Dirty Page – Homemade Cookbooks
Helen: All right, well,
Chris: I, well, I just hit record, so…
Helen: Hello, and welcome to the first episode of a brand new podcast, which we’re calling The Dirty Page. I’m Helen.
Chris: And I’m Chris, we’re two home cooks who’ll be chatting around food and life. And today we’re kicking off with the first of six episodes. But why did we call the pod the dirty page?
Helen: That’s a, a, a good, good point. So the idea here is that if you go into anybody’s home and and quite rudely, you start going through the cookbooks and you’ll flick through these. You are probably well, of course, yes. There’s one way to get to know someone, isn’t it? You’ll probably find a page that is more splattered than any others, and the idea there is that’s [00:01:00] their dirty page, and chances are that’s one of their favorite recipes.
Chris: That’s exactly right. And I think you can learn a lot about someone by what their dirty page is too.
Helen: Yes, that’s true. And, and not only that is the idea here is we wanna talk about the stories behind those favorite recipes. So the Dirty page is a tool to find out what your favorite recipes are and our favorite recipes, and then we wanna tease out those stories behind them.
Chris: And we wanna know what your dirty pages are. The plan is as the pod progresses, we’ll get more people on to talk about their dirty pages. Plus, we’d love to find out what our audience were, what our listeners ones are.
Helen: Absolutely. Well, audience listeners, everyone’s welcome. So that’s the pod in a nutshell. A small peanut nutshell right now, but hopefully by next year, a coconut. Okay. Yeah, I think this is gonna be a theme of [00:02:00] Helen’s dodgy jokes. Chris, not being afraid. I think it’s okay.
Chris: It’s alright. I can edit in cricket noises later. It’s fine.
Helen: Alright, so moving on. How are you, Chris?
Chris: I’m great. Excited looking forward to doing this great little adventure with you. But otherwise, you know, just cooking. I’ve cooked a. Cheesecake this week and I cooked an ossobuco. I’m doing well. So
Helen: that’s really exciting though.
Chris: And how are you going?
Helen: I’m good. I actually have ossobuco in the slow cooker right now as well. Oh, nice. I have an inkling that some of that cheesecake I might get to taste later on, so I’m excited about that.
Chris: Yeah, just a little bit. Yeah, just a little bit. I, I If you good?
Helen: Yeah, thanks. I’ll see how I go. It’s been an exciting week for me as well. I was Reverted back to being a teenager with Blur releasing a new album. I’ve been in love with Damon Albarn since I was 13 and listening to [00:03:00] the Ballad of Darren was very like, oh, I’m, I’m like 15 again. This is, this is great. So, Yes. I’ve also had a bit of a cheese thing. Been eating a lot of cheese this week. Some nice creamy
Chris: cheese. Never a bad thing.
Helen: Exactly. Never. Yeah. I’m a big fan of oat cakes with my cheese. How, what about you? Like, how do you take your cheese?
Chris: It has to be crackers and you know, while I love the odd Jatz and that sort of thing I discovered rediscovered a biscuit that. You hardly find in the supermarkets anymore, which is the vintage cracker. And it’s, I found something similar in the uk. I can’t remember what it was, but I’m like, Ooh, this is almost this biscuit. And then I had to come back and find it. So yeah,
Helen: that sounds very lovely. Intriguing. Yeah, I mean, I say I’m a bit traditional with my Oat cakes. Having lived in Scotland for a while and there’s like one [00:04:00] specific brand of Oat cakes. The, the Nairns ones, which we’re very lucky that as we’re based in Australia, the IGA supermarkets often stock them. So very happy. That’s good. I do not think about the, the food miles, but I hope, I guess they come on boats ’cause. You know what’s more indestructible than an oat cake?
Chris: This, this is absolutely the thing. I was talking about my cheesecake before, and the only thing I can ever do for a cheesecake base anymore is hobnobs.
Helen: Oh my word.
Chris: Which are also from the UK.
Helen: Yeah.
Chris: And. That nothing beats it. There’s nothing better than a ground up hob knob with butter.
Helen: Yeah. It,
Chris: just works
Helen: the Syrupiness and the oatiness of it and the crunch and, and the very word hob knob. It’s just, I feel like
Chris: Exactly.
Helen: I feel like Rowan Atkinson every time I say it, Hobnob
Chris: it, it just, it just inspires joy really.
Helen: It does. It really does. Well, this sounds like [00:05:00] things are very good. We both had good food weeks. So the plan is that each of our episodes are gonna have a, a bit of a theme that we’re gonna use to find some dirty pages and talk about them. Chris what’s today’s theme?
Chris: So, today’s theme is drum roll.
Helen: It is more like a cookbook role.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. Homemade cookbooks. So everyone’s got one of these, well, most people have one of these. In my case, it was one that was given to me when I turned 17 by my mother. Well just after I turned 17 at Christmas. But Yeah, everyone’s got one of these. It, it’s a cookbook that is given to you or you write yourself and it’s just got the home recipes that you always create or your family always create. So yeah, I think it’s a really cool idea.
Helen: Yeah. There, I mean they, I’ve seen a few other people’s ones. [00:06:00] They’re often like old. Diaries or old notebooks or something. But it, it’s somewhere where you can, where you’ve found a recipe online or old school in a magazine and you can literally, as I used to do, cut them out and post them in and things like this.
And they’re, they’re just things of joy and, and. The ones that you’ve got, sometimes maybe a friend has written down a cookbook. So mine, like, like Chris’s was prepared and gifted to me by my mother. And it’s got all sorts of memories in it. It’s got different people’s handwriting. Bizarrely, I’ve got unfinished recipes.
There’s, there’s one written by, oh, let’s face it, a boy that I pashed at university and he got halfway through writing his recipe for paprika chicken and it literally ends. And my, my. Husband has gone, where does it go from here? And I’m like, probably better to not think about [00:07:00] that. So yeah, it’s kind of crazy.
It, I also love them because there’s often a generational thing. So my, my grandmother passed away. Two years ago now, and my mom now has her handmade cookbook and there are recipes in that that are in my mother’s and in mine as well. And my, I have two sisters, so they’re in there as well. So there’s that sort of beautiful.
Continuity of them, but that they’re also very, very organic very sort of, they grow and they probably tell you something about your life, where you’re going, what you’re doing, what boys you’ve pashed and stuff. So, yeah,
Chris: absolutely. And I think it, it, it also, It sometimes it obfuscates where these recipes have come from as well. So I know that. When my mom was asking me after her mom died if I had Nan’s Scone recipe mm-hmm. She told me, oh, you know, that came off the back of a the milk powder box, don’t you? I’m like, no. What? And I don’t know, you, you, you can get some interesting stories out of them because Yeah,
Helen: they’re sort of, it bends where things comes from to some point. ’cause as you say, you think of it as your nan’s going recipe, but your mum sort of knows a little bit different about it in terms of like Yeah. Where it comes from and stuff. I, I think they can also be, should be cool. A testament to people that you’ve lost. So I’ve actually just flipped Yeah. In mine to the recipe for ginger log and it has my mom’s written, Jill O’meara, who was my mum’s best friend from university who passed quite early. And you know, so. And it’s a, it’s a beautiful recipe. It’s basically those hard ginger biscuits [00:09:00] and you sandwich them with cream that has been flavored in oh, no, no. That’s it. You whip the cream. I should just read the recipe. You whip the cream and you pour some booze into a saucer.
Chris: Nice.
Helen: So, booze, whiskey, brandy, sherry, rum or whatever.
Chris: Yeah.
Helen: And then you dip the biscuits both side into the booze, but don’t allow them to soak. ’cause they just, otherwise you’ll run out of booze. Yeah. And they’ll be too floppy. Yep, yep, yep. And then you sandwich them with cream and then you cover it with cream at the end and you put nuts on it. But the important thing, and I think this has came directly from, from Jill originally, is that you have to, when you cut it, you cut it on a diagonal so you can show off the layers.
Chris: I love that.
Helen: But you know, it it,
Chris: this is why these are like a, a, a time capsule really.
Helen: They they absolutely are. And I think for my mum, Like, that’s a very sort of [00:10:00] 1970s dinner party thing. Yeah. I think for her that sort of will bring back lots and lots of memories. This is a woman I, I, I met, I didn’t know particularly well.
I was still a child when she passed, but you know, it’s, it’s it wonderful that this, this, this of hers just continues and, you know, similarly, I’ve got my nan’s steak sauce recipe and, and things like this. But, but you know, it, it is just great. And I’m, I’m sorry, I’ve just flicked to the Christmas cake recipe, which in my mum’s version of the same book there are about, I don’t know, 20 tick marks alongside each one, where every year she’s ticked off because it’s, you know, Christmas cake.
It’s got like, I don’t know. 25 ingredients, right? Yeah. And she’s just ticked off every year. And so that’s again, a, a, a recording of history and like I could see, I, I think from my, from memory, there’s at least one or two years where I. [00:11:00] Quite famously, mom forgot to put something in and she looked back and she could see that she hadn’t ticked it off.
And she’s like, oh, well that’s why the cake tastes rubbish or doesn’t taste like it normally does. So if mom’s listening, your Christmas cake is never rubbish.
Chris: I have a question on the Christmas cake recipe. Does.
Helen: Oh yeah,
Chris: does that one?
Helen: Lemme go back to it.
Chris: Stipulate how many times you have to stir it.
Helen: Right. Oh, okay. So this is another family thing? Yeah.
Chris: Oh yeah. It definitely is.
Helen: This is funny. Yeah, so it’s actually written in the instructions. Don’t forget to make a stir and a wish. So my family, and maybe you guys have this as well, you have to, you stir it all and you combine all the ingredients. But then everyone in the family has to stir the the cake whilst saying, I wish everybody a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
And I wish, and as you say, and I wish you pick a little bit of spoon, you know, a teaspoon of the cake mixture and you eat it. I love the raw cake mixture. I love that. And ev, that was a ceremony. My family did it and. The thing I remember about the ceremony is my dad every year would do it with the big spoon.
Chris: Oh yeah.
Helen: And try and be like, you know, go to eat All, you know, it’s, oh gosh. Oh, I’m getting tearful. That’s so really nice memories. Sorry. So, I mean, what’s, what about your Christmas cake recipe?
Chris: Well, mom always does Christmas puddings, but what, what she does is every member of the family who’s in the house when she’s making them, has to stir… I think it’s something stupid like seven times their age. Now I think,
Helen: oh my, what?
Chris: I’m pretty sure this was just so mom could get some free child labor in making her her puddings, because I noticed she, she stopped doing it after I moved out. So, you know,
Helen: that’s, that’s wonderful. So isn’t it wonderful that, that, that these ceremonies. You know, these, these very intimate family ceremonies Yeah. Are sort of in these books and things like that.
Chris: So it’s great, isn’t it?
Helen: Oh, it’s great. I’m, I’m just flicking through it and, oh, getting so many, oh gosh. There’s one, actually, my husband hasn’t written in this book too many times, but one of them is called Syncotron Survival Sauce, and it was, When I would go and do very long experiments.
And he came up with this sauce that basically you could put on a steak or a, or a mushroom steak. ’cause we had a friend who’s a vegetarian who used to do long experiments with me and yeah. And we’d come home and he would cook this up for us, so. Oh. Yeah, it’s, so, it’s kind of funny. Yeah. It’s gosh, so many, so many memories.
Absolutely. [00:14:00] Yeah. So I suppose thinking about the, the, the listenership is, do you also have this kind of cookbook? You know, do, do write in at hello@thedirtypage.com and tell us about it? Send us some pictures and, and tell us a bit about the favorite recipes and things.
Chris: Absolutely. We’d love to hear from you. But we’ve heard about your handmade cookbook, so what have you chosen from it today, Helen?
Helen: Yes. Yeah. So this is the point. So we’ll take a theme and then we’ll talk a bit about a couple of recipes. I’ve realized we’ve already mentioned quite a few.
Chris: We, we’ve talked about a few, but, but these ones we’re gonna go deeper into.
Helen: So yeah. Deeper indeed. So the recipe, I’ve talked, I’m just madly flicking to see finding it and trying not to, oh, look at that. Oh, look at that. So it, it should be mocha squares. But I’m dyslexic and I like putting extra [00:15:00] vowels and things and things. So in our family, and actually even my husband today, he said, oh, so you’re talking about Moocha squares?
And yeah, so that’s, that’s the book, that’s the recipe. Sorry. It’s a tray bake cake. And the reason I picked it is I think it might be one of the first things I ever baked. It’s very simple. I was probably nine or 10 and I found this recipe and my mom’s cookbook. And and in my handmade cookbook, as people will see from our Instagram account, ’cause I posted a picture of it, it’s one of our first posts.
It’s quite dirty, it’s quite splattered. It is also next to another recipe, which is Blue Peter’s fatless tea bread, which I could probably do a whole episode on that one. But Moocha squares they’re just sort of. A mixture of sugar. Some, well, in my, on my mom’s recipe, it’s Marge, [00:16:00] which means margarine.
Yeah. Sugar syrup SSR flour, which is. Obviously self raising flour, porridge, js and cocoa, and you melt the marge or butter and then you combine everything. There’s not actually even a methodology written on my recipe because I think my mom just assumed I would work out what I was doing.
Chris: Yep, yep, yep.
Helen: Yeah, so you sort of combine it all together and then you flatten it down into a tray. You then bake it for 15 minutes. And the other nice thing about this is, is in the cookbook, it’s right next to where my mom’s written the golden Rule, that all cooking times are approximate.
Chris: That is important information.
Helen: Exactly. It is the fill yourself in and, and to also, you know, get used to your. You know, ovens are different and things like this. It’s sort of empowering in some way, and then she’s also written, it will smell. Smell [00:17:00] cooked and skewer will come out clean. So, but of course there are always exceptions to the golden rule if you gonna make brownies.
But so yeah, so the moocha squares you, you make all of that, you bake it, and then afterwards you put a topping on it, which is, if the bottom is a oatey chocolate tininess with the cocoa powder. Mm-hmm. Then the topping is a coffee icing, sugar and buttercream esque thing. Well, margarine cream again I mean this recipe is dated.
It’s all in ounces. I usually just do the 25 grams two an ounce conversion ’cause I only work in metric these days. The, the the, the, the oven. Temperature is gas mark full? Oh, yes. Which dates it even faster. Oh, yes, I know. I, I think when it comes to cake baking, unless I’m told specifically, I just whack it in at 180 degrees,
Chris: so I had [00:18:00] never seen gas marks before until very recently. Really? Yeah. I, yeah, the first, yeah.
Helen: Oh, that’s bonkers. Was it not a thing here?
Chris: I, I don’t know if, I think,
Helen: I mean, Chris, you are a little bit younger than me, so, well, the, not that much younger than me.
Chris: The old oven that I used to have in my house here was a 1950s oven, and it had degrees on it. So, I don’t know, I don’t know if it really was a thing.
I, I suppose it must have been at some point, but
Helen: yeah. Yeah, the first oven I cooked on literally had numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, up to I think gas mark eight or something like that. Wow. Would’ve been bonkers. And there was sort of approximate temperatures there and you know, the whole Yeah. Gas ovens. It was like, I think when I was 11 we moved to a house that had a fan oven, so that was when I sort of would’ve stopped.
But the original oven, I, and actually my parents these [00:19:00] days still do have a gas oven, which is hilarious in some ways. And I did a bit of reading with the whole Mocha Mocha. Mm-hmm. And part of the reason was that is I’ve actually read an amazing book this week. I picked it up at the airport this week ’cause I had to go down to Melbourne for work and it’s called Before The Coffee Gets Cold Tails from the Cafe.
Mm-hmm. It’s by Toshi Kazu Ken Gucci. So it’s orig originally written in Japanese, but it’s about a cafe. Where you can go back in time or you can actually go forward in time as well. But nobody ever wants to do that. But you, there’s like one seat in the cafe where you can do this and you have to be back before the coffee gets cold.
What I discovered was that this was, Actually the second of a book, there’s actually the first one is called Before the Coffee Gets Cold. I, I really enjoyed it. It was a really short book. I’ve actually bought the first book now as well. [00:20:00] Nice. But in it, they talked about the coffee that the that they serve in the cafe and One of the interesting things is they talked about MOA coffee, and I, I don’t know about you, but I always thought MOA coffee was always chocolate and coffee.
I, you know, macino, things like that. What, what is it, this is what I did a little bit of deep delving and I hope listeners find this interesting too, that mocha is actually m o k H A is actually a port in Yemen. From which in the, I think the, the, the 16th century, maybe the 17th century was a big center of the coffee trade.
And so a lot of the original trade came through the, I think the idea was that nomadic tribes from Ethiopia had first sort of cultivated this and then there was sort of a trade. Sort of built up from there. And so Mocha coffee was sort of a richer [00:21:00] type of coffee originally, and the, the sort of association of, of, of coffee and chocolate that became to be known as Mocha. Was something that was very much sort of, I think the first mention of it was in a Betty Crocker recipe in like 1880 something.
Chris: Wow.
Helen: So it’s quite a, and then there was another reference in the 1920s. So it’s sort of, and it’s sort of. Because unfortunately the, the, the moa, the coffee MOA coffee trade had sort of been superseded by other coffee trades and other things, and unfortunately these days, Yemen is a quite a, an unstable place for the mm-hmm.
The people that live there. But the idea of the, the chocolate coffee combo was to sort of simulate the richness of the original mocha coffee. But yeah, in the the cafe, they talk about how they actually managed to still source this coffee. And I thought that was quite [00:22:00] interesting. So it’s really cool.
Maybe I’ve spent too much time in Melbourne, but I’m like, oh, maybe you could look into that as different coffee. I, I,
I think so. Yeah.
Chris: I think traveling and reading can give you different perspectives on food that you haven’t really thought about before. Mm-hmm. Yes. Mm-hmm. Definitely through the books you read, but also through understanding different cultures takes on things.
Recently I went to Europe and in preparation for that, I learned about. You know, Belgian dishes, ’cause we were going to Brussels for three days. I’m like, okay, let, let’s prepare for this. Let’s, let’s go to our good old friend Nigella and see what she does.
Helen: And yes we apologize in advance listeners.
Chris: Oh yeah. We really should.
Helen: Nigella there is a lot of Nigella love between myself and Chris, so she’s gonna come up. The, the high priestess of our urban religion will come up a lot. Anyway, sorry, Chris.[00:23:00]
Chris: The, I, I found this lovely dish called Stouffles also known as
Helen: I like that word.
Chris: I think it’s like a Carbonnade or, or something like that.
I’ll, I’ll have to find the exact name of it, but basically it’s a Belgian stew. Yeah, we made it. And basically what it is, is it’s a slow cooked beef stew, but it’s braised in beer, so it’s a beer braised beef stew, and it is gorgeous. And I made this and I’m like, this is beautiful. I love it. And then I went to Brussels and we had it on the first night we were there.
I’m like, mm-hmm. This is so much better than mine. What is different? But it was essentially the same thing, but it was, I think I know what it is. I think it was white pepper, but [00:24:00] I was, I was pouring over this dish for five minutes going, what is that like?
Helen: But that, that, I mean, maybe it was just the aura of being somewhere different.
Chris: Exactly
Helen: the taste and, you know, the localness of ingredients like. There’s that thing that you can never quite recreate those special dishes and stuff. Yeah. But yeah, so yeah, that’s, that’s sort of all I had and, and it’s nice that we’ve gone down a couple of different roads and I’m sure this will be a, a feature of our things.
Chris: I, I think we’ll always go on segues. Yeah,
Helen: which is good. This is good. So, yeah, Chris I see from show notes or a inverted comments script you chose an omelet. Now I did notice that you have spelt it again. I should say that I’m not. Great on spelling, but you spelled it O m l e t T. Now I wondered if this was intentional, ’cause [00:25:00] I thought omelet normally had something like an E on something on the end, but, mm-hmm.
But also, you know, what’s, what’s so special about this recipe? From the handmade Cookbook.
Chris: So first I’ll address the spelling. I called my mother this morning because she, she of course was the person who made this book for me. And I’m like, so what, what’s with the spelling? And she’s like, oh, how did I spell it?
And I told her, and she’s like, I must have just been having a bad day. I was writing three of these books. Two, two for you, brother.
Helen: Oh, she did them all at
the same time?
Chris: Yep.
Helen: Beautiful.
Chris: And she also did my cousin’s book as well at the same time. Mm-hmm. So all three of us kids got books that year and yeah, she just must have.
Had a day is her comment. But, but this recipe I really love. And it’s one of my earliest cooking memories, [00:26:00] like proper in the kitchen, cooking with dad. My dad was a chef and he has always, like mom’s always cooked as well, but if dad got in the kitchen, you knew something special was happening or something.
Something interesting was happening and the, I must have been like 15 or 16 when he first made the, got me to make this with him, and there’s something about French cooking where he just excels. He, he would say it’s butter. Like
I was gonna say, it’s either something about the technique, because my understanding of French cooking is, it’s sort of simple, but that Belies the technique of it, but also having watched Guillame Brahimi a lot it’s, butter it’s spelled B U D D E R.
Yeah. Yeah. To the point where when my [00:27:00] parents were over at Christmas time, mum went through a local bookshop and she found. A book and went, this is for your father. And I looked and I went, yep. This is all about butter and all the recipes you can make with butter. Yeah, that’s him. That’s definitely him.
This is a really simple recipe, but it’s sort of scalable recipe as well. And so it says two eggs per person. So at that point you go, right, how many people am I making eggs for? Mm-hmm. And everything else is scalable to that salt and pepper to taste, obviously at the end. And half an egg shell of water per egg.
Now, I don’t always follow this, but that, that’s what dad has always said is half an egg shell of water. And from here it gets
Helen: That’s, that’s a wonderful measurement [00:28:00] actually. Yeah. I mean, I think with my omelets, I usually put milk in and it’s a, a, a tablespoon or a spoon of milk per egg. Mm-hmm. But I, I love that idea of a half an eggshell.
That’s, that’s,
Chris: well all, all, all, all of a sudden it’s scalable, right. Because mm-hmm. You can go. Hey, I’m doing two people, so that’s four eggs, so that’s two eggs of water. And I was like that. That’s so simple. How do you get to that? But I guess that’s a conversation for another day. But then a as yours is Helen.
This recipe goes very shall we say airy fairy. Oh, it basically just says, Whisk eggs, add salt, pepper, and water. And then whisk again doesn’t, say consistency doesn’t say anything like that. Just says whisk all the things and whisk again.
Helen: It’s sort of like we’ve already practiced this together so you [00:29:00] know what you’re doing. Pretty much
so inherent knowledge.
Chris: Then there’s heat, skillet pan grease with butter now. Excellent. You know, this is my father at play. It’s basically grease it in butter, not in oil. And I’m like, okay, yes, dad got it. To the point where I now fry eggs and butter. But wow, we get to that another day. Pour in egg mixture and cook until almost set, add extra ingredients such as ham, cheese, tomato, chicken, or mushroom if required.
Helen: Ah, so you put the ingredients in at that point. So with me, my omelets usually end up being more scrambled egg. Mm-hmm. And probably a lot of it is because I’ve put the ingredients in before, apart from cheese, I will put in the egg mixture. Yep. Especially tomatoes, [00:30:00] which is often a bit of a mistake because they go a bit watery and stuff.
Chris: Yeah, don’t, don’t put,
Helen: yeah. Okay. I know my, my omelets are not beautiful, but they taste okay. But it sounds like this is gonna be a beautiful omelet.
Chris: The final step is fold in half. Cook for a further two to three minutes. Now, this is the step I always have problems with, and I’m guessing that most of our listeners will also have problems with this step as well, because I can never do an omelet without it cracking at the back and that cheese melting out and you’ve got a pan full of cheese.
Helen: I. A pan full of cheese. There are worse things in life
Chris: there, there are worse things in life. See the start of this episode, we, we would, we are very much into cheese in this, in this house. But, you know, to the point where I don’t necessarily follow this recipe so much [00:31:00] anymore, but I use it as a first.
Okay. I use, mm-hmm. I use the first half for the recipe very much. But the second half, I go, you know what? I’ve got bacon that I’m using for this omelet. I’m just going to fry the bacon off in that first, and then, yeah, put everything else on top of that. Mm-hmm. And. I’m even at the point where I don’t even fold the, the omelet anymore. Sorry, dad. I,
Helen: oh, you’re gonna get letters about that.
Chris: I, I know I am. I absolutely know I am. But what I do is I put the cheese on top and I put it in the grill.
Helen: So it’s like a parmi omelet
Chris: pretty much.
Helen: Oh my God. Grilled omelet. Oh dear. That is amazing. So the thing there is that not only have you got that recipe, but the recipe, it’s like gone over like a Pokemon esque evolution.
Absolutely. Absolutely. The it is are most unrecognizable [00:32:00] from the original omelet in the recipe.
Chris: But reading it again, I am tempted to try again. And I know I’m probably gonna fail again, but I will give it a go. I think that’s the other thing about these books is you can find things that you haven’t necessarily looked at in a while and go, yeah, oh yeah, I make this all the time, but this is different
and yeah.
Helen: Yeah. I’ve, you know, you’ve evolved it in your head and, and Yeah. ’cause you don’t even look at the recipe anymore. I, I think it was good. Actually to reflect on the before where we went and talked about the travel ness of food mm-hmm. Is that omelet for me is very evocative of my time in Japan. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Where, you know, those beautiful perfect you know, Japanese omelets that if you go to like a breakfast bar at Japan, there’ll be a, a chef who’s just putting them out, you know? Yeah, three every minute or something that is so diametrically opposite [00:33:00] to what I would call an omelet. And I have great ambitions to, to make something that perfect, but I’m not sure it’s ever gonna happen.
Someone for my birthday bought me a very lovely cookbook about Japanese sort of bar cooking. And they have that recipe where it’s the omelet you put on rice and you split it and it just sort of like flops on the rice. Yeah. So there’s, there’s a lot of technique to it and a lot of practice and things and I’m not the most technical.
Of home cooks, but I, I, I It’s so to aspire to, isn’t
it? Yeah.
Chris: And I think this is also a thing is about home cooking is about practice. It’s, well, it’s about two things. It’s about having the confidence to have a go and then it’s about, okay, this didn’t work so well, but let’s try again and let’s try and learn the things that maybe didn’t work so well.
Helen: [00:34:00] Yep. Yeah, it’s true. And the thing is, it’s always eating the disasters as well. Yeah. That, and we’re gonna have a whole episode on that, folks. Yeah. I think we called it unexpected successes though.
Chris: Yes. Yes we did. Yes, we did.
Helen: It’s very positive of us.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. But no, that, that’s everything I’ve got about omelet.
Do you have any other thoughts about omelets?
Helen: No, I think, I think that’s, that’s pretty good. I’m very hungry now, so I’m thinking we should wrap up and then I could go buy some
cheese.
I
Chris: think so too. Well,
folks on that one.
Helen: Or maybe make an omelet.
Chris: Oh, I’ve, I’ve had breakfast already. Do I really want, yeah, I want me
too.
Helen: I mean, second breakfast.
Chris: Second breakfast. Yes. Yes. This is definitely a thing that could happen. And on that note, folks, that is our episode for today. We both hope that you’ve enjoyed what we’ve put together. We’d love to hear your stories of [00:35:00] homemade cookbooks and the dirty pages within them. Please let us know by email at hello@thedirtypage.com.
Helen: Yes, please. Or you can tag us on Instagram or as I was trying to call it the Gram, but Chris wasn’t that impressed where we are. Dirty page pod all one word, and you can find posts of our homemade cookbooks there and the dirty pages we’ve been talking about. So our next episodes theme will be on first cookbooks, stroke student cookbooks.
So dig out your first cookbook your student cookbook, and tell us what your dirty page is.
Chris: In the meantime, you can find our website, which is still in progress and might not be live when this goes up, but it will have the details of the recipes we’ve talked about today and transcripts of the pod at dirtypagepod.com.
Do check us out before we get taken down for people thinking it’s a porn site.
Helen: Well, let’s see how [00:36:00] things pan out eh?.
Oh dear. We have descended it now. And we have, you can also catch Yeah, we have. You can also catch Chris’s weekly cooking adventures at Twitch tv slash. Ginger Chris, 86. Follow him along. Is it every Sunday you’ve, you you stream for hilarity Every Sunday?
Chris: Every Sunday at 11 o’clock. A e s t,
Helen: For your yeah. Good. Your dose of cooking hilarity. What you doing this week, Chris?
Chris: I’m not, I’m taking the week off. Oh, you have a week off? ’cause I’m having a week off ’cause I’m going to see some friends. Oh,
Helen: you are indeed. I wonder who they’re I’m indeed. I wonder who they could be.
Yeah.
Chris: Well, thank you everyone for joining us, and I hope you’ll have a lovely time.
Helen: Thank you everyone. Take care.
Chris: The dirty Page is created, written and produced by Helen Maynard Caley and Chris Sims, and is licensed under a creative commons attribution, [00:37:00] non-commercial share like 4.0 International License. Idea, logo and social media handled by Helen Maynard-Casely, website, and editing handled by Chris Sims.
If you would like to contact us, you can email us at hello@thedirtypage.com or follow us on Instagram at Dirty Page Pod.