Mishalak

I have sucessfully imported most of my old email files. I now have much, though not all, of my email right back to September 1st, 1999. Yeah... I am totally a geek. My email archive is nonsensical in its size. Also embarrassing to see how bad a writer I was and what kind of a person I was back then. But I kept them to remind myself of a very important thing. No one else remembers. I doubt most of these people remember who I am. But here is a copy of a newsgroup mail I saved from David Morgan-Mar of Irregular Webcomic fame.

2 cups raisins 1 cup sultanas (white raisins) (substitute glace cherries for some of the above if you prefer)
410g jar fruit mince (14.4 ounce, this is just fruit**, and maybe some vegetable shortening, mushed up - this seems to be something not well known in North America - make your own substitute if you can't get it, by just partially blending some fruit. ** raisins, currants, citrus peel, mostly)
200g butter (7 ounces) 1/4 cup brandy 1 cup brown sugar 1/2 teaspoon sodium bicarbonate
3 eggs 1 1/2 cups plain white flour 3 teaspoons mixed spice (cinnamon, nutmeg, etc) extra 1/4 cup brandy

1. Grease a deep 20cm (8 inch) round springform cake pan. Line the base and sides with baking paper, leaving paper extending 5cm (2 inches) above the pan rim.

2. Combine all fruit, butter, brandy, sugar in a large saucepan. Stir over low heat until butter melts and sugar dissolves. Simmer covered for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in sodium bicarbonate. Pour into large mixing bowl and let cool.

3. Add eggs, flour, spice and mix well. Pour into cake pan.

4. Bake at 150C (300F) for about 1 hour 45 minutes. It is better to bake longer than shorter. If the top gets too brown, cover with aluminium foil and keep baking. Test with a skewer - when it comes away clean the centre is done.

5. Poke a few holes in the hot cake with skewer and pour over extra brandy.

6. Let cool, then wrap in foil and store in an airtight container for up to 2 months before eating. Or you can eat it straight away.

I usually make a double batch in a 28cm (12 inch) pan, because it gets eaten so quickly.

I remember making this recipe that year for Christmas and it was good. Very good.

2 large onions, diced
1 pound ground turkey
2 cloves minced garlic or equivalent
4 cans (about 14 ½ oz.) diced tomatoes
1 small can (8 oz.) tomato paste
2 pounds (about 15 oz.) red kidney beans, cooked
2 tablespoons molasses
½ teaspoon Tabasco sauce or equivalent
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa
¼ cup paprika
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 tablespoon oregano and dry basil

Brown onion and deglaze multiple times, three batches, set aside. Drain diced tomatoes, retaining liquid. Cook ground turkey, set aside. Cook down tomato liquid. Add kidney beans, continue cooking, add tomato paste. When thickness looks good add all other ingredients. Black pepper to taste. Cook beans to slightly softer stage next time.

I still need an icon for cooking.

Peacan or Walnut Crescent Cookies

2 cups whole pecans or walnuts, chopped fine
2 cups bleached all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp. salt
1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter (reduce salt if salted is used)
1/3 cup superfine sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup confectioners sugar (no need to measure)

1. Take the butter out of the fridge and prepare your workspace. You'll need two mixing bowls, your food processor, stand mixer fitted with paddle, a rubber spatula, two cookie pans, one or two cooling racks, a cup measure, 1/3 cup measure, 1/4 tsp measure, 1/2 tsp measure, and a 1 or 2 tablespoon measure depending on the size of cookies you'll be baking. Grind your granulated sugar to superfine using your food processor (a blender will work in a pinch making small 1/4 cup batches). Measure and set aside.

2. Adjust oven racks to upper and lower-middle potions and heat to 325. Take one cup of the chopped nuts and process to the texture of coarse cornmeal in a food processor, should measure about 3/4 of a cup after this. Mix both portions of nuts with the flour and salt.

3. Cream the butter to light and fluffy, about 1.5 minutes, beat in vanilla. Scrape down the sides of your mixing bowl. Add flour and nut mixture, slowly beat into butter 15 seconds just until it comes together, dough should still look loose and scrappy. Scrape bowl and beater then mix just a little more until it comes together.

4. Measure out dough 1 or 2 tablespoons at a time. 2 tablespoons make quite a large cookie. Roll into a cylinder and then form into a crescent on the tray 1 to 1 1/2 inches apart.

5. Bake two trays at a time for 17 to 19 minutes reversing positions for even baking halfway through. Cookies should be golden and the bottoms just starting to brown. Start cleanup while cookies are baking and get out your cooling racks. Cool on tray for two minutes before putting on cooling rack.

6. Cool cookies to room temperature before rolling in powdered sugar. Will keep in an airtight container for 5 days if you can resist eating them all at one go. My food processor leaves plenty of larger nut chunks when processing whole walnuts to cornmeal fineness so I have taken the shortcut of just measuring out 1 3/4 cups of them after they are processed.

Okay, this was actually just one fish, but the wonderful incorrectness of 'fishes' just begged me to use it.

1 medium onion, diced
1 apple, diced
1/2 tablespoon honey
1/2 teaspoon dried spearmint (approximate)
Salt
1 very clean and scaled fresh trout
Olive Oil
Vegetable Oil
Flour

First fry the onion in the olive oil until nicely browned. Then combine with the diced apple, the honey, crushed spearmint, and salt to taste. Take your perfectly scaled trout and dry it. Then give a nice liberal coating of flour to its skin and stuff it with your apple and everything else mixture. You'll have a lot left over, don't worry you'll put it over the trout later. Have your skillet heating up with a good layer of vegetable oil over a nice medium high heat. Put in the tout and cook until nicely brown and crispy on both sides. Starting from the tail separate one side from the other and serve immediately with the rest of the mixture on top. Serves 2 or one very hungry person. I like this experiment and think it is well on its way to being a full fledged recipe.
 

One Pyrex (or other borosilicate glass) Loaf Pan
One pound very good quality Wild Salmon.
Olive Oil
2 Cloves of Garlic
1/2 to 1 Tablespoon of Butter
1 Tablespoon of Marmalade
2 Teaspoons of Honey

I scaled the fish and then put it in the loaf pan while heating the oven to 350 degrees. I put a little olive oil on the fish and then proceeded to mince the garlic very finely and mix it up with the butter, marmalade, and honey. I had trouble getting the butter to combine with the other ingredients so I heated everything up in the microwave for ten seconds before pouring it over the thickest part of the salmon fillet. It cooked for between 15 and 20 minutes and was perfect.

It was a very, very good fish as it was one of the Alaskan Cooper River salmon run and pretty fresh. Delicious. I've already adjusted the amounts as needed from what I prepared given that I felt it had too much butter and garlic, but only a little too much. I served it with stir fry vegetables from Costco done in my nonstick pan with olive oil and a little toasted sesame seed oil. V. good.
 

Equipment: stove, 12-inch skillet or frying pan (a lid is good, but optional), spoon or spatula for stirring, measuring cups and spoons.

2 tablespoons butter or (preferably) bacon drippings
4 cups shredded red cabbage
2 cups baking apples (not Red Delicious) cut up with skin on.
¼ cup water
¼ cup vinegar
¼ cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1½ teaspoons caraway seeds

Tip: when cutting up your apples you can pour the vinegar over them if you want them to stay less brown. Why? It makes it harder to see if you've put browning on them in the pan. Otherwise don't bother.

Heat up your butter or bacon fat in a large (at least 12 inch) skillet. Butter should get to the point where it is foaming, just short of turning brown; bacon drippings should get to a bubbly fragrant point. Put in all ingredients, possibly starting with just the apples if you want to put a little browning on them. Turn down heat to low to simmer gently for 15-30 minutes depending upon how soft you want your cabbage. Stir occasionally and check to see how much liquid is left in the bottom of the pan. If there is very little put a lid on to prevent it from loosing any more and scorching. If necessary add a bit of water.

This is a great dish alongside pork, serves at least 6.

And now I have pictures of my recent cookie making adventures. They look very tasty and I can confirm they taste even better. I was dumbfounded that I made some of these. In particular the cookies that I slathered in orange butter cream frosting were so good they could have come from a high end bakery. Perfect balance, sweet enough to satisfy completely with just one cookie but not so sweet that I felt like I was about to go into sugar shock.

Orange Buttercream Frosting
¾ cups butter (1½ sticks)
¾ cups confectioners' sugar
½ tablespoon orange zest (about one orange worth)
1½ tablespoons orange juice
1½ tablespoons milk

Beat butter in a bowl, preferably with an electric mixer using a paddle attachment at medium speed. Beat until fluffy, this should take about a minute if the butter is at room temperature. Stop the mixer and add a half cup of the confectioners' sugar, beat it slowly until fully incorporated. Repeat until you have added all the sugar. Increase speed to medium again and beat until very smooth, this should take three minutes or longer. I mean it!

Add the orange ingredients and beat a bit before adding the milk to avoid any possibility of curdling, however slight. Then add the milk and beat a bit more. Stop and scrape the bowl and beater with a spatula to make sure everything gets throughly mixed. You may have to repeat the scraping and mixing stage several times. Once totally mixed beat briskly until the mixture is rather fluffy, this could take four minutes or longer.

The resulting frosting will have a pleasant pale orange color with flecks of darker colors in it. If you wanted it to be totally uniform you could try making this in a food processor, but I've never done it. This makes enough to easily frost a dozen and a half cookies or a dozen if put on very thick.

( 4 Cookie Pictures )

1 package fresh or frozen whole cranberries (12 oz.)
¾ cup liquid
1 cup sugar, less one tablespoon
1 orange
1 lemon

Take off some of the zest of the lemon and orange. Then cut them each in half and juice to get about ¼ cup of liquid. Fill up the rest of the way with water. Add to pot with sugar and rinsed cranberries. Cook over medium high heat until all cranberries have popped and broken down. Put a food mill over another pot, preferably a wide one, and process the mixture. Be sure to keep grinding until only the inedible pulp is left in the mill, occasionally running it backwards one turn will help to clear the holes. Return remaining cranberry sauce to the stove top and cook over low heat until very thick. It should practically stand up even when hot. Pour into a mold, be sure not to use untinned copper as cranberries are very acidic.

A typical mold takes about two packages. I used four packages this year to fill two molds.

I used up my last package of cranberries today. Some of it went into making relish to go with the last of my left over turkey from my family's Yule dinner. I deiced to put two thirds of them towards an experiment. I finely minced them in my food processor then put them in a jar with half a liter of vodka. I'm going to let it sit for a week or two and then decant into another bottle. No sugar because I want to see what the drink is like plain. Maybe it will be too strong and need diluting down with more vodka (funny, diluting with vodka). If it needs sugar I'll add a bit at a time until it is just right.

The next time I get to the store I'll see if there might be any fresh packages left, though I doubt there will be. I also think I'll get some ham and some bread because eventually I've a mind to make some Scotch Eggs. They'd make a nice lunch with some greens.

Until then I'm working on what I have here. Tonight I think some rice and some mung beans mashed with some milk or something.

Today I got registered for unemployment and to start searching for a new job. Offically unemployeed last Friday and all. I'll have to document where I'm applying now so that I can get the benifit, such as it is. I also got more cleaned up today. A third of the floor is scrubed and now I'm working on a sink full of dishes.

Cut an acorn squash in half in the usual way. After scraping out the seeds poke the inside with a fork then sprinkle lightly with medium hot cyan pepper. Drizzle in some honey then pour in a good measure of olive oil. Cook in an oven until soft (about 400F for one hour for American ovens). It is a pretty good side dish.