Cooking and Eating Seminar

What a combination of presentations:  first garlic and then candy!  

 

The presentation on garlic covered a wide variety of material from the chemical makeup of garlic to its history to the different kinds of garlic and how to grow them. The most interesting thing I learned was that garlic is stronger if you put it through a garlic press than if you cut it up.  The reason is that there are two different chemicals in garlic and they're kept apart when a garlic clove is intact.  But when you cut it, the cells are crushed and the two chemicals combine and that's what produces the flavor.   Using a garlic press crushes more of the cells, so the result is a stronger flavor.  I'm going to continue using my garlic press because I like a strong garlic flavor!

 

The presentation on candy included a look at two of the main companies that produce candy:  Hersheys and Mars.  Both have interesting histories and are privately held companies.  We learned that chocolate from the Hershey company was a standard part of the food given to the soldiers who fought in WW2 and that Hershey had its own sugar plantation in Cuba, so that it did not have to be concerned with rationing.  The finale was a treat bag with a variety of old-fashioned candy.

 

Recipe for Stuffed Dates and Walnuts

Stuffed Dates and Walnuts  (served at a typical Algerian Holyday Meal)

Recipe found on Internet site :Food in Algeria, Algerian cuisine 

  Ingredients

      -12 fresh dates

      -1/2 cup of ground almonds

      -2Tbsp pistachios very finely chopped

      -2 Tbsp granulated sugar

      -orange flower water ( found in specialty store )

      -24 walnut halves

      powdered sugar to decorate

             1- With a sharp knife, make a slit down the length of each date and carefully remove the seed .

             2- In a bowl, mix together the ground almonds, the chopped pistachios nuts and the sugar.

             3- Add enough orange flower water to make a smooth paste.

             4- Shape half of the paste into 12 nuggets the size of the date seeds and use to stuff the dates.

             5- Use the remaining paste to sandwich the walnut halves together in pairs.

             6- Sift a little powdered sugar over the stuffed dates and the walnuts.

     

                                _ Serves best with rich coffee.      

   

Fall 2010: Cooking and Eating

We had two very different presentations yesterday.  First N gave a presentation on lobsters, including several funny and familiar movie clips involving lobsters, as well as a variety of paintings in which lobsters were featured.  I loved the Dali telephone with a lobster as the receiver! 

Then J gave a presentation on the Pillsbury Bake-Off contest.  She showed some video clips from the past and passed around some winning recipes from the past including some that sounded absolutely awful, including:

• fish sticks wrapped in a canned biscuit
• small apple pies with crushed cheese curls in the bottom
• marshmallows baked in canned crescent rolls

However, there were some good recipes as well.  And given that the current prize is $1 million, we should all think of entering the contest next year.

J: September 28