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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2009 14:15:13 GMT
Yes,it is meant to be symbolic of renewal,the eggs fertility of course.
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voy
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The Lobstah Lady
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Post by voy on Apr 1, 2009 18:18:26 GMT
K-in22 - I don't think those are the ones Baz and I are talking about. "our" blue/purple beans look like the ones in Bix's pic - only not green. once cooked they look just like normal beans. haricots vert ..
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Post by tillystar on Apr 2, 2009 9:35:54 GMT
It is lamb here. This is the best lamb ever:
Front quarter of lamb in 6 pieces place in a dish and pour in water until it is about 2cm deep in the dish. Pour in a small glass of red wine, sprinkle with a very large pinch of salt and crumble a beef stock cube into the liquid. Place in oven at 120C for 1.5 hours, check flavour of liquid at half time and add more salt and turn lamb if necessary, then after 2 hours blast at 220C for 20 mins.
Serve in the cooking dish with lots of bread to soak up the liquid and a big green salad.
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Post by gringalais on Apr 2, 2009 14:53:10 GMT
Come to think of it, I have never been to a typical Easter meal here. I know seafood is big, especially seafood empanadas, but apart from that I am not sure.
Funny the comments about Americans and lamb. My mom hates lamb so we never ate it when I was growing up. Living away from my parents I didn't really have it either, since you don't see it for sale that much and I didn't have a good idea of howto prepare it. I may have had it at someone's house once or twice and once when I was living in Spain, but that was it. My husband, however, likes it, so when we started dating, he would buy it sometimes and now I really like it. We go to the Vega Central, a big market, and buy it from one of the butchers there.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 2, 2009 17:37:27 GMT
I tend to buy a leg of lamb frozen, imported from New Zealand, because the French lamb is double the price.
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voy
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The Lobstah Lady
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Post by voy on Apr 2, 2009 17:51:48 GMT
those little NZ legs are great. and I am back to using them, as I no longer have my "rent" - from when my neighbor used my farm for his beef cattle, and the "rent" was a sheep a year for my freezer - which ended up being more - as you can't have just one sheep... boy do I miss my ( approx.) 42cents a pound,organic hogget...
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Post by gringalais on Apr 3, 2009 15:08:36 GMT
I think the lamb we buy here is either from Chile or Argentina, there is lots of sheep-raising in Patagonia. Last time we got a whole leg too. We might do that this weekend, since after several weekends in a row of having lots of dinners out and other social commitments, we are going to take it easy at home and I am in the mood to do some more involved cooking than I do during the week. I am thinking of some sort of Indian dish.
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Post by lagatta on Apr 3, 2009 22:39:55 GMT
Kerouac, don't you buy lamb from halal butchers? I guess I was lucky when in Paris as I had a very savvy and streetwise Moroccan friend who steered me to the best places.
gringalais, I'd be pretty much certain your lamb is from Patagonia, on either side of the border. àà
As for an earlier question, Easter here: as many things, a combination of French, traditional Québécois and North American influences, and a lot of input from various immigrant groups. Some people eat lamb, some ham (which I don't like as a dish - for me ham is an accent in other dishes). Always lamb at home, but I guess the Italian component claimed culinary superiority over the Québécois francophone and Irish ones.
There aren't much in the way of local vegetables yet, so not too many traditional foods, unlike Christmas/New Year's time. People do pretty much what they want, except of course chocolate for children.
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Post by Don Cuevas on Apr 3, 2009 23:42:09 GMT
I think we'll be going to the Sirloin Stockade buffet, in Morelia, but on Palm Sunday. Who knows what we'll do when we take my S.I.L back to the airport on Easter Sunday. EDIT: we decided that it would be much more pleasant and distinctively Mexican to take her to one of our most favorite seafood restaurants, Mariscos La Güera. Doña Cuevas and I checked it out last Sunday, to make sure it would be all right for S-I-L. Tostada de Pulpos a la Diabla Camarones al Coco
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Post by hwinpp on Apr 4, 2009 3:28:35 GMT
All the beef is slaughtered by the Cham here, descendents of the great enemies of the Khmers, a small Muslim minority. They also slaughter goats but I haven't been able to find any at the markets! I suppose if I bought a kid it would be as good as a lamb?
Although right now suckling roast pig is much easier to find because tomorrow is Ching Ming.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 4, 2009 3:31:33 GMT
Mares eat oats, and does eat oats, and little lambs eat ivy. A kid'll eat ivy too, wouldn't you?
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 4, 2009 3:34:26 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2009 5:03:27 GMT
Kerouac, don't you buy lamb from halal butchers? I guess I was lucky when in Paris as I had a very savvy and streetwise Moroccan friend who steered me to the best places. I figure it would be pretty unlikely for a halal butcher to sell New Zealand lamb, since I doubt that much of it is halal. I usually buy my lamb from the Picard frozen food supermarket. Although now, HW has me thinking about goat, because there are at least a dozen goat butchers nearby, so I might go check out the offering shortly.
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Post by mockchoc on Apr 4, 2009 8:33:55 GMT
We don't have a traditional Easter meal.
Main thing is the children get chocolate easter eggs and we get time off work.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2009 10:19:26 GMT
Damn, I wanted to buy a leg of lamb at Picard and they were sold out! Maybe that's because they're on sale for 9.90€ for a 2kg leg. I'll try again next week.
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Post by lagatta on Apr 4, 2009 13:51:10 GMT
Picard is one of the unknown joys of Paris - frozen foods that actually taste good. Very handy for travellers who want to eat in to save money (or because they are tired in the evening) but don't want to be bothered making an actual meal in the tiny kitchenettes in rental studios. (Normal Parisian kitchens are small, so those...).
I have actually seen halal New Zealand lamb - the country doesn't have a large Muslim population but they have Muslim butchers slaughter some of the lamb for that market.
Are your goat butchers South Asian, or des Antilles?
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Post by Don Cuevas on Apr 4, 2009 14:04:18 GMT
While at the birthday party on Thursday evening, we heard the story of grilled lamb, sold on grape leaves, in the Pátzcuaro mercado. I've been in almost every rinconcito (nook and cranny) of the mercado, but had never known of this. Somehow, it sounds Middle Eastern. So, at 10 a.m. today, we are to meet a friend of Lebanese-Mexican descent (no, not Salma Hayek ), and investigate this report. EDIT: we found the place with no trouble at all, but it doesn't open until 2 p.m. and we are usually well gone home before 1 p.m. It's called "Borrego Marina al Machetazo." Sounds a bit violent. So, in serendipitous compensation, we ended up, 2 days later at "Barbacoa de Borrego José Luis", in Morelia when bringing my S-I-L from the airport. We ate medium bowls of consomé de borrego, complete with the required garbanzos, and shared a 1/4 kilo of the meat; all accompanied by plenty of freshly made hot tortillas. It was just the thing to hit the spot after an early morning airport pickup and to revive us for shopping in the nearby Costco.
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Post by auntieannie on Apr 5, 2009 15:23:55 GMT
mmmmh! Goat!
I am trying to remember traditional easter menu at my parents and I would think lamb, although it isn't a meat they eat frequently.
I don't know what we will cook next weekend. No idea what the tradition is here in the UK.
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Post by hwinpp on Apr 6, 2009 4:07:13 GMT
You mean ours, lagatta? They're Cambodian muslims.
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Post by lagatta on Apr 6, 2009 20:48:56 GMT
I meant Kerouac's, but am just as glad to hear about yours. I guess Cambodian Muslims would eat about the same food as anyone else in that culture, but would of course not eat pork, and lamb or mutton would figure in Muslim religous holidays?
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Post by Deleted on Apr 6, 2009 21:18:17 GMT
The Vietnamese Muslims told me that they were allowed to eat pork and drink beer. "It is different here."
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Post by hwinpp on Apr 7, 2009 3:51:05 GMT
I meant Kerouac's, but am just as glad to hear about yours. I guess Cambodian Muslims would eat about the same food as anyone else in that culture, but would of course not eat pork, and lamb or mutton would figure in Muslim religous holidays? Yes, that's correct. Some of the best Khmer food is done by Cham. They don't cater to visitors so it is a bit different from other Khmer places. They are now getting a lot of help from Malaysia and some Gulf States and Saudi. Not sure if that's a good thing. The FBI opened an office here a year ago to help the Cambodian government with the war on terror. They've apparently caught some Cham in southern Thailand and some of the Indon bombers have taken refuge here. Re the food, I was shocked to see a Cham restaurant serving exclusively Malay food.
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Post by Don Cuevas on Apr 8, 2009 11:31:56 GMT
While at the birthday party on Thursday evening, we heard the story of grilled lamb, sold on grape leaves, in the Pátzcuaro mercado. I've been in almost every rinconcito (nook and cranny) of the mercado, but had never known of this. Somehow, it sounds Middle Eastern. So, at 10 a.m. today, we are to meet a friend of Lebanese-Mexican descent (no, not Salma Hayek ), and investigate this report. EDIT: we found the place with no trouble at all, but it doesn't open until 2 p.m. and we are usually well gone home before 1 p.m. It's called "Borrego Marina al Machetazo." Sounds a bit violent. So, in serendipitous compensation, we ended up, 2 days later at "Barbacoa de Borrego José Luis", in Morelia when bringing my S-I-L from the airport. We ate medium bowls of consomé de borrego, complete with the required garbanzos, and shared a 1/4 kilo of the meat; all accompanied by plenty of freshly made hot tortillas. It was just the thing to hit the spot after an early morning airport pickup and to revive us for shopping in the nearby Costco.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 8, 2009 13:35:08 GMT
I say we all go to New Jersey for Easter! From today's NYTimes online:
Newark’s Portuguese Community Keeps Fires of Tradition Burning By DAVID LEITE
FRANK ALEXANDRE was so excited to make his point that he hip-checked a table out of the way as he lurched toward the photograph on the wall. “Olhe! Olhe!” he said in his native Portuguese. (“Look! Look!”)
The picture, hanging in the Casa de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, a social club (named after the desolate region in northeast Portugal) in the Ironbound section of this city, shows a clutch of sun-pummeled stone buildings, the roofs crenulated with scrub, the road thick with dust.
“This building here is the cookhouse,” said Mr. Alexandre, owner of a local auto repair and towing company, pointing to an imposing windowless stone structure pictured atop a hill. “There are four or five stone ovens inside.” He explained that in times gone by, the residents of the village in the photograph would forage for scraps of wood, build a fire in the ovens and cook communally: hotter fires roasted meats and baked breads while cooler embers burbled stews and braises and coddled eggy desserts. Families then divided the food and trekked home to dine.
“That,” he said, tapping the picture, “is how we survived.”
Nearly six decades after that photograph was taken and half a world away in Ironbound, where 25 percent of the population is of Portuguese descent, the tradition of communal cooking and eating remains — especially during Páscoa, or Easter.
“Last Easter I sold about 120 whole lambs, 60 kid goats and almost as many suckling pigs,” said Herminio Lopes, who owns the Lopes Sausage Company in Newark, one of the area’s most popular meat suppliers (he has also shipped sausages to the White House).
He explained that because home ovens can’t always accommodate a whole animal, the Portuguese-preferred way of roasting, many animals are brought to restaurant kitchens, where they are marinated or massaged with a customer’s own rub, then roasted and either enjoyed in the dining room or taken home. Other people dress the roasts themselves and cook them outdoors in hand-built brick ovens.
On a ride through the city and nearby Elizabeth, Mr. Alexandre pointed out small backyards co-opted by hulking ovens — the Portuguese equivalent of the American charcoal grill — in which, he said, it wasn’t unusual for one cook to roast not only his own family’s Easter dinner but those of several neighbors.
In the early 20th century, waves of immigrants from Portugal and the Azores settled in the Ironbound district, and by the 1920s the community had its first social club along with churches and retail stores lining Ferry Street, the neighborhood’s noisy thoroughfare.
Midcentury saw another boom, which was eclipsed in the ’70s and ’80s by immigration from former Portuguese colonies, including Brazil and Cape Verde. Although the Luso population has decreased because of relocation to the wealthier suburbs and restrictions on immigration, most Portuguese families in the area still cleave to the Catholic church, religious festivals and feasts.
Despite the economy, preparing whole animals remains a booming enterprise for rogue roasters, who turn a tidy profit. “We have several people in the area who cook for a fee,” said John Panneta, a tour guide who introduces groups to the Ironbound’s social, gastronomic and cultural pleasures. “Most of them cook from their backyards and deliver it to your house.”
A different business model of roaster-for-hire is Valença, a restaurant in Elizabeth run with precision by its owner, Martinho Pereira. His crew cranks out several hundred roast suckling pigs during the holiday season for in-house customers, catered events and families who prefer to dig into their pig in the privacy of their own dining room.
When asked what secret ingredients make his pork so popular, Mr. Pereira laughed and shrugged as if to say, “What secret?” Like most Portuguese roasts, his suckling pigs are coated with nothing more than lard, garlic, salt and black and white pepper.
Recently, at the Newark home of António and Magda Araujo, Mr. Alexandre and his wife, Maria, cooked up a lamb feast. But instead of cooking it whole, they had Mr. Lopes butcher it to show off two Easter favorites — borrego assado (roasted legs of spring lamb) and guisado de borrego (lamb stew). The scene, as Mrs. Araujo described it, was typically Portuguese: “loud and fast.”
“Everything is better with olive oil!” Mrs. Alexandre shouted as she rubbed some into the lamb legs. Mr. Alexandre countered with voluminous and rapid-fire requests for bowls, pans and cutting boards. Their frantic pas de deux continued, and they dipped and spun to avoid elbows and sharp knives as they whirred garlicky pastes in the food processor, peeled potatoes and dressed the meat. In under 45 minutes, four pans along with a flan were ready for the stove. Ervilhas com ovos, a staple of peas and bacon topped with poached eggs, would be made right before dinner.
Mr. Alexandre is no stranger to the kitchen, as he’s proud to announce, having won several contests at the social club for his folar, a traditional Easter bread that in Trás-os-Montes is stuffed with cured meat.
“I made the mistake of teaching one of the young men from the Azores how to make it,” he said, “and that year he won.” Mr. Alexandre is determined to win back his title this year.
A short time later, half a roast suckling pig from Valença and both lamb dishes were nestled in the center of the table. Potatoes, rice, bread and the egg-topped peas filled the gaps. Around the table sat 10 hungry guests.
Dinner was suddenly interrupted by the bleating of Mr. Alexandre’s cellphone. A Portuguese woman was stranded on the highway and called for a tow. He stood up, popped another chunk of lamb into his mouth, and shrugged on his jacket.
“Got to take care of our own,” he said, heading for the door. “It’s how we survive.”
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Post by Jazz on Apr 8, 2009 21:01:58 GMT
Yum! ok...mmm...should one of let him know that we're all coming? (courtesy, and then he'll be sure to have enough food.)
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2009 4:46:23 GMT
I'm not sure if I want to go to Newark, but if they wrap the leftovers in a container of dry ice, perhaps they could send me some.
Meanwhile, I will return to the frozen food supermarket today to see if they have restocked the legs of lamb.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 9, 2009 6:18:25 GMT
They did! They did!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 17, 2011 14:38:58 GMT
Any plans for next Sunday? I have not given the meal a thought yet.
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Post by lagatta on Apr 20, 2011 10:23:10 GMT
At a Greek supermarket, one of the specials this week was on 500g of ewe's ricotta. Now I have to figure out what to do with it. I know this could be used for a ricotta cheesecake (less fatty than the kind with cream cheese, and usually flavoured with lemon, casimira) but I don't eat sweets, at least not to the extent that I would actually prepare them. Am trying to think of some kind of savoury ricotta tart. Sure, I could make lasagna, but that might not showcase the ewe's cheese enough.
The butchers' counter was full of cleaned lamb boyaux (intestines used to make sausage - natural casings?) and ovine tripe.
I still have over half the spring lamb stew I made a couple of weeks ago, frozen.
Note that the Pascal celebrations are all tightly packed together this year. Passover started on the 19th, and both Eastern and Western Churches are celebrating Easter this Sunday.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 20, 2011 11:08:05 GMT
Yes, I saw that the nephew of the old lady across the hall from my mother had brought some matzos and other stuff yesterday. Old Rachel is Tunisian.
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