Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

[quote="englishangel"]yams are sweet potatoes, quote]

We can buy all sorts of yams, sweet potatoes, kumara, etc here. My favourite are the little yams (well, that's what they are called here, but I suspect that the nomenclature is regional) that look like, um, well, I shall resort to the words of a John Williamson song:

grrrrr, can't remember them precisely, but they are something along the lines of

blah, blah yams: they look so absurd
I'd tell you what they look like, but I can't say that word.

xx

Yes, isn't it absurd that fresh pumpkins are only available in the shops here during the week leading up to Hallowe'en, specifically so that people can hollow them out and mostly throw away the edible part? Surely the cropping season extends long past then. And it is years since I saw tins of pumpkin puree. This year I thought I would be canny and try buying fresh pumpkin just after Hallowe'en when they might be selling the leftovers off cheaply, with a view to freezing them as puree - it didn't happen. I remember roast pumpkin being a regular part of any roast dinner in Australia forty years ago (Ouch, is it really that long ago?!), but here we make do with parsnips - my husband hates them, the girls and I love them, so they tend to have become a Christmas treat, on a par, I guess, with pumpkin at Thanksgiving.

How fashions in food have changed. When I was a child (my father says 'when Knightsbridge was the first village west of London'!) Sunday dinner was roast beef, Christmas dinner was chicken, and rabbit was an everyday occurrence. Then myximatosis (?sp) happened and rabbit became a luxury and often mistrusted, but chickens became more common - was that because of battery farming? I have just about forgotten what roast beef tastes like. Since most of us don't like turkey especially, Christmas dinner will probably be lamb, which I am told is difficult to get in Finland. I think their Christmas dinners are usually gammon, eaten on Christmas Eve. Perhaps Maria could enlighten us on what happens at a real Finnish Christmas in the land of the 'real' Father Christmas - not the one we are exporting to them next week!

Fjgrogan wrote:Yes, isn't it absurd that fresh pumpkins are only available in the shops here during the week leading up to Hallowe'en, specifically so that people can hollow them out and mostly throw away the edible part? Surely the cropping season extends long past then.

beef, Christmas dinner was chicken, and rabbit was an everyday occurrence. !

Like squashes pumpkins can be stored very successfully. I have some courgettes (well, 8 inch diameter and 6 inches deep) which I cut in July and should be good into January. I used to wax the cut ends but I don't even do that now provided they were fully ripe when cut.


Rabbit - AFAIR tasted a bit like chicken. We used to have it for primary school meals; our teacher was allergic and would collapse within minutes and be off ill for two days.

Rabbit was (and presumably still is) indeed very like chicken.

When I was very young my grandfather used to go rabbitting to augment the table.

Having recovered from yesterday's orgiastic excesses, I can tell you about our Thanksgiving. I had similar reactions to you all when I first came to live here - but have become 'Americanized' over the years. I am now used to similar reactions about British Holiday fare ('Ew! Fruit cake" etc). Thanksgiving is my favourite Holiday these days, as it requires the least effort (just to cook a feast), but the time to enjoy my family at leisure. All my kids and their significant others come (with assorted 'strays'), so we have a full table - and always play lots of board games after we are all full.
I have incorporated some American culinary classics, but retained things that were traditional for Christmas dinners in my home, growing up. I have not eaten meat since the 70s and I raised my older kids vegetarian, so we have meat and non-meat foods. (My oldest son is vegan - so some foods are purist dairy/animal free) We usually have roast turkey and tofurkey (or tofu/seitan vegan substitute) , potatoes, candied yams (not with marshmallows, though - I use maple syrup/apple juice and pecans), brussel sprouts, corn, peas, stuffing, bread sauce and fresh cranberry sauce. Our desserts this year were vegan pumpkin pie, pumpkin roulade with cream cheese filling and maple cheesecake with cranberry/ maple compote - all homemade. I would send a picture, if I knew how to attach one!
Today is Black Friday - a hideously American bout of rampant consumerism, of which I want no part! Am enjoying the peace at home.

Mid A 15 wrote:Rabbit was (and presumably still is) indeed very like chicken.

.

As are frog legs, crocodile, emu ................

I read an article recently (but think it was published in the well known source of misinformation The Adelaide Advertiser) about some chefs being blindfolded and fed lamb, beef and chicken that had every skerrit of fat removed before cooking. Apparently all three meats tasted like chicken: so, either the chefs had naff palates or any lean meat tastes like chicken.

In my experience rabbit didn't taste remotely like chicken; it had a much stronger taste.

Mid A 15 wrote:Rabbit was (and presumably still is) indeed very like chicken.

When I was very young my grandfather used to go rabbitting to augment the table.

We have rabbit quite frequently and it is sometimes used instead of chicken in Paella. It has a distinctive taste, stronger than chicken which is fairly bland.
Rabbitting must be a South London thing. My father kept a couple of rabbits for fattening up for one Xmas. I was aware of this but didn´t pay much attention as I was in my first term at CH.
I was home for the Xmas holidays and everyone else was either working or at school, so I was alone when my grandfather knocked on the back door. He was a batman at Woolwich and his visits were infrequent. He normally came on a Sunday, after the pubs had closed and he had visited Beresford Square. He always brought his small wooden suitcase stuffed with brown paper bags of winkles, cockles etc and some fruit.
So I was surprised at his visit and even more so when he informed me that he had come for the rabbits. I took him to the garden shed where he got one out and gave it to me to hold whilst he got the other. Before I realised what was happening, he had killed and gutted one rabbit with his penknife and I was holding it by its back legs whilst he operated on the other. Tied the legs together, hung them up in the larder and off he went, leaving me in a state of shock.
My father complained that the rabbits hadn´t been skinned and my mother about the blood on the floor inside the larder, but that was Xmas dinner.
We get given lots of pumpkins in the village, where everyone grows them. They keep pretty well and it is my job to split them in half and take them to the bakers where they are cooked for 0,50€. Lots of different types and all delicious.

My mother worked in a government department after leaving school, and with her first pay bought presents for her parents and younger sister. Aunt Connie's present was a pair of pet rabbits from Harrods pet department, which my grandfather apparently paid an unexpected amount of attention: until the day Mum came home from work to find her gift braising away nicely.

I remember coming over all un-necessary in NZ when a friend appeared at our door with a shotgun over one shoulder and a pair (brace?) of dead rabbits over the other. He proceeded to gut and skin the rabbits for me while I was overwhelmed by ancestral memories and all sorts of inappropriate thoughts about the husband of one of my friends My father-in-law was living with us at the time, and I made a rabbit pie, complete with fancy air hole in the pastry. All went well: I remembered that I was cooking the pie, and retrieved it from the oven before it burnt, then left it to cool on the kitchen bench. I returned to find Maui (cat) delicately sticking a front paw into the hole in the pastry and pulling out pieces of meat.

Oh, and I believe that wild rabbit tastes more like rabbit than farmed meat, which tastes more like chicken. Not as big a difference as there is between wild and farmed duck, but a definite difference.

My first experience of rabbit was in France just prior to O'levels when the older brother of my French penpal hit something one night when we were on our way home from a dance. A rabbit was slung into the back of the car (a very basic 2CV) and next time I saw it was on my plate at lunch the next day.

cf. the film Local Hero where the 'anti-hero' hits a rabbit breaking its leg and delivers it to the eponymous protagonist ostensibly for veterinary care and is served casserole de lapin for dinner.

englishangel wrote:
cf. the film Local Hero where the 'anti-hero' hits a rabbit breaking its leg and delivers it to the eponymous protagonist ostensibly for veterinary care and is served casserole de lapin for dinner.

One of my very favourite films

The female hotelier tells her gullible guest that she is serving hare, but her husband later fishes the broken leg bone off his guest's plate to prove that the rabbit was only fit for the pot

Also my husband's most favourtie film.

I've watched it again and again. A Scottish friend told me that aficianados make pilgrimages to the telephone box!

How I loved Mr Happer's therapy sessions.

In my Youth (OK OK !) Rabbits were the easiest Meat to obtain -- there were FAHZANDS of 'em about, and pretty easy to snare -- no guns, Very Quiet !

I won a bet snaring a couple in the Atomic Energy ZEBRA REactor compound------ as I took my trophies past the UKAEA Policeman -- he remarked "There must be something illegal about that -- but I can't think what it is "
I pointed out a) they were Vermin b) no firearm was used c) they were not Authority Property.
He seemed unconvinced -- but nonplussed !


What I didn't mention was that, the WIRE used was Authority Property !!!