Category: 1970’s food

Cabin Casserole

The very name Cabin Casserole conjures up something hearty and comforting.  Something the Ingalls family might have eaten on Little House on The Prairie.  And the recipe for Cabin Casserole from the American Chapter of Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery did not disappoint.  For my readers in the Northern Hemisphere who are heading into winter and who are looking for an easy tasty meal, this one needs to go onto your rotation list ASAP.

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What is Cabin Casserole?

Cabin Casserole is layered tomato and onions with bacon and chops that have been sprinkled with curry powder and salt.  I used lamb chops for my casserole but pork chops would also work.  Also, don’t stint on the salt.  I only used a little salt because I thought the bacon would bring enough but I had to add salt at the end. Having said that, for a recipe with so few ingredients, this is really tasty!

I also did not use dripping to fry my chops, I fried the bacon first then used the bacon fat to fry the chops.

I served my cabin casserole with little potatoes wrapped in Proscuitto and a sage leaf and some grilled zucchini with feta cheese.  The Cabin Casserole would  be super with mashed potatoes!

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Little House on The Prairie – The Lost Cabin Casserole Episode

Further to my mention of Little House on the Prairie, I can almost imagine the episode which would be called “Give them curry, Laura”.  The Olesen’s start selling the very exotic ingredient of curry powder in the Mercantile.  Nellie teases Laura that her family is too poor to ever even taste it.  A fight ensues a little like this one.  Just substitute “Your pa’s too poor to buy curry powder” instead of smelling like a horse.

Laura is required to go to the Mercantile and apologise to Nellie.  She also has to help out in the store for a week.  We see in a store work montage that she works very hard and is so polite to the customers that through the week she makes a little tip here and there.

At the end of the week, she has enough money to buy herself some candy or maybe a toy.  Instead, she asks for some curry powder which she takes home and gives to Ma.

That night the Ingalls family feast on Cabin Casserole.

The moral of the story is that hard work and not giving someone curry is the key to getting curry.

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Here’s the recipe

 

Have a wonderful week!

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Cheesy Egg Dunk

Howdy friends, today we are starting a new Chapter of Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery.  We are leaving the shores of Africa and heading to the good ol’ U.S. of A!  I’ll be choosing a few classics and a few lesser-known dishes from the land of the free and the home of the brave starting with this Cheesy Egg Dunk!

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I find it hard to believe that there was a time when a dip was strange to anyone.  However, Good Housekeeping felt the need to introduce the concept  with this:

“Dunking” is an established American custom.  For any informal buffet type party, savoury “dips” are very popular.  Guests help themselves to the bite-sized pieces of toast, etc., and dip them into one of several soft piquant mixtures”

I’m not sure why, if it is such an established custom, why they felt the need to put quotation marks around the words dunking and dips.  Maybe we just need to be glad that “dunks” did not become the preferred nomenclature!

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The Cheesy Egg Dunk tastes like a smooth egg salad.   Full disclosure I only had 60g of cream cheese and, as I am about to go away for a few days I did not want to buy any more so I subbed in some cottage cheese to make up the difference.  My version might be a bit less creamy but it will also be lower in calories!.  More importantly, it was delicious!

Cheesy Egg Dunk – The Recipe

One thing that did bamboozle me – the recipe calls for piquant table sauce.  I had no idea what that is so I hoped for the best and added a 1/4 teaspoon of Worchestershire sauce combined with a few drops of Tabasco sauce.  I was pretty pleased with the result but if any of my American readers can let me know what piquant table sauce is,  I would love to know.

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If like me you are trying to lose a few covid kilos you could have some Cheesy Egg Dunk on lettuce as a low carb substitute for an egg salad sandwich.  Or, you could take it high-end and sprinkle some fancy salmon roe over the top. Ooh la la!!!!

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Cheesey Egg Dunk recipe

Maybe because I used 2/3 cottage cheese instead of all cream cheese my mixture was quite soft so I did not add the milk.

Just remember, if you make it…no double dipping!!!

A Little Vacay

As mentioned I am heading off on a little holiday!  I am so looking forward to getting out of Melbourne, having a break from work and relaxing for a new days!  One of the delights of the Air BNB we have chosen is that it has very sketchy reception.  On the upside, that means no work calls or emails!  On the downside,  I might not be able to post from there next week.  I have however planned to cook another recipe from this chapter when I am there.  Even if I can’t post I will be thinking of you all as I make it.

I have already packed my books – I am taking the next Agatha Christie on my list, Why Didn’t They Ask Evans, The Devil’s Picnic by Taras Grescoe and The Lost Man by Jane Harper which will satisfy my need to have a holiday read that is set somewhat in the place where I am going. We will be on the coast and not in the outback but It is the closest I have!  For the 4 hour drive there I have Stanley Tucci’s Taste all set to go on Audible!

Have a wonderful week!

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Raiff of Cheese

Hello Globetrotters and food lovers!  Given we can no longer travel in actuality I guess the next best is to travel virtually via our tastebuds.  And today, we are turning the page in Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery to a whole  new continent!  And what better way to celebrate anything but with some cheesy pastries otherwise known as Raiff of Cheese!

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So, where are we off to?  Here’s a clue:

I hear the drums echoing tonight
But she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation
She’s coming in, 12:30 flight
The moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation

Yes, my friends, we are going to be blessing the rains down in Africa for the next little while.  And I, for one, am here for it!  Africa is a real knowledge gap for me in terms of food.  I have cooked tagines and couscous, I have eaten Doro Wat and Injera in an Ethiopian restaurant and I have read about Bunny Chow and Sosaties. But that’s pretty much it for what is a massive continent!  So,  this will be a journey of exploration for me. Not that I am expecting Good Housekeeping from 1972 to provide any 100% authentic recipes but I”m hoping it will be enough to give me a taste of African food!

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These cheese pastries or Raiff of Cheese come from the North African section of World Cookery.  I chose to cook these because they reminded me very much of the Cheese Pastries we love at our local Syrian restaurant.  Believe me, I could sit and eat plate after plate of their Bourak B’jebneh!  I was also inspired by the menu at Shaam to use haloumi as the cheese in my pastries.

Raiff of Cheese – Recipe and My Variations

I used bought filo pastry because life’s too short to make homemade filo.  If you do want to do that, here’s a recipe and good luck to you!  I do want to try to make my own haloumi one day though.  I think it would have been nice (but maybe not very North African) to sub in some mozzarella for the haloumi to give the pastries some lovely melty cheesy stretchiness.  Next time maybe!

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Another little change I made to the recipe as given in GHWC was to add in a little sauteed leek and the very last of the chervil from my garden.  This combination features in many of the other North African recipes and it just so happened that I had half a leek in the fridge.  I had no idea that either of these were used so extensively in North African cooking.  Like I said, journey of exploration!

Finally, to serve my cheese pastries, I added a little drizzle of pomegranate molasses – the sweet-sour of this being a perfect counterpoint to the salty haloumi and some toasted sesame seeds to add some nutty crunchiness.  Any chutney or relish would be good with these.

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I’m not sure how authentically North African these cheese pastries are but they were really tasty. And as sure as  Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti I’ll be making these again!

Have a great week!

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Satanic Sardines

Hello my friends!  They say there are defining moments in our lives, days which we will never forget.  For some, it was the death of John F Kennedy, Princess Diana or 9 -11.  Today, 6th February, way back in 1989 was such a day for Harold and Deborah Degan. Who? I hear you ask.  We’ll get to that in a minute.  For the moment, just know that we are celebrating the event with a dish of satanic sardines!

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 Something Fishy This Way Comes

Imagine you are Harold Degan, resident of the small inland Queensland country town of Rosewood.  If nowhere had a middle, this might not be it exactly it but it’s certainly within shouting distance.   It is about 11:30 in the morning on the 6 of February 1989 and you are pottering around your garden shed. You are starting to feel a bit peckish and are hoping that your wife, Deborah, will shortly call out that lunch is ready.

Suddenly you hear a tap-tap, tap-tap-tap on the tin roof of the shed.  This sound signals the rains have come and judging from the noise of the drops on the roof it is a  heavy downpour.  You wonder if you should try to make a dash for the house. Or, would it be better to sit the shower out in the comfort of the shed and have another sneaky ciggie while you wait?

You open the shed door to better assess your options and…

Jesus H Christ on a cracker!!!!!

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One Fish, Two Fish, Red  Fish, Blue Fish

Between the shed and the house, a distance of some 80 feet, there are hundreds and hundreds of small fish flapping on the ground.  The sound of the “rain” has also alerted Deborah.   As you stand at the shed door staring at the fish wondering where on earth they’ve come from, you register the sound of the back door opening.

Deborah’s startled exclamation of  “Where the f*** have all these fish come from Harold?”* shows that even she, ever the prankster, is in no way responsible for the fishy situation in your backyard.

Where indeed have all the fish come from?  They have either sprouted from the ground like feisty flapping fishy seedlings sent from the Devil himself or they have dropped from the sky like a Piscine offering from God.  Harold looks up.  He looks down. He looks across the 80-foot expanse of dirt and fish to his wife and shrugs   “F***ed if I know Deb.”

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The Rosewood Sardine Shower

It did indeed rain fish in Rosewood on 6 February 1989.

The official explanation for the  shower was that:

In a matter of extremely peculiar circumstances, a violent storm updraught drew fish from shallow waters into the atmosphere; only to be dumped on, of all places, an inland town.

 – Sunshine Coast Daily

Yup, Rosewood had a Sardine-ado!

Whilst the event is commonly known as a sardine shower due to the small size of the fish, they were actually found to be bream.

Breamnado and Sardineado were considered as the names for a movie franchise many years later.  These were discounted for the more scary sounding shark*

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The dialogue between Harold and Deborah Degan above is totally contrived for creative purposes.  Having said that, I know a number of people from country Queensland and they all swear like howsyourfather.  It is probably closer to the mark than either one of them describing the sardine shower as “A bit of a phenomenon”.

I also cannot 100% verify that Harold Degan used to sneak cigarettes in his shed.  However, popular culture has lead me to believe that sheds are almost entirely used for sneaking cigarettes, porn or dead bodies.  I’m giving Harold the benefit of the doubt on this one.

I’m a Coal Train, Fast Lane, Caught up in the Dirty Rain

(Jamie T – Zombie)

Little fish have also supposedly rained from the sky in Mexico, England, Thailand and Honduras.

Other weird things reported to have fallen from the sky are frogs, alligators hermit crabs, blood, fungal spores, corn kernels and cows!  Satanic Sardines 4

Satanic Sardines – The Recipe

I am aware that some people find any form of sardine to be Satanic.  And I get that.  They are very fishy fish.   Personally, I love them.  They were also part of one of my favourite meals ever which happened in a tiny little restaurant in Zagreb. The recipe for the Satanic Sardines comes from The Party Cookbook from 1976 which I have cooked from previously.

My changes to the Satanic Sardines recipe

  • I added some chopped tomatoes in homage to the dish I had at Heritage in Zagreb.
  • I did not chop the crusts off the bread because I am no longer five.  And neither are you.  Eat your crusts like a grown-up.  It will make your hair grow curly**
  • I used a multigrain sourdough not brown bread

Have a great week!  As Harold and Deborah would say, so long and thanks for all the fish!

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*This is not true

**This is also very likely not true.  But I’m not calling my mum a liar.  And neither should you.

REPOST – The Margaret Fulton Cookbook – Pork

Margaret Fulton Pork Quote
Margaret Fulton Pork Quote

I’m not a pork eater….although I have been known to steal a bit of crackling off his plate if he orders it when we go out.

On the basis of crackling alone, both of these look pretty good.  The apples in Maragaret’s 1977 port look weird and not very nice. But the modern version could do with one of the two bowls of applesauce from the vintage version.

PicMonkey Collage - Pork
Roast Pork – Then & Now

I’m really not fit to judge on this though.  So, pork eaters, which of these appeals to you you more?

And whislt they are not chops, these pictures did remind me of one of my favourite bits from the Brady Bunch …

 

Have a great week!

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