When a chapter called Nuts about Nourishment contains a recipe for Deep Fried Mashed Potato Balls, you know it has to be 1977. And that we are about to delve into The A-Z of Cooking. Potato Almond Balls. I was so excited about these, I ate salad for a week to pre-compensate for the delicious calorific overload.
And then they didn’t work.
The problem was that the egg and almond crust split in many places…and when it did, the mashed potato kind of disintegrated. So in a lot of instances I ended up with the almond crust and not much else. Where they remained whole, they were totally delicious sprinkled with a bit of smoked paprika and dipped in some of my favorite green sauce.
I’m putting the failure of the balls down to the wrong temperatures. Either the balls were too cold or too warm or the oil was. Is it significant that The A-Z of Cooking has no pictures of this dish? It is possible that their Potato Almond Balls also broke into bits?
Here’s the recipe for anyone who wants it, I hope you have better luck than me!
To counteract the effect of deep fried potato balls (and because I had no other photos) I thought I would give you all an update on my attempts at the C25K running program. Today I started week 7 of the program and ran for 25 minutes which was not only the longest time but also the furthest distance I have done so yay me!
Mind you, this is probably a very apt description of both my pace and my style:
Personally, given my new obsession with the ‘My Favorite Murder Podcast,, this might well become my mantra:
And this is probably closer to the truth:;
Next time in The A-Z we are moving onto O for some “Old Fashioned Favourites”. I was hoping to be done with it by the end of the year but given it is nearly December (how the hell did that happen?) it seems unlikely. I’m now aiming for end of summer.
Today we are exploring the first part of a two-part series taken from the pages of Vogue Entertaining October / November 1989 with a gorgeous Japanese snack plate.
On the plate today we have Japanese Fried Chicken, Prawn Canapé’s, Radish Canapés, edamame beans, wasabi and mayo! This is so pretty, perfect for a Spring brunch!
The magazine comes from a time when ingenious recipes and inventive ideas may have involved giving your guests a bowl of roses to munch on. Yummy!
Roses aside, we are putting some Spring flavours in full bloom on today’s Japanese snack plate. Just as an aside though, guess which day the J key on my laptop decided to break, meaning it had to be hit about four times harder than all the other keys. The sound track for the writing of this post was tap, tap, tap THUMP tap, tap, tap THUMP.
Minor typing difficulties aside, lets turn our attention to some hors d’œuvres for our Japanese snack plate.
Japanese Stuffed Radishes
Could not be simpler and the crunchy peppery radish is delicious with the salty punch of the caviar. Simply slice your radish down the middle of the stem, then scoop out a small hollow in your radish and fill with caviar. I think nowadays if you were making this you would use tobiko instead of normal caviar but maybe that was readily available in 1989. Come to think of it, I have no idea if it is readily available now!
Stuffed Prawns
Pardon me for having two things stuffed with caviar in this post but seeing as I had to buy it specially, I wanted to get some bang for my buck. Also, if it was good enough for Vogue Entertaining in 1989 its good enough for me!
This is also very tasty with this time a contrast between the sweet prawn meat and the salty caviar. Add a dob of pungent wasabi and some creamy mayo and you have perfection! The original recipe had the prawn heads left on. I took mine off. I just think it is easier to eat with head and shells gone.
It is important to skewer the prawns so they stay straight.
To make these you will need:
12 medium green king prawns
2 tsp salt
25g black caviar
Place a satay stick through the body of each prawn to keep it straight. Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil. Drop the prawns in and cook for 3-5 minutes. Remove from the water and leave to cool.
Remove the satay sticks and remove the heads and shells, leaving the tail. Split the prawns down the back with a sharp knife and remove the digestive tracts. Fill the tract cavity with a little caviar. Repeat.
Soy and Ginger Edamame (loosely adapted from A Moveable Feast by Katy Holder)
These are not from Vogue Entertaining Oct /November 1989 but make a tasty and colourful addition to the snack plate.
200g edamame in pods
1/2 tbsp Japanese rice vinegar
1/2 tbsp light olive oil
1/2 tbsp mirin
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp grated ginger
pinch of sugar
Cook the edamame in boiling water for 2 minutes. Drain and refresh under cold water. Pop the beans from their pods. Combine all the other ingredients in a bowl, stirring well to dissolve the sugar. Pour over the edamame and sit for at least an hour to let the flavours absorb. Strain and add to the plate.
Japanese Fried Chicken
I did not make this for the snack plate. We had it for dinner the night before but I made extra so we could have it on the plate. This is so good. Huh…it’s fried chicken, like it was ever going to be bad! This was great hot from the fryer in the evening and also super eaten cold the next day – it was not too greasy like a lot of fried chicken as leftovers and still quite crispy, although it is not a thick southern style coating.
