Laodicea

Ultimate Macaroni Cheese

by Good Housekeeping’s Cookery Book (revised edition of 1959) and bat Ionah.

2 oz macaroni, 1 oz butter, 1 oz flour, 3/4 pint milk, piquant sauce [e.g. Tabasco], mustard, salt, 4 oz grated cheese, freshly crushed cardamon seeds (that is the “ultimate” bit).

Cook the macaroni.

Sauce: Meantime, melt the butter, stir in the flour, ad the milk: bring to the boil, add the sauce, mustard and salt, and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the cheese and stir till quite melted (save some if you are one of those freaks who likes burnt crispy cheese on top of your macaroni cheese, lasagne and so on). Somewhere along the line chuck in the crushed cardamon seeds (you can probably perfectly well use ground cardamon, it just happened that in the house we had whole seeds).

Magic moment: drain the pasta, mix it in with the sauce, put it in An Ovenproof Dish, put on An Ovenproof Lid, and bake it for a wee bit. (Come to think of it, I have no idea why it is necessary to bake it.) For Freak Version, sprinkle the reserved grated cheese on the top and bake (or grill) without a lid till it goes all horrible and crunchy with that burnt cheese taste. You could go for the full school dinners effect and add a couple of slices of tomato. (For this version you definitely have to bake or grill it, unless you want to attempt Macaroni Fromage Brulee).

Black Goose (an eighteenth-century Polish court recipe)

A goose

Honey, ginger, vinegar (I think, it’s been a couple of years)

Cooking apples (peeled, cored, cut into segments)

Straw

Burn the straw. Mix the ashes with the ginger, honey, vinegar, and anything else you think is a good idea – it will come out looking like something you drained from a tractor engine. Stuff the goose with the apples. Cover it in the black stuff. Roast it, scooping out the excess fat regularly. This is a highly recommended recipe!

Easy Pumpkin Soup

You need: pumpkin, onion, butter, water, seasoning (sweet papryka, allspice, nutmeg, ginger, ground black pepper, bay leaf – or get hold of this tripe seasoning). Chop onions, fry till transparent, or till sweet, if you have the patience. Add some water, and chunks of pumpkin, and butter. Cook slowly. Add seasoning and put through the blender.

Baked Beans

Fresh white beans, tomatoes, a (I used red) pepper, bay leaf(-ves), oregano, olive oil. Salt, if you like. Chop up the tomatoes and pepper into small cubes/squares. Mix it all up, but leave enough tomatoes to have a layer of tomato on the top. Bake it. Eat it.

Tomato and Cucumber Salad

You need tomatoes, cucumbers-in-brine, olive oil. The cucumbers should be well pickled – have that dark green transparent look  – and not be the “lightly salted” kind that are eaten quite fresh. If you are somewhere where these things only come in tins, they will do very nicely.

Here’s where it gets tricky. Chop the cucumbers and tomatoes into very small cubes, in about equal quantities. Mix them together and add lots of very strong olive oil.

Eat.

Traditional Polish Hot Beer Milkshake

You need beer (well, lager), sour cream (though ordinary cream will probably do), egg yolks(s) and sugar or honey. Optionally – dry crumbly fresh white cheese (drained cottage cheese will do).

Mix together the cream and egg yolks in a cup. Heat the beer, and add the sugar or honey. Add the cream&egg, whisking all the time. Drink, or  - pour over cheese in a bowl and eat.  People add spices.

Traditional Polish Hot Beer Lentshake

This, like the non-fast version, is a breakfast dish. You need beer, butter, and bread. Heat the beer. Add the butter. Pour it over bread. Enjoy!

Herring Stovies

You need herrings, potatoes, onions, fat and nutmeg.

Soak out the salt from your herrings. Slice them into small pieces. Peel and slice the potatoes. Chop the onions and fry them a bit. Put layers of potato, herring and onion into an oven-proof dish, finishing with potatoes. Sprinkle generously with nutmeg, cover with a layer of breadcrumbs and dot with butter, or oil if it’s Lent. Bake for a while covered (?20 mins?) and then the same time again uncovered. Eat.

Poached Frozen Striped Catfish

Frozen catfish fillets,  an lemon, olive oil, flat-leaf parsley (if you can get it; it has much more flavour than the curly kind)

Put slices of lemon on the bottom of a frying pan, the fillets on top, smear them with olive oil and a little salt, cover with vast amounts of chopped fresh parsley. Cover and poach slooooowly. Eat with millet or, at a pinch, cous cous.