1. Right potato
2. Even cut
3. Right oil
4. Clean oil
5. Fry twice
6. Bonus tip - salt immediately

Right Potato

All potatoes are not made equal. Some spuds are better for mashing. Other potatoes better for baking. The best potatoes for deep frying are those that are half way between waxy and floury, a bit on the floury side.

• Floury potatoes tend to fall apart when cooked. They feel dry and look granular.
• Waxy potatoes tend to stay firm when cooked. They are a bit translucent and feel moist.

My favourite potato for deep frying is a golden potato. In New Zealand it is known as "Agria". A similar potato in Canada and the United States is "Yukon Gold".

Even Cut

Your fries won't cook evenly if they aren't cut to the same size. Whether you like your fries large or small, it is important that you cut then evenly.

Potatoes cut evenly.

Right Oil

Some oils can't handle the high temperatures required for deep frying. Make sure the oil you select handles high temperatures well. These oils are said to have a high smoke point. Different people prefer different oils. Some chefs mix different oils for best results. The most well known oils for deep frying are:

• Canola oil
• Peanut oil
• Sunflower (safflower) oil
• Grape seed oil

Clean Oil

If your oil is old, or has been used too much, it will give your fries a bad taste. Old oil turns rancid. Over-used oil changes colour, and accumulates debris.

The cooking oil should be clean and fresh.

Fry Twice

First cook the fries at relatively low temperature - 150 °C (300 °F) until they are cooked through. Then cook them at about 190 °C (375° F) to make them crisp and brown.

This will give you a fry that is crisp, brown, and isn't greasy or oily.

This also allows you to have your fries almost ready ahead of time, cutting down on cooking time required just before serving. You could do the first cooking earlier in the day, finishing the fries off just before serving.

Salt Immediately

Bonus tip - if you eat salt on your fries, salt them as soon as they are out of the oil the second time. The salt will stick to the fries when they are still super hot. This means the fries taste better, not salty. And you need less salt.

Ingredients for older version of Seed cake

Ingredients for modern version of Seed cake

As it turned out, despite only having a third more flour and similar quantities of butter and sugar, the older recipe actually made about twice as much cake. Could the change in proportion relate to the relative cost of ingredients - did flour cost relatively more back then?

As well as the quantity variations the older recipe was decidedly scant on details. I appreciate that ranges would have been the primary cooking device and temperature control was perhaps not so refined as to make instructions such as "Preheat oven to 180 C" but there wasn't an indication of cooking time either - in fact, the recipe stopped short after mixing the ingredients. Perhaps the intention was to eat the batter raw. ;-)

Many of the other recipes in the 1914 book have instructions such as "cook in the usual way" - with such oblique directions it amazes me the cookbook established itself so thoroughly in Kiwi culture - but then I suppose women tended to have a firmer grounding in the domestic science in those days, and perhaps secrets such as what constituted "the usual way" were passed down through the generations.

Seed cakes in the tins

I baked the modern version in a loaf tin and the other in a round cake tin, so it would be easy to know which was which. I definitely preferred the loaf look - but all bar one of the bake-off attendees preferred the older version. It was moister and definitely eggier and the lemon (which you could easily add to the other one, of course) was a great accent flavour for the distinctive caraway seeds.

Seed cake, served and ready to eat.

Either way this is definitely the sort of cake you have with a cuppa - perhaps slathered with butter, though fresh it was fine on its own.

You can also view a more complete entry on this seed cake on MrsCakeNZ website.

Short of starting up my fire to make sure my oven was ‘quick’, I decided to be faithful to 1914 with the older edition recipe – creaming the sugar with my Nana’s old hand eggbeater.

Momentary wonderings of whether chickens in the 1900s laid bigger or smaller eggs . . . and exactly what kind of ‘degrees’ to use to add the dry ingredients to the mixture with. Nevertheless, onwards.

Raspberry Delights prepared following the 1914 version of the recipe.

The 1914 mixture was the tweet to the 2000 blog. Were there no gluttons in the early 20th century? Smaller ovens, I suppose. The recipe produced 7 Raspberry Delights – and a much thinner mixture at that. No wonder people were shorter back then.

Thank goodness for the newer reference edition to work out what temperature the oven should be, and how long it would take to get to ‘nearly baked’ (though my mother tells me Nanas always know that you can tell ‘nearly baked’ by smell alone).

On to the modern ‘De Luxe’ edition. Catering to contemporary appetites, the 2000 recipe made 15 Delights. My trusty electric eggbeater was also in service.

The batter was much stiffer, with equal amounts of flour (1/4 cup) and Custard Powder (1/4 cup) relative to Baking Powder (1/2 teaspoon); compared to the 1914 edition with its teaspoon of flour to a tablespoon of Custard Powder, and also less Baking Powder (1/2 teaspoon) relative to the other two dry ingredients.

Out of the oven in 13 minutes popped something slightly perfect looking with symmetrical rounded tops, compared to the more ‘organic’ looking 1914 Delights.

Modern version of Rasbperry Delight looks more perfect than the older recipe's results.

The modern version of Raspberry Delight looks more symmetrical and has more rounded top than the 1914 version.

But the taste test told a different story.

I took the results of my slightly pikelety efforts over to the parents for a blind evaluation . . . and 1914 unanimously got the greedy little thumbs up. Better texture, more flavor they reported. And they liked the additional ‘a bit crispy’ factor.

So there you go. Sometimes newer isn’t necessarily better. And you definitely shouldn’t judge a Delight by its appearance.

Young housemaids cooking, circa 1910s, probably in the Christchurch region. Shows them standing in a kitchen, around a table, by a coal range. Photograph taken for 'The Press' by an unidentified photographer. Alexander Turnbull Library Ref: 1/1-017705-G.

As a result, several individuals will be cooking both the 1914 version and a more modern equivalent of the recipe.

The idea is to prepare & document the original recipe, with photos ideally. Then do the same with a modern version of the book (Published after 2000 or as near as possible). If the modern version doesn't carry the same recipe (they sometimes get removed), let's try and find a recent version that has the recipe.

I'm arbitrarily setting a deadline of a month from now - 12 August 2011. This should give everyone time to find modern book, and prepare both recipes.

Prize

A random "winner" will be selected from all the entries submitted on or before 12 August. Edmonds has graciously offered a gift basket of their products for the winner. A big thank you to them for being game!

Twitter hashtag

Let's use #suretorise as a hashtag.

Edmonds Factory 1908

@Vexus_Nexus found the following great photo:

Photo of the factory in 1908 - the year that the first Cookery Book was probably produced. Photo copied from the original photo held by the Burnside family - descendants of T J Edmonds.

Edmonds Factory 1908 by Ron is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 New Zealand License.

Results

The photos and notes should be emailed to me, and I'll put them up here for all to see :)

Current participants

@danrandow - Pikelets

@vavroom - Apple Dumplings

@Librarykris - Vegetarian Roast

@PublicAddress - TBA

@GlennDCitrix - TBA

@AliceandRachel - Ham or Tongue Omelet

@Sarabeee - Cinnamon Scones

@flaminandromeda - Elsie's Fingers

@Vexus_Nexus - Raspberry Delight - See the resulting raspberry delights.

@zora_aisling - Yorkshire Tea Scones (Plain Scones in modern version)

@johnjcampbell - Tomato and Macaroni

@HelenSteemson - Madeira cake

@vaughndavis - TBA

@karenhurley - Bread & Butter Pudding

@MrsCakeNZ - Seed Cake

@thedemlz - Ginger Cake

Comment on this post if you want to enter.

The baking sheet will collect anything that spills, making it easier to keep your oven clean.

You may even want to line the baking sheet with some oven-proof paper, so the baking sheet itself doesn't get soiled.

The baking sheet shouldn't make a difference to cooking time. But if you are concerned it might make a difference, you can place it on the tray below your casserole. If you do that, the baking paper trick isn't as usable though.

The Experiment

I purchased the three available types of ground (mince) beef:

1. Premium / Super Lean
2. Prime / Lean
3. Regular

Premium ground beef on the left, Regular ground beef on the right.

Regular mince is the meat that has the most fat content. Premium ground beef the one that has the least fat content.

• I measured 200 g of each type, using my elecronic scale.
• I used 15 ml (1 tablespoon) of vegetable oil to panfry each type separately.
• I used no salt, pepper or any type of seasoning.
• Once the meat was cooked, and all liquids (except for fat) were evaporated, I strained the meat, and let it drain for 5 minutes.
• I weighted the meat and measured the amount of fat left.

The Results

I was surprised by the results. Regular ground beef is, in fact, cheaper than Premium mince.

Weight before cooking: 200 g

Conclusion

Regular ground beef is cheaper than Premium ground beef. I didn't think that was the case, but there you have it, my (semi) scientific experiment shows me I was wrong.

I will be using regular mince more often. I will still use Premium mince in recipes where I am unable to drain the fat (e.g. casseroles vs patties). But by and large, I'm not going to always purchase premium ground beef.

On a side note, I noticed when I was cooking professionally that if you put the ground beef through the grinder twice, it looks much leaner. Appearances can be deceiving!

How about you? Did you believe premium ground beef was actually cheaper? Do you buy regular ground beef instead of premium? Why?

Side by side comparison of two cans of creamed corn, showing the ingredients, and part of the nutritional value.

I was looking at 2 cans in particular:

1. Oak Brand
2. Home Brand

In the table below, I compared the cost, size, percentage of corn, actual amount of corn, and cost per 100 g of corn for each brand.

We can see that Home Brand is the cheaper can. But it's not the better value. The Home Brand is actualy 28% more expensive for the corn you get.

Also worth noticing is that Home Brand has more sugar (6.6 g vs 2.8 g) and salt (172 mg vs 130 mg) per 100 g than Oak.

Do you read the labels? What products have you found that had a significant difference like that?

A snow storm, not dissimlar to the one I remember.
Photo courtesy of Kicking Designs - Released under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 2.5 License.

I was sous-chef at Hidden Valley Resort Hotel, a 200-room hotel on Peninsula Lake near Huntsville, Ontario, right by the ski field. In '89 or '90, we were to cook the banquet for the Muskoka Chefs Association. The hotel was very quiet at that time of year.  Chef had given me carte blanche to work on a menu to "amuse myself" and impress the "grande toques" ( or "tall hats", a nickname for the head chefs in hotels).

This was an exciting challenge: feeding nearly 2 dozen head chefs from the areas. I planned it for weeks. I started prepping a few days ahead. The menu, as I remember planning it, looked like this:

1. Consommé en croûte
2. Salmon with a citrus and olive oil emulsion
3. Roast rack of lamb with a herb crust
4. Green salad of some sort
5. Cheese plate
6. Duo of chocolate mousse

It started snowing the night before the event. And kept snowing all through the night. And the morning. By lunch time, it was obvious that the event wasn't going to happen. The scenery outdoors was shades of grey, it was very hard to tell sky, trees, ground and falling snow apart. By that time, over half the chefs had called to say they weren't able to attend, the roads were closed, or too dangerous to tackle.

What's more, a large part of the hotel staff wasn't able to come to work. Those that were at the hotel weren't able to leave.  Even Chef wasn't able to reach the main road because of his snow-covered driveway. Me, I lived on the premises, so I didn't have commute issues.

So the event was cancelled. But the food didn't go to waste. I did cook the banquet, and we served the staff that was marrooned at work. It was a great party. Significantly less formal than had the folks from the Chefs Association had been there.

So when Adam spoke about perks and food and snow storms, it all came back to me.

What experience do you remember that relates to food and being stuck because of a snowstorm?

Burgers cooking on a grill.
Photo courtesy of Trancemist - Released under Creative Commons By-NC 2.0 License.

We had a dining room with about 50 seats, a patio with another 75 or so seats. There was also a function room on the second floor that could seat about 100 people, but it was rarely used. At the height of the season, we could serve 400 people per meal, easy.

It was early in the summer season and we already were hitting 32 °C (90 °F) in the shade. The kitchen was small and compact. There was a Garland commercial 6-burner stove against one wall. To the right of the stove, a double deep-frier. To the left, a grill. On the other side of a 1 m wide "aisle", a steam table and the passe. I never did take the temperature in that kitchen, but I assure you, it was hot. And the steam from the steam table made it very muggy.

I had to change my chef's vest 3, sometimes 4 times a day because they would get soaked with sweat. One of my vests had metal snap buttons. I had to be careful not to let the buttons touch my chest, otherwise the heat of the metal would hurt and leave burn marks. I kept a pitcher of water to drink from. One of those clear plastic pitchers - 60 oz (about 1.7 liter). Kept it filled with ice and water, and half a lemon squeezed in it. I could empty half that pitcher in a few long swallows. Boy, it was hot in that kitchen!

The head chef had left 2 days before the season really got going. He went to Ireland for his sister's wedding. He was supposed to be gone a week. He never came back. One week we were serving maybe 30 covers/meal. After he left, we consistently hitting 300! There was me in the kitchen, with 2 pantry cooks sharing shifts, and a couple guys washing pots, pans and dishes. We all worked hard that summer. I inherited the head chef's tasks on top of my own, but not the title nor the wages. And no overtime pay - I was on salary!

I spent most of those weeks working. I arrived around 9am in the morning to start prep. I'd work until 3pm and then take a short break if I was lucky enough to have the time. Back in the kitchen about 5pm, and on until 11pm or midnight. 12 to 14 hours a day. 7 days a week. That lasted about 6 weeks. By the end of the season, I could take my pants off without undoing the button or zip - I lost a fair bit of weight. My friends told me I looked pasty green.

Still, looking back I'm proud that I met the challenge. It was far from easy. But I did it. We did it.

And to think all those memories were triggered by the simple smells of cooking burgers!

The great Belgian singer, Jacques Brel sang:

Et puis on ira manger, des frites et puis des moules,
des moules et puis des frites, et du vin de Moselles
And we'll go eat, fries and mussels, mussels and fries, and wine from Moselle

That song always evokes the image of large pots of mussels served in front of you, with plenty of fries. Despite fries usualy being known as "French", they are in fact typically Belgian. Some traditionalists will even argue that the proper fry is cooked in horse fat, but I think it has been many, many decades since the last fry was cooked in horse fat.

A pot full of cooked Mussels "Marinières".

So, today, we went to a Brasserie, an upmarket pub. Moules et frites has always been a dish for the people, a cheap meal, that a lot of snobs would lift their noses at. Alas! Cheap no more. The dish of Moules Marinières cost 25 Euros. The same price as the hare dish, and the pheasant dish, which are prime dishes for the fall season. TWENTY FIVE EUROS. That's a bucketload of money! For my devalued New Zealand dollar, that means we paid about NZ$100 for mussels for two! I'm glad I wasn't paying!

Yes, the mussels were very good. Cooked in a broth of wine and butter and a bit of cream with celery and onions. Served piping hot, still soft and tender. Small mussels, too. For those of you who know the kiwi green lipped mussels, we're looking at mussels a third to half the size of the average green lipped one. A significantly different mollusk.

The restaurant claimed proudly that they were Zealand mussels. Note - not New Zealand, but Zealand. An area in the North Sea on the coast of Holland and Norther Belgium. They are the best. Because you can now get Spanish mussels at a lower price. But the fame of the mussel dishes was built on the Zealand mussel. And that very fame is what transformed this dish from something for the people, to a rare and luxurious treat - the poor beasties have been overfished. The mussel population hasn't been able to keep up. And the price shot up. Nearly the price of lobster, maybe we'll give the guys a rest and it'll be affordable again. I don't really have that much faith in humans. As an aside, lots of reports in the news lately about red tuna fish quotas in the Mediterannean. Despite quotas set in place for years, fisherment admit to catching more than their quota, because the Japanese demand is so high. Watch that it won't be long Mediterannean red tuna is going to go the way of the Zealand mussel, and both of these going the way of the Dodo.

So, here was this guy from New Zealand, who never really got used to eating those big fat green lipped mussels, in Belgium, eating overpriced Zealand small mussels. But man! They were *good*. They arrived served in big cauldrons with a big lid. The lid keeps the steam in while it gets to the table, and upside down, it gives you a receptable for your shells. The trick to eating Moules Marinière is to use your fork to pick one mussel out of it shell. Then you use the empty shell as pincers to retrieve other mollusks from their own shell. Any that have a broken shell, you discard. Any that are not cracked open, yuo dont eat. And if you're unluky enough to eat at a cheaper place that recycles the ones uneaten, you'll find a few dried up, tough, chewey, dark, shrunk mussels. I wouldn't eat those either.

You get such a large cauldron because the shells take up a lot of space. There's a trick to discarding shells. Stack them up one inside the other. Serious mussel eaters often do that. Otherwise you end up unable to keep the shell in the pot's lid, as large as it is.

The broth was most excellent, too. The vegetables were cooked, but still crispy and full of flavours. I was nearly tempted to dig into my companion's pot, which she barely touched. But I know my grand-mother. About to turn 90, and eating like a bird since as long as I've known her. But hey - more for me. I polished off her portion as well, minus the all of 6 mollusks she left for me.

One thing that was a great disappointment - the fries. The portion was ungenerous and I would have thought that at that price, we'd have gotten a good helping. But it wasn't too bad there wasn't much fries. Because they weren't fries. They were what Aussies and Kiwis refer to as "chip". A frozen product, obviously. In fact, i could swear that the chips I got at the fish n chip shop a few days before I left was the same brand and model - once cooked, they are a strange putty surrounded by cardboard. I ate a few. I hated a few. I did not expect to travel half way across the world to find myself eating the take-away-kiwi-frozen-fries. I did not expect such low quality fries for such a high cost.

Yes, Zealand mussels are to be enjoyed, expecially if you never had them before. But be prepared for sticker tag.