Barry C. Parsons - Rock recipes : The Best Food From My Newfoundland Kitchen

Barry C. Parsons

Rock Recipes

The Best Food From My Newfoundland Kitchen

WWW.BREAKWATERBOOKS.COM

Breakwater Books is committed to choosing papers and materials for our books that help to protect our environment. To this end, this book is printed on a recycled paper that is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council of Canada.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Parsons, Barry C., author
Rock recipes : the best food from my Newfoundland kitchen /
Barry C. Parsons.
ISBN 978-1-55081-555-9 (bound)
1. Cooking, Canadian--Newfoundland and Labrador style.
2. Cooking--Newfoundland and Labrador. 3. Cookbooks I. Title.
TX715.6.P367 2014 641.59718 C2014-901925-4

Copyright 2014 Barry C. Parsons

All Rights Reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any meansgraphic, electronic or mechanicalwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping or storing in an information retrieval system of any part of this book shall be directed in writing to Access Copyright, One Yonge Street, Suite 800, Toronto, Ontario, M5E 1E5.

	We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador through the Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation for our publishing activities.
PRINTED AND BOUND IN CANADA.

For
Ruby Yetman, who thought a Betty Crocker Cookbook was
a perfectly fine Christmas gift for a fifteen-year-old boy.

Contents

I was a curious kid in their kitchens.

Lets get one thing out of the way from the very beginning: I am not a chef.

Ive never taken a cooking lesson in my life, except from my mom, grandmothers, or aunts when I was a curious kid in their kitchens. Im just an enthusiastic home cook whos had a lifelong love of cooking, baking, and developing my own recipes by experimenting in the kitchen. My culinary experiments started even before my teen years with a particular love of baking, and from there, advanced into cooking as well. I was quite a finicky eater as a child, and I think I subconsciously learned that if I cooked, I controlled what went on the dinner table for my parents and five siblings. I still tell parents of picky eaters today not to be too hard on their discerning kids; they might all turn out to be pretty good cooks one day.

With years of cooking and baking experience under my belt, like many others with plenty of kitchen know-how, Ive developed a pretty good sense of what ingredients will work well together in a main dish and what flavors, textures, and ingredient proportions work well in a good baking recipe too. That means my kitchen adventures these days are much more hits than the sometimes misses of my trial-and-error early days. I always say I am my own best teacher but also my most inefficient.

I dont have a sprawling gourmet kitchen. I have a 10 x 11 kitchen with not nearly enough counter space. Ive never paid thousands, or even hundreds, for a set of high-end cookware or bake ware. I dont have all the latest gadgets or much interest in them either. Other than my stove, the most expensive thing in my kitchen is my Kitchen Aid stand mixer. A food processor and a blender are my only two other small kitchen appliances. My point, of course, is that its the cook that makes the meal and not the cooking implements. I tell young cooks starting out to learn about cooking basics first and decide what their kitchens actually need as they hone their skills and learn more. Some of us would have saved a fortune with that approach.

My food philosophy is pretty simple: Real quality ingredients and a good simple recipe is all it takes to prepare real everyday food for real people. I was once in a supermarket line where the lady behind me was struggling to keep masses of cardboard and plastic over-packaged products from spilling out of two overloaded carts. My one cart was full of ingredients to actually cook meals withplus I probably had twice the food as her at half the cost. While many of the popular recipes on my blog and in these pages can sometimes be a little indulgent, I contend that if you are not eating out of packages, you are still eating better than many. I say balanced eating is much more achievable with real food than with preservative ridden processed foods.

This book is a collection of some of the most popular recipes on my Rock Recipes blog, gathered over the past seven years, with a few of my personal favorites and some brand new recipes developed just for this book too. The recipes have been tried successfully by thousands of real people who, probably just like you, are simply trying to get dinner on the table each weeknight, who like an occasional slow-cooked Sunday comfort-food meal, and who maybe even enjoy finding the perfect celebration cake or dessert to share with family and friends. My purpose in writing this book is to present achievable recipes that anyone will have success with, from an absolute beginner home cook to one with years of experience looking for more great useable recipes. I get amazing positive feedback from folks who follow my blog and regularly try my recipes; its one of the most gratifying things about sharing them over the past several years.

And I am definitely not a pro photographer. Ive always had a philosophy that you can teach yourself practically anything if you have the time. The limited amount that I know about taking a decent photo definitely comes from that trial-and-error mentality. I bought my first decent camera in order to take plenty of baby photos when my daughter was born, and other than reading a beginner photography book to get the basics, Ive never had a lesson in that either.