Tonight i cooked:

Mac&cheese. Or as we call it in the UK, pasta bake.
Ingredients:
Chicken breast x4
Red onion x2
150gr cooking bacon
Mushrooms, half a punnet
Broccoli 500gr
Cauliflower 500gr
Fusili 500 grams
4 Medium sized tomatoes
750ml milk 2%
75 gr plain flower
75 gr butter
Grated cheese to taste
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Nutmeg
Smoked paprika powder

Cut the onions in half and then slice thinly
Slice the mushrooms thinly
Cut the bacon into tiny bits
Dice the chicken into small cubes
Cut the Broccoli and Cauliflower into.small florets.
Bring a big pot with water to the boil (add salt).
Splash a bit of oil into a frying pan and put on medium / high heat.
Put the Cauliflower into the boiling water and after 5 minutes add the Broccoli. Cook for another 5 minutes and take both out of the water and set to the side. DO NOT throw out the water.
Simultaneously fry the onions and mushrooms and bacon. When done set to the side.
Ring the water back to the boil and cook the Fusili for 7-8 minutes. Set to the side.
Melt the butter , add the flower, whilst stirring and slowly stir in the milk.when the sauce reaches a thick, creamy consistency, add a touch of nutmeg, salt and pepper to taste.
Thinly slice the tomatoes.
Mix everything together in an oven dish. Mix in the sauce. Lay the sliced tomatoes on top and top of with grated cheese ( I like a 50/50 mix of cheddar and mozzarella)
Put in the oven at 190 Celsius for 15 minutes or until golden brown.


It's awesome.


Stay tuned for more in the future.

Tsj

To make this instantly boring:
Tonight it's burgers and fries.
Of the home cooked variety, but still.

Tomorrow its going to be "krokettten" and vegetables,
But Sunday will be bolognese style sauce which I will share.

Do you make your own patties? If so, what do you use in your mix? :)

It's donkey-head soup day at my house.

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Lovely.

you can make soup from the heads of various animals.
donkeys wouldnt be my first choice......
wanna share the recipe? :lol:

tonight was indeed kroketten. Beef ragout ones.
with fries, broccoli and green peas.

Tomorrow will be much more interesting.

Sure - it's a biblical recipe.

2 Kings 6:25
And there was a great famine in Samaria: and, behold, they besieged it, until an ass's head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of dove's dung for five pieces of silver.

The reference to "dove's dung" is controversial, but in my household, which believes in the literal interpretation of the true English Bible, we use the real thing, as fresh as possible.

If you have some salt, some onions and a few cloves of garlic (and maybe a carrot or two) it's probably even nicer, but we stick to the basics as dictated by the infallible word of God.

Damn, 80 silver for an asshead? That's some bullshit.

Yup - that is a lot of shekels for a donkey's head. But that's what happens in a famine. You think it was bad having no TP during COVID? Try going without food. Mind you, that still doesn't explain why someone who's hungry would pay 5 shekels for a pile of dove shit. I guess tastes have changed since then.

Personally, I'd have skipped the donkey head and bird shit and eaten the doves.

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"From Middle English dung, dunge, donge, from Old English dung (“dung; excrement; manure”), from Proto-Germanic *dung? (“dung”), from Proto-Indo-European *d?eng?- (“to cover”)." - source

Could be that they covered the donkey head with dove meat?

That's a great guess. It reminds me the old joke - what does a bell sound like if you fill it with shit?

DUNG!!!

There are several possible explanations:

1. The dove dung was eaten. They would not have been the first ancient people to eat shit during a famine or siege:

...when they were no longer able to carry out the dead bodies of the poor, they laid their corpses on heaps in very large houses, and shut them up therein. As also that a medimnus of wheat, was sold for a talent: and that when, a while afterward, it was not possible to gather herbs, by reason the city was all walled about, some persons were driven to that terrible distress, as to search the common sewers, and old dunghills of cattle, and to eat the dung which they got there: and what they of old could not endure so much as to see, they now used for food. Josephus - Wars, 5, 13, 7.

2. It was used as fuel to cook the donkey heads. (Yes, animal shit is used as fuel, but dove shit? As a former dovekeeper I'm not sure that would work.)

3. According to Bible scholars there are little plants (vetches from the pea family) in the middle east that are traditionally referred to as various types of animal dung. Thus Kings is using the colloquial name for a plant that no one would eat unless they were starving.

I like the 3rd poss., but yours is pretty good too. :)

There is a powerplant near Thetford UK that runs on chicken shit, so it's entirely possible they fueled the fire with dove excrement.
anyway... off topic?
( btw, there is no true English Bible. If you are referring to the KJ bible, that was heavily edited from the latin. Also, there is not really a true bible, as most versions are interpretations of translations of translations.)

recipe for the bolognese style sauce to follow later today.

500gr 5% fat beef mince
3 medium carrots
2 red onions
Half a punnet of mushrooms
4 small bell pepper ( I like red and orange ones)
1 Tin of chopped tomatoes
500ml pasata
2 beef stock cubes
1 vegetable stock cube
Pepper
Salt
Basil
Garlic powder
Smoked paprika powder
Sage
Parsley
Olive oil


Chop the onions, carrot, peppers, and mushrooms in small cubes.
Heat a cast iron pot on medium heat. Add olive oil. Fry the diced carrot and onion until glazed. Push to the side in the pan and add the mince to the pot. Cook until the mince is brown. Mix ingredients in the pot.
Add the diced peppers. Cook on medium until the pepper has gone slightly soft. Add the tinned tomato and the Pasata. Stir until well mixed. Dissolve the stockcubes in 200ml of hot water and add to the pot.
Add pepper, salt and herbs to taste. Turn the heat all the way down and let simmer for 3-4 hours whilst stirring occasionally.
Cook your pasta of choice al dente. Add a splash of pasta water to the sauce and dish up.
Garnish with some grates mozzarella or parmesan, and some chopped green herbs.
Enjoy.

A few variations:
Add red wine when the meat is browned and wait for the alcohol to evaporate before adding the peppers.
If you have it, add 4 cloves of garlic instead of garlic powder ( I had run out).
Fresh herbs are always better than dried ones.
Use good olive oil. This is important.
When frying the onions and carrots, use half butter, half olive oil. This will give a richer flavour.
To make a proper sofritto, you need celery too, but my missus does not like celery, so I leave it out.

Bon appetite!