The front page of Reddit yesterday had a Gordon Ramsay recipe for Scotch Pancakes with Caramelized Banana. For my fellow Americans, that translates into a dessert made of buttermilk pancakes drizzled in caramelized bananas that had been flambéed in a dark Jamaican rum topped with vanilla bean ice cream. [mainbodyad]Any time you combine fire with a drink made famous by…
It was another night of testing peasant dishes from French cuisine. This round included a Leek and Potato Soup with carrots, turnips, and a small amount of cream. The entire pot couldn’t have more than 900 calories in the aggregate but it was delicious and cost less than $7.
The parade of so-called “peasant dishes” from classic cuisine continues! A peasant dish (a term somewhat offensive to my American sensibilities), is a meal made up of low-cost, widely available ingredients that are improved with specific cooking techniques and spices. Peasant dishes evolved out of centuries of experimentation by working-class families in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and England; the by-product of cooks, housewives, and head chefs improvising, experimenting, adjusting, and modifying the foods they had on hand to create something extraordinary with limited resources.