Copy Cat Recipes

I am sure that you have eaten somewhere and wished that you could get a copy of the actual recipe used in the particular establishment. KFC is one of those examples – nice chicken, but hardly an example of healthy eating.

We really enjoy homemade fried chicken, baked potato and coleslaw which is often the easy quick meal during the week (I think somebody described this as “soul food”), but the challenge is always to come up with a well flavoured flour dredging that you can either shallow fry or bake in the oven. From a healthy eating perspective – baking is the better option, and remember to loose the skin! Yes CN, I do remember that.

Surfing the net – there are many KFC clone recipes kicking around, but this one looks like it is worth a try. If you do try it out – let us know what you think.

1 tablespoon rosemary
1 tablespoon oregano
1 tablespoon ground sage
1 teaspoon powdered ginger
1 teaspoon marjoram
1 1/2 teaspoons thyme
3 tablespoons packed brown sugar
3 tablespoons dry minced parsley
1 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon paprika
2 tablespoons garlic salt
2 tablespoons onion salt
2 tablespoons chicken stock powder or 4 chicken stock cubes, crushed

Place all ingredients in blender and pulse for 3-4 minutes to pulverise, or rub through a fine strainer. Store in an airtight container so it will not lose potency. Makes about 3/4 cup. To use with flour: Add 25g mix to cup of flour for coating chicken.

CDK is another great source of copy-cat recipes that I came across the other day – you can find loads of them here.

Cornish Pasty Follow-up

Here is a great link that takes you to what would seem to be a good step by step guide to making a real cornish pasty. This web page has photo’s to accompany the recipe and comes from Green Cronicle .com. If you would like to take a look at the recipe – click here and it should open up in another browser window. I have not tried it yet, so please let us know how it works out if you do.

Later …

[AP]

Cornish Pasties

Now this may come as a surprise to you all, but one of the things that was top on my list of things to-do, and I was determined to try when we went to Cornwall recently, was an authentic Cornish Pasty. They have always been on the pie menu in most take-away/greasy spoon establishments (and I can remember buying them in P&P), but I always did wonder whether the real macoy was the same.

I can now tell you that having sampled a “real” one – they are nowhere close to what us South African’s would call a Cornish Pasty (other than the fact that there is some meat and veg of some sort in a pie form that goes by the same name). Compared to the real one – what I have been eating for decades should be called Lottery Pasties, – if you can guess what is inside, you win the big prize!

What made me put finger to keyboard on this topic was this article on the Sky News web site that I reading on the train coming out of London today, which says that the Cornish pasty is now on the endangered authentic British food list because young people are no longer exposed to eating them. I think that this is criminal – we should all be protecting and preserve our “real” food and make sure that the art of making and cooking it is passed on. Real food tastes better than McD’s as well.

So what is a real Cornish pasty like?

1. It is made from a shortcrust pastry which came as a surprise to me ( I have always seen them made with puff/flaky pastry)
2. It is stuffed with good quality beef, potato, onions and turnip which is seasoned perfectly and really tasty
3. You cannot eat more than one at a sitting because they are so large and heavy (because they stuffed so full) -
4. If you drop one on your toe and you are not wearing shoes – beware, you may do yourself and injury.
5. And the pastry is really hard (almost like a biscuit)

So some of you may be wondering – so why is he writing about pies? Simply because I thought that for those of you in the southern hemisphere, they will make a brilliant dish in the winter and in the summer they would make a superb picnic dish to take to the beach. The trick is to make them with shortcrust pastry which is not greasy, so you won’t get sea-sand all over your hands and grit in your teeth. And looking at the recipes, they do not seem that difficult to make.

So here is the challenge to all of you – see if you can make a real Cornish Pasty. If you are up to the challenge, then let us know (add a comment). If you want to see other versions of the recipe’s then add a comment as well, and I will post the others that I have come across. I am going to try and make them sometime and will let you know what the result was.

Hungry yet???

Later…..

[AP]