Welcome to the WGB Cooking School - the place where WGB members present good recipes and how to make them.

Sorry to the members with modems. This is going to be one image heavy thread.

Ingredients

1 hokkaido pumpkin
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 l stock (chicken, vegetable, or just plain ol' water)
1/4 l cream (9%)
1/2 teaspoon cumin
Salt and Pepper


Open a bottle of beer and peel the hokaido.


Remove the seeds.


Chop the hokkaido, onion and garlic into large pieces.


Sauté the garlic and onions in the olive oil.


Add the hokkaido pieces.


Add the stock until all of the vegetables are covered. Boil for approximately 20 minutes or until the pumpkin pieces can easily be mashed with a fork.


Blend the soup. (The Braun whirred)



Add cream and spices.



Serve and enjoy. Consider serving the soup with croutons or parsley.

P.S. Don't bother buying a Fischer beer. It's not worth it

thanks so much for that Fashionpolice.

that reminds me. i have about 6 salmon in the freezer (caught by one of the good lads here at the house).
i'm a pretty damn good cook but my experience with fish is virtually non-existent besides eating it. anyone spare a good tried and true salmon recipe?

FP - outstanding post and surperlative pumpkin soup.

Curses - now I must find a way to outdo you! Perhaps over Christmas when I make my goose...

Dum Spiro Spero

mmm fp, I gotta try, first thing. I've been looking for a hokkaido-soup recipe ever since I first tried it (then, it was served with crushed amerittini, try it). Thats some thing like ten years ago!

About the salmon: simple is best: bake it in foil: sprinkle it inside with salt and pepper, put in a leaf of sage, a small lump of butter and a spoonfull of white wine. wrap the whole fish in foil or baking paper, and bake till done - which depends on the size of the fish. Check carefully when the bones let loose, and get it out. Over-cooked fish is the worst.

I would suggest potatoes, spinach, and a hollandaise sauce to go with it.
carefully melt a pound of butter.
meanwhile, whip 6 egg-yolks vigourously with salt, pepper and a teaspoon vinegar. put the yolks in a bain-marie, and keep whipping, while you add the melted butter. never stop whipping. when the fish is ready, the juices from it can be added to the hollandaise, maybe with a little lemon to taste. Serve instantly, on hot plates.
I looooove this sauce, but normally keep female guests far away from the kitchen when I'm making it.

M : thanks for the recipe. I wondered how Hollandaise sauce was made...
--
ArkanGL
Now Im hungry. My kitchen is empty. And stores are closed on sunday. :'(

My pleasure, ArkanGL, I'm in the exact same situation, which is probably why I'm having food-fantasies. Now I found some spagetti in the cupboard, and some eco-heinz. Whatever, its better than nothing

M, you might like this rather short story that I wrote:

http://www.razorwinged.com/contest.htm

It's the winning story in the contest.

Good thing I read it *after* I ate my spagetti.

Great story - not least because it reminded me of my own first encounter with an American kitchen, as a design graduate in NYC. At least you don't need a car in New York

yay!
I'm saved : I have found some fish in the freezer

--
ArkanGL

Yep, I too have moved from a wonderful gas stove in Australia to a woeful electric one in Canada. All of them had the controls at the back though... Can you post a pic of your ergonomic and gleaming Scandiwegian stove, FP?

FashionPolice, I belive the explanation of the "strange" American stove design is that small children can't reach the knobs if you put them at the back of the stove. (Maybe European children are better behaved. . .)

As for the gas/electric controversy, not all homes here in the USA have natural gas available. My mother's house, for example. Electric stove, and heated with oil.

Where I live, on the other hand, is heated with natural gas, and even has a pipe coming up in the right location to hook up a gas stove. One of these days, I'll have the cash to swap out my electric burner, knobs in the back stove.

How do you feel about induction stoves?

-------------------
Contents may have settled during shipping.

While admitting that a gas range is far easier to cook with than an electric, I still prefer to have an electric. Why? Because my gas oven in a prior residence exploded in my face. That's right. Burned half the hair off my head, including my beard, eyelashes, and all the hair off the left side of my upper body with a hearty PA-Whooompf!

The oven hadn't been igniting properly. Didn't get enough oxygen to light unless you opened the door just a crack when you turned it on. But my wife was visiting from afar, and I was distracted when I turned on the oven. Forgot to open the door. So a few minutes later when I opened the door to pop in a tray full of cookies, it was just a big oven-full of gas waiting to light. Ever looked directly into an exploding cloud of gas? I must admit, that part was a little fun. But I still declare my undying loyalty to electric ranges.

---------------------------
That's a lie, but I said it with a smile -- John Roderick

waaah Splitcoil, once an old lady in the apartement over me did that - she suffered no serious physical damage, but never got over the shock. The blast was enormous.
I have an electric oven and a gas-stove, imo the best (though I have late-night fantasies about getting a SMEG or AGA range when I refurbish my kitchen).
FP has ultracool scandinavian in-built induction, don't you, FP? Look at the pictures.

[This message was edited by M on December 07, 2003 at 10:16 AM.]

It's a stand-alone Siemens stove. Electric Ceramic stove top and oven with hot air function and pyrolytic self-cleaning.

We bought it 1½ year ago when the stove that came with the house went kaput.
We would have liked to have gone for the induction, but it would have meant having to replace all of our pots and pans, many of which were wedding presents. So it was just way too pricy of an investment.

We hadn't realized that there was a gas pipe right behind the stove until we were installing the new stove. Otherwise we might have ended up going for gas instead.

The pyrolytic self-cleaning function is well worth the investment. Our oven has never been cleaner (believe me you don't want to know what some of our prior ovens looked like on the inside)

P.S. Slightly blurry picture of my stove is located here:
http://www.fashionpolice.dk/lasagne/9.htm

We've got a gas cooktop (with controls sited along the right hand edge).

The wall oven's electric, and it's actually a double oven. Standard sized oven on top, smaller griller below which doubles as a second oven if you need it.

The main oven's got what I think are pyrolitic self-clean liner thingies. Must use them one of these years...

Ingredients:

Five sleighbell potatoes
An onion
A few cloves of garlic
Olive oil
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper


Microwave the unpeeled potatoes in a bit of water for five minutes.



Meanwhile, chop the onion. Run the garlic through a garlic press.



When the potatoes are soft, smash them...



...and chop them coarsely.



Heat a black iron frying pan medium-hot. Add olive oil, onions, and garlic. Brown for a minute or two.



Add potatoes. Sprinkle generously with salt and fresh black pepper. Refill salt shaker and repaet. Press down on potatoes with spatula. Brown well, stirring occasionally.



When browned, turn; press down again, and fry for several minutes without turning. Potatoes will begin to bind.



Turn onto plate. Season with pepper, Tabasco,and more salt. Serve with a large glass of water.

I would personally then proceed to melt cheese on it and smother it with light sour cream, which is why I'm the shape I am. Oh, and serve it with beer.

Thanks M.O.M! Enjoyed that!

Excellent mean old man, but did you really need such a high calibre weapon? A .22 would have done nicely.

Dum Spiro Spero