Well yeah, that’s true in the US, but it’s not true in the UK. Nobody in the UK would ever call creme caramel flan. Flan in the UK is not creme caramel.
Note that I’m not saying the US usage is wrong, just pointing out another difference in language. You can’t assume that everyone around the world knows what you mean by “flan” whether you’re writing from the UK or the US, because the meanings are different.
Just like pigs in blankets in the UK only means chipolatas wrapped in bacon (mostly eaten with Christmas dinner). You can change the type of bacon or even use full size sausages if you don’t have small ones in, but that’s as far as the differences go. The US usage is different.
I think US usages are often more flexible than British ones. Casserole has a specific meaning in British English, for example, basically a savoury stew that’s cooked in the oven rather than on the hob, but in the US it applies to all sorts of things. Again, I’m not saying the US usage is wrong, just passing the time by chatting about differences in language.
Sorry, could have elaborated! It comes either as a joint of meat or as steaks. Steaks are as they sound - flattish slabs cut from a cured leg. They’re generally fried, maybe griddles, and often served with fried eggs and/or pineapple. Eggs…well, bacon and eggs, ham and eggs, that obviously works; pineapple is to provide a sharp sweetness as counterpoint to the salty, fatty meat.
A gammon joint is traditionally boiled (think New England Boiled Dinner kind of vibe - salt cured meat boiled and served with cabbage and root veg), and served with a parsley sauce. Or of course you can part boil then bake with a glaze. If boiled, the resultant stock makes a cracking pea soup.
I boil it with mirepoix and bayleaf, with a steamer basket hanging above it in the pot, which I fill with chopped and rinsed spuds. They steam cooked; meanwhile I fry chopped spring onions (scallions) in salted butter, then I stir the spuds vigorously into that with plenty of pepper, creating a crushed up mess of buttery, oniony, ham-infused potato stodge. Then the basket is refilled with ribboned greens to steam as the gammon finishes. Gammon, spuds and greens served with a ladlemof the cooking liquor, and English mustard.
The leftover potatoes are mixed with shredded gammon and formed into patties, and fried up along with eggs the following day.
The skin which has been removed from the joint before serving but after cooking is crisped up in a lidded frying pan over a low heat, broken up and consumed with a beer after the kids are in bed. The rendered fat is poured into the jar of pork fat which lives in the fridge for refried beans, rubbing onto chickens before roasting, roasting potatoes etc, and the pan isn’t cleaned so the dregs are there for the above-mentioned hash and eggs in the morning.
Cheers. It would never be good, but she turns 40 in three days, so the timing is pretty fucking awful!
Yeah, British food culture was pretty set in its ways, historically speaking. But as per the OP, American pudding is one particular thing, British pudding is a considerably broader concept! And could casserole refer to the cooking pot itself in American usage, or is it specifically the name of that which is cooked in it?
Yes, I know that. That’s what all the prior posts were about. I was responding to a post that said that American flan “looks like” crème caramel. It doesn’t just “look like” it. It’s exactly crème caramel. And I gave the reason why: It’s the Spanish term.
That’s true, this is a word area where we generalise and the US doesn’t! There might be others I haven’t picked up on too.
I’ve seen cold salads referred to as a “casserole” by US speakers so I don’t think it’s about the pot, but something to do with mixing ingredients in one dish. And of course it might vary by area.
One of my friends who’s turning 40 soon has decided she’s just going to be ageless instead. I hope your wife’s well enough to talk to friends on Skype/Zoom etc.
I think there must be some crossed wires here. I was talking about the British use of the word flan (which hadn’t been brought up in previous posts), and this thread is about British uses of culinary terms that are different to American terms. Flan is creme caramel in the US, but not in the UK. It looked like you were correcting me. No matter though, obvs
I’ve seen “casserole” used for the dish itself (i.e., the piece of cookware) in the US, but it’s more often used for the food you cook in the dish. Opinions vary on whether a “casserole dish” must have a lid or not.
But yeah, pretty much any sort of whole-meal-in-one-dish that’s baked is or can be a casserole, in the US. Except in parts of the northern midwest, where it’s a “hotdish”.
Yes, I have heard a cooking vessel referred to as “a casserole”.
Maybe it’s regional? I’m in the Northeast, and I can’t imagine calling a cold salad a casserole. I expect a casserole to be a hot dish with a lot of starch, some meat, and some sauce, cooked in the oven so the top gets a little dry/crisp, and served hot, out of the pan it was cooked in. Tuna/noodle casserole, for instance.
I’ve seen it for tuna and tinned beans mixed together, served cold. The beans would have been cooked at some point, and the whole thing was mixed more than a salad was. The sort of thing people take to a pot luck or Thanksgiving. I was told that the mixing was what made it a casserole. And lasagne certainly meets your definition of casserole but it would just sound odd to refer to a lasagne as a casserole in British English.
Tuna and spaghetti cooked in the oven would be a tuna bake, or a pasta bake. We also don’t say noodles for spaghetti - noodles are specifically what you eat in Chinese food. They’re probably not that different but they don’t have the same name.
I wouldn’t call lasagna a casserole, because it’s lasagna. But I suppose it sort of is…
In the US, the only pasta that are spaghetti are long thin ones. Tuna noodle casserole usually uses broad flat noodles. Like, spaghetti is maybe 20cm long and 2mm diameter round. Whereas the noodles in tuna noodle casserole might be 4-6cm long, 1cm wide, and 1mm thick. I’ve never seen tuna noodle casserole made with spaghetti.
I would say that lasagna is, strictly speaking, a casserole, but that nobody would ever refer to it as such. It’s cooked in exactly the same piece of crockery, though. And if you were throwing a potluck and said “Everyone bring a casserole”, nobody would look askance at someone who brought lasagna.
I would say that lasagna is, strictly speaking, a casserole, but that nobody would ever refer to it as such. It’s cooked in exactly the same piece of crockery, though. And if you were throwing a potluck and said “Everyone bring a casserole”, nobody would look askance at someone who brought lasagna.
Since we’re kind of all over the place here, I can share my made-from-scratch, mashed potatoes tip.
Don’t over-mash the mashed potatoes!
I had no idea there was a very strict limit as to how long this last step is supposed to take and the potatoes -a featured component of a big, family gathering- would be totally ruined when one overdoes it. The finished product was a gluey, gloppy inedible lump of starch and no additions of milk or butter would set it right. Who knew?
From that point on, it’s strictly the pre-mashed, ready-to-eat offering that comes in the plastic tub.
There are some recipes that do benefit from what would otherwise be a release of too much starch (e.g. pommes aligot), but yeah. Once as a kid I thought I’d be clever and use a hand mixer. The results were poor.
I think you missed the point there; we don’t call pasta ‘noodles’ in the UK. Spaghetti is the same here, but we wouldn’t call it a noodle.
Noodle’s a really weird word when you look at it too many times…
I hope your wife’s well enough to talk to friends on Skype/Zoom etc.