Yesterday I had to cook an evening meal for my guests and I was hunting around in the depths of the freezer for inspiration when something Trike had suggested on the 'historical bake-off' thread came to mind. Yesterday was 18 June, the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo .... so it just had to be Beef Wellington! Actually I used a recipe from a French book (which substituted wild mushrooms duxelles in place of foie gras), but the recipe was still called Boeuf Wellington, and mentioned that it was named after the victor of Waterloo. I suppose I should have accompanied it with Brussels’ sprouts but they aren’t in season, so instead I did it with Belgian endive, as Witloof à la Flamande, and French beans embellished with some Dutch/German speck (bacon bits). My guests were a French couple and a Belgium couple and nobody was offended, and it certainly gave a topic for discussion if nothing else.

For tonight all I’ve found is this entry in Samuel Pepys diary:
19 June 1666
"..... Thence home and at my business till late at night, then with my wife into the garden and there sang with Mercer, [Mary Mercer was a companion of Elizabeth Pepys], whom I feel myself begin to love too much by handling of her breasts in a’ morning when she dresses me, they being the finest that ever I saw in my life, that is the truth of it. So home and to supper with beans and bacon, and to bed."

So I suppose I could do boiled ham with butter beans (a regular of my mothers) or for something a bit more French, a cassoulet, but that’s a bit like the French equivalent of beans on toast, so maybe not really suitable. Although taking inspiration from Pepys’s love of Mistress Mercer’s breasts, for dessert one could do that naughty 18th century favourite, Capezzoli di Venere (Nipples of Venus) … chestnuts, brandy and white chocolate, suitably shaped, and surmounted by dark chocolate nipples! Oooo saucy!

OK maybe one cannot find something for every day in the year, but it would be nice to built up a collection of suggested dishes of the day, based however loosely one wishes on the date's anniversary of an historical event. Sort of ‘On this Day’ meets  ‘Historical Bake-off’. Suggestions anyone?

May be stretching it a bit, 19 June was the first day of the Battle of the Philippine Sea, so how about a Filipino seafood recipe;

Mixed Seafood with Oyster Sauce Recipe

 
Estimated cooking time: 30 minutes
 

Seafood with Oyster Sauce Ingredients:

• 1 kilo of seafood (any one or a combination of crabs, prawns, squid, clams, mussels and any seafood)
  
• 1 large onion, diced
  
• spring onions (cut 1 inch long)
  
• 1 thumb sized ginger, sliced into strips
  
• 1/2 teaspoon of sugar or monosodium glutamate
  
• 1/3 cup of oyster sauce
  
• 2 pieces green finger pepper (sili pag sigang) chopped
  
• 3 table spoons of cooking oil or olive oil
  
• 1/3 cup water
  
• Salt and pepper to taste
  

Cooking Instructions:

• Cut crabs into 2 or 4 if very big
  
• Steam crabs and prawns for 5 minutes
  
• Clean squid and cut into 1 inch long sections
  
• On a big wok, sauté garlic until golden brown, then add ginger and onions, sauté for a minute more
  
• Add water and bring to a boil
  
• Add squid, clams, mussels and other uncooked seafood.
  
• Boil for 5 minutes
  
• Add crabs and shrimp
  
• Add the oyster sauce
  
• Salt and pepper to taste
  
• Sprinkle the sugar or monosodium glutamate (vetsin)
  
• Add the long green chili
  
• Mix well and bring to a boil
  
• Simmer for 3 minutes
  
• Serve hot with steamed rice.
  

PS; due the large number of Japanese planes shot down during this battle it was nicknamed "The Marianas Turkey Shoot", so a turkey dish

Thanks Trike. And I've just realised that we missed by only four days, Chicken Marengo, for the anniversary of the Battle of Marengo on 14 June 1800.

Oh well that'll have to be for next year.

Great idea, MM.  I once tried for a year to celebrate countries' national days by cooking something reminiscent of their region.  Would be much easier now, where there are ingredients available from all sorts of places, which wasn't the case 20 years ago.  You're coming up to July, so it is easy to do the USA and, er, France. I think you want more specific than that for those countries. 

Some places don't seem to have a lot of history that has made an impact on the rest of the world. We have just had the Football World Cup Under-20s in NZ, and even a country like Hungary didn't immediately have historical moments that we could quickly pinpoint.  The main feeling we had about Serbia, who won and who we were supporting in the final, since they had enjoyed Dunedin so much, was that they had been to some degrees the aggressors against Croatia (or at least that was how the Croatians had felt when we were there for a week a few years ago).  

For the next few days, I see civil rights leaders killed at Mississippi, a Soviet blockade on Berlin, Julia Gillard (Welsh-born, so you could have nice lamb) becomes Australia's first woman PM, the Korean War starts, and Croatia and Slovenia declaring their independence from Yugoslavia.  Must be something there to get you started!

Oh, and some recipes: 

Korean - Bulgogi (fire meat)

500gms stewing steak, thinly slices
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup cold water
1 dessertspoon sesame seed
1 des. oil
2 des. chopped onion
1 des. sugar
1 crushed garlic clove (recipe I have says half, but that seems silly to me)
salt and pepper

Mix all ingredients, pour over the meat in a lidded dish. Leave 2 - 3 hours.  Boil very gently in sauce till the meat is cooked (it suggested 30 minutes but I would think stewing steak, even sliced thinly, would take considerably longer).  Add one cup of water if too strong.  I presume serve with rice and Asian greens.

For Mississipi you could try a fried chicken dish, though I see they use a lot of catfish, shrimps and food that sounds somewhat Creole to me.  Finish with Mississippi mudcake.

We ate kangaroo and ostrich when we were in Australia, but these might be hard to get in France.  (Perhaps not the ostrich).  Or you could have a hearty carpetbag steak - fillet steak stuffed with oysters put in a slit cut into the steak.  Grill 4 - 6 minutes.  Or as it's summer time you could just have a barbecue and put whatever you like on it.

20 June 1837 – the accession of Queen Victoria.

In her diary she wrote: "I was awoke at 6 o'clock by Mamma, who told me the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Conyngham [the Lord chamberlain] were here and wished to see me. I got out of bed and went into my sitting-room and only in my dressing gown, alone and saw them. Lord Conyngham then acquainted me that my poor Uncle, the King, was no more and had expired at 12 minutes past 2 this morning, and consequently that I am Queen."

So certainly for afternoon tea (and I’m sure we could adapt it to an evening dessert too) I guess it’s got to be that good old W.I. stalwart, the gloriously old-fashioned Victoria Sponge.

From Marks and Spencer, of course. I've cheated many a time with this one:

25 June 1950

North Korean forces launched a pre-dawn raid over the 38th parallel into South Korea thus starting the Korean War. So a good opportunity to do Caro's Korean Bulgogi (fire meat) recipe.

25 June 1876: Custard's Last Stand;


Old Fashioned Custard Pie 1 unbaked pie shell
 3 large eggs
1/2 cup of sugar
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg
2-2/3 cups of milk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

  Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. Beat your eggs slightly, then add sugar, salt, nutmeg, and milk. Beat well and poor into the unbaked pie shell. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes. Remove from oven and cool. Sprinkle the top of pie with fresh ground nutmeg and serve.

I like your sense of humour!


And to continue your pun, ..... that looks like a recipe for a good 'standing custard', or "gode stonding crustard", as a Tudor cook might say … that is one that is sufficiently strong that it can ‘stand up’, unsupported. This was an important consideration in the 16th century, in the days before refrigeration could be used to get custards, blancmanges, jellies and junkets to set really firm, and when diners still often ate by hand from a shared dish without individual plates or forks.

26 June 1963 - US President John F Kennedy visited West Berlin to underline US support for West Germany just 22 months after the Soviet supported East Germany had erected the Berlin Wall. His speech to a crowd of 450,000 is considered one of his best and most memorable:

"Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was 'civis Romanus sum'. Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is, 'Ich bin ein Berliner!' ... All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words 'Ich ni ein Berliner!"

There is a common misconception that Kennedy made a risible error by saying "Ich bin ein Berliner", the claim being that by doing so Kennedy referred to himself not as a citizen of Berlin but as a Berliner, a jam doughnut (they're known in Berlin and Eastern Germany as a Pfannkuchen (pancake) but as a Berliner in the north and west, and as a Krapfen in Bavaria and Austria). Kennedy should, supposedly, have said "Ich bin Berliner", to mean I am a person of Berlin, and so adding the indefinite article, ein, implied he was a non-human Berliner - ie a doughnut. However while the indefinite article, ein, is omitted when speaking of an individual's profession or residence, it is still necessary when speaking in a figurative sense as Kennedy did. Since the President was not literally from Berlin but only declaring his solidarity with its citizens, "Ich bin Berliner" was not only correct but was the only way to express what he wanted to say.

Anyway, linguistics aside, today's suggested dish is the Berliner ... a jam-filled doughnut made from a sweet, eggy, yeast dough, deep-fried in lard, and then piped with a jam filling and dusted with sugar:

Aber welche marmelade in der Berliner - erdbeere, himbeere oder aprikose? 

P.S. Just to add to the linguistic confusion I've also sometimes heard German speakers refer to a donut simply shortened to 'der Berlin'.

P.P.S. That could just be an example of lazy speech though. A bit like English speakers spelling doughnut as donut.

Surely the "donut", like the "English muffin" and thinking "corn" means "maize" is simply another manifestation of American culinary misguidedness?

Vizzer wrote:

Aber welche marmelade in der Berliner - erdbeere, himbeere oder aprikose? 

P.S. Just to add to the linguistic confusion I've also sometimes heard German speakers refer to a donut simply shortened to 'der Berlin'.

P.P.S. That could just be an example of lazy speech though. A bit like English speakers spelling doughnut as donut.

Vizzer,

no, or at least overhere , a "boule de Berlin" has to be filled with vanilla pudding...
http://www.bakkerijveldeman.be/boule-de-berlin.html



Bah, donuts...give me boules de Berlin anytime...

Kind regards, Paul.

When we holidayed in Belgium, I used to insist on this at least once.


Also acquired the habit of visiting "Friture Georges" in Blankenberge where I learned to eat my frites with mayonnaise, but hated the brass-voiced woman who yelled all day long "Ice cream" in Flemish/French/Flemish/French/English. The man with the tray of doughnuts on his head was, by contrast, mercifully silent.

Paul does that mean it'll be 2 American Custard Pies in a row? Trike's Little Big Horn Flan followed by Meles' Hyannis Port Ball. That's an awful lot of dairy.

Gil if the thought of American Custard Pies gives indigestion then we can always rename them as tartes au maïs à la crème anglaise.

That's not custard, Vizzer, that is Tarte au Riz

Recipe here :-
http://www.food.com/recipe/belgian-rice-tart-tarte-au-riz-454401

Gilgamesh of Uruk wrote:

When we holidayed in Belgium, I used to insist on this at least once.


Also acquired the habit of visiting "Friture Georges" in Blankenberge where I learned to eat my frites with mayonnaise, but hated the brass-voiced woman who yelled all day long "Ice cream" in Flemish/French/Flemish/French/English. The man with the tray of doughnuts on his head was, by contrast, mercifully silent.

 Yes Gil, "tarte au riz" (Dutch: rijsttaart)

Even a recept from the Grande Guerre 14-18 (WWI)
https://www.rtbf.be/14-18/thematiques/detail_tarte-au-riz?id=8263791

Also one of my favourites and some have them also in long rectangular pieces up to 30 cm...
Very efficient to halt the urgent hunger...

Kind regards from your friend, Paul.

What is the difference between tarte au riz and ordinary rice pudding, which I am threatening to make since we have some unwanted short-grain rice and I seem to remember rice pudding with some fondness. 

My youngest son came back from a month in Germany with a liking for mayonnaise on chips, which he passed on to me, at least.

Vizzer wrote:

Paul does that mean it'll be 2 American Custard Pies in a row? Trike's Little Big Horn Flan followed by Meles' Hyannis Port Ball. That's an awful lot of dairy.

Gil if the thought of American Custard Pies gives indigestion then we can always rename them as tartes au maïs à la crème anglaise.

Vizzer, I don't want to give some opinions in this matter, while all these "things" are that strange to me and as I have not even an emotion as how it tastes on the tongue ... For instance most recipes give cinnamon in the tarte au riz, while overhere it is even many times without or a slight taste. The cinnamon is more the Holland method and I suppose the German one...

And they add it to the pancakes too (I hope that pancake is the same as our "pannnekoek"). The border towns at the Belgian border are already used to the Belgians and don't use it anymore...

And the Dutch and the Germans have some other odd additions as in "mayonaise". They, horror, add some sugar in it...

Vizzer, happy to see you more on these boards and kind regards from Paul.

Caro wrote:

What is the difference between tarte au riz and ordinary rice pudding, which I am threatening to make since we have some unwanted short-grain rice and I seem to remember rice pudding with some fondness. 

My youngest son came back from a month in Germany with a liking for mayonnaise on chips, which he passed on to me, at least.

It's much more solid and dryer - cuts nicely to be eaten with the fingers at a picnic or similar event. On the subject of mayonnaise on chips - our Belgian friends regarded the idea of "frites vinaigre" with a mixture of horror and hilarity. Never been a great lover of vinegar on chips, but we discovered a chip shop in Calais on our way back to the boat (we normally sailed to Ostend but returned via Calais) and a couple of weeks of deprivation led to us drowning them in vinegar. Mayonnaise was a thing you either made yourself or did without in those days in the town we lived in, so we had to substitute salad cream. My wife still prefers that!

Caro wrote:

What is the difference between tarte au riz and ordinary rice pudding, which I am threatening to make since we have some unwanted short-grain rice and I seem to remember rice pudding with some fondness. 

My youngest son came back from a month in Germany with a liking for mayonnaise on chips, which he passed on to me, at least.

 Yes Caro we, my sister and I, are brought up with rice pudding. How delicious.
And she always said that in heaven the little angels eat rice pudding with golden spoons...but the expression seems not to exist in English...
http://everybodyeatswell.blogspot.be/2010/05/belgian-rice-pudding-rijstpap.html
Read the first paragraph about the rice pudding, the golden spoons and the heaven...
But again, as the comment of the Paul on the blog, our mother prepared it otherwise and certainly without any cinnamon...

Kind regards from your friend Paul.

How strange to our way of thinking, Paul, that that recipe uses long grain rice whereas we always use short grain, 'pudding' rice. And it's served cold!

There's dissension though as to whether the pudding should be cooked on top of the stove or baked in the oven so as to acquire a thick, golden skin, which I loathe. Then there's the sultanas - no sultanas controversy, I like the former and lots of Nestle's condensed milk in it and over it.

Yesterday, since I was using the oven to make pies and a fruit cake, I thought it was the time for a rice pudding too.  My recipe was very simple, fewer ingredients than your site mentioned, Paul.  Just two tablespoons of rice, 1 tablespoon of sugar and a pint (600mls) of milk. Flavouring if desired and a sprinkle of grated nutmeg on the top.  This came from the Edmonds Cookbook, an iconic book in NZ history, which every young person going out on their own or flatting is given a copy of.  Very good for 'ordinary' cooking.   Anyway I peered at the amount of rice and decided maybe my tablespoons weren't big enough so added another half one.  Then I looked at how much milk 600mls is and the size of my dish, and thought it might boil over.  It seemed impossible this would ever become food. I put a little vanilla in (real and exorbitantly priced, expecially since it was so expensive I decided another couple of dollars wasn't going to make a difference and bought Fairtrade), and pre-prepared nutmeg.

In the end, though, it was thick enough that it would stand up like Gil's.  Very nice with a smidgeon of icecream and a slice of orange or tinned mango.  I've got someone coming for lunch, so we can have a little of it for afters.

No golden spoons; could have used sterling silver, perhaps! I don't seem to have the shape of the usual angel though.

Ferval, as a child I hated the top layer too, but seemed to like it fine last night.  Mind you, as a child, I didn't really eat anything sweet, except sugar in my tea.  It's hard to understand why I should have had this taste, since I recall my father had a sweet tooth.  I suppose there must be a logical reason for some people to like certain tastes and others different ones, but I haven't seen the science for this yet. I do eat some cake and biscuits now, though am pretty fussy about what sort.  (The other night at bowls there were chocolate biscuits and I thought I would have one, but half way through decided I didn't want to eat the rest and surreptitiously put it in my pocket to take home and throw away.)

This seems to be one place where one may be a bit jingoistic - at least about food - so here's my country's bid on a rice dessert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risalamande

Nielsen it is ages ago that I have eaten it. Overhere it is not that popular.
http://allrecipes.nl/recept/4324/amandelrijst.aspx

But what is very popular are "rochers" (in our dialect we call it that way, but in fact it is French from "Rochers de coco") and now they made "rotsjes" of it in Dutch
http://www.marmiton.org/recettes/recette_rochers-coco_24628.aspx

Kind regards and happy to see once a message from you again

Your friend, Paul.

4 July 1776 - US Declaration of Independence.

So what’ll it be: hamburger and freedom [!] fries, fried chicken, hot dogs, clam chowder, peanut and jelly sandwich, waffles, muffins, donuts? Or how about good ol’ apple pie and ice cream? ….. and what better recipe than one written by the principal author of the Declaration of Independence itself, Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson’s recipe for vanilla ice-cream:

 

By 'sabottiere' Jefferson means a sorbetière, that is the inner metal drum of an old-fashioned, hand-cranked, brine/ice sorbet or    ice-cream maker.

When Jefferson went to Paris in 1784 as US Minister to France, he took with him a 19-year-old slave James Hemings. Jefferson wanted Hemings trained in French cooking and so got him apprenticed to a well regarded Parisian caterer, Combeaux. Hemings learned well and the meals he prepared at Jefferson's home in Paris must have met the highest French standards, because Jefferson did not hesitate to send dinner invitations to some of the most distinguished and discriminating men and women in France. On his return to the US Jefferson continued to entertain lavishly and did much to introduce fine French cuisine to US. Ice cream had been known in European high society for the past 50 years or so but in the US, while not unknown it was still a rare novelty, and Jefferson's dinner parties did much to popularise the dish, at least amongst the well off. While the recipe above is actually written out by Jefferson, it is almost certainly something that Hemings had learned in Paris. It was said that after his apprenticeship in Paris, Hemings spoke considerably better French than Jefferson, hence may be the sabottier/sorbetiere error.

France had abolished slavery in the revolution and so during his apprenticeship in Paris, Hemings could easily have gone to court and been granted his freedom. Jefferson however had promised Hemings his freedom if he would learn the art of French cuisine and then pass that knowledge on to a successor back at Monticello (Jefferson’s US home). Jefferson did eventually give Hemings his feedom, although not until 6 years after their return to the US. A further underlying dynamic of the Jefferson-Hemings relationship is the fact that Hemings was not only a slave but was also related to the Jefferson family. Hemings' father was John Wayles, who was Thomas Jefferson's father-in-law, and thus Hemings was actually a half-brother to Jefferson's wife, Martha. Jefferson had inherited the entire Hemings family (including James' younger sister Sarah, or Sally, with whom Jefferson allegedly had at least one child), on Wayles’ death.

Blueberry pancakes and maple syrup for breakfast after reading your post. Tnanks for the prompt!

Full English and to perdition with the rebels!

Surely the patriots considered themselves to be English (only living in America) and were merely claiming 'nothing but the liberty and privileges of Englishmen' (as those living in Britain). In other words they saw it as a dispute between 2 sets of English people, the American English and the British English (i.e. between 'the Americans' and 'the British'). For example one of the indictments in the Declaration of Independence was 'for abolishing the free system of English Laws in a neighbouring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these states'.

By contrast the loyalists were often not English such as the Quebecois etc. The Redcoats themselves, of course, comprised large numbers of Welsh, Scots, Cornish and Irish. And that's not to mention the Hessian mercenaries. With regard to that last group (and considering it's a month without an 'r' in it, so speck and wurst etc are off the menu) then may I suggest a sourdough rye bread open sandwich with handkase and red onion. 

On second thoughts a beef patty bun and fries followed by apple pie and Jefferson's ice cream sounds much better.

Well, I have said I am sometimes lowbrow and low-tech...I'm not that much of a rice pudding fan but if I do get the craving it can be bought in a tin...

Ambrosia may be the food of the Gods - but not the Sumerian ones!

To quote Janice Battersby - the character that used to be in Coronation Street - her best friends were microwave and takeaway.  Microwave I don't have at the moment and takeaway can be expensive but cuppa soup and cuppa porridge and stuff of that ilk can be useful, especially if I can get them in one of the cheap shops.

Ah no - porridge is best prepared in that other pal of the culinarily challenged - the slow cooker. The cup / packet stuff is a snare and a delusion, it really should be made from coarse oatmeal.

My husband have an unending disagreement about porridge.  He is happy to have it made in the microwave which is much simpler, but I insist it doesn't taste right, so when I fancy some it is made in a pot, which I generally manage to make stick and then have to spend ages cleaning.  But it does taste better.  I don't have an objection to the microwave and use it a lot.  But not for porridge.  We have coarse oatmeal but I rather like the finer stuff.  I havwen't heard of cuppa porridge - maybe we don't have that here, or maybe I just never look for it.

Is the slow cooker for the culinary challenged?  I would like one, but he who pays the bills says, "Just put it in low in the oven."  (I daresay the power bill is higher that way, but less noticeable.)

Slow cooker does the job but does not break up the veg to make a smooth sauce. Flavour good though and useful if one doesn't want to keep checking and for family who are cavalier about when they might turn up to be fed - but wanting it the minute they do. Other's thoughts - and advice here would be interesting. Caro, let M do the checking for the oven job if you want to put your feet up or go out. This has a wing clipping effect on the 'just do' advice. I'm with you on porridge. We have separate bowls of this and wouldn't give table space for his. hers is sooooo much better. Soak the pan, give the residue to the birds........one the other hand who am I to give kitchen advice? Kitchen and religion, I ought give them both a miss - along with a long list of  of matters, except gardening.

I tend only to eat porridge in the wintertime - so this must be high porridge season for Caro - and I'm firmly in the pan-on-the-hob camp with regard to the making of it. That said, I've seen the slow cookers used in workplace canteens and guesthouse breakfast rooms etc so they probably make sense if you're cooking for large numbers.

Porridge made just with oats and water doesn't stick to the pan at all and it's very easy to clean afterwards. If milk is used then it's got to be full fat. Skimmed milk and semi-skimmed milk just burns too easily.

Mrs Vizzer doesn't eat porridge at all but I love it. "Sticks to your ribs" as my mother used to say. It's the starch and fibre in the oats. In fact cellulose from oats was often one of the ingredients used in the early manufacture of photographic film. And today is the 120th anniversary of the first demonstration by the Lumiere brothers of moving film. So in a roundabout way maybe a bowl of porridge is an appropriate dish of the day. I suspect, however, that the Frenchmen Auguste and Louis would probably be like Mrs Vizzer and turn their noses up at such simple northern European fare:

We do use milk - in my home family it was always water. I never imagined making it with milk till I married and my husband's English family used milk, which was so much nicer.  It's always full milk here - my family disapprove of green milk. (Called green milk in Britain? for the colour of the lids.) I have another disagreement with him re porridge, no one in my family uses salt in their porridge which I think is sacrilegious.  I have to serve everyone else's then put salt into my lot.  Somewhere I remember talk about porridge and people added all sorts of oddities - raisins, apples,etc.  I like it best with running cream and brown sugar, but will use a little butter if there is no cream. 

Priscilla, I don't need to go anywhere to get my husband to cook - he likes to cook, and if it can be made more difficult than it needs to be, so much the better. When we got home the other day he said, "We'll just have baked beans on toast." So I had toast with cheese (don't like baked beans much), and he had...not baked beans. No, I look up to see him cooking spaghetti and fiddle-arsing with a tin of tomatoes and mince and various herbs and sauces.  He didn't even leave a taste for me!

I am very fond of Oatibix, considered an abomination by porridge eaters. It is described as being "oatily different": I am not quite sure what that means.

From the sound of him, Caro, your M is Dish of the Day. I wish I could chance on someone in the kitchen making a meal.

I normally cook 6 days out of 7 and the Girl Siduri does a "proper dinner" on the other. Takes as long washing up after hers as it takes to prepare, cook, eat & clean up after mine. There should be a legal limit on the number of saucepans you can use to cook one meal.

oats...

I always thought that that was for the horses...how can that be that I never ever saw or tasted what you here so abundantly describe...
It can be that it was only in my parents families that the dish came not on table...
Asked my wife and yes she had a vague rememberance of a dish like that...and that it was healthy and good for not having overweight...
My impression was that it was more a dish for the "poorer" families and outside town, but that can be an impression...all what I knew from my youth was wheat preparations...
And later the American invasion of maize (corn) preparations...

Did some research for the Belgian position about oats:
http://www.pepsico.be/nl/media/persberichten/havermoutontbijt-wordt-steeds-populairder-bij-belgen
"In de studie werd ook gepeild naar hoe men is begonnen met het eten van havermout. Voor 60% van de ondervraagden is het omdat ze het product kennen vanuit hun jeugd. Het is als het ware een welgesmaakt vintage-item dat aan een heuse opmars bezig is." (in the study one asked how one started with the eating of oats. For 60 % of the inquiry it was because they knew the product from their youth)
Seemingly it is a new product on the market, which has its roots in the past and which became now in the circles of the "green" adepts (and also pushed by the advertisement) a new hype...
And it seems as my wife recalled some healthy...
http://www.gezondheidsnet.nl/noten-zaden-en-granen/7-goede-redenen-om-havermout-te-eten
"healthy net"
Seven good reasons to eat oats:
1. cholesterol
2. appeasing hunger
3. gelatine? agar? free
4. good against overweight
5. antioxydants
6. variation in the food
7. quick preparation: only 5 minutes

However it can be that the "health net" is sponsored by an interested advertiser...?

Kind regards, Paul.

All true, Paul, porridge is wonderful stuff but unfortunately, I loathe it. But oatcakes, herring in oatmeal or toasted in cranachan, they are all delicious.

I have a slow cooker but I don't use it very often, you don't get any of the lovely caramelised flavours unless everything is thoroughly browned beforehand and that is a bit of a fouter. During the '3 Day Week' period in the seventies I sometimes used a hay box to make soup and casseroles when there was a scheduled power cut and the results tasted very similar to those from a slow cooker.

Doctor Johnson proposed to define the word ‘oats’ thus: ‘A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.’ And I replied: ‘Aye, and that’s why England has such fine horses, and Scotland such fine people.’

(Boswell's "Life of Johnson")

14 July 1789　- The storming of the Bastille in Paris.

To commemorate France’s national day it is of course not difficult to find any number of typically fancy French dishes. But I feel something austere and plebian is needed to be more in keeping with the historic event. So I propose something from "La Cuisinière Républicaine - The [female] Republican Cook" published "L’An III de la République", (ie 1794) by Mme Mérigot.



Following a bad wheat harvest in September 1788, the granaries were largely empty by the summer of 1789 and so bread riots in Paris and other cities added to the cries to sweep away the Ancien Régime. But the Republican Government, when faced with the same problem of no bread, couldn’t just dismiss the pleas of its citizens by blithely suggesting they "ate cake". Instead they officially encouraged bread made in part from potato flour and the consumption of potatoes generally. Mme Mérigot did her bit for the republican cause by promoting potatoes in every one of the 36 simple recipes in her little book, including this one for potato bread:

　

Potato bread is all very well but I feel it needs to accompany something a little more substantial if one is to spend the day executing aristos, manning the barricades or just watching the modern Bastille Day parade, so here’s another recipe suitable for the common citizenry as given in ‘La Cuisinière Républicaine’: a gratin of potato and salt cod (stockfish):

[Pommes de terre] À la morue
Pelez des Pommes de terre & mettez-les à cuire dans de l'eau, lorsqu'elles seront aux trois quarts cuites, mettez -y un morceau de morue, crête, entre deux, ou queue; lorsque la morue sera cuite mettez-la égoûter, ainsi que les Pommes de terre; dressez la morue sur le plat que vous devez servir & les Pommes autour; si elles sont trop grosses vous les couperez en deux; mettez un morceau de beurre, persil, ciboule, échalottes hachées, un peu de verjus ou vinaigre, du gros poivre; mettez le plat sur le feu & le remuez souvent, servez-les chaudes.　

..... which actually isn’t that much different from the traditional Provençal dish ‘brandade de morue’ a baked purée of potato and salt cod which is still a simple staple across much of the south of France. The ingredients might be rather rustique but it's not just revolting peasant food, or even food for revolting peasants, but rather if well made with good olive oil, a pinch of nutmeg and a garnish of chopped parsely, is actually rather fine when eaten with some crusty pain de compagne:



And these days if you can't face all the labourious soaking, rinsing and pounding of the salt cod, you can always buy the finished dish in a foil tray, ready to just pop into a hot oven.

Vive la révolution!

Peasant food is rarely revolting though is it?  Tasty stews, potato dishes, steamed puddings for English/Scottish peoples; interesting pulses, cheeses, tortillas etc in other places.

Someone said it would be porridge time here - certainly is, though not made with water tonight.  It has been so frosty pipes have been frozen in the morning, but today I still had no cold water at 4pm.  Someone said that had been common in the town today so I didn't worry about it any more till my neighbour phoned to say our pump had been going on and off all the time.  So should it be turned off - and did that mean the pump or the water?  Husband away till tomorrow evening, so I thought who could help and decided on the man who mows our lawn.  So now the pump is off, but the kettle is full and one pot of tea will do for the day, heated up in the microwave.  No shower though.

I thought you might give us a recipe today, MM, and wondered what you might choose. And lo! It's tattie scones and 'Shetland' Herring cooked with potatoes.
Vive la vieille alliance.

I make the former if I've got left over mash and the latter I do a version of, with smoked mackerel, a splash of cream, lots of grain mustard and bay leaves.

I used to love potato scones, but I haven't made them or had them made for me for years. Every now and again someone/thing reminds me of them.

ferval wrote:

I thought you might give us a recipe today, MM, and wondered what you might choose. And lo! It's tattie scones and 'Shetland' Herring cooked with potatoes.
Vive la vieille alliance.

I make the former if I've got left over mash and the latter I do a version of, with smoked mackerel, a splash of cream, lots of grain mustard and bay leaves.

Heresy! Left-over mash is only validly used as the basis for bubble & squeak!