The Queen's Daimond Jubilee

[Glitter Brunello Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Glitter Brunello]

How many of you celebrated the Queen's 60th year on the throne today? We went to a free three course dinner of British favorites at a local Village restaurant. No catch, no gimmick, dinner was truly free (we paid cash for drinks). We had the welsh rarebits (my favorite), pea soup with stilton cheese (yum), roast chicken and a steak pie with bubble and squeak (also fab). A friend ordered the bangers and mash. Everything was delicious, and I will definitely go back to the restaurant and pay The usual menu is not quite so eccentric, the food is always good and the space is quaint. The owner was so generous, it was really a fun NYC surprise.
God save the Queen!

[CarolF Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close CarolF]

How many of you celebrated the Queen's 60th year on the throne today? We went to a free three course dinner of British favorites at a local Village restaurant. No catch, no gimmick, dinner was truly free (we paid cash for drinks). We had the welsh rarebits (my favorite), pea soup with stilton cheese (yum), roast chicken and a steak pie with bubble and squeak (also fab). A friend ordered the bangers and mash. Everything was delicious, and I will definitely go back to the restaurant and pay The usual menu is not quite so eccentric, the food is always good and the space is quaint. The owner was so generous, it was really a fun NYC surprise.
God save the Queen!

Sounds like fun and good on them for serving such old-fashioned family favourites. Here is a recipe for you from my family cookbook, the famous Mrs Beeton's All About Cookery, post World War II edition.

WELSH RAREBIT

Ingredients: 1/4 of a lb. of Cheshire or Cheddar cheese, 1/2 an oz. of butter, 2 tablespoonfuls of either milk or ale, 1 teaspoonful of made mustard, hot buttered toast.

Method: Melt the butter in a stew-pan, add the cheese grated, stir until melted, then add the milk or ale gradually, mustard, and season to taste. Have ready some hot buttered toast, pour the cheese preparation on to it, and serve as hot as possible.

Time: About 15 minutes. Sufficient for 3 persons.

Avoid having a Cholesterol test for the next week.

[Hobbitess Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Hobbitess]

How many of you celebrated the Queen's 60th year on the throne today? We went to a free three course dinner of British favorites at a local Village restaurant. No catch, no gimmick, dinner was truly free (we paid cash for drinks).

If we'd had the opportunity to celebrate the jubilee in that fashion, we sure would have!

[ArtsieAng Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close ArtsieAng]

Wow.....Sounds like so much fun! Yes, very generous of the restaurant!

How many of you celebrated the Queen's 60th year on the throne today? We went to a free three course dinner of British favorites at a local Village restaurant. No catch, no gimmick, dinner was truly free (we paid cash for drinks). We had the welsh rarebits (my favorite), pea soup with stilton cheese (yum), roast chicken and a steak pie with bubble and squeak (also fab). A friend ordered the bangers and mash. Everything was delicious, and I will definitely go back to the restaurant and pay The usual menu is not quite so eccentric, the food is always good and the space is quaint. The owner was so generous, it was really a fun NYC surprise.
God save the Queen!

[mshatty Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close mshatty]

Sounds like a great deal of fun, especially since it was free. When I was a kid, I thought Welsh Rarebit was spelled Welsh Rabbit.

[CarolF Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close CarolF]

Sounds like a great deal of fun, especially since it was free. When I was a kid, I thought Welsh Rarebit was spelled Welsh Rabbit.

You were right, interchangeable terms.

[shaggy Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close shaggy]

What a neat way to spend the day!! shaggy

[Glitter Brunello Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Glitter Brunello]

You were right, interchangeable terms.

In Mike's defense, I always thought it was rabbit, too! Just not something we see on our menus, and the speedreading american reader (at least this one) sees "rabbit." The RAREBITS were delicious... ours tasted like there was some banana, too, though it was mostly butter served on a slice of heaven.

[CarolF Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close CarolF]

In Mike's defense, I always thought it was rabbit, too! Just not something we see on our menus, and the speedreading american reader (at least this one) sees "rabbit." The RAREBITS were delicious... ours tasted like there was some banana, too, though it was mostly butter served on a slice of heaven.

Welsh Rabbit (Rarebit) is traditionally cheese on toast, its name is like Mock Turtle Soup and Mock Hare Soup, there isn't Rabbit, Turtle or Hare in any of those recipes. They were all dishes for the working class (traditionally the poor people) and named to lift them out of their class. The Welsh were poor and rabbit was considered a poor persons meat. Bangers and mash, bubble and squeak are 'family foods' too, you would be unlikely to serve them to guests at your home. I'm having a guess, because I have no idea about american family foods, but I think it would be sort of like serving your guests with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The pie was probably steak and kidney, an old traditional english pie. Do Americans eat kidneys and other offal?

I was brought up on all the foods you named, absolutely love them and I'm glad you liked them too. It sounds like they may have adjusted the Rarebit recipe, putting banana with it sounds a bit eccentric to me but it obviously worked because you liked it the most. It's fun when cultures blend together and blend their recipes too, something we can all enjoy sharing.

We celebrate the Queens birthday on Monday and I'll serve a traditional Roast with Yorkshire Pudding.

[Hobbitess Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Hobbitess]

Do Americans eat kidneys and other offal?

Not as a rule, in my experience. My sister-in-law likes liver and onions, and it's popular enough she can find it in mid-range restaurants pretty easily. I believe you can find chitterlings (fried pig intestine) in much of the South, and I know it's easy to find mudbugs (aka crawfish, crayfish, poor man's lobster, etc.) in Louisiana, both of which are historically poor people food. Aside from soul food restaurants (which I think you can find in most cities east of the Mississippi). and liver-and-onions, I think most offal food is more local -- pepper pot soup some places in the east, menudo in the west and western south (both use tripe), etc.

I suspect people in the U.S. who were financially struggling were more likely to be relying on salt pork and smoked ham hocks kind of stuff, protein food or meaty fats that could travel. Americans ate a lot of beans flavored with bits of smoked or salted meats (bland beans in the east, spicy beans in the west). Aside from the slaves (who also ate a lot of pigs feet and ham hocks), a lot of U.S. citizens who often went hungry were on the frontier, meaning there weren't a lot of animals being butchered regularly. Offal doesn't keep, so unless someone could afford to butcher their own meat, they wouldn't be eating much of it. Might be different in the cities and in the more populated east, but in the midwest and most places I've lived, not much offal in our food history. Unless you consider prairie oysters "offal."

Also might be I'm just remembering the foods I like or thought interesting.

[happymum Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close happymum]

Sounds like a blast! Welsh rarebit was a favorite when i was growing up.

[CarolF Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close CarolF]

Might be different in the cities and in the more populated east, but in the midwest and most places I've lived, not much offal in our food history. Unless you consider prairie oysters "offal."

Also might be I'm just remembering the foods I like or thought interesting.

I googled prairie oyster and I'm guessing you weren't referring to the cocktail . I have enough trouble handling meat nevermind preparing offal. DH had sheeps brains and pressed tongue on the menu in his childhood .

I have absolutely no idea whatsoever of US food and I found your info really interesting, thanks for taking the time to post it. Old England was not known for its culinary delights, so glad I live in a multi-cultural society with a variety of foods now.

[Hobbitess Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Hobbitess]

I have absolutely no idea whatsoever of US food and I found your info really interesting, thanks for taking the time to post it.

You're welcome. I think food history is interesting, but a lot of it is also hotly debated, with one expert dead certain some food went from this culture to that, and another equally sure it when from that culture to this. And so much US food is regional, and often came here from somewhere else, that I'm guessing it would be hard to say what was "typical" US food up until pretty recently -- since the 1950s, hamburger and pizza are pretty clearly common! And tacos since the 1980s, I would guess -- I can still remember the first time I ever saw a taco (I was 12), at a school party, and no one else in the class had ever had them before either, except the guy whose mom prepared them, but now Taco Bell and the other fast food taco joints pretty much cross the country, I believe. And when I was around the same age I asked my grandma to make me pizza and she had never heard of it or had it. She lived in the boonies and I don't think there were any restaurants serving pizza around there back then (there are now!), but now I think of it, I don't think there were any pizza places where we lived, either. I knew about pizza because my mom made it from a box mix.

Although "American food" might not have much history, there are some foods that are clearly native to the Americas, though, like corn (maize), potatoes, tomatoes, and peanuts. I had a meal with an African friend once, and every course had peanuts in it! Some had grains or beef as well, so they're not as dependent on it as the Irish were on potatoes. And people in the US tend to assume that Italians live on tomatoes, likely because so many of the dishes that spread from Italian immigrants were tomato based. But I'm guessing those dishes spread and were so popular in Italian restaurants because tomatoes were a taste Americans from other cultures were already familiar with. Spaghetti -- the pasta -- is one of those hotly debated dishes; depending on who you ask, it first appeared in either Rome or China, since they both want to claim it. Pizza is also debated, but it's Greece versus Italy versus the Arabs, and sometimes the US gets in there, depending on how you define pizza (yeast bread base with oil on it? bread with a sauce on it? bread with a tomato sauce? bread with tomato sauce and cheese? etc.). Part of the challenge food historians face is that the food names don't always tell us much -- "corn" refers to a number of grains in England, but was the name of the most common local grain a lot of places so could refer to maize, rye, wheat, oats, and probably other stuff.

But then you have corned beef, which uses the same word to refer to salted beef -- at one time, someone decided that salt looked like grain (I'm guessing they were dealing with larger grains of salt than you get with modern table salt!), and so the term "corn" for the grains of salt led to corned (salted) foods. Names also get transferred from one food to another when the first food is not available, and they mean different things to different generations, or to the same generations in different parts of the world where the tradition has split over the years due to some or all migrating.

And now you're sorry you brought it up. I went and dug up the cookbook my grandma and MIL used (the Betty Crocker Cookbook printed in 1956) to see if pizza was in it -- it is, along with "Mexican Enchiladas" on the Main Dishes "with foreign flavor" page. On the back of that page is Welsh Rabbit with variations -- including "Welsh Rabbit with Kidney Beans," "Rum Tum Tiddy" (might be eldest daughter's favorite dish; definitely in her top five), and "Brer Rabbit with Corn". You familiar with any of those? How about "English Pizza," which is tomato, cheese, and olive oil with pizza spices on an English muffin?

The 1970s Betty Crocker cookbook also has a pizza recipe, and clearly assumes the reader is familiar with it -- however, it's on a biscuit (quick bread) base.

[CarolF Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close CarolF]

Wow, the things you learn here. I think Pizza arrived in the late 70's or maybe 80's and apparently Mexican cuisine arrived then too, although I didn't try it till the 90's. Strangely, the Greeks and Italians often ran "Fish and Chip" shops which were our fast food outlets (very popular with the English).

No, I haven't heard of Rum Tum Tiddy or Brer Rabbit with corn or English Pizza . Welsh Rabbit with Kidney Beans definitely sounds American. I didn't know Betty Crocker had a cookbook but I do remember that she had one of the first boxed cake mixes available.

Mrs Beeton died in 1865. My book has an Australian Cookery section which states "Cookery in Australia is of course English in character, while in the hotels the French cuisine plays a prominent part just as it does in England and elsewhere". A notable recipe is Kangaroo Tail, curried. Step 1 of the method - Wash, blanch and dry the tail thoroughly and divide it at the joints.

[Hobbitess Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Hobbitess]

It's hard for me to say when Mexican food was generally known, because in 1972 in Michigan we'd never heard of it, but by 1974 we'd moved to Colorado, where it was everywhere, possibly because there was a large hispanic population where we lived (in Michigan racists hated blacks; in Colorado, racists hated Mexicans ). It had certainly reached Michigan by the time my parents moved back and I visited them (late eighties?), but I'm not sure when.

I didn't know Betty Crocker had a cookbook but I do remember that she had one of the first boxed cake mixes available.

Betty Crocker is (or was) the everyday cookbook of the midwest (the original flour company was based in Minnesota, although I'm sure they've been bought out since). Betty was originally a radio star for "Washburn Crosby" and then "General Mills", but eventually Betty was on the boxes and no one knew who General Mills might have been! She was on the radio going back to the early 1910s, but "her" cookbook didn't come out until 1955 (however everyone I know bought the next edition, the 1956 one, which had a lot more color pics). Oops, I'm wrong -- the red one came out in 1950.

http://generalmills.com/~/media/File...ist_betty.ashx

My copy doesn't have a picture of Betty -- it may be missing that page -- but it has her cutesy introductions to every chapter which I so loved as a kid. My mother made the exact same two-week menu over and over through my childhood, which I was sick of by the time I hit gradeschool, so I used to dream over the recipes in that book. And it's the first cookbook I cooked out of, of course. Now I use the Joy of Cooking for my muffin recipe and use a biscuit recipe from another cookbook and really only use the old Betty for Rum Tum Tiddy and the like (which I have transferred to the computer anyhow), but I still love it and hang onto it, even though it's a clunky old ringbound thing that will invariably break open every time I drop it or the kids knock it off something. Nostalgia knows not reason, that's what.

Joy of Cooking is bigger in the east I think, but everyone I know who has it either uses it as a backup when Betty fails them, or hardly ever cooks. I can't remember the third one that always comes up, since I don't have it -- Good Housekeeping? Better Homes and Gardens? one of those I think -- but I wonder sometimes if people my kids' age will even use cookbooks. It's hard to get a lot of what I consider basic ingredients at Walmart, although the dish I'm aiming at is often available in box or mix form (and I prefer my own recipes, thanks). I can still find stuff at other grocery stores but everyone else there is my age or older. And a lot of the meat that was cheap when I was a kid is now pricey, while the cheapest meat is often hamburger or skinned and boned chicken breast -- meat that's already half prepared, if you will.

Did you guys have the Pillsbury doughboy in your commercials? I was never a fan, but I started collecting their monthly recipe magazine back when it was a quarterly. Gave up after a while because the mixes were taking over, and I've never bought an official Pillsbury cookbook but they're out there. I think most of the major food producers have one cookbook or another -- I'm pretty sure 90% of the recipes I use that take oatbran come from a Quaker Oats cookbook, and half the Christmas specials we watched when I was a kid would have Kraft commercials where the recipes were available in that weeks TV Guide. Still have a lot of those recipes, too, but I don't necessarily use Kraft products in them.

There are a couple of cooking magazines (Taste of Home and Quick Cooking) out that don't accept advertisements -- in reality they have a couple of articles every issue that are clearly paid for by the Dairy Industry or whatever -- where most of the recipes are reader submissions, and it's fun to see recipes from other sources pop up there. For whatever reason, cookbooks are practically exempt from the copyright laws, so you'll find people claiming as their own stuff ideas that were printed in a magazine years back, or just not bothering to identify the source of the recipe beyond "I saw it somewhere/cut it out of a magzine/was on the box." Mostly people do admit they got the recipe from someone else, and I suppose some of the people claiming the idea really might have come up with it on their own; I've outlined novels I never wrote and then a few years later read a description of a book in print that totally fit my outline. The other author's execution would have been different, but the idea was obviously floating around in the aether and we both caught it.

My book has an Australian Cookery section which states "Cookery in Australia is of course English in character, while in the hotels the French cuisine plays a prominent part just as it does in England and elsewhere". A notable recipe is Kangaroo Tail, curried. Step 1 of the method - Wash, blanch and dry the tail thoroughly and divide it at the joints.

Sounds like Joy of Cooking, which has recipes for all kinds of stuff most of its readers will never make. Which is likely why so many non-cooks I've known like it!

I would think that cutting kangaroo tail at the joints would give you all manner of different sizes, since the end close to the body would be way bigger than the tip -- how would you cook those evenly?

If I cooked as often as I ramble on about it, we'd have a much more varied diet.