my top ten favorite foods

Coddle

2011-05-07T14:08:00.000-07:00

Coddle (sometimes Dublin Coddle) is an Irish dish consisting of layers of roughly sliced pork sausages and rashers (thinly sliced, somewhat fatty back bacon) with sliced potatoes, and onions. Traditionally, it can also include barley.
Coddle is traditionally associated with Dublin, Ireland. It was reputedly a favourite dish of Seán O'Casey and Jonathan Swift,and it appears in several Dublin literary references including the works of James Joyce.
The dish is semi-boiled, and semi-steamed in the stock produced by boiling the rashers and sausages. Some traditional recipes favour the addition of a small amount of Guinness to the pot, but this is very rare in modern versions of the recipe. The dish should be cooked in a pot with a well-fitting lid in order to steam the ingredients left uncovered by water.The only seasoning is usually salt, pepper, and occasionally parsley. It could be considered a comfort food in Ireland, and is inexpensive, easy to prepare and quick to cook. It is often eaten in the winter months. In the days when Catholics were not supposed to eat meat on Fridays, this was a meal often eaten on Thursdays as it allowed a family to use up any remaining sausages or rashers.

Tom kha gai

2011-05-05T05:54:00.000-07:00

Tom kha gai (Lao: ຕົ້ມຂ່າໄກ່; Thai: ต้มข่าไก่, RTGS: tom kha kai, IPA: [tôm kʰàː kàj]), literally "chicken galangal soup") is a spicy hot soup in Laotian cuisine and Thai Cuisine. This soup is made with coconut milk, galangal, lemon grass and chicken. The fried chillies add a smoky flavor as well as texture, color and heat, but not so much that it overwhelms the soup. The key is to get a taste balance between the spices. Thai-style tom kha gai does not use dill weed, whereas Laotian-style tom kha gai usually contains "phak si" (dill weed), which is a common herb used in Laotian cuisine. The Thais' answer to dill weed (known in Thailand as "phak chi Lao", since its known as a Laotian herb) in Tom kha is coriander or cilantro ("phak chi" in Thai). There are other versions made with seafood (tom kha thale), mushroom (tom kha het), and tofu (tom kha taohu). All follow a similar recipe.

Okonomiyaki

2011-05-03T09:41:00.000-07:00

Okonomiyaki (お好み焼き) is a Japanese savoury pancake containing a variety of ingredients. The name is derived from the word okonomi, meaning "what you like" or "what you want", and yaki meaning "grilled" or "cooked" (c.f. yakitori and yakisoba). Okonomiyaki is mainly associated with Kansai or Hiroshima areas of Japan, but is widely available throughout the country. Toppings and batters tend to vary according to region.

Kansai area

Kansai- or Osaka-style okonomiyaki is the predominant version of the dish, found throughout most of Japan. The batter is made of flour, grated yam, water or dashi, eggs and shredded cabbage, and usually contains other ingredients such as green onion, meat (generally pork or bacon), octopus, squid, shrimp, vegetables, kimchi, mochi or cheese. Okonomiyaki is sometimes compared to an omelette or a pancake and may be referred to as "a Japanese pancake" or even "Osaka soul food"^.
Some okonomiyaki restaurants are grill-it-yourself establishments, where the server produces a bowl of raw ingredients that the customer mixes and grills at tables fitted with teppan, or special hotplates. They may also have a diner-style counter where the cook prepares the dish in front of the customers.
In Osaka (the largest city in the Kansai region), where this dish is said to have originated, okonomiyaki is prepared much like a pancake. The batter and other ingredients are fried on both sides on either a teppan or a pan using metal spatulas that are later used to slice the dish when it has finished cooking. Cooked okonomiyaki is topped with ingredients that include otafuku/okonomiyaki sauce (similar to Worcestershire sauce but thicker and sweeter), aonori (seaweed flakes), katsuobushi (bonito flakes), Japanese mayonnaise, and pickled ginger (beni shoga).

Variants

When served with a layer of fried noodles (either yakisoba or udon), the resulting dish is called modanyaki (モダン焼き) "modern yaki".
Negiyaki (ねぎ焼き) is a thinner variation of okonomiyaki made with a great deal of scallions; compare Korean pajeon and Chinese green onion pancakes.

Coq au vin

2011-05-02T07:34:00.000-07:00

Coq au vin French pronunciation: [kɔk o vɛ̃] (lit. 'rooster in wine') is a French braise of chicken cooked with wine, lardons, mushrooms, and optionally garlic.

While the wine is typically Burgundy wine, many regions of France have variants of coq au vin using the local wine, such as coq au vin jaune (Jura), coq au Riesling (Alsace), coq au Champagne, and so on.

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History:
Various legends trace coq au vin to ancient Gaul and Julius Caesar, but the recipe was not documented until the early 20th century; it is generally accepted that it existed as a rustic dish long before that. A somewhat similar recipe, poulet au vin blanc, appeared in an 1864 cookbook.

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Preparation:
Although the word "coq" in French means "rooster", and tough birds with lots of connective tissue benefit from braising, most coq au vin recipes call for capon or chicken.

Standard recipes call for a chicken, red wine (pinot noir, burgundy, beaujolais nouveau, or zinfandel), lardons (salt pork), button mushrooms, onions, often garlic, and sometimes brandy. Recipes with vin jaune may specify morels instead of white mushrooms. The preparation is similar in many respects to beef bourguignon. The chicken is first marinated in wine, then seared in fat and slowly simmered until tender. The traditional seasonings are salt, pepper, thyme, parsley and bay leaf, usually in the form of a bouquet garni. The juices are thickened either by making a small roux at the beginning of cooking, or by adding blood at the end.

Christmas pudding

2011-05-01T11:13:00.000-07:00

Christmas pudding is a pudding traditionally served on Christmas Day (December 25). It has its origins in medieval England, and is sometimes known as plum pudding or plum duff,[1][2] though this can also refer to other kinds of boiled pudding involving dried fruit.

Basics
Christmas pudding manufactured in Bracknell, Berkshire

Many households have their own recipe for Christmas pudding, some handed down through families for generations. Essentially the recipe brings together what traditionally were expensive or luxurious ingredients - notably the sweet spices that are so important in developing its distinctive rich aroma, and usually made with suet. It is very dark in appearance - effectively black - as a result of the dark sugars and black treacle in most recipes, and its long cooking time. The mixture can be moistened with the juice of citrus fruits, brandy and other alcohol (some recipes call for dark beers such as mild, stout or porter).
Christmas puddings are often dried out on hooks for weeks prior to serving in order to enhance the flavour. This pudding has been prepared with a traditional cloth rather than a basin.

Prior to the nineteenth century, the English Christmas pudding was boiled in a pudding cloth, and often represented as round.[1] The new Victorian era fashion involved putting the batter into a basin and then steaming it, followed by unwrapping the pudding, placing it on a platter, and decorating its top with a sprig of holly.[1] Initial cooking usually involves steaming for many hours (the period can be shortened without loss of quality by using a pressure cooker). To serve, the pudding is reheated by steaming once more, and dressed with warm brandy which is set alight.[3] It can be eaten with hard sauce, brandy butter, rum butter, cream, lemon cream, custard, or sweetened béchamel, and is sometimes sprinkled with caster sugar (the fall of the sugar on triangular slices resembling the fall of snow on a pitched roof, or snowy mountain tops).
[edit] History

The plum pudding's association with Christmas goes back to medieval England with the Roman Catholic church's decree that the "pudding should be made on the twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity, that it be prepared with thirteen ingredients to represent Christ and the twelve apostles, and that every family member stir it in turn from east to west to honour the Magi and their supposed journey in that direction".[1] Recipes for plum puddings appear mainly, if not entirely, in the seventeenth century and later. Their possible ancestors include savoury puddings such as those in Harleian MS 279, crustades,[4] malaches whyte,[5] creme boiled (a kind of stirred custard), and sippets. Various ingredients and methods of these older recipes appear in early plum puddings.

Features of these recipes were combined or refined in ways that could have yielded plum pudding recipes. For example, combining the stirred custard with sippets makes it into a fool, a contemporary of early plum puddings, which is very similar to a pudding. Some early custard tarts, such as the crustade lumbard in Harleian MS 279, are only unlike plum puddings in that they are held together by a pastry crust and not by crumbs or meal. Malaches whyte, another kind of pastry, has a filling of eggs, bread crumbs, and butter, but no plums. So a fully developed plum pudding recipe could be derived from the above list of possible ancestors by some recombination. This is not to say that there were not other ancestors, only that there need not have been any.

Although it took its final form in Victorian England, the pudding's origins can be traced back to the 1420s, to two sources. It emerged not as a confection or a dessert at all, but as a way of preserving meat at the end of the season. Because of shortages of fodder, all surplus livestock were slaughtered in the autumn. The meat was then kept in a pastry case along with dried fruits acting as a preservative. The resultant large "mince pies" could then be used to feed hosts of people, particularly at the festive season. The chief ancestor of the modern pudding, however, was the pottage, a meat and vegetable concoction originating in Roman times. This was prepared in a large cauldron, the ingredients being slow cooked, with dried fruits, sugar and spices added. In the 15th century, Plum pottage was a sloppy mix of meat, vegetables and fruit served at the beginning of a meal.[6]

In 1714, King George I (sometimes known as the Pudding King)[1] requested that plum pudding be served as part of his royal feast in his first Christmas in England.[1] A recipe for "plum porridge" appeared in Christmas Entertainments in 1740.[1] As techniques for meat preserving improved in the eighteenth century, the savoury element of both the mince pie and the plum pottage diminished as the sweet content increased. The mince pie kept its name, though the pottage was increasingly referred to as plum pudding. Although the latter was always a celebratory dish it was originally eaten at the Harvest Festival, not Christmas. It was not until the 1830s that the cannon-ball of flour, fruits, suet, sugar and spices, all topped with holly, made a definite appearance, becoming more and more associated with Christmas. In 1747, London food writer Hannah Glasse had given a recipe for Christmas plum porridge, but it appears that East Sussex cook Eliza Acton was the first to refer to it as "Christmas Pudding" in her cookbook.[7]
[edit] Wishing and other traditions
Traditionally, every member of the household stirs the pudding, while making a wish.
A Christmas Pudding being flamed after brandy has been poured over it.

Traditionally puddings were made on or immediately after the Sunday "next before Advent", i.e. four to five weeks before Christmas. The collect for that Sunday in the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England, as it was used from the 16th century (and still is in traditional churches), reads:

"Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may by thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen"

The day became known as "Stir-up Sunday".[8] Traditionally everyone in the household, or at least every child, gave the mixture a stir and made a wish while doing so.
A traditional bag-boiled Christmas Pudding still showing the "skin".

It was common practice to include small silver coins in the pudding mixture, which could be kept by the person whose serving included them.[1] The usual choice was a silver threepence or a sixpence. The coin was believed to bring wealth in the coming year. Despite knowing that a portion might contain a coin, many a Christmas reveller damaged his or her teeth by biting into one, or indeed swallowed one by mistake. However this practice fell away once real silver coins were not available, as it was believed that alloy coins would taint the pudding. Additionally, coins pose a choking hazard.

Other tokens are also known to have been included, such as a tiny wishbone (to bring good luck), a silver thimble (for thrift), or an anchor (to symbolise safe harbour).[1]

Once turned out of its basin, decorated with holly, doused in brandy, and flamed (or 'fired'), the pudding is traditionally brought to the table ceremoniously, and greeted with a round of applause. In 1843, Charles Dickens describes the scene in A Christmas Carol:

"Mrs Cratchit left the room alone -- too nervous to bear witnesses -- to take the pudding up and bring it in... Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day. That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that. That was the pudding. In half a minute Mrs Cratchit entered -- flushed, but smiling proudly -- with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top."[9]

For the best effect under modern conditions, the lights should be turned out as the pudding is brought in amid its halo of purple brandy flames (this is related to the Christmas tradition of snap-dragons).

Cottage pie

2011-05-01T11:10:00.000-07:00

Cottage pie refers to a British or Irish meat pie made with beef mince and with a crust made from mashed potato. A variation on this dish is known as shepherd's pie.
The term cottage pie is known to have been in use in 1791,^[1]^[2] when the potato was being introduced as an edible crop affordable for the poor (cf. "cottage" meaning a modest dwelling for rural workers).
In early cookery books, the dish was a means of using leftover roasted meat of any kind, and the pie dish was lined with mashed potato as well as having a mashed potato crust on top.^[3]^[4]
The term "shepherd's pie" did not appear until the 1870s,^[2] and since then it has been used synonymously with "cottage pie", regardless of whether the principal ingredient was beef or mutton.There is now a popular tendency for "shepherd's pie" to be used when the meat is mutton or lamb,^[9] with the suggested origin being that shepherds are concerned with sheep^[10] and not cattle,^[11]^[12] This may, however, be an example of folk etymology.

Variations

Though in modern day recipes it is considered standard to use mashed potato as a topping, traditionally it was served with slices of potato layered over the meat filling which, when cooked, looked like the tiles of a cottage roof. This is thought to be how the dish got its name.^{[citation needed]}

The cumberland pie is a version with a layer of bread crumbs on top.^[13]

A similar British dish made with fish is a fish pie.

A vegetarian version can be made using soya or other meat substitutes (like tofu), or legumes such as lentils or chick peas.

In Australia, the dish is often made with left-over roast lamb.^[14]

In English-speaking Canada, the dish is referred to as shepherd's pie, even with a beef filling.

In Argentina and Chile a similar dish is called "pastel de papa (potato pie).

In the Dominican Republic this is called pastelón de papa (potato casserole), it has a layer of potatoes, one or two of meat, and another of potatoes, topped with a layer of cheese.

In France, a similar dish is called hachis Parmentier.

In Ireland the dish is commonly called shepherd's pie even when containing beef.

In Jordan, Syria and Lebanon a similar dish is referred to as "Siniyet Batata" (literally meaning a plate of potatoes), or "Kibbet Batata".

In Quebec, a similar dish is called pâté chinois (literally, "Chinese pie").

In Russia, a similar dish is called "Картофельная запеканка" (Kartofel'naya zapekanka, or "potato baked pudding").

In the United States a similar dish is called cowboy pie. In New England the most common recipe for shepherd's pie consists of ground beef, kernel corn, mashed potatoes, and cream of mushroom soup.