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Category: 1970’s food

22
Jun
2014

A Savage Fennel and Lemon Salad

categories: 1970's food, Fennel, Lemon, Salad, Salad Dressing

Many years ago, my mum used to work in a local solicitor’s firm – and let me tell you right now – forget every glamorous tv legal drama you’ve ever seen. Sadly, this old chestnut, unfunny though it is, was far more the reality:

Each and every one of them was bonkers. Nicely bonkers, even sweetly bonkers. But bonkers all the same.

Downstairs was the domain of a married couple, both lawyers. They had a super cute boxer dog called Brigeeta who they used to bring to work with them every day. Nothing nuts about that. I wish I could take my dogs to work everyday.

What was kooky was that Brigeeta used to have a different outfit every day. And I mean EVERY DAY. My mum worked with them for maybe five years. The dog never wore the same clothes twice.

And you know, I’m not averse to dogs wearing clothes…Oscar has a pair of pyjamas he wears in winter…

But there is a a difference between ONE pair of totally necessary pyjamas and 1500 separate outfits!!!

Remember that old song “You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you?” Well that could have been written about….well, let’s just call him Mr Magoo…(remember, these people are lawyers, they are familiar with litigation). Mr Magoo was badly in need of glasses but thought that getting them would spoil his handsome boy modelling school good looks. Which incidentally were fairly spare on the ground. Glasses were not the issue.

One morning the lady downstairs cornered him and started showing him photos of the party they had gone to the day before, many of which featured Brigeeta in her latest couture which was a Little Red Riding Hood outfit.

Later he asked Mum if she’d seen the photos. She said she had.

He said “Did you see that kid in the red? Man, that was the ugliest child I’ve ever seen”

Captain of this particular Titanic was a lovely, elderly Italian solicitor. Now he wasn’t crazy as such he just sometimes had a bit of trouble with English. So, for instance, once Mum asked him what he did on the weekend and he replied “We went hunting the savage fennels”.

Have you ever heard anything more adorable in your life?

I LOVE that…

“Hunting the Savage Fennels” sounds like a Maurice Sendak book. Maybe the lesser known prequel to “Where the Wild Things Are”.

The savage fennels grow in abundance in this neck o’ the woods; they spring up on every vacant lot and the hills are literally alive with them!

This salad I have adapted from “Salads For All Seasons” is a perfect simple and gorgeous way to feature the savage fennels. Or the more mild mannered fennel you might find in your local supermarket or green grocer. I kept mine pretty minimalist but some black olives would be a great addition.

I was a little worried about mixing cream and lemon juice in the dressing…because surely that would curdle? It didn’t.

Final tip on the salad – fennel is quite robust so it is perfectly fine to dress the salad and leave it for hours. I added the dressing in the morning and took this to work and it was still crunchy four or five hours later.

This is a perfect accompaniment to fish but would also be fabulous with a grilled steak!

Have a fabulous week! And beware the savage fennels!

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11
May
2014

Dressing For Success: 1971 vs 2013

categories: 1970's food, 1970's recipes, Daring Kitchen, Eggs, Mayonnaise, Salad

For March’s Daring Cooks’ Challenge, (yes, I know I’m a little behind the times) Ruth, Shelley and Sawsan asked us to totally veg out! We made salads and dressings, letting the sky be the limit as we created new flavors and combinations that reflect our own unique tastes.

My own unique tastes huh? Oh boy. Who smells trouble? With a capital T.

Vanilla Horseradish Dressing with Roast Beef Salad

The salad dressing challenge actually came at a good time as I had just started on “Salads For All Seasons” and the 1971 recipe comes directly from that.

Remember a few posts ago when I mentioned that the word “Surprise” when contained in a vintage recipe generally denotes something dubious? Well here’s another instalment of words to strike fear into the heart of any retro cooker. Beware words denoting parsimony of any description – Pennywise, Frugal, Thrifty. Even more than the “Surprise” these should best be avoided.

And for a double whammy, check out Erica’s great post on Retro Recipes for “Thrifty Drumstick Surprise”.

Yeah…See what I mean?

Then brace yourselves, because today we are taste-testing Rosemary Mayne-Wilson’s recipe for….

ECONOMICAL MAYONNAISE

On page 23 of Salads For All Seasons“, Rosemary Mayne-Wilson describes mayo as

“A process of forcing egg yolks to absorb oil and to hold them in an emulsion, thick and creamy”

And ok, not the most romantic of descriptions but technically correct.

I can only assume that somewhere between writing page 23 and page 24 she was possessed by the devil. It’s the only way to explain the eggless, oilless monstrosity that is the economical mayonnaise.

A lot of the time, if I think something is going to be awful, I don’t make it because I hate to see food wasted. However, by its own definition this is economical. So I thought I would give it a try. So, I made it. And it was…

Drumroll please….

Absolutely fucking horrible.

The best thing you could say about it was that it looked like mayonnaise. And that it tasted like condensed milk mixed with vinegar.

Yeah, I know normally that wouldn’t be a plus. Believe me, I’m scrambling for positives here.

The worst was….

Have you ever bought berry scented nail polish remover? This tasted like how that smells – there was an initial sickly sweetness followed by a throat catching, eye watering sharpness…it was really bad. And not one iota like lovely, gorgeous, creamy, delicious mayonnaise.

However, I wanted to be fair to the recipe and it’s not every day you eat mayo straight off the spoon – which is what provoked the above reaction. And here at Retro Foods For Modern Times we are nothing if not scientific – so I had the idea to do a blind taste testing of the Economical Mayo vs a normal mayo. And what better item to test this on but what is fast becoming this blog’s favourite ingredient, the humble egg.

The Egg Experiment

I wanted to keep this very plain so the flavours of the mayo would be “pure” so I found a very simple recipe for Stuffed Eggs – pretty much just egg yolk and mayo. The idea was to make up two identical mixes, one with a bought mayo and one with the Economical, then mix up the egg halves so it was impossible to tell the difference between them – and blind taste test them. If I couldn’t tell them apart…then any snarkiness on my part was utterly due to my own prejudices and not fact.

That didn’t work.

Primarily because the two versions looked completely different to each other. It was utterly impossible not to tell them apart:

Even though the recipe was too heavy on the mayo, the bought mayonnaise behaved as it should when mixed with egg yolk and formed a rounded dome. Mixing the boiled egg yolks with the economical mayonnaise just made a yellow runny “mayonnaise”. It was so runny that when I bit into it, the mixture ran out of the egg all over my hand which was gross. The egg did temper some of the sharpness of the vinegar but in this instance – Epic Fail for 1971!!!

So, after the disaster of the Economical Mayo, I was a little apprehensive about trying the modern recipe for salad dressing which also mixed a sweet ingredient with something quite pungent.

The following is based on a recipe for Vanilla Horseradish dressing which I found in “500 Paleo Recipes” by Dana Carpender.

I would have through cavemen would have been too busy trying to survive to be pfaffing about with vanilla beans. Then again, my entire knowledge of the paleolithic era is based on B grade movies where scantily clad cavewomen and dinosaurs co-exist. So what do I know?

Vanilla Horseradish Dressing

Print Recipe

Vanilla and Horseradish liven up a Vinaigrette!

Prep Time: 5
Total Time: 5

Ingredients

Scale

¼ cup vinegar – I used white wine, the original recipe calls for white balsamic
1/8 tsp vanilla extract
¼ tsp white pepper
¼ tsp salt
¾ cup (175 ml) olive oil
¼ tsp mustard powder
2 tbsp horseradish

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

Put all of the ingredients into a blender and mix together until it looks creamy – around 30 seconds.

Notes

If you can lay your hands on fresh horseradish, it would be good to finely grate your own. I used bought horseradish sauce from the supermarket

This was awesome!!! Really, really good. I had this on a salad I made with some left over roast beef which was rather dry. By the time I came to eat this at lunch time, the beef was gorgeously, melt in your mouth tender – I suspect this was some action of the horseradish or maybe the vanilla. Either way, it was delicious!!!

The vanilla is quite subtle, initially providing more of an aroma and only the teeniest undercurrent of flavour. You know, it’s of those times where, if you didn’t know what it was, you wouldn’t know what it was. But it would drive you mad trying to pinpoint what exactly it was.

I also had this on a few other salads and it was good every time!

I would caution against adding more vanilla into the mix as I found that the longer I kept this in the fridge, and I had it in there for close to a week, the stronger the taste of vanilla became. My vivid imagination? Possibly.

I would love to know what other people think of this recipe and if they noticed the same thing. Please let me know if you make it!!!

Oh, and just in case you thought I meant a different kind of dressing for success, lets take a peek at what the cool kids were wearing in 1971.

For the ladies, it was definitely the year of the hotpant…

Whereas for the gentlemen, it ranged from the high necked and tightly belted straightlaced work attire….

Men's Fashion

To the “manly gown” which was both smart and comfy for lazing in.

Toupé and soap on a rope optional extras. Sold separately.

And then there was the downright bizarre….hang on…isn’t this the same guy from the first photo? Is this what he’s wearing under that tightly belted turtleneck?

Eww…I’m going to go before this gets creepy…or should that be any creepier?

Have a fabulous week!

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07
Apr
2014

Raising The Salad Bar Part 2 – Melon Surprise x 2

categories: 1970's food, Apples, Celery, Grapes, Jello, Jelly, Rockmelon, Salad, Tuna

Shortly after you start reading vintage recipe books, you start becoming attuned to certain words as being signifiers of something truly awful.

Any recipe with the word “Surprise” in it usually falls slam bang into this description. Believe me, nine times out of ten, the surprise isn’t one of the happy, happy, joy, joy variety.

For instance, my mum used to make something we used to call tuna surprise. I found this recipe for something very similar in an old magazine.

It is sans the potato chip topping which was always the best bit of mum’s tuna surprise but I guess I can forgive that when the Shaun referred to was none other than my main man Shaun Micallef.

What?

I’ve been doing this a couple of years now and I’ve never spoken about my huge girly love crush on this man? For those of you who do haven’t had the pleasure, imagine the wit of John Stewart combined with the silver foxiness of George Clooney and you’re in the ball park…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoz6kZsjc3s

Anyway, enough about my obsessions…ok, no, just one more. It’s my blog, I guess I can do what I want….

Ok, so before this turns into the gushy, girly Shaun Micallef hour…lets talk about Melon Surprise.

But before we go there can we just stop for a moment and look at my ever so cute pins? Bought at Daiso…how adorable are they?

So the melon had pins in it because…surprise….this ain’t no normal melon!!!!

Because when you cut it open….look what’s inside!

Grapes in Jello folks, grapes in jello!

Hands up who was expecting something really disgusting? Wait a few minutes….it’s coming.

But in a real surprise, the Melon Surprise turned out to be pretty damn super. To my taste, more of a dessert than a salad but still pretty damn good all the same.

Ok…so by the way, both of these recipes come from the “Elegant First Courses” section of Salads For All Seasons in which Rosemary Mayne-Wilson tells us that

“The recipes in this section are designed to excite the eye, delight the palate and stimulate the appetite”

And sure, the Melon Surprise does all of these things. As you can see I tool some liberties with the flavour of jelly and the colour of the grapes.

Time did not permit me to peel the grapes. There is not enough time in the universe to induce me to do that.

Next up, we have Surfer’s Paradise Melon.

Let’s take the ingredients for this individually shall we?

Rockmelons – sure.

Celery – why not?

Grapes…worked in the Melon Surprise.

Apples – I’m getting a bit excited, this is looking Waldorfy…

Mayo…yep, its a Waldorf with Melons. That sounds great!

But wait…there’s more?

Oh yeah, Walnuts right? Waldorf with Melons. Awesome.

What? What do you mean the final ingredient isn’t walnuts? How can we have Waldorf with Melons without Walnuts?

Oh, I see the quirky bit, the RMW spin is that it’s not walnuts. So what is it? Almonds? Cashews? Pistachios?

It’s what?

Yeah…that’s what I thought you said…..

Ok…look, I just want to doublecheck.

You said tuna right?

Like in the fish?

Oh for the love of God….why?

Incidentally, the tuna and fruit combo must be vibing in some retro space because recently the lovely Erica from Retro Recipe Attempts was guesting on Mid Century Menu and made some Tuna Apple Sandwiches.

In the blurb for this salad RMW says:

“When Australians are overseas, few requests are made for them to contribute to food stalls and fairs…it is assumed that our cuisine is either too dull to be considered or just an offshoot of English cooking…However, if there is a request for an Australian dish, one friend always serves this grand melon appetizer”

I suspect she’s confusing cause and effect…

If anyone turned up to my food stall or fair with a mix of canned tuna and rockmelon, I’d probably ban their whole nation too.

However, here it is….

Surfer's Paradise Melon Salad — Surfer’s Paradise Melon Salad

It looks pretty good doesn’t it?

And truth be told, it was not disgusting. It had a nice crunch and it was…palatable. I might have actually liked it without the rockmelon…

Surfer's Paradise Melon Salad2 — Surfer’s Paradise Melon Salad2

One thing? If you ever plan on making this, when you mix the rockmelon and tuna together, it looks huge. There is a mountain of Surfer’s Paradise Melon Salad such that you think you’ll never be able to eat it all.

I had for lunch at around 12:30. And, believe me, by 5:00pm I was ready to gnaw the leg off my chair. Because when you think about it, this is what it is:

Thanks company I am not going to name (but hint, their name is pretty clearly displayed in the photo) for only putting half a can of tuna into a can of tuna. I guess that’s why it’s called light….And the rest of it is just fruit and celery so I guess you know, from a weight loss perspective this is win-win. You won’t want to eat it but when you do, it probably has all of about 3 calories.

And just so I’m not deterring tourism to our lovely Gold Coast, I can almost guarantee that no one in Surfer’s Paradise is eating this…do not let this dissuade you from coming.

By the way, I just signed up for 100 Happy Days and will be regularly tweeting my happy snaps. You can follow my progress on Twitter or join up. To find out more, click the link:

http://100happydays.com/

I”m going to spending my week finding things that make me happy. Make yours fabulous whatever you do!

18
Mar
2014

Raising the (Salad) Bar Part 1: Cuban Aguacate Salad and Dressing

categories: 1970's food, Avocado, Cucumber, Feta, Rum, Salad

One of the reasons I love old cookbooks is sometimes you get a little insight in to the lives of the people who owned them previously. My latest favourite vintage find, Salads For All Seasons is no exception.

There is an inscription on the front inner cover that reads “To Ann, Happy Christmas 1985. Love Aunty Ev & Uncle Bill.

Thing is…the book was published in 1971. I don’t want to judge but I dunno….unless it’s an absolute classic, giving someone a 14 year old cookbook makes me think that some regifting may have been at play here.

I suspect Ann may not have been the favourite niece.

In the foreward Elizabeth Durack Clancy O.B.E. says:

“I commend this book because it is so useful and practical. “The wilful extravagant maid” can learn some fresh devilment from these pages but the “housewife that’s thrifty” is equally catered for.”

Hmmm…I’m thinking Aunty Ev may have been one of those “thrifty housewives”. And good old Ann, a maid of will and extravagance. It’s all starting to come together….it certainly explains the parsimony of the Christmas present. And the lack of a term of endearment in the greeting.

Next up, the introduction where author Rosemary Mayne-Wilson tells us:

“Salad used to something served on Sunday evenings. It consisted of neatly shredded lettuce, tomato wedges, hard boiled eggs and a slice of cheese. It was served with the sliced leftovers of the Sunday roast. Generally it was put straight on the plate, but when there were visitors it was served in a crystal salad bowl. To make it daring, a blob of mayonnaise was added, but this ‘extra’ was confined to adults”

Personally, I’d be quite happy eating that salad. But more importantly, who knew mayo was a rite of passage?

Then again, have you heard of those Menarche Parties that people are throwing their daughters these days? I swear, if my parents had ever done anything like that to me, I would still be locked in the bathroom, listening to The Smiths on repeat and sobbing “You hate me don’t you? You really fucking hate me.”

You can view the full horror by clicking on the link below but just to whet your appetite, included in the party pack provided by…

wait for it…

Menarche Parties R Us.com ((2021 Update – sadly this site no longer exists))

(I swear you couldn’t make this shit up if you tried)

…are 2 games. One of these is called “Pin the Ovaries” and the other is called the “Puberty Marshmallow Game”.

(2021 Update – sadly this site no longer exists)

Pinning ovaries sounds like something a serial killer would do. And I never want to know what a puberty marshmallow game entails.

For the love of God, bring back the dob of mayo on the Sunday Night Salad. “You’re a woman now Ann, have some Hellman’s”.

“Gee thanks Aunty Ev. Any chance of some tips on frugality?”

Wow,that was a spectacular digression. Where we we? Salad. Yes. Right. Ok. Sorry, I’m still being gobsmacked by the puberty marshmallow game.

Salad. We’re here to talk about salad.

Back to the Introduction of Salads For All Seasons – after dropping in the comment about the mayo, in a lovely piece of randomness, Rosemary Mayne-Wilson tells us:

“Of course this has all changed and now nearly everyone owns a wooden salad bowl”

Bear with me while I nip across to Ebay because I am one of the few who own nothing of the sort. And now I desperately want one. I really want one that looks like this:

But I’m guessing I might have to make do with something a little more mundane.

And it will come in handy because I’m thinking that this could be a long haul. There is so much that is both amazing and godawful in Salads for All Seasons, that I think it’s worth spending some time here.

I was going to work through it from start to finish…until I read some of the recipes and paused for a moment of sanity. So we’ll be kind of working our way through in a fairly random order but skipping some of the truly awful and the just plain boring.

But just to get us off to a to an extravagant and devilish start, put your hot pink dancin’ shoes on, because your tastebuds are going to be doing the Rhumba with this awesome Cuban inspired salad.

[amd-zlrecipe-recipe:2]

Who knew you could put rum into salad dressing? It’s certainly efficient – you can toxify and detoxify at the same time!!! And it tastes great!

I”m going to be spending my week, trying not to think about marshmallows! Hopefully Salad dressing liberally dosed with Bacardi will help that act of forgetting.

Have a fabulous one whatever you do!

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23
Dec
2013

Bad Retro Holiday Food…What? Can There Be Such a Thing?

categories: 1970's food, Retro Food in the News, Shrimp

Great article on the interwebs today about Retro Holiday Foods that have, according to the authors, gladly been forgotten…although…I’m not so sure…

I thought this Shrimp Christmas Tree was brilliant…it reminded me a little of Yinzerella’s Shrimp Sputniks from a few days ago. I also loved that massive goblet of sauce… I had a little bet with myself that it would be nothing more than ketchup and mayo and…almost!

I”m doing this…Christmas 2014, your name is Shrimp Christmas Tree. Recipe here.

Funnily enough, this also reminded me of the lovely Yinzerella:

Whereas this just made me giggle for hours. Because I’m really a 12-year-old boy…

I’d ask what were they were thinking but it’s kind of obvious….

Full article here.

So, do you agree with the authors that these should be forgotten? Or, like me have you been inspired to add some retro glam to your next Christmas party meal?

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