Text 150, 68 rader
Skriven 2007-12-25 14:25:24 av Glen Jamieson
     Kommentar till en text av Dave Drum
Ärende: CHOPPED GRAVY 71225
===========================
 -=> Quoting Dave Drum to Glen Jamieson <=-

 GJ> MR> real mashed potatoes made with cream and butter
 GJ> JW> I ate that almost daily growing up and got tired of it. These
 GJ> JW> days we have it occasionally. Perhaps it is no longer popular as
 GJ> JW> mashed potatoes beg for gravy, which means cooking a big roast,
 GJ> JW> which is also uncommon these days?
 
 GJ>That combination of gravy and mashed taters seems to be common in
 GJ>America, but I don't like it much, as the foreshore where the gravy
 GJ>sea meets the potato mountains gets all sloppy and horrible.

 DD> If you makes your mash tatties a little dry - then the gravy doesn't 
 DD> make the join so swampy. If, OTOH, you make your mash very soupy and 
 DD> flowing ...

That would help to compensate sloppiness in the shoreline region, but
the sand-hills would then be rather parched.

 DD> I like gravy on my mashed tatties. Heck, I like gravy on nearly 
 DD> everything in the veggie line. And a lot of the meat line, too.

I like to have some liquid to mix in with my rice.  Recently, while
travelling in the SW of Western Australia, I stayed in a series of
youth hostels where I usually cooked my own food.  Kitchen facilities
for guests in these YHA hostels were very variable, but usually
adequate for producing quick meals.

As the cooking knives in those places are always very blunt, I took my
own.  Food storage facilities are provided for refrigerated and other
foods, which are labelled by the owners to avoid confusion.  As most
guests only stay for a few days, there is a storage area for "Free
Food" where departing guests can leave their left over bottles of
sauce, half empty packets of rice, jars of jam, etc.  This gives
incoming guests an interesting set of ingredients to work with.

On one occasion I had bought a small packet of pork stir-fry from the
local Perth city supermarket and cooked it the previous day, but had
eaten only half of it.  For my dinner on my last day in that hostel I
cut the rest of the pork smaller and put to one side.  I chopped my
last half an onion, and fried that in left over olive oil, adding
ground coriander, then developing the sauce with good sized dollops of
chili, soy and oyster sauces, a spoonful of peanut butter, and a few
spoons of salsa from a jar, thickened with some canned refried beans,
finally adding the pork and heating it through, serving over steamed
Calrose rice, with a s/market pre-packed Greek salad on the side.
While I was preparing that dish, the nice Chinese girl working on the
next stove became increasingly round-eyed as she saw what I was doing,
finally gasping at the amount of (mild) "Hot Chili Sauce" I chucked
into the mess.

That rich sauce turned out to be very good, with the subtle peanut
flavour coming through to enhance the pork.  With a nice reddish-brown
colour, it even looked good.  For wine I had bought something new to me
- a one litre plastic/cardboard box of NSW "Long Flat Cabernet Merlot"
red wine which looked rather like a milk carton, but with a screw-top
on one side of the top.  The instructions said when storing a part-used
container, to squeeze the box to eliminate air, then replace the
screw-cap.  I had done that the previous day, when I most abstemiously
drank only half a litre, and the remaining wine was in perfect
condition.   That container, squeezed down to half its volume did look
a bit strange.  Other guests had the usual bottles of wine and beer
with their meals in the dining room.

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 * Origin: Braintap BBS Adelaide Australia (3:800/449)