Taryn Nicole, Author at Retro Food For Modern Times

Author: Taryn Nicole

19
Oct
2021

A Murder on The Orient Express Collab

categories: Celebrity Recipes, Desserts, Dried Fruit, Film, Fish, Poirot

All aboard! Welcome friends to a cooking and murder collab between Silver Screen Suppers and Retro Food For Modern Times. Jenny and I have been tallking about doing this literally for months! I am breaking my usual Dining with the Dame Format to cook recipes by the stars of the 1974 version of Murder on The Orient Express and half a world away in London Jenny is doing the same. Jenny provided the recipes and we agreed to watch the film on the same day!

Murder on The Orient Express 1974 – The Film

As with the Kenneth Brannagh 2017 film, the 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express is a star-studded affair! The rather schlocky trailer describes it as the “Who’s who in the whodunnit”.

Albert Finney stars as Poirot Agatha Christie herself gave Albert the thumbs up in his portrayal of Poirot. (He was excellent, and his denouement at the end is amazing – he had to learn 8 pages of script off by heart to do it – but for me, David Suchet is, and will only ever be, the true Poirot).

Others in the cast include Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Jacqueline Bisset, Sean Connery, Sir John Gielgud, Anthony Perkins, Vanessa Redgrave and Michael York to name but a few! Ingrid Bergman won an Oscar as best supporting actress for her role in this. Albert Finney was nominated but missed out to Art Carney from Harry and Tonto.

The film follows the story of the Agatha Christie novel with the luxurious Orient Express train stuck in a snow bank with no one being able to get on or off the train. One of the guests is stabbed to death in the night. It is up to Hercule Poirot to discover whodunnit!. He soon learns that the victim is connected to the kidnapping of Daisy Armstrong 5 years before. And the group of seemingly disparate strangers on the train may not be all they seem!

The stroy is based on two true events, the first being the very famous kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby i n 1932, the second was an incident when the Orient Express was trapped for 6 days in a blizzard in Turkey in 1929.

But now, we would like you to head over to the buffet car to sample today’s menu,

The Menu

Trout in Cream Saice

For your dining pleasure on today’s journey from Istanbul to Caiais, we are delighted to be serving Trout with Cream Sauce, a recipe by Ms Ingrid Bergman.

This was delicious! Trout is such a delicate fish and the lemony cream sauce was a perfect accompaniment to it. I served mine with chips (very un Orient Express), beans, broccolini and some cherry tomatoes. It was also incredibly easy to make!!! Without the chips, it is an elegant and light dish which would be worthy of the Orient Express!

The whole time I was making the trout I was singing the Billy Bragg / Wilco song :

Ingrid Bergman, Ingrid Bergman
Let’s go make a picture
On the island of Stromboli
Ingrid Bergman

And I deft anyone who knows this song to do otherwise!

Ingrid Bergman plays Greta Ohlsson in the film and she won the Academy Award for best-supporting actress for her role. I would give her an Oscar for that trout recipe because it was chef’s kiss mwah!!!

Prune Fool Syllabub

To end your meal, we are serving Prune Fool by Ms. Wendy Hiller. Wendy plays Princess Dragomiroff in Murder. I feel that the Prune Fool, despite its name has the hint of gravitas equal to such a grand dame!

I LOVED the Prune Fool! The prunes and currants (I didn’t have sultanas in the red wine combined beautifully with the cream and shortbread. Eating this made me feel like a grownup. for something that is so simple to make, the end result is sophisticated.

I feel both of these dishes would meet Poirot’s approval!

Just as an aside, it appears as if, whilst on the Orient Express, Poirot has eschewed his normal tisanes and sirops for a little glass of…creme de menthe? Drunk via a straw no less.

But, I digress, back to the Prune Fool.
I know I am biased but how pretty is it?

Here’s the recipe:

Cooking for this was so fun! I loved the film as well! And it is always fun to have a shared project. Thank you Jenny for the recipes and for joining in particularly on one of the big hitters like Murder on The Orient Express. (Let’s not wait 6 months before we do another!!!) And if anyone else would like to Dine with the Dame and me, please let me know!!!

If you would like to see what Jenny cooked and how she celebrated Murder Sunday, head over to Silver Screen Suppers for a look!

I’ll be back next week with a more traditional version of Dining with the Dame – Murder on the Orient Express 2 (Electric Boogaloo).

Have a great week and happy watching!

10
Oct
2021

Sole au Vermouth – Lord Edgware Dies

categories: Dining With The Dame, Fish, Poirot

Hello crime readers and food lovers! Today we are Dining not only with Dame Agatha but also with Vincent Price. What a combo!! And it’s not the first time these two have met either. But more about that later. On the menu is Sole au Vermouth from Vincent Price’s A Treasury of Great Recipes. And top of our reading list is Lord Edgware Dies. This is another absolute cracker of a novel. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Lord Edgware Dies is a novel, where if you pay close attention and you know some Christie tropes you can, I think, quite easily figure out whodunnit it. I won’t mention the specific trope here because spoilers but let’s just say that people of a certain profession are quite often the villains in the novels so far!

Lord Edgware Dies – The Plot

Jane Wilkinson aka Lady Edgware wants a divorce. She asks Poirot to speak to her husband about granting her one. Although reluctant to do so, Poirot speaks to Lord Edgware, only to find that he says he has already agreed to a divorce. Then…wait for it….Lord Edgware dies (quelle surprise!). He is murdered in his home. His butler and housekeeper claim that Lady Edgware was the last person to see him alive as she visited the house that evening. However, 12 people swear to her having been at a dinner party with them at the time of the murder.

It is up to my beloved trinity of Hastings, Japp but mostly Poirot to figure out who did him in!

On top of a dead Lord we also have :

An actress who died from an overdose of veronal
A mysterious gold case
A dead actor
Altered letters
A mysterious American widow
An impoverished nephew who stands to inherit the Lord’s considerable wealth

Lord Edgware Dies – The Covers

Finding non-English Christie covers has become quite an obsession of mine. Here we have a Farsi version, a Russian edition, two French versions, and another possibly Eastern European edition. Dead centre is the Tom Adams version which eschews the normal symbolism for a pretty graphic knife in the head. It is not a corn knife, which was the murder weapon in Lord Edgware Dies but in “Tom Adams Uncovered” Tom Adam says that it was “nice little paper-knife of mine”. He also says he thinks Agatha Christie was not happy with the cover.

It is also definitely of a piece with Adams’ illustration for The Murder of Roger Ackroyd:

The Recipe – Sole au Vermouth

‘We will dine first Hastings. And until we drink our coffee, we will not discuss the case further. When engaged in eating, the brain should be the servant of the stomach.”

Poirot was as good as his word. We went to a litlte restaurant in Soho where he was well known, and there we had a delicious omelette, a sole, a chicken and a Baba au Rhum of which Poirot was inordinaltey fond”

Agatha Christie, Lord Edgware Dies

Disclaimer, we do not have sole in Australia so I cooked flathead. It tasted lovely and I very much liked VP’s idea of browning the sauce.

Other Food Mentioned in Lord Edgware Dies

Champagne, cocktails and old brandy in an immense goblet

Coffee (twice)

The ever present Whisky Soda (twice)

An omeltte (three times)

A chicken

A Baba au Rhum – I was tempted to make one of these but given I have already made a Savarin of Rum which is very similar I felt I would hold off. Given Poirot is said to be fond of them, I’m sure I will have another opportunity.

Next chronologically in the Christie canon is 1934’s Three Act Tragedy. But we may be skipping that one for the moment as we have a very special Christie collab coming up…stay tuned!

Have a great week, and for another great collab, here is something else combining Vincent Price and Agatha Christie.

02
Oct
2021

Lemon Barley Water

categories: Drinks, Lemon, Non - Alcoholic

When life gives some people lemons, they make lemonade. We, here at Retro Food For Modern Times never like to follow the crowd so we made lemon barley water. As previously mentioned, our backyard lemon tree is laden and because we are now in our sixty-fifth year of lockdown (or our 240th day – which feels like 65 years) we can go nowhere nor can anyone visit us so the opportunities for giving away our lemon crop are few. Other people in the area have cornered the market in setting boxes of lemons on the pavement for walkers by to pick up so we can’t even give ours away to strangers.

I was contemplating setting up my own Lucy Van Pelt-esque lemonade stand. And then, as if we don’t have enough to contend with, on top of the 240 days of lockdown already mentioned, we also had an earthquake! I now think the idea of the psychiatric stand is a better option. I mean how much more are we expected to put up with?

If you would like to see the most Australian response to the earthquake watch this. If you are offended by profanity and you watch it, that’s on you. I gave you fair warning.

Anyhoo, we were talking about Lemon barley water. It is a very old-fashioned drink. They used to serve it at tennis tournaments when I played as a teenager and I remember it as being refreshing and not too sweet. It is also the perfect drink to serve in this delightful fruit-inspired jug and glasses that I found the last time I went antiquing.

Benefits of Lemon Barley Water

You might be wondering why make lemon barley water and not just good old-fashioned lemonade? Well, I had some barley that had been sitting in the pantry for a while….

Also, according to healthline.com barley water may:

Lower cholesterol
Control blood sugar
Promote weightloss
Improve digestion
Lower the risk of cancer
Support the immune system and,
it is rich in vitamins and antioxidants.

I suspect that some of these benefits are not as prevalent in this version which contains quite an amount of sugar but it is also probably no worse for you than many sweet drinks. The slight nutty barley flavour with the lemon is very pleasant.

I used the recipe for Lemon Barley water that was on the back of the pack of barley. You can also find it here. I added the juice of an extra lemon juice into my mixture to give it a bit more zing as I thought the initial end product was a bit bland.

What to do with the leftover barley

The making of lemon barley water does cause one issue – what to do with the barley. Some other recipes I looked at suggested it could be served unstrained in which case you would get more of the health benefits of the barley. I was not in the mood for a lemon barley bubble tea so I rinsed the lemon and sugar off the strained cooked barley and made a tabbouleh-like salad with more lemon juice, a heap of parsley and some tomatoes with some of it. I also mixed the rest of the rinsed barley with the dogs’ food so none of it went to waste! And we were all pretty happy!

Have a great week!

25
Sep
2021

Melktert

categories: 1970's recipes, Africa, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, Pastry, World Cooking

My recipe for Melktert comes from the South African chapter of Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery and it is a baked custard tart. It is called Melktert because the day before the recipe for the OG Milk Tart went to print, someone broke into the printing press and stole all bar one of the vowels.

Some people would tell you that it is a dish that originated in Holland and it kept the Dutch spelling when it came to South Africa. However, we at RFFMT prefer not to allow truth to get in the way of a good story. Besides the visual image of a never say die printer triumphantly adding e’s to where the i and a had been, humming a prototypical version of The Shamen’s 1992 hit Ebeneezer Goode as he did so was too good not to share.

I pondered whether in homage to the melktert, I should also write this post using the letter e as my only vowel.

That idea lasted all of about 5 seconds – I got as far as “Here. Melktert. Sweet” and gave up.

The Melktert was delicious! Just the right amount of sweetness and the almonds on top gave a nice crunch. There was a lot of the filling mix leftover so I think next time I make it I will try a deeper dish which would also mean there would be more of the slightly cinnamon-y custard which could only be s a good thing! The recipe does state a deep pie dish!

Melktert :The Recipe

That’s all folks, nothing much else to say except:

Melktert – Excellent? Yes!

Enjoy your weekend!

09
Sep
2021

Pieathalon 8 – Ozark Pie

categories: 1960's recipes, Cook A Long, Pieathalon

Friends and pie lovers, it’s that wonderful time of year when food bloggers from all over the world celebrate the beauty of old-time pie by swapping recipes! And this year my pie came from S.S over at A Book of Cookrye, Ozark Pie! The timing was exceptional because I has been looking for a new show to watch and Ozark Pie was just the push I needed to start binging the Netlix show Ozark.

It’s always nerve wracking to see what pie you get. There’s always a fear that it might be something utterly horrible.

But as with the last recipe I got from SS, this one was an absolutel belter. So without any further preamble

Now, you may be wondering what is an Ozark Pie? Well for a start it’s not really a pie. It’s a very thick batter mixed with apples and nuts. I used walnuts but the recipe doesn’t specify so you can use what you like, or what you have.

I was going to start bitching here about weird measurements by the cup are for things like apples and walnuts but…

This was 2 small apples:

Now let’s get back to that batter. It was STIFF. I could barely stir it, And trying to mix the apples and walnuts into it was hard work!! But I eventually managed to get it somewhat mixed and into the pie dish. The result was not pretty!

Up close it was even worse. It looked liked a plate of sick…

Hmm…yes, but how? I put it in the oven and hoped that the magic alchemy is cooking would turn this toad into a prince.

But…about twenty minutes into the cook, something did start to happen. First there was a glorious smell of baked apples and sugar and….pie!!!!

And a few minutes later look what came out of the oven!

The batter was just the right level of sweet, the apples were juicy, the walnuts were toasty!!!!

We loved this pie! It was really delicious and very simple to make.

Shame not everyone felt the same way!

Ozark Pie – The Recipe

Well, for those of you who do not prefer French Toasts Sticks, here’s the recipe:

Thanks to SS for the fab recipe and Yinzerella for organising! Why not head over to see what they, and all the other Pieathletes cooked up! Also make sure to swing by Vintage Recipe Cards to see how my pick of Rum and Butterscotch Pie turned out!

The Pieathletes

(at the time of posting this list is incomplete and some of the links don’t work. I’ll refresh and add over the next day or so because it is now nearly the end of my day but many of the athletes will only be waking up about now)

Rum and Butterscotch Pie at Vintage Recipe Cards
Surprise Fudge Pie at Silver Screen Suppers
Tarte a l’Orange at Recipes for Rebels
Chocolate-Crusted Coffee Pie at Grannie Pantries
Osgood Pie at A Book of Cookrye
Tarte au Petite Suisse at The Nostalgic Cook
Save Your Marriage Meat Pie by Dr Bobb
Mahogany Pie from Dinner is Served 1972

Have a great week friends, and remember…eat pie!