Online resource helps cooks at holidays
It can crop up any time of the year, but it seems especially
likely during the holidays.
Online resource helps cooks at holidays
It can crop up any time of the year, but it seems especially likely during the holidays.
An unfamiliar ingredient presents itself or a family member requests an old favorite that may never have been accompanied by a recipe. When the recipe file left us in the lurch, the time was that we just shrugged and went back to one of the old standards.
But technology offers a speedy solution. The Web is populated with countless food sites. One of the oldest, and in our family, most useful is www.recipesource.com.
Recipesource is the product of a project called the Searchable Online Archive of Recipes – SOAR. It delivers exactly what’s promised – recipes. There are no popups, bells or whistles. Photos? Go elsewhere. What surfers get instead is a compendium of recipes, mostly submitted by users that are grouped by occasion, ethnicity, major ingredients and course.
The key to using the site is the search window located on the left side of the home page. Enter something as arcane as “parsnip” and no less than 36 recipes appear. The straightforward text in each recipe lends itself to being easily printed. And a glance reveals Irish apple parsnip soup and potato-parsnip homefries, both recipes that may eventually find their way into our kitchen.
Recipesource really comes into its own with the unfamiliar or unusual. One member of our family hoped to prepare a dish appropriate to the English book her reading group was consuming. Anyone who has read Patrick O’Brian’s meticulously researched seafaring novels has surely grappled with some of the strange dishes served on His Majesty’s ships.
One – spotted dick – jumped out for its remarkably unappetizing name. It’s really just a steamed pudding – flour, butter, sugar and raisins, mostly. That made the menu that night.
At Christmastime, my mother prepared plum pudding, complete with two sauces. For all of us accustomed to Jell-O, English puddings such as spotted dick and plum are new territory. Steamed, they tend to be moist and cakey.
Plum pudding steamed up the house as it cooked, filling it with the smells of home. Released from its elaborate mold, it stood tall on a platter, a great ending to the Christmas feast.
But how to make it was anyone’s guess. That was Mom’s department. Recipesource delivers 19 recipes for different versions of the dish. The one described below is closest to the one I remember.
Recipesource used to list the number of recipes in its archives on its homepage. That feature is gone, but before it disappeared, the count was well over 80,000. That’s a library of cookbooks that would inundate the largest of kitchens.
In time for the holidays, and featuring a most improbable list of ingredients, here’s the ticket for plum pudding.
Steamed Plum Pudding
1 c. flour
1 pound chopped suet
1 pound raisins
1 pound washed currants
½ pound chopped citron
1 tsp. grated nutmeg
1 tbsp. cinnamon
½ tbsp. mace
1 tsp. salt
6 tbsp. sugar
7 egg yolks
¼ c. cream
½ c. brandy
3 c. bread crumbs, dry
7 egg whites
Hot wine or hard sauce
½ c. apple brandy
Sift the flour. Prepare and combine suet, raisins, currants and citron. Dredge lightly with some flour.
Combine the remaining flour with nutmeg, cinnamon, mace, salt and sugar and combine with the suet and fruit.
Add egg yolks, cream, brandy and bread crumbs. Whip egg whites until stiff and fold them lightly into the mixture. Pour batter into a large, well-greased mold. Steam for six hours.
Remove from the heat, let cool and pour the apple brandy over the pudding. Cover and store for several hours. Reheat in a double boiler, placed over, not in, water at least an hour before serving.
Mark Paxton can be reached at [email protected].
