1960's recipes Archives - Retro Food For Modern Times

Category: 1960’s recipes

18
Dec
2023

Christmas Adelaide Pecan Pie

categories: 1960's recipes, Baking, Celebrity Cookbooks, Celebrity Recipes, Pie

Hello friends and greetings of the season! Today’s Christmas Adelaide Pecan Pie comes from Singers and Swingers in the Kitchen. I last visited that book in 2013! The recipe comes from Eva Marie Saint, star of On The Waterfront, North by Northwest and many other films. The Christmas Adelaide Pecan Pie is so called because it was a pecan pie, made every Christmas by Eva Marie’s sister Adelaide.

You’ll see from the above that a made little pies rather than one big pie. I had some mini pie crusts in the freezer from another cooking project so I decided to use them up instead of buying a big pastry shell. Cooking time on the small tarts was 30 minutes. I also could not find dark corn syrup in my local supermarket. I subbed in a mix of 2/3 golden syrup and 1/3 maple syrup.

Is pecan pie served traditionally at Christmas? I would love for one of my American readers to tell me? It feels like it should be – it certainly makes sense when Christmas falls in winter and fresh fruit is in shorter supply than in the summer months.

Chrismas Adelaide Pecan Pie Recipe

If you wanted to double down on recipes from this book, the Christmas Adelaide Pecan Pie would be divine with a scoop of Barbra Streisand’s Coffee Ice Cream. This might also come in handy if you need a snack while reading Barbra’s nearly 1000-page memoir!

Singers and Swingers in The Kitchen The Book

This little book is so much fun! As well as Eva and Barbra, it also includes recipes from The Rolling Stones, Jane Fonda, Don Adams and Barbara Feldman from Get Smart, The Mamas and The Papas, The Monkees and a host more “scene makers”and “groovy gourmets”. My records…well Amazon’s records show I bought this back in 2012 for a measly $15. It now regularly sells for over a hundred!!! If you don’t want to be spending that kind of money, please feel free to browse the archives here for the recipes I’ve already shared. I’m also sure this won’t be the last time I dip into this book.

Have a great week!

21
Oct
2023

Oeufs Caroline – Five Little Pigs

categories: 1960's recipes, Dining With The Dame, Eggs, Poirot

Hello crime readers and food lovers. In what is starting to become a bit of a trend, today’s post is dedicated to one of the main characters in Five Little Pigs, Caroline Crale. To many fans, Five Little Pigs is the nec plus ultra of the Christie novels. And it is an absolute cracker! We never actually meet Caroline as she is sixteen years dead when the story begins. But…what a character. I absolutely loved her. Her dignity, grace, loyalty, and fiery temperament made her a wonderful compelling and intriguing character.

I also feel that all egg recipes are a little wink to Poirot and his egg-shaped head!

I found the recipe for Oeufs Caroline in the French children’s cookbook called La Cuisine Est Un Jeu D’Enfants by Michel Oliver (1963). It is a very cute book and I will definitely cook more from it but the timing on this recipe was completely wrong. You have no idea how many times I ate Oeufs Caroline for lunch this week trying to get it right!

Five Little Pigs – The Plot

The accepted version of certain facts is not necessarily the true one.”

Agatha Christie – Five Little Pigs

A young woman called Carla Lemarchant approaches Hercule Poirot with a very unusual case. Sixteen years ago, her mother, Caroline Crale was found guilty of poisoning her father Amyas Crale. However, before she died in prison, Caroline sent a letter to her daughter professing her innocence. Carla wants Poirot to find out the truth. Did her mother kill her father? Poirot focuses his investigation on the five people, apart from Carla and Caroline who were present on the day Amyas died. For if Caroline is not guilty, then one of them is…

We have:

Philip Blake

A stockbroker (went to market, geddit?) was one of Amyas’ closest friends. On the day of Amyas’ death, he overhears an argument between Caroline and Amyas where Caroline threatens to kill him. Philip is apparently no fan of Caroline and puts the murder down to “crude female jealousy. However, does he have a secret desire to see Amyas dead?

Meredith Blake

Philip’s brother. Unlike his brother who is a successful broker, Meredith stayed home and dabbled in herbalism and other country pursuits. It is some coniine from his laboratory that killed Amyas. Unlike his brother, Meredith admits a fondness for and a loyalty to Caroline. He argues with Amyas saying that the situation with Elsa was an “”unendurable insult” and not fair to either woman. Might seeing the woman he cares for being mistreated have given him a motive for murder?

Elsa Greer (now Lady Dittisham)

The little piggy who had roast beef. She was a rich, spoiled beautiful, young woman in love with Amyas. It is her deliberate provocation of Caroline on the day of the murder that many people see as being the catalyst for later, lethal events. Poirot…”saw her beautiful and rich, seductive to men, seeking with greedy predatory hands to fill up a life that was empty”. She is still vitriolic about Caroline and says she would have preferred to see her hanged.

Cecilia Williams

Angela Warren’s former governess. She is a shrewd, fiercely loyal woman, living “close to the bone”. She epitomises the one who has none. She believes that Amyas got what was coming to him, her sympathies are entirely with Caroline. But she also has proof, never previously disclosed that Caroline murdered Amyas

Angela Warren

Caroline’s half-sister. Caroline is overly protective of Angela after disfiguring her face in a fit of pique as a much younger woman. Angela is spoiled and enjoys playing tricks on Amyas. He wants to send her away to school. She doesn’t want to go and this is causing some additional friction between Amyas and Caroline (as if there wasn’t enough already -the two are already, to quote Bonnie Tyler, “Living in a powderkeg and giving off sparks!).

Amyas Crale

And finally, let’s talk about Amyas. In my first few drafts of this, I didn’t include a description of him because I felt we all know this character. That is not to say that he is badly drawn but because many of us have met this person in real life. He is an Artist and everything and everyone around him comes second to his art…back in my uni days, I would have found him irresistible. Now, the sheer arrogance and gall of this man would make me want to stab him in the neck.

Amyas was…a ruthless egoist. He loved Caroline but he never once considered her in any way. He did as he pleased…he was as fond of her as he could be of anybody – but she came a long way behind his art

Agatha Christie – Five Little Pigs

🤮

Well, just like Shaggy, it wasn’t me but it was someone. And it will take all of Poirot’s little grey cells to figure this one out!

Five Little Pigs – The Covers

There’s nothing too crazy in the covers, lots of references to Amyas being an artist, and a few to the poisoned beer. My favourites are the second row, second left for its pulp fiction feel and amazing font. And I also really like third row first on the left with the artist and his brushes.

The Recipe – Ouefs Caroline

I have included here both the OG recipe from Cuisine Est Un Jeu D’Enfants and my updated version.

Oeufs Caroline

Print Recipe

A lovely breakfast or lunch dish, inspired by Agatha Christie’s Three Little Pigs

Author: Taryn Nicole

Ingredients

Scale

1 tomato
1 egg
1 slice of bread (I used a potato and rosemary bread)
1 tbsp Creme Fraiche
Chives or other herbs to garnish
Butter, Salt Pepper

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

Cut the top off the tomato and scoop out the insides with a spoon.
Sprinkle the inside of the tomato with salt and turn upside down. This will help to drain a lot of the tomato juice. Otherwise, your eggs will be very watery. Leave for 1/2 -1 hour.
Heat your oven to 180C.
Crack the egg and separate. I found it easier to put the yolk into the tomato first and then top up with the white. Don’t overfill. You need some room to add the creme fraiche.
Butter your bread and place the tomato on top of it.
Place your egg-filled tomato and bread into the oven and cook for approximately 15 minutes for a soft egg and 25 minutes for a harder egg. Check this as cooking time will depend on the size of your tomato.
After 15-25 minutes add the creme fraiche to the egg, turn off the oven and turn on the grill. Grill for an additional 5 minutes.
Remove from the oven and garnish with herbs, salt and pepper.

Notes

I wanted to keep mine vegetarian but you could add a rasher or two of bacon when you place the tomatoes under the grill.

And Caroline Crale? Each person had seen her differently. Montague Depleach had despised her as a defeatist-a quitter. To young Fogg she had represented Romance. Edmunds saw her simply as a ‘lady’. Mr Jonathan had called her a stormy, turbulent creature. How would he, Hercule Poirot, have seen her? On the answer to that question depended, he felt, the success of his quest. So far, not one of the people he had seen had doubted that whatever else she was, Caroline Crale was also a murderess.”

Agatha Christie – Five Little Pigs

Links To The Christieverse

Poirot brings a letter of introduction from Lady Mary Lytton-Gore with him when he meets Meredith Blake.

Other Food & Drinks Mentioned in Five Little Pigs

Butter
Beer
Coffee
Sandwiches
Plums, sour apples, hard pears
Dandelion Tea
Roast Beef
Gin, Vermouth, Lemonade, Gingerbeer
Fruit
Fish

November’s read is The Moving Finger

08
Oct
2023

Spaghetti Diable

categories: 1960's recipes, Chicken, Pasta

Greetings Friends and welcome to October. I am celebrating the start of the spookiest month of the year with some Spaghetti Diable. The recipe for our Devil’s Spaghetti comes from The Australian Hostess Cookbook. This book, which is fast becoming one of my favourites, also gave us the Ginger Tingle a while back.

The Life of The Grazier’s Wife

Both of these come from the menu of the same Australian Hostess in a chapter called A Grazier’s Wife Entertains. For those not familiar with the term grazier it refers to a person who has farms sheep or cattle. But maybe I’ll let the grazier’s wife tell us a little bit more about her life.

When planning my menu I consider the conditions out here is in the Austalian Bush. Our nearest town is 56 miles away and the mail lorry, with my ingredients aboard, has to spend a whole night on the dusty dirt road before it finally arrives at our door early the next morning. Fruit and vegetables travel 300 miles in a goods train before they reach the mail lorry

It astounds me how anyone survived under those conditions let alone was able to be sufficiently organised to throw dinner parties! And not just any dinner parties either. Here is the grazier’s wife describing the ambiance of her dinner party.

When dinner is ready I light the candles and limit the lights in the dining room to a corner lamp. The stereo set continues playing soft mood music all evening. My large dining table will be set with a plain lilac linen tablecloth and moss green linen table napkins. The main decoration will be a small bowl of lilac sweet peas with deeper mauve candles inserted into the centre of the float bowl. On each woman’s napkin there will be a freshly picked pink rosebud tied with a narrow lilac velvet bow”

How delightful does all of that sound!!!! Who doesn’t now want to get an invitation to dinner at the grazier’s wife’s house?

My own table settings for the Spaghetti Diable were not nearly so fancy.

Spaghetti and Chicken?

As I was making the Spaghetti Diable I realised that I had never eaten chicken and spaghetti together before. Growing up, we had Spaghetti Bolognese and Lasagne (both Beef), Carbonara (Bacon), Marinara (Various Seafood), and Canneloni which was spinach and ricotta. There was some sort of Tuna Pasta Casserole which is best not spoken about but we NEVER had chicken with pasta. And even as an adult, they are two things I would not even think of combining. It even felt weird to be making it. I realise this says more about me than about the combination of chicken and spaghetti which I’m sure is very normal.

Is The Devil In The Details? Spaghetti Diable – The Recipe

Is hard to see why this is called Spaghetti Diable. Diable or Devil in a dish usually indicates the presence of chilli. And quite a lot of it. Even allowing for the delicate palates of countrified Australians in 1969, a mere dash of cayenne powder seems a little tame!

Also, I used fresh mushrooms which I sliced and sauteed with the onion and garlic. I however have the luxury of being able to pop into the local green grocer or supermarket for fresh mushrooms whenever I please without having to wait for them to come over 300 miles on a goods train and then overnight on a mail lorry!

I also added some parsley as a garnish.

Tell me, are there food combinations that you think are strange but other people think are normal? Or combos that you think are normal but other people find weird?

And have a great week!!!!

06
Sep
2023

Not Quite A Hershey Pie-Pieathalon X

categories: 1960's recipes, Desserts, Pieathalon

Hello friends and PieLovers! Welcome to Pieathalon Ten. And welcome to my Not Quite A Hershey Pie! For new readers, Pieathalon is the time of year where food bloggers all over the world, lead by the lovely Yinzerella swap recipes for all sorts of weird and wonderful pies. This year, I was sent a recipe for Hershey Pie by Kari from The Nostalgic Cook. And I’m going to start right off by saying that this was a delight. It was so easy to cook, it looked absolutely gorgeous and tasted like a little piece of heaven.

Having said that, it was not without some problems. Notably, this was a very American pie. And as the name suggests, this pie called for Hershey Bars. Six Almond Hershey bars to be exact. So what, I hear half the world (The American half) exclaim. Well….Hershey’s is not the chocolate of choice in Australia. It’s not impossible to get Hershey bars but you either have to buy them off the net or go to a shop that sells American candy. And both of these places charge like wounded bulls. Luckily, Cadbury which is our chocolate of choice does a Milk Chocolate and Roast Almond Block which I was able to sub in for the Hershey’s. And if Hershey’s are hard to find….Graham Crackers? Impossible. I have never even seen these for sale here. So another substitution. Marie Biscuits for Graham Crackers this time.

I won’t even begin to enter the mathematical saga of if 6 Almond Hershey bars weigh x ounces and 2 Cadbury Family Size Blocks of Roast Almond weigh y grams, how much chocolate do I need for the pie? Or the trauma of how big is a large marshmallow?

Somehow, I managed to convert a SIX ingredient recipe into an international, mathematical, imperial to metrical brain scramble.

Having said that. The Cadbury / Hershey Pie was….wait for it…

It was so good.

First, it looked gorgeous!!! As I was mixing in the marshmallows, I noticed that they created a marble effect which I thought was quite beautiful. I kept some of those streaks in the finished pie. I also sprinkled some of the leftover crumb crust on top. Then the taste!!! It was like a little bit of heaven. Very rich, very sweet but utterly delicious!!! Personally, I found a tiny bit of salt sprinkled over the top helped to cut through the sweetness. The Fussiest Eater in the World liked it as is.

Hershey Pie – The Recipe

The Pieathletes

Here is a list of the other Pieathletes. Why not pop on over and see their creations? I wonder who got my Villa Pie?

(For early readers, I’ll update the links once each recipe is posted)

S.S.made a Microwave Peach Pie

Dr Bobb made Anthony Hopkins’ Four Star Shepherd’s Pie

Poppy Crocker made a Coconut Cream Pie

Surly made a Hot Fudge Pie

Kari, who sent me the delightful Hersjey Pie made an Aspic Salad Pie. Oh dear….

Camilla made a Ballymaloe Chicken Pie

Cathy made a Delicious Apple Pie

Jenny made Anthony Hopkins Beef and Hash Brown Pie. Goodness, Mr Hopkins is getting about this Pieathalon!

Thanks to Kari for the wonderful recipe and to the wonderful Yinzerella for organising! Have a great week…I’m off to eat some more of that yummy, yummy, pie!

09
Jul
2023

The Ginger Tingle

categories: 1960's recipes, Dining With The Dame, Drinks, Mocktail

Hello friends and welcome to a precursor episode to next week’s Dining with The Dame. We will be focussing on Evil Under The Sun in both weeks. This week is just me. But, next week’s post will feature a very special collab with a very special person! More about that at the end of the post. Today we are drinking with the Dame with the delightfully named Ginger Tingle. The recipe comes from The Australian Hostess Cookbook (1969).

Arlena Marshall

As soon as I read the name, I knew I wanted to dedicate The Ginger Tingle to Arlena Marshall from Evil Under The Sun. Arlena – is a gorgeous redhead (hence the ginger) and full of sex appeal (hence the tingle). I”m nothing if not subtle! 😜

Here is Arlena’s entrance into the story:

Her arrival had all the importance of a stage entrance.

Moreover, she walked as though she knew it. There was no self-consciousness apparent. It would seem that she was too used to the invariable effect her presence produced.

She was tall and slender. She wore a simple backless white bathing dress and every inch of her exposed body was tanned a beautiful even shade of bronze. She was as perfect as a statue. Her hair was a rich flaming auburn, curling richly and intimately into her neck…the whole effect of her was one of youth, of superb and triumphant vitality”

Arlena Stuart Marshall as played by Diana Rigg — Arlena Marshall as played by Diana Rigg

I intentionally left out a bit of that quote that said “Her face had that slight hardness which is seen when thirty years have come and gone” . On behalf of women of a certain age, everywhere, none of us need that! Or, in the words of another lovely redhead:

I also wanted to feature Arlena because she is treated incredibly harshly in the novel. She is not only the murder victim but she is also resoundingly and almost universally slut-shamed throughout the book:

“Now to my mind, that woman’s a personification of evil. She’s a bad lot through and through”

“Such women are a menace – a menace to — “

“There’s a type of woman who likes smashing up homes”

“She’s the world’s first gold digger. And a man-eater as well. If anything personable in trousers comes within a hundred yards of her, it’s fresh sport for Arlena. She’s that kind.”

Even the police inspecting her murder have noting good to say about her:

“Ï should say that a lady like her would -well, would make some pretty bad enemies”

Arlena reminded me of another misunderstood readhead.

One of the remarkable things about Evil Under The Sun is that we mostly hear about Arlena. We rarely hear from her. Arlena’s own motivations are intentionally omitted (I believe) to build a picture of her as seen through the eyes of other people. Only the more astute guests at Jolly Roger Hotel see her for what she truly is – a victim – of an unscrupulous murderer, gossip from other guests, and ultimately, her own foolishness. Christie does this with an absolutely deft touch that reveals a writer at the top of her game!

The Recipe – Ginger Tingle

Now if you wanted to add a little splash of gin or vodka into the mix, be my guest! The Ginger Tingle however a lovely refreshing soft drink and would be perfect to sip under the sun as is. Either way let’s raise a toast to Arlena!

Next Week’s Dining The Dame

I am absolutely delighted that next week’s post will be a collaboration with Jenny from the fabulous blog Silver Screen Suppers. Why not grab a copy of Evil Under The Sun or watch the Poirot episode based on the book and join us for some fun (and evil) under the sun!