Yummy fried food
I bet I don’t use that heading in eight days time.
It’s first night Chanukah tonight and I’ve been give Chanukah presents by a niece and a friend and I feel all seasonal and warm and friendly. Some of the warmth may be due to the fact that it’s still summer in Australia, of course, but I’ve lit candles and sung my little song and eaten fried food and now I need to give presents to all of you. Other bloggers are also giving out Chanukah presents, just in case (like me) you like gifts.
I thought eight days of historical fried recipes would be a good present, with occasional extra posts for those of you who are trying to watch your weight. I can hear pans rattling already, so someone out there can’t wait to catch up with the doughnuts and fritters.
Most of my recipes will be from the US, since I found more recipes for fried food in US historical cookbooks than in any of the (rather random) others I checked. Tonight, though, I want to start with Indian recipes. I love Indian food and I miss my friends from India, so it’s the perfect place to begin. These two recipes are from a book published in Calcutta in the late nineteenth century. It’s called The Indian Cookery Book. I wonder if the market has plantains right now?
Plantain Fritters
Prepare a batter of twelve ripe plantains, four tablespoonfuls of finely-sifted flour, half a cupful of milk, sugar to taste, and cardamom and caraway seeds, with a couple of eggs beaten up; mix the whole well together, and make into small cakes by pouring a tablespoonful at a time of the mixture into melted ghee; fry them on both sides to a good brown colour, and serve up hot.
Fried Plantains
Slice or divide very ripe plantains lengthways into two; brush them slightly with the yolk of an egg; dredge with flour, and fry in melted ghee. Serve up hot, sprinkled with crushed crystallized sugar.
December 5th, 2007 at 8:17 am
Welcome to my site : http://www.chinesefoodmore.com
THS! ^o^
December 5th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
[...] a different type of fried food, let’s look at Cassell’s Vegetarian Cookery. A manual of cheap and wholesome diet. It [...]
December 7th, 2007 at 4:55 am
[...] feel all kinds of eighteenth century today. This doesn’t explain why the fried foods I’m giving you right now are from the seventeenth. Basically, we’ve had thunderstorms [...]
December 7th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
[...] you can stop worrying about all this fried food (just in case you were concerned about your health or you’re running out of oil or lard) [...]
December 11th, 2007 at 1:29 am
[...] Yesterday I read a cookbook that, although the right date for my Prohibition banquet, was antirely the wrong food. It was home cooking and a lot of the recipes looked really scrummy, so I thought you might like an extract for the first of the fried food posts today. The book is The Perry Home Cook Book, by the Ladies of Perry, Kansas, and Vicinity 1920. One day I might have to get hold of a modern community cookbook from Perry, just to compare Perry food over time. Today is not that day, however: today is the day for joyous fried food. [...]