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COOKING AGE: ORIGINS
With Inferia Smith
'Tis the season for Feast Days, and here's a perfect dish for a family meal.
No turkey this year, Mom! Mackerel puddings all round!
I'm using nutmeg here, because they don't sell mace in my local shops. At least not the sort of mace I want to use in cooking.
Start off by preheating your oven to 180° Celsius. Or 4500° Fahrenheit. I think I've got that conversion right.
Poach your mackerel in salted water. Maybe add a little white wine, if you're looking for an excuse to open a bottle.
Roughly chop the onion, pepper and celery, and then throw the pieces in your food processor.
Pause to savor the moment, then DESTROY THEM.
Good. Excellent. You have learned well.
After about 10 minutes, the mackerel should be good and poached and you should have finished off your first glass of white wine.
Peel off the mackerel's skin and flake the flesh into a mixing bowl.
Add the mace, cardamon, salt and pepper. Drip in the two spoons of mustard. Scatter in the shredded veggies. Finally, glorp in the beaten eggs and mix everything together into a big mush.
Split your disgusting mulch into four patties and place on a baking tray. Don't forget to grease the foil.
Look, I know this looks like fake vomit now but you have to trust me. It will look marginally better after cooking.
Cook the patties for 35-40 minutes. Finish off the bottle of wine. Hard boil two eggs. Badly burn yourself with boiling egg water.
Ta da! Crispy little mackerel pancake things. Serve with egg slices and salad. And wine.
Actually, bin the pancakes and the salad. Just have the wine. It's even lower in calories.
Magnifique!
SO, WHAT'S THIS ALL ABOUT THEN?
[The recipe is originally from a 1974 Weight Watchers recipe card. It, along with its horrendous brethren (Frankfurter Spectacular anyone?), went mildy memetic in the mid 2000s, thanks to blogger Wendy McClure re-discovering a stash of old recipe cards and writing a book about them.
Presumably some Bioware dev enjoyed it and snuck a reference into Dragon Age.
The recipe originally suggested cooking them in a cup- hence the 'pudding'- but I decided to make pancakes instead. I'm not wasting my good cups on this.
If you, dear reader, would like to try making them in cups then go for it. Please report back in the thread any food poisoning that results.]