My sainted father used to call my mother's cooking "slopdosh" on occasion. Slopdosh, also absquatulate, are not words in common parlance these days, which is a pity, I think.
I write in praise of slopdosh, not literally of a mixture of mud and water but of the domestic economy of stews and curries. In hindsight, perhaps my father was not overly complimentary but his vocabulary was probably influenced by an institution that calls their fine dining facilities a Mess.
My father served in Burma and India during the Second World War. He brought home some interesting western oriental weapons, some exotic health problems, and a dislike of curry.
Curry contains garlic, cumin, turmeric and many other spices, and it is a wonderful preservative of elderly food and also a fine disguiser of less pleasant tastes and textures. The more times you cook a curry, the better it tastes, but the more indistinguishable its ingredients become. Hence, slopdosh.
I've got arthritis, alas. For a few months, I gave up potatoes (which I love), also tomatoes, peppers, chillies, and eggplant, and was doing well. Last weekend, I mashed potatoes and made the most delicious fish pie (rather like cottage pie or shepherds pie, in that, instead of pastry, one has mashed potatoes on top of the protein slop). Well, that was a bad idea!!!!! I had a flare up and could hardly walk or lift anything as heavy as a bottle of water, and if I got on my knees, I had to crawl for quite a distance before I hit a position from which I could get back to my feet. So, I had to call in a professional to help me clean my kitchen and my fridge this week.
My all-American cleaner said I am disgusting. What prompted this feedback? She saw a well-wrinkled apple, a half cabbage, some slightly wilted beetroot leaves, some carrot top leaves and the green ends of a couple of leeks, green stalks of broccolini, and a bowl of the parts of two cauliflowers that most people discard, the root end of a heart of celery, the remains of stewed prunes in cranberry juice, and a coffee mug full of kale stalks. She would have thrown it out.
On the bright side, she put my trusty electric crock pot within reach.
In times of food insecurity and rising prices, slop dosh is a good thing. I put a good splash of virgin olive oil into the crock pot, added diced onion, shredded leek greens, torn wilted beetroot leaves, chopped nasty bits of cauliflower (not actually nasty, in fact, surprisingly tender if the knobbly bits are discarded) and most of my other fridge contents (including the kale stalks) and seared it in the oil with half a jar of curry powder, then added reserved vegetable water and simmered the lot on and off during off peak electric hours.
By the way, I have attended two presentations by Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn of the Cleveland Clinic in which his wife and daughter flourishingly strip the leafy bits from kale, but in my experience the stalky bits can also be snipped with kitchen scissors, cooked in slop dosh and are excellent fiber for bowel health.
My internist tells me that I eat the most healthy diet of any of his patients. My gynecologist tells me that I am the only patient she has who eats sardines. (Sardines are good because they are the whole fish, soft, calcium rich backbone and all.)
This boiling of leftovers gave me a base for at least 8 meals for two, assuming that I add cooked chicken, or chick peas, or beans, or mussel meats, or shrimp/prawns, etc for protein respectively to each double portion. I've frozen some, recooked the rest. The French call reheated leftovers "rechauffe" which sounds ever so much more acceptable, doesn't it?
Curry can be as fruity as you wish. Old pineapple does well, or blueberries, or dried raisins or cranberries or cherries or ginger... or apples or figs. Wilted lettuce works, as does peeled and well cooked parsnip. I cannot recommend bananas, though. You can thicken your slop dosh with Bisto gravy powder or granules, or Taco sauce powder, but it won't need much thickening.
Talking of ginger, the candied stuff is fine. The powder is only good for flavor. Fresh ginger has the best health benefits.
Americans don't seem to like beetroot. One tip is to boil it. Then peel off the skin by pressing firmly with a thumb, then slice it and reheat it in Braswell pepper or chili jelly with a sprinkling of chili powder.
Set aside the liquor from cooking the original beetroot, because no matter how well you wash your beets, some sandy grit remains. Let the grit sink, pour off most of the water and discard the last inch. Use the red water to cook red or black beans from dry, and/or barley.
Another gross but fascinating thing I like to do is break a cob of corn in half, leave it out to dry overnight, then use a thumb to tease out the niblets, row by row, and add them to a dish every third day. Some always survive digestion. Nuff said.
Apologies that this has nothing to do with copyright law.
All the best,
Rowena Cherry
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