Here's the simplest recipe I've found for my old summer favourite, broad beans (fava beans) and bacon. The Romans brought broad beans to Blighty when they invaded - thanks chaps - and this is supposed to be their standard way of cooking it. It's good hot or cold, and is one of those recipes that's really best made the day before and left to stand, to let the flavours develop.
Now, here's a thing: I used to copy out all my favourite recipes by hand into a leather-bound book, because I'm a traditional old Hedgewizard and love the thrilling possibility that I might one day open my Book of Shadows in the middle of a ritual and find myself staring at a recipe for bread and butter pudding; or that I might accidentally hand Auntie Elsie a recipe book that tells her how to raise prana in a variety of interesting manners. But now the book is old and the bindings are going, and the chocolate mud-swamp pudding recipe hasn't been accessible since the Great Cream Liqueur Incident of 1998. Time to face it - I need a new way to store recipes.
In the true spirit of the noughties*, I'd like to do it on my notebook. Bookmarks to other people's recipes and my own pages here would be OK, but pages come and pages go - and I don't want to suddenly find that the finest flapjack recipe in the world is 404. There are recipe storage programs, but that seems a bit... I don't know. Anal. Do any of you have any solutions beyond the idea of a big-ass word document?
Where was I? Oh yes, the recipe.
- Take 450g (1lb) of beans and boil in a little unsalted water until tender. Drain, but keep the liquid.
- Fry some diced bacon (say 6 rashers) and an onion in a little butter until the onion is soft.
- Blend in 2 tbsp of flour and cook for a further minute, before stirring in 240ml (one cup) of the bean liquor.
- Bring back to the boil, stir in the beans, and reheat gently. At the last minute, stir in a handful of chopped parsley, and you're done. Serve it with fresh bread, good cheese, and a glass of dark beer. Just to really finish off anyone with gout.
I like this recipe because it uses bacon (or ham) as a spice - you don't need to put a lot in, it's just for the flavour. You can also substitute some diced chorizo or salami if you want a stronger flavour.
*Yes, I know the noughties are over but I'm a bit behind the times. And anyway, no-one's even been able to tell me what the new decade will be called. The teensies? So stuff it, says I. Decades? I'll catch the next one.
11 comments:
Open office has a master documents facility. Yiu save all your individual recipes as documents, then creat a master, which brings them all together. It was meant for students with theses and novelists, but it sounds just the job for this!
Like you, I still use a hardback notepad; just can't face something disappearing. That said, an Excel spreadsheet, maybe?
I use Evernote and have each recipe in it's own "note" which I can tag with "broad bean, bacon, roman, side, magical" for example.
The useful thing (to me) is that I can copy a portion of a web page and "Clip to Evernote" which will copy the text, images, etc. verbatim and also keep a link to the original. That way I have the recipe in case the site vanishes, and also the site if I want to go back there.
The extra-useful thing (to me) is that I can access it anywhere, even on my phone (which is just about web capable) standing in front of the stove.
I second the EverNote suggestion. It syncs to an online server so you can access it from anywhere (work, friends' house, while shopping, etc), but it also stores everything on your own computer so you can access it if you lose web access.
I print out, then stick into a notebook...I still prefer to have my Book of Shadows, handy!
And who said recipes were not meant to be included? Who made THAT rule up?
I used to use onenote (an MS Office program) but since my computer was replaced and I lost the program I have been turning them into .pdf's and putting them in a file structure (recipes>desserts>cookies>sugar for example)
However, that's only with the recipes that I'm willing to share. The ones I keep close track of are scribed into a tome that is reverently placed inside a large plastic zipper bag every time it is used. This tip was put into use after the great sugar syrup incident of '96 that rendered the cards they were originally on into a big block of ick. Fortunately they were still legible. My family is aware of it's existence but are not allowed to touch. My m-i-l has resorted to asking my 8 year old to bring it with her when she visits. Evil woman.
I've been bookmarking lots and lots of interesting looking recipes this past year or so (are you familiar with http://smittenkitchen.com/ ? I've lost several hours of my life in there!) and have become very conscious of the need to save all that info in case some of it starts disappearing into the ether. At the moment I'm scribbling recipes down on bits of paper if there's something I actually want to make now (based on the state of some of my bookbooks, taking the computer into the kitchen would be a bad, bad idea). Occasionally I'm prepared enough to have printed something out in work. I think one of these days I'll get my hands on a printer and start printing. But otherwise I could imagine just lots and lots of separate word documents. The master thing in open office sounds interesting - must go and check that out.
I do a bit of both. I have two recipe books for handwritten recipes - one for savoury dishes, one for sweet - and I either hand write recipes into them, or stick print outs or recipe cards in too. It's the way my mother kept her recipes, and my grandmother, and I'm an unashamed traditionalist in that regard. Computers can break. My books are cherished ;)
Thanks all for the options. I've been intrigued by Evernote, and have been experimenting with the web browser version. It's handy and easy to use, but you're forced to rely on the EN server to store and access your data. If it went tits up, everything would be gone, and that doesn't appeal in the least.
Which is why this evening I'm installing the Windows version of the EN, which will allow me to store a local copy of all the data I've clipped to the service: so if EN is down, or I have no network coverage, I can still access the data on my notebook, or iPhone*, or Kindle*, or whatever. I'll let you know how I get on.
*If I had any of these things. My attitude to phones is the same as my attitude to cars: if I have a crap one, no-one will want to steal it. Burglars have been known to break into my home, take pity on me, and leave me a nice new DVD player.
I keep a 'Food' folder, broken down into sub-folders for 'recipes', 'techniques', etc. The recipes are saved as separate .pdf files, clearly labelled as to what the represent (e.g. 'tobacco truffles', not 'tr000x.1'), and I keep a separate index, too, because I'm a bit on the obsessive side when it comes to organizing. Each .pdf file may have several closely related recipes on it (e.g. a several varieties of truffle).
The .pdf files that are not downloads usually begin life as a Word document; I just prefer to save them as 'pdf files.
I was browsing through smittenkitchen again today and she outlines how she keeps track of things she wants to try using something called google documents. She started talking about the convenience of using it with the iPhone though so I tuned out a bit. My technical savvy sort of stopped around the same time the internet became popular I think.
Ha! My word verification is tatessig which, if it was German, mean achievement vinegar. Hee.
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