Twenty Years Ago Today – September 2002

Hello Friends!!!   I’m going to be very honest here.  I have a problem.  I love a food magazine as much as I love a cookbook and have been collecting them for many years.  Too many years it turns out as I am running out of space to keep them.  They are here:

And here

And are now piling up on the floor here:

So, something needed to be done before the fussiest eater in the world calls the Hoarders team on me.  And as with many problems, the solution came to me while I was on holiday and not really thinking about them.  In order to help me decide which mags to keep and which to cull, I will cook out of them!  And blog about it. One month at a time.  In order to assess them, I am going to apply a straightforward formula – if I can build a decent three-ish course meal from any magazine, it will stay in my collection.  If that is impossible, it will go into the donation box.

So shall we see what September 2002 via Good Taste Magazine had in store for me?

The Menu

It looks like this one might be a keeper!  Even the selection on the menu above is only some of the recipes I would cook from this mag.  But the proof of the magazine recipe is in the eating so let’s see how I went with cooking some of the items off said menu.

Pink Grapefruit & Mint Caipiroska

As much as I love a margarita, I am choosing the Caipiroska.  I love pink grapefruit, I love mint and I also love the etymology of the work Caipiroska – it is basically a Brazilian Portuguese ellison between  caipi- (shortened from caipirinha) and -roska meaning Russian as the spirit in a caipiroska is vodka.

These were delicious!!!  Just the right amount of sugar syrup to balance out the grapefruit.  And the mint made it all very fresh.   If you cannot find palm sugar for the sugar syrup you could use brown sugar instead

Pink Grapefruit & Mint Caipiroska Recipe

Tandoori Fish Skewers

These were so tasty!

Now, you may be wondering where is the pea rice in the recipe?  Well, I’m not that fond of a pea so I swapped that out for roti and a tomato, red onion and coriander salad.  I also dropped in a little  raita.

Tandoori  Fish SkewersRecipe

The recipes for the other items on my menu can be found here and here

My Nigella Moment

What is a Nigella moment?  You know how at the end of each episode of a Nigella tv show, you see her popping back to the fridge for just one more bite of something?  Well, my Nigella moment will be one thing that didn’t make the menu but something I look forward to cooking (and eating) in the near future.

There were a few contenders in the mag:

• A margarita
• A prawn, avocado and watercress salad with dijon mayonnaise
• A rocky road slice

However, the winner in this category is this corn and chive pancake with smoked salmon!

Random fun fact from September 2002

There was a little article on broad beans which contained the following bits of trivia:

Favism is severe condition brought on by eating broad beans in people who have a particular genetic enzyme deficiency.  It can bring on fever, fatigue, jaundice, anaemia and abdominal and back pain!

The Greek philosopher Pythagoras banned his followers from eating broad beans.  No one actually know why but theories include their flatulence inducing properties to the belief that they contained the souls of the dead.  (Or maybe Pythagoras was someone with favism?)

Broad beans aka fava beans gained some pop culture cred with this statement by Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs:

I hope you’ve enjoyed  this trip back in time to September 2002.

Have a great week!