsp coconut, grated if fresh or dessicated
2 tsp sunflower (vegetable) oil
1 tsp black mustard seeds
8 curry leaves
½ tsp sugar
salt to taste
Instructions
Mix the cucumber, peanuts, chili, cilantro and coconut together in the bowl you're going to serve in.
Heat the oil in a small pan and add the mustard seeds. When they pop add the curry leaves, stir and pour over the cucumber mixture.
Add the salt and sugar just before serving.
**********
Feta and Watermelon Salad
I know this sounds weird if you've never had it but it's one of the best, and simplest, summer salads. I got this recipe from the Israeli Ambassador to the UN, who used to make it when he worked on a kibbutz, and I've loved it ever since. The combination of the salty feta and the sweet cubes of melon is perfect, especially when combined with toasted pine nuts.
Someone, and Elizabeth was never sure who, slipped a packet of watermelon seeds into the crates the botany department brought through the gate. There must have been something in the air or the soil because they grew so incredibly well on Atlantis that no one really cared if the seeds hadn't been on the original inventory. David Parrish, who moved to the top of the list of seed smuggling suspects when he demonstrated his love of the fruit, proved to be an expert at cultivating monster fruits.
In the climate controlled greenhouses of Atlantis we could produce watermelons year round and we could probably have turned a tidy profit if we'd traded them, but somehow, no matter how many we grew, we ate them. Teyla became a watermelon addict and has even been known to resort to a little silent intimidation of marines who look like they might reach for the last slice. They all train with her so a single raised eyebrow is usually enough to make them back away from the chiller.
This salad became part of our contribution to celebration feasts on the Lantian main land, and later New Athos, and was especially good made with the newest of the Athosian dreem cheese instead of feta. You need to serve this cold and almost as soon as you make it because if it sits for too long, a problem we didn't have too often with Teyla and Dr Parrish around, the salt in the cheese starts to pull the juice out the watermelon and the texture of the fruit changes.
There's other recipes that have onion in them and no pint nuts, others with fresh mint, some with no oil but balsamic vinegar. This is my favorite but feel free to add or take away what you fancy.
Ingredients - quantities per person
1 cup really ripe, sweet watermelon, cubed and de-seeded
¼ cup feta cheese, crumbled or cubed
¼ cup pine nuts
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil (optional)
fresh ground black pepper
Method
Place the watermelon in a bowl and add the feta cheese. Stir in black pepper, and the olive oil if using, and set aside for a few minutes.
In a dry frying pan toast the pine nuts, taking care not to burn them. Once they're a nice golden brown, throw them on top of the salad and serve.
*********
Hallonan style Jeru
I am told by my niece, who is fourteen and knows about these things, that the big must-have gift this coming Christmas is going to be The Game (nicknamed the McPlay Station by some joker in the Marine Corps). Based solely on it's association with Atlantis, and a few carefully released publicity shots, the pre-orders on Amazon have pushed it to the top of the charts. When it is finally released it's expected to make it's creators millions.
McKay put together a demo of the game during a trip back to Earth on board the Daedalus, with no doubt more help than he will ever acknowledge from Sheppard. Strict doctor's orders, after their very nearly disastrous run in with the Bolo Kai, prohibited both McKay and Sheppard from any work on the trip and I imagine that writing the game stopped Rodney driving himself, and everyone else, crazy. It is of course based on the 'game' the pair played on an Ancient console, just without the prospect of actual war between real people.
Anyway, he touted the demo to a few companies when they got back to Earth but just got frustrated when all the manufacturers wanted to take the game as was and not improve on what he thought of as a very rough version. So, with a few phone calls, Sheppard collected on some family favors and founded a company that would take the demo and make it into what McKay wanted. One month's enforced R&R later and McShep Technologies was pretty much ready to produce the game on a advanced new console that the company's two founders, and the SGC, share the patents on.
On Atlantis this Christmas one of the things everyone will be looking forward to (alongside the free McPlay Stations we've been promised), is Jeru in it's many forms. It's a root, very like a parsnip, that is a delicacy in both Hallona and Geldar and forms a large portion of the trade between us. The two countries are good allies now and we give them very favorable trade terms, which seems only fair after Sheppard and McKay nearly destroyed them playing their game. Oddly, for all their focus on their military, the Hallonans managed to maintain their wonderful culinary skills and this is one of the many recipes that their chefs shared with us. We serve this one on Christmas day, along side our roast agrop and mashed potatoes.
And yes Rodney, Geldar's food is also lovely.
Ingredients
1¾lb (750g) parsnips, peeled
1 tbsp vegetable oil
knob of butter
good pinch of Chinese five spice
3-4 tbsp vegetable stock (made from a cube or powder)
1 tbsp honey
Instructions
Cut the parsnips into halves, quarters or eighths (depending on their size) length ways so you have long, kind of chunky slices. If they have slightly woody cores cut them out.
Put the oil and the butter in a large frying pan when it starts to sizzle add the parsnips, the five spice and 3 tbsp of the stock.
Cook, turning regularly, until the parsnips are cooked through and browned on the outside. Add more stock if you think you need it to stop the pan burning.
Once the parsnips are cooked, add the honey and toss together to give the a lovely caramelized coating. Season with salt and pepper and serve.
************
Chutnied Stone Fruit
There are some people who have weird, sixth sense about food and manage to invent new dishes that most of us would never dream of. They're often not chefs, in fact I think most chefs are too bound by 'rules' to let themselves just experiment. I know I am. I can invent new ways to make variations of dishes I already know and I can combine flavors know work together, but I can't put things I 'know' won't work together just to see what will happen. Fortunately I know someone who can. John Sheppard.
He doesn't do it all the time but if he's in 'one of those moods', as Rodney calls it, then watching Sheppard pick up a meal is always interesting, often entertaining. I used to think he made his wild choices based on if the colors matched, or maybe the shapes looked good together, but I have to say I have no idea if even he knows how he picks what he's going to eat.
These mad experiments are how we found that the combination of newly picked, super sweet Nittian luffum stems and hot sauce are amazing together. It's also how we found out that eating Lantian sea lettuce with grape jelly does terrible things to a person's guts. Actually I think anyone could have told us the latter was a bad idea. Seaweed and jelly, whatever the flavor, is clearly wrong.
I made this easy, fresh chutney to accompany grilled chicken and fish as we had lots of fruit and very little in the way of vegetables at the time and it seemed a good way to make a savory side dish out of fruit. Sheppard, during one of his crazy risk taking meals, saved his chutney and stirred it into his vanilla ice cream. Rodney's outraged squawk about the waste of good ice cream drew everyone's attention and Sheppard's pleased grin let them know he'd found another winner.
It shouldn't work but it does. The garam masala isn't an over powering spice and the flavor of the fruit and the sharpness of the vinegar cut through the sweetness of the ice cream. Basically, it's genius.
Rodney calls Sheppard an adrenalin addled idiot-savant, and I'm pretty sure he isn't just talking about the food thing.
Ingredients
2 large firm but ripe peaches or nectarines (about 12oz/340g total), halved, pitted, thinly sliced
2 small firm but ripe apricots or plums (about 6oz/170g total), halved, pitted, thinly sliced
1 cup quartered pitted cherries
6 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp white balsamic vinegar
½ tsp garam masala (an Indian spice mixture available in many supermarkets and at Indian markets)
Instructions
Combine all fruit in medium bowl. Add sugar, vinegar, and garam masala, then toss gently. Let stand 1 hour at room temperature to allow juices to form and to blend flavors, stirring occasionally. Serve chilled or at room temperature.
It can be made 1 day ahead and kept covered in the refrigerator. Serve it with grilled fish or meat, or with cheese, either melted or not. It's great in plain yogurt, or on cereals in the morning. Or you can serve it with vanilla ice cream just like our own food genius, John Sheppard.
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Yorkshire puddings
When I first put these on the menu there were two reactions. The first one, the one that happened most, was bafflement as to why there would be 'pudding' served with roast Jentian not-cow. The second, mostly from the Brits, was a frantic scramble to get to the mess before the Yorkshires were all gone. I thought there might be fisty cuffs when Major Lorne discovered they'd all gone before he could extricate himself from what he considered to be Carson's overly thorough post mission medical. Evan had developed a love of them when he was briefly stationed at Lakenheath in the UK.
After the success of the first batch I had an inkling that I had made a mistake. We might have had contact with Earth again but there was only so much flour that the Daedalus could carry and these really do need proper wheat flour to work well. As I ended up explaining, in what I will admit now was a rather terse email, I couldn't make wheat flour appear out of thin air and if people wanted to suggest what should be left off the Daedalus manifest to make room for more flour then I was sure that Elizabeth would be glad to hear their ideas. Needless to say most people got the sarcasm and stopped asking. I believe Captain Sorensson only spent two months doing nothing but inventory for actually making it as far as Sheppard's office with his suggestion.
You can make one large pudding using this recipe instead of the individual ones and each person can have a slice, or you can serve the single large pudding, stuffed with slices of meat and gravy as a meal in itself. In fact you can stuff Yorkshire puddings with pretty much anything you fancy or use the batter to cover pre-cooked link sausages and make another British classic of Toad in the Hole. Ronon, once he'd gotten past the confusion over the name, became a devoted worshiper of the dish, even requesting it on his birthday instead of a cake. Rodney is appalled by this every year.
Ingredients
vegetable oil
½ pint (290ml) milk
4 eggs, beaten
9oz (255g)plain flour, sifted
salt and freshly ground black pepper
Method
Preheat the oven to 425ºF/220ºC.
Grease a Yorkshire pudding tin with a little vegetable oil. Use a muffin pan in place of the tin if you don't have one. The puddings will be smaller than with a classic Yorkshire tin but actually I like them that way. Place the tin in the oven to preheat.
Place the milk, eggs and seasoning in a bowl. Stir well to combine and then whisk in the flour.
Remove the tin from the oven. Pour in the batter, filling each case only three quarters full. It will sputter so be careful.
Place the tin in the oven and bake for 10 minutes, or until puffy and raised. Remove the puddings from the oven and serve immediately.