If you read my last post you would have already seen these amazing cucumber candlesticks…now you get to learn how to make them yourself!
Cucumber Candlesticks
I found the original recipe in, yep, you guessed it, the delight that is Salads For All Seasons by Rosemary Mayne Wilson, because that book never gets old. Well, technically yes it does but you know what I mean.
I fancy pantsed mine up a bit by adding a little bit of hot sauce into my crab and mayo mix but you could use wasabi or tomato paste or chilli sauce, chopped herbs, chopped up sun-dried tomatoes, or pretty much any flavouring you liked. You could also swap out the crab for canned tuna or salmon if that’s how you roll.
I also added a strip of sun-dried tomato as a flame.
The only bit of making these that was even a little bit difficult was scooping out the flesh of the cucumbers and not having them break. I don’t have a grapefruit knife as suggested by Rosemary Mayne Wilson so I ended up using a 1/4 teaspoon measure and scooping out a little bit at a time.
Cucumber Candlesticks
These were really tasty and pretty easy to make. And a pretty cool retro canapé to kick off the celebrations.
Cucumber Candlesticks2
To eat these you can slice them either across into rounds down the middle into half or quarter moons.
But before the recipe, I thought I might do a quick “retro” spective. I spent some time the other day going through some old posts and one thing became clear. If there was going to be a sub-sub title for this blog, it would surely have to be “I like round food. And I really, really like small round food”
May 2012 – Cucumbers Stuffed with Cream Cheese
July 2012 – Moccha Mousse
July 2012 – Tuna Stuffed Tomatoes
February 2013 – Barbra Streisands Coffee Ice Cream
April 2013 – Devilled Chestnuts
April 2013 – Rosé Wine Cup
May 2013 – Television Eggs
September 2013 – Ice Cream Muffins
September 2013 – Vietnamese Inspired Aubergine
Minh Mang-o Daiquiri
November 2013 – Kale and Onion Pies, Smoked Salmon Frittata
December 2013 – Pepperoni Pizza with Boccocini, Olives and Mint
December 2013 – Cabbage Rolls with Meatballs
January 2014 – Saffron Risotto Balls
April 2014 – Ox Eye Eggs
August 2014 – Autumn Rosti With Smoked Salmon
August 2014- Meatball Sandwich
Umami Meatballs
November 2014 – Cheesy Eggplant Sandwiches
Eggplant Salami Sandwich 4
November 2014 – Chargrilled Aubergines from Persiana
Remember last year when I forgot to celebrate my blog-irthday? Not so for Year 3 my friends. This year, not only are we starting early but I bought you a present. Well one of you…but more about that later. I have quite the celebration planned, cakes, a cocktail, these lovely cucumber candlestick canapés and maybe even a Spanish take on the Potato Salad Roll…
But first up, my mum and and I had a lovely Mother’s Day bonding experience last weekend by hitting up some of the local op shops and I got a huge swag of goodies, some of which will be jumping right to the top of the queue in the retro food stakes.
Here are some of the best of the best:
The Complete Avocado Cookbook by Christine Heaslip
I was utterly obsessed with this book as a child. But until I saw this book in the oppy on the weekend, I had completely forgotten a very strange thing I used to do. I must have had an idea that avocados were very sophisticated and I remember borrowing this book from the library about a billion times because I would get it home, then I would dress up all my dolls in their best clothes and put them in a circle and put the book in the middle and I would make up menus and they would have avocado based dinner parties where i would flick to a page in the book and tell them what we were eating, and they would each comment on the food.
Sometimes they didn’t like what they were given in which case they either got put into the corner and missed the next dinner party or I’d twist their heads around 180° and say something like “Maybe you’ll like it better out of the back of head”
(WEIRD. ONLY. CHILD).
Complete Avocado Cookbook
I was particularly obsessed by this – The Crusty Stuffed Avocado. Which is an avocado stuffed with camembert, crumbed, deep fried and served with an almond butter sauce.
Crusty Stuffed Avocado
Maybe I should have used that as a threat for the dolls that didn’t like their meals. “One more peep out of you Missy and you get the Crusty Stuffed Avocado. And then we get to play Barbie gets a triple bypass”.
The Egg Cookbook By Peter Russell Clarke.
Back in the day, he was a celebrity chef in the 80’s whose catchcry (is that a word? it looks weird) was “Where’s the cheese?” To which the answer presumably was “In the hardened arteries of the people who ate the Crusty Stuffed Avocado”.
Eggs are one of the favourite ingredients here at maison de la retro food so this one was a certainty, despite it contains such dubious delights as a banana and chicken omelette and eggs in oranges. That one is so dodgy that even Peter Russell Clarke admits his friends don’t like the sound of it.
If you you tube PRC you will see that, instead of his good natured tv personal is he actually a bit of a foul mouthed curmudgeon. As one myself, it only made me like him more!
The Beautiful Breakfast Book by Judy Willing
Proof that you can judge a book by it’s cover. And Judy looks more than willing on the cover! This is going to be GOLD!
International Mixed Drinks
This isn’t strictly vintage but who could resist a book that offers over 300 cocktails by country? Not me that’s for sure. Mind you, I think they might be drawing a long bow in some of their allocations. Yeah, we all totally get that the Long Island Ice Tea and the Louisiana Lullaby are from the U.S.A. However, I searched for cocktails containing Parfait Amour, because I still have a buttload of it left and I found the Purple People Eater and the Love Bite. These apparently hail from The Seychelles and Mauritius respectively. Which smacks of allocating sucky cocktails to countries who are too small to declare war on you.
Still, this got me all sorts of excited. I was thinking we might do a round the world in a cocktail glass feature over the next year…52 countries in 52 weeks? Or at least until either incipient bankruptcy or alcoholism make their presence felt…..
And finally, this is it folks, over the top
Australian Cooking For Today by Anne Marshall
If today was 1977.
This is a MONSTER of a book, 900 recipes, 450 colour photos. If you were hit over the head with this book, you would wind up in hospital faster than someone who had eaten a Crusty Stuffed Avocado.
And this can be yours!
(Basically because when I got it home, I realised I already had a copy.)
And just in case the cover is not enough to convince you, opening Australian Cooking For Today at a random page reveals this – Giant Gingerbreadmen apparently reenacting the Great Train Robbery and a big ball of sausage and cheese:
You know you want it…
How You Can Win Australian Cooking For Today
There are three ways to win:
If you already follow the blog, follow me on twitter or facebook or viceversa, drop me a note and I will pop your name into a hat.
If you know of someone who you think would enjoy reading this, send them my way – all new followers will get a chance to win and if they leave me a message giving me your name, you get 5 chances.
Finally, if you already follow me on all media as do all of your friends, neighbours, co-workers, etc or you have none of the above, leave a comment below, answering the very simple question “Where’s the cheese?” and you will get a number of entries commensurate with how funny I think your entry is.
The T’s, The C’s, The Boring Bits
The actual birthday of the blog is 25 May, however it’s going to take me a bit longer than that to post all the posts on the celebrations so let’s say you have 4 weeks from now to enter. Entries will close midnight 14 June 2015.
You can enter as many times as you like.
If you are outside of Australia, I will have to send the book by cheapest mail possible as postage from here is terribly expensive. So you might get it by Christmas.
Maybe once you get it we can do a combined cook or something. Then again, it’s your present, you can do what you want with it!
This French Apple Flan straight from the buffet section of the A-Z of Cooking is délicieux! I know what you’re thinking. Two pastry dishes in two weeks? Why, it’s almost like you’re practicing for something.
Nudge nudge, wink, wink, say no more.
French Apple Flan
Truth is, I made this before I knew anything about Pieathalon 2…which is not only a reality but I have purchased my ingredients and will be baking on the weekend.
But back to the French Apple Flan. I was actually a bit wary about making a second pastry dish from the A-Z of Cooking because, lets face it, I was not overly impressed with the pastry from the Date Crunchies.
But, the buffet section left a LOT to be desired. There was an Egg Mousse. But there is also an Egg Mousse in Salads for All Seasons, which quite frankly reads better. Then there is a Cold Loin of Pork Orientale….except I don’t eat pork. There is the trout of nightmares:
And there is the French Apple Flan:
French Apple Flan
So, despite that picture not being overly appealing, this was kind of a no-brainer.
And let me say right now, I can’t imagine any of the other dishes being this good because this was AWESOME. The pastry was crisp and light and delicious, the filling was lovely – and again not too sweet. There was only a 50g of sugar for a kilo of apples. The butter and the lemon and the wine hummed along quietly in the background without taking over. The filling really just tastes of apples. But nicer. Like supercharged apples. But really, please, despite what the recipe says use butter not that horrible other stuff.
French Apple Flan 8
A friend of mine recently made some gorgeous apple roses that she found here and they kind of inspired my topping.
French Apple Flan 9
I also used a blackberry jam for my glaze because that’s what I had and smoke em if you got ’em is how I roll. It made my glaze quite dark but I kind of liked that ombre effect it created.
French Apple Flan
And again, the French Apple Flan was just lovely. And it was totally delicious on it’s own but if you really want to ramp it up, try it, slightly warm with some dulce de leche ice cream. And then just float away on a little cloud because you will seriously think you have died and gone to heaven.
French Apple Flan
So, good.
In my mind this is an apple tart. So much so that I had to keep going back when writing and changing the word tart to flan. I am not precisely sure of the difference between a tart and a flan although some albeit rather lazy research leads me to think a flan contains a custard filling. Which this doesn’t.
So it’s a tart right?
Whatever you call it. it’s super delicious and made from things you already probably have in your house or can get pretty easily. I promise you will not regret making this…so go on, do it now!
Breakfasts and Brunches start the “B” section of the A-Z of Cooking. I chose a smoked salmon and egg combo called Nova Scotia Eggs which was, not surprisingly, delicious. You’d have to go a long way to go wrong with those ingredients.
Nova Scotia Eggs 1
Having said that, the recipe did it’s best to bamboozle me. Coat the eggs in mayonnaise it says. It actually had me questioning the word “coat”. Because to cover the eggs completely, which would be the normal translation, seems like a LOT of mayo. Then again it also calls for 8 tablespoon of mayonnaise to cover 4 eggs. I’ll say it again. That’s a shit ton of mayo.
Nova Scotia Eggs – Recipe
Who knows, maybe Canadians really, really like mayo. Although having said that, I have no idea if the Nova Scotia eggs have any actual connection to Canada.
I also feel that unless I get something off my chest, I will probably never get to find out. You see, I am carrying a deep dark secret in relation to Canada. Well, in relation to two Canadians specifically but I get the feeling they are very community spirited. Do ill by two of them and the whole country takes against you. Anyhow, I feel that until I publicly right this wrong, I may never be welcome in the land where pines and maples grow, great prairies spread and Lordly rivers flow!
It happened like this.
A few years ago we holidayed on the Amalfi Coast. Whilst we were there we did a half day tour of Pompeii. The problem was that we booked ourselves onto a triple language tour. This meant that for each point of interest the tour guide stopped and spoke about it in Italian, English and Russian. Then there was time for questions. Of which the Italians and Russians had plenty. And she would duly translate the answers into the other two languages. Kudos to the tour guide for being fluent in three languages when sometimes I feel like I struggle with just one, but it meant the going was SLOW. So slow that, had there been glaciers in the vicinity, we could have watched them moving and marvelled at their speed compared to our progess through Pompeii.
An hour in, and we weren’t even inside the walls. He was starting to get antsy. “Come on, this is crap, we’re never going to see anything at this rate. And don’t you know about it?”
I may have slightly bigged up my knowledge of Pompeii. I had studied it in art class in high school for what seemed like an eternity however, high school was OMG, 20 years ago.
Excuse me while I have a minor major flip out about that.
OK. I’m back. I’m centred and TWENTY YEARS?
Holy Crap.
Nova Scotia Eggs3
Back to Pompeii…anything to blank out the horror….During the next few Russian and Italian sessions we started a muttered debate. He wanted to leave the group and strike out on our own, armed with our purchased tour book and my…ahem…vast knowledge. I was equally adamant that we had paid for a guided tour and dammit, a guided tour we would have.
“Are you guys thinking about ditching this ?” Our conversation was interrupted by a whisper coming from a guy standing beside us. (We were all being very quiet so as not to disrupt the relentless Italian / Russian chatter).
“Yes” Him.
“No” Me.
“Cos we are too”. They were a Canadian couple on honeymoon and after a few more murmered exchanges we decided to very quietly leave the group and explore on our own.
“And we don’t need a guide. Taryn knows all about it.”
Why is there never a bottomless volcanic crater around when you need to push someone into one?
Nova Scotia Eggs4
In retrospect, it was the best thing to do. The four of us covered an amazing amount of ground and had a great time doing it. They had a different book to us so we were all sharing what we had and we all got on really well. Then we reached a point where apparently, back in the day, you could look across and see the cave of the oracle of Cumae. And something in my brain clicked.
“You know that in the days before Vesuvius erupted the Oracle of Cumae told them to get out of Pompeii. Twice. But the people were so hedonistic and so consumed by their material possessions that they refused to go”. All of a sudden, I was Simon Schama. I knew all about the Oracle and the prophecies and I was not afraid to tell the world. The lovely Canadian couple were quite impressed. They even took notes. And He was impressed. Dammit, I was impressing myself. Who knew I paid that much attention in art history classes?
Nova Scotia Eggs5
Much later in the day, when we were on the bus back to where we were staying in Positano, he asked if he could see the guidebooks. I handed them over and he started pouring over them with an intensity I have rarely seen.
“Whatcha looking for?”
“All that stuff about the Oracle…did you read that in here?”
“I dunno.Maybe…or maybe in the book at the hotel. Or maybe from memory. Why are you so interested?”
“I want to see if they say if that’s where they got the idea for the episode of Doctor Who”
Oh. OH.
“The w…w…what?”
“You know, the episode of Doctor Who where they go to Pompeii. And the oracle tells the people to leave. Twice”.
“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”
Nova Scotia Eggs5
Except I kinda, sorta, maybe did. So, lovely Canadian honeymoon couple from Pompeii, whose names I have completely forgotten specifically and people of Canada in general. I’m really sorry. I have a very, very bad feeling that instead of telling you some amazing actual factual history, that I may have just given you the summary of the plot line of an episode of Doctor Who.
In terms of accuracy, it might have been better if I’d just sung that Bastille song to you.
Feel free to update the Canadian Wikipedia entry on Pompeii any day now folks.
And enjoy the Nova Scotia eggs, they are delicious. I made them for you!
And please let me in if I ever come visit, I really want to try some poutine.
Have a great week!
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Part Two of A in The A-Z of Cooking concerns itself with one of the best meals of the day, the after school snack.
I chose to make the Date Crunchies purely on the basis that I had every single ingredient already in my pantry.
That never happens!
Date Crunchies2
But first, two intros to After School Snacks. The original from The A-Z of Cooking
“Welcome home your hungry young scholars with something nourishing to tide them over until suppertime”
May have pleased mothers but set children all over the world weeping. They didn’t want something nourishing, they wanted something chockful of sugar with maybe a bit of artificial colouring thrown in.
Not so my After School Snacks Haiku:
Hungry After School?
Dates and Oats Make Good Crunchies
Yummy for your tum.
Did I miss a career in marketing or what?
And…we’re done with the poetry. Trust me. There will be no sonnets to breakfast food, no odes to the buffet. Unless you really like them. In which case get ready for a whole heap of limericks and haikus because that’s about my limit.
Date Crunchies – The Good
These are kinda sorta almost healthy with the sweetness coming from dates and honey instead of sugar, and the use of oats and wholemeal flour.
Dates, honey and cinnamon are a combination that works amazingly well together. And the little bit of lemon made the it even better!
I think I probably like them more now than I would have as a child when I would have wanted something sweeter.
Apparently they worked well with a glass of milk. This is on hearsay only. I have never liked milk and even the thought of drinking a full glass of it makes me want to gag.
Working the dough was the best arm workout I have had in a long time. I’m pretty sure I’ve staved off bingo wings for at least another year just by that alone.
Date Crunchies 4
Date Crunchies – The Bad
The the quantities in the recipe seemed wrong. I needed a lot more water to soften the dates and a pinch of cinnamon is no good to anyone. You need at least 1/4 teaspoon.
More than this though that pasty was way too short. I was lovely and light but you just had to look at it the wrong way and it crumbled. It needed an egg or something else to bind it together a bit more.
Date Crunchie
Date Crunchies – The Ugly
Let’s also address the other elephant in the room when in comes to this recipe. In some places in Australia, “date” is a colloquial expression for one’s…well…anus. So a date crunchie is probably not something that should be even remotely appetizing. As for these? They were better than that. Just not by much.
In all honesty, they were perfectly acceptable. They were average. There was nothing fundamentally hideous about them. Truth be told, it’s taken me ages to write this post simply because I find it really hard to describe food that’s just….meh….
WouId I have wanted these as an afternoon snack when I was a child?
Hell no.
But I was a weird only child with a working mother. She didn’t have time to bake and I had an idea that anything homemade was bound to be inferior to something that could be bought from a shop. I was far happier with a perfectly formed store-bought Tim Tam than anything homemade and vaguely hippyish.
Now? That date filling was rather nice…but you know what? I think I’d still prefer a TimTam. I may make the Date Crunchie dough again just so I never have to do another tricep dip in my life.
Date Crunchies – not an epic fail, not even a fail, just not much of a pass… And with that, we’re done with the A’s.
Next time we venture into The A-Z of Cooking we’re heading to Canada for B..B..Breakfast.
August 2014- Meatball Sandwich
January 2015 – Meringue Topped Nutella Cupcakes
Remember, third birthday giveaway closes 14 June. Enter now to win an amazing 1970’s cookbook, and have a fabulous week!
