1970's recipes Archives - Page 11 of 22 - Retro Food For Modern Times

Category: 1970’s recipes

22
Mar
2019

Shish Kebabs

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

So as luck would have it, the week I wanted to write about the Turkish meal of Shish kebabs, there has been a diplomatic incident between Australia and Turkey. But this blog is not afraid to tackle contentious issues. Actually, no, scratch that, this blog doesn’t want to have anything to do with this debacle. To be frank, both sides of this spat are terrifying and we here at RFFMT are ~~cowards~~ peace lovers who just want to eat some meat on a stick.

Or, to be etymologically exact roasted meat (kebap) on a sword (sis).

Or to be even more precise, delicious roasted meat on a sword.

The recipe for these Shish Kebabs came to you direct from 1972 via Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery. As usual, the introduction to each chapter comes with a gorgeous drawing of representing the food of the region:

Each chapter also has an overview of the food of the region. Some “facts” I learned about the food of Turkey:

The Turks have more than forty ways of cooking eggplant

People in Istanbul, choose their drinking water with as much care as people in France choose wine.

Peaches and apples are ordered by name for those from different areas have a different flavour and fragrance

A formal dinner can start with as many as thirty or forty appetisers

The shish kebabs are simple to make, look really pretty with all the colours of the vegetables and taste delicious!

A little drizzle of pomegranate molasses over the top sets these off to perfection.

These shish kebabs are also a tasty lunch treat!

Have a great week. And be kind to each other!

13
Jan
2019

This could get meze: Hummus and Tabbouleh

categories: 1970's food, 1970's recipes, Dip, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, Lebanon, Middle Eastern, Salad, Vegan, World Cooking

I LOVE Middle Eastern food. One of my favourite cookbooks is Persiana by Sabrina Ghayour and I also love all the Ottolenghi books. Maha in Melbourne is one of my favourite restaurants – their 12-hour slow cooked lamb is to die for! I also used to live in an area of Melbourne that is full of middle eastern restaurants and ate at one of them at least once a week. So I was very excited to see that the next chapter in Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery (1972) was for food from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran. I was even more excited to see that there were recipes for two absolute classics of the region – hummus and tabbouleh. Both of which were in the Lebanese section.

Apart from the deliciousness, one of the other reasons I love Middle Eastern food is the amazing names for example, The Imam Fainted, and The Dervish’s Rosary. No other culture that I can think of has such poetic names for their food. My original plan had been to feature both of these recipes however, I recently discovered that I have an allergy to eggplant (aubergine), an ingredient that features heavily in both of these dishes.

Have you ever wondered if what you see and call “green” is the same as what other people see when they see green? Yes, it’s the colour of grass and leaves and apples but is the green I see the same as the green you see?

I wonder about things like that all the time.

I’m super fun at parties…

Well, my experience with eggplant was a little like finding out that what I call green is what everyone else calls pink. I was talking to a friend of mine about eggplants (as you do) and happened to mention “I like the way they make your mouth go all tingly”.

My friend was like “No…no it doesn’t….” with this face:

Long story short, it turns out that not everyone’s mouth tingles when they eat eggplant and that tingle is actually an allergic reaction. Turns out I am mildly allergic to nightshades, particularly eggplant and capsicums.

So an eggplant heavy menu was off the menu. So, no great names today, just some damn nice food. Starting with…

Hummus

Luckily I have no allergy problems with hummus which is wonderful because I eat it by the truckload. And yet, I have never made it before. And I may never make it again. I’d read that for really smooth hummus you need to peel the chickpeas. This is not only utterly boring (even using the hacks that abound on the interwebs) but also oddly repulsive. The chickpea peels kept sticking to my fingers and pulling them off felt weirdly like removing my own skin. It even looked a bit like it too…

The hummus was lovely though. This was a very classic recipe but, you could jazz it up by adding herbs or other flavourings to it.

Here are twenty or so variations from my Appetizers spreadsheet:

You say Tabbouleh, I say Tabouli

For the love of Mike can we settle on one spelling and stick to it? I’ve seen this spelt so many different ways – Tabbouleh, Tabouleh, Tabouli, Tabbouli…..in the end, even Good Housekeeping gave up. They list this in the index as Mint and Parsley Salad!

Unlike hummus, which I buy pretty much every week, I never buy tabbouleh. Because store-bought tabbouleh is generally disgusting – soggy and bland.

Homemade? Delish!

Like the hummus, the tabbouleh recipe in World Cookery is fairly plain. But this will allow you to jazz it up as you wish. Next time, I will add a little sumac into the dressing to ramp up the zing factor. I am also very taken with the Ottolenghi idea of topping tabbouleh with pomegranate arils.

That variation and a number of others can be found here.

The Recipes

I used tinned chickpeas for my recipe. I also assumed that when they said sesame oil in the recipe for hummus that they meant tahini (given it is in the recipe title) and not the sesame oil you use in Asian dishes.

Also, I did not garnish with parsley as per the suggestion because I needed all my parsley for the tabbouleh. I used a sprinkle of paprika.

The tabbouleh recipe suggests that you eat your tabbouleh using lettuce, vine or cabbage leaves as scoops. I prefer pita as the scoop, and if that piece of pita happens to have a smear of hummus on it, so much the better!

You could add some other delicious Middle Eastern titbits (for inspiration see here) and make up a lovely meze platter with these. Or, you could do what I did and just have them, along with the pita bread for lunch.

For those who care about such things, this meal is vegan.

Have a wonderful week! But before we go, tell me, what is your favourite cuisine?

21
Nov
2018

Sour Cherry Stuffed Monkey

categories: 1970's recipes, Desserts, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, Israel, World Cooking

Disclaimer: No monkeys, stuffed or otherwise, were hurt, or even involved in the making of this week’s recipe. Stuffed Monkey is actually a Jewish pastry. With a totally kooky, and kind of revolting, name. Which is, of course, why I had to make it!

And I’m so glad I did because Stuffed Monkey is delicious! The pastry is like a cinnamony shortbread and the filling is slightly fudgy, a bit like a brownie. It’s so good!

Now, the original recipe for Stuffed Monkey, direct from the pages of Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery, had candied orange peel as the fruit in the filling. I’m not a big fan of candied peel at the best of times and, certainly not in the quantities required to make this. So I subbed in some dried sour cherries and some dried apricots for my version. I did add some orange zest as well so there was a hint of orange in my recipe as a small nod and a wink to the original.

So, why the odd and not appetising at all name? I found a couple of theories on the old interwebs…the first is that “monkey” is a corruption of the Arabic word “makhshi” which means stuffed. So this would then become a Stuffed Stuffed? The other theory I found is that these were first popularised by a family called the Monnickendams.

I’m not sure I’m entirely convinced by either of these but what do I know?

Here’s the recipe direct from Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery:

And here is my version with the cherries and apricots.

Stuffed Monkey

Print Recipe

A delicious baked dessert

Author: Taryn Fryer

Ingredients

Scale

For The Pastry

170g butter
227g plain flour
170g caster sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
Pinch of salt
1 egg, beaten

For The Filling

80g dried sour cherries, chopped
80g dried apricots, chopped
60g slivered almonds
zest of an orange
227g ground almonds
85g butter
2 egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla essence
Pinch of salt
1 egg white

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

For The Pastry

Rub the butter into the flour.
Add the sugar, cinnamon and salt.
Add the egg. Combine until the mixture becomes a smooth dough.
Divide in two equal pieces.
Roll the first piece out and use it to line a pie dish.

For The Filling

Beat the butter, ground almonds and egg yolks together.
Add the dried fruit, nuts and vanilla and salt.
Stir to combine.
Spread the filling over the dough in the pie dish.
Roll out the second piece of pastry and cover the filling with it.
Press the edges to seal them.
Brush with the egg white to glaze.
Heat the oven to 180C.
Place the pie pan in the oven and bake for around 30 minutes or until golden brown.

Notes

This is great on its own but is fabulous with a scoop of vanilla ice cream!

There is a downside to making a dessert called a Stuffed Monkey.

Which is that no one wants to eat it. The minute you mention the name, they get a funny look on their faces. Then they ask you to repeat what you said. Then they say “It’s okay, I think I might just have coffee”.

So just tell your friends it’s called Sour Cherry Tart or something. They’ll be shovelling it down like nobody’s business and asking for seconds in no time at all!

Or tell them the name and keep it all for yourself. It’s that good!

Have a great week!

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31
Oct
2018

Potato Maraska

categories: 1970's recipes, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, Israel, Middle Eastern

Today, as we continue our globetrotting trek through 1972 we are saying goodbye to the Balkans and heading to…well, here’s the clue given on page 273 of Good Housekeeping World Cookery….

If the baking dishes of non-descript food didn’t immediately alert you to our destination, then maybe the shisha, the toy camels and the fact that the dishes are placed on SAND may indicate that

a) We are off to the Middle East, and

b)Subtlety was not strong back in the day!

That picture is the worst!

Specifically, our first stop on the trip is Israel.

I really wonder, why, when the line drawings in this book are so pretty, they even bothered with the cliched photography. It was hardly to make the food look attractive!

The Potato Maraska was not my first choice of recipe for this post. I originally wanted to make a Butter Kuchen. I even bought all the ingredients for it. Well, I bought sour cream. I had everything else.

Then I read the recipe…

Hmm….and after you let the dough rise overnight? Then what?

Well, if you’re Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery you move swiftly on to a recipe for Chremzlach and the Butter Kuchen is never mentioned again.

Never mind, I thought, there is a recipe right above the recipe for Butter Kuchen for Kuchen Dough. I’ll just get the rest of the recipe from that…

Or…..not….

I would love to know what Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery has against finishing a recipe for Kuchen. But given the absence of how to cook the risen dough, I decided that mine was going to be a kuchen free kitchen!

I had been going to make a fish pie that night and, in the absence of kuchen I decided that I would use the recipe for Potato Maraska as the topping instead of regular mashed potato.

The Potato Maraska was…..okay. Not as nice as normal mashed potato but if you and didn’t have milk and butter or you wanted to cut down on some calories, the egg adds a richness to the plain potato.

And at least it was a full recipe!

That’s it for me!

Have a great week!

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PS – If anyone knows how to make a butter kuchen, please send me a full recipe!

07
Mar
2018

REPOST: All The Z’s – Part 5 – Zurich Mushroom Tartlets

categories: 1970's recipes, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, Mushrooms, Switzerland, Vegetarian

Hello, and welcome to the fifth and final post of the Food that starts with Z mini-series…We’re heading to Switzerland for some Zurich Mushroom Tartlets. And I have a new book to cook from! Pack your passports friends, we are taking a trip around the world via Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery from 1972.

The book promises

222 illustrations, 48 in full colour
672 pages
2316 recipes from all over the world

The World in 1972

So what was this world of 1972 that we are about to enter into? What was the zeitgeist that spawned this tome?

www.thepeoplehistory.com tells us that

1972 This year is marked as a black year in history due to the use of terrorism entering sport with the massacre of 11 Israel Athletes by Arab Gunman. Also this is the beginning of the biggest political scandal in modern times and the start of the Watergate Scandal. On the other side of the Atlantic a worsening of the problems between the IRA and the British government see wrongs from both sides and innocent lives are lost.

Hmm…cheerful.

But who knew years were colour-coded? Who has that job? And can I have it when you’re done?

On a happier note, in 1972 you could buy these awesome shoes for just $9.97.

And this wig was a bargain at $20. The resting bitch face is possibly a sign of the troubled times…

Or maybe she was just worried about getting her wig wet. Problem solved by this umbrella for a mere fiver. Look how much happier this woman is now she doesn’t have to worry about wet hair.

Switzerland 1972

So in the midst of all this trial and trib, what was going on in the notoriously neutral country of Switzerland? Well, hold onto your hats because while chaos and panic were overtaking the rest of the world? The Swiss were creating an International Convention on Safe Containers.

The Swiss are an orderly, well-mannered, and meticulous people. This is why you could probably take your safe container and join a group of Swiss people mushroom foraging around Zurich without fear of dying from some fungi-induced poisoning.

Which brings us back to do…oh…oh..oh (If ANY of you thought we were going to get through a post on Switzerland WITHOUT a Sound Of Music reference, then you don’t know me at all do you?).

ZURICH MUSHROOM TARTLETS

Let’s start with the recipe. It’s a very good place to start…(Refer paragraph above re The Sound of Music) And let’s hope that it isn’t an omen of things to come…

Hmmmm….make the pastry it says Without actually telling you how to do that. So, If they’re not going to tell you?

I will. Here’s what you do.

Put your flour back in the cupboard, your egg and butter back in the fridge and tip your salted water down the sink. Then you get in your car and drive to the nearest supermarket and by some ready-made pastry shells.

Because if they can’t be bothered, why should you?

I used a mix of mushrooms for my tartlets and added some herbs from the garden into the mix.

I pan-fried the small fancy mushrooms in so they could be artfully strewn over the top of the tarts whilst I cooked the regular ones as per the recipe.

IWhile the mushrooms were cooking, I warmed the shells in the oven, then tipped the filling into them.

A sprinkle of parsley and some smoked paprika and these were good to go!

And they were delicious! Creamy and earthy with a lovely crisp and light pastry.

Despite the initial setback with the pastry, the Zurich Mushroom Tartlets were a good start to this book. Easy to make, quick, and tasty! Best eaten in front of the telly watching The Sound of Music, Or wearing your best curtains. Or both.

Have a great week!