Great name huh? It just kinda rolls off the tongue. Sportsman’s Saturday Salad. I have no idea why it is called that; but the name instils visions of mad hungry footballers coming home after a match demanding to be fed. This is a relatively hearty salad with beans providing the bulk and salami and eggs providing the protein. I guess it is kind of a man salad….even though I tried to make it as pretty as poss.
Sportsman’s Saturday Salad1
This gem comes from…huh…where else? Rosemary Mayne Wilson’s Salad’s for All Seasons. And it’s good. Really good!
He had a couple of mates coming over to do….things…in the garden pertaining to retaining walls and welding and digging post holes. Maybe. I’m pretty sure it was something like that. Whenever they started talking my brain did that thing they do in the Snoopy cartoons when the teachers talk….
I may have even started snoring at a few points. But anyway, there were, if not exactly sportsmen in my house at least some semblance of burly-ish men and they not only ate this salad, they wolfed it. I also pretty much ate my own weight of it so it is by no means limited to sportsmen.
I did make it on a Saturday but believe me, this would be good any day of the week!
Sportsman’s Saturday Salad2
Here is the original recipe and below you will find my tweaked version.
Capsicums repeat on me so I always sub something else into recipes containing them. In this instance it was chopped cherry tomatoes.
I also subbed in 5 bean mix for the kidney beans because that’s what I had in my cupboard.
And I happened to have some of the saffron yoghurt left over from when I made the super delicious eggplant dish from Perisana so I used that instead of mayo. You have to waste not, want not with the saffron, that stuff’s exxy!
Sportsmans Saturday Salad
Because I am obsessed with finger food, I made mine into bite size portions but you could also make a big salad as per the original.
This is great, quick, easy tasty and I thought it looked pretty as well.
And remember, it’s not just for Sportsmen. Or Saturdays. It’s barely even salad. It is really badly named. But delicious!
Try it!
And have a fabulous week.
And let me know if you have any food you think is incorrectly named!
Don’tcha just love it when bits of your life just seem to fit together? This Hayman Island Chicken Salad pretty much joined all the dots for me last week.
Hayman Island Chicken Salad
If last week my life was a movie, this week is a jigsaw.
I have always been inordinately fond of a jigsaw. I think it stems from being an only child and it being one of the things I could do alone. We have been doing some jigsaws at work recently and it has been awesome. We set them up in the kitchen so, at lunch time or randomly through the day, people can go in a do a piece or two.
Although, just between you and me, I think the lady who is bringing them in secretly hates us. Not for her the art prints which are my favourites or the Alpine scenes and waterfalls of my childhood, No way, Uh uh…She likes the impossipuzzle. We had only just recovered from #2 which was this:
No, not a series of pieces thrown on the table. The top one is the picture.The bottom one is a close up. It was only five hundred pieces and it took us three weeks to complete! It also left us shattered remnants of human beings. Then she brought in number 3.
Cat Impossipuzzle
Yep, no borders and five extra pieces. Not to mention a plethora of cats that all look the same She really does hate us.
There was some weirdness as well. We finished puzzle #2 on a Friday but left it out so people could admire our puzzle making skills and laud us accordingly. No change on Monday. However, when I came in on Tuesday, someone had removed the four corner pieces. They hadn’t taken them or thrown them away. Just removed them and left them on the table. Who or why? No idea. I work with some strange people.
But enough of the literal, here’s the metaphorical.
After eating my weight in bacon whilst being obsessed with Fruity Devils I felt the need for some slimming.
I also had some left over pineapple and oranges and Rosemary Mayne Wilson’s Salads For All Seasons.
There is a section on diet salads in the book however it contains recipes like this
And this:
I don’t know, maybe I’m just being picky but if I was making a recipe that I wanted people to eat, I’d think twice about having the word “mould” in the title. Just saying. Maybe that was Rosemary’s cunning plan. You are so repulsed by the name of the food that your appetite is automatically reduced. Then you realise it’s either cottage cheese and pineapple juice (note, you don’t even get the pineapple) or lamb and curry powder in gelatine and what’s left of it disappears all together. Voila. I suppose it’s one way to get skinny!
Handily, not all of Rosemary’s recipes are that disgusting. I made my version of her Hayman Island Chicken Salad which used up my leftover oranges and pineapple. It was pretty tasty and looked quite pretty with the green from the avocado, celery and spring onion, the orange from the oranges (duh) and the yellow pineapple. Mango would also be great in here and would add to the tropical vibe. I have shown it here as a sandwich but I also took some into work for lunch and it was great just as a salad too. Also, there was no avocado in the original. I just had one that needed to be used….
Hayman Island Chicken Salad3
There is no explanation given the Salads For All Seasons as to why this recipe is named after Hayman Island which is a holiday resort on the Great Barrier Reef. I can only assume it was served there back in the 1970’s. It is possibly the thing in the white dish front and centre below.
Hayman Island Buffet via Vintage Queensland
So I had made my Hayman Island Chicken Salad and then, in a coincidence weirder than someone removing the corner pieces from a jigsaw, I happened to glance at the cover of this month’s Gourmet Traveller which had been sitting on my coffee table unread for a couple of weeks. (It actually made an appearance last week, slightly obscured by my huge glass of wine…)
And totally obscured by my hot sauce was this!
Coincidence? I don’t think so. I think the universe is trying to tell me something. And I’m fairly sure that it is that I need to get to Hayman Island pronto.
You see, I read that article and there is no mention of a chicken salad. Nor does it appear on any of the resort menus.
Which is, as far as I am concerned a travesty.
hayman-island-resort-32832
I feel it is my duty, no my mission, to bring this salad to the attention of the resort owners. I would be quite happy to spend a weekend working with the chefs to bring help back this piece of Hayman Island history. Although…we would probably need to match it with some wines and a cocktail or two. Hmm…maybe I’ll need a week.
And we needn’t go all out with the retro vibe. The outrigger canoe as a buffet table? That can stay gone.
And I’m not greedy. I don’t need the $ 10,600-a-night penthouse. I have simple tastes. The $1990 per night beach villa with private pool will be just fine.
How glorious does that room look? The only downside is that now I have that Coldplay song running through in my head.
As do you now too. Don’t thank me. You’re more than welcome.
All together now…Para, para, paradise…..Whoa-oh-oh oh-oooh oh-oh-oh.
So what do you think of my chances of getting the all expenses paid trip to Hayman to act as historical cuisine consultant to the chefs?
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 “SaladsFor 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.
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:
Stuffed Eggs
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 “500Paleo 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?
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
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!!!
Vanilla Horseradish Dressing
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….
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?
Published in 1973, Food For Lovers is quite possibly the kookiest book I have ever read. The book is broken into 15 sections, each of which is based on a different type of man and the food an aspiring seductress should cook for him if she wants to win his affections.
The main problem of the book that the descriptions of each of these men are so horrible that I can’t think of why anyone in their right mind would want to be in the same room as them let alone seduce them.
Take this, from the introduction to Jack Snack:
Wow. One day my Prince will come. And he will be a dreary non-event couch potato. Although, in comparison to some of the other types mentioned, the boring (but benign) Jack Snack actually comes up sounding like a winner. He’s certainly preferable to Greek God Rod:
Dreary tv man is starting to look pretty good by comparison isn’t he?
Then there’s Professor Repressor:
At best, he sounds like a pervert. At worst, a sex offender.
If you find yourself attracted by such a specimen, I would suggest you you seek professional help.
Brodsky suggests you whip him up a bowl of borscht, followed by braised wine-steeped beef and an apple strudel.
As if these lesss than appealing descriptions aren’t bad enough, they are combined with some of the creepiest drawings I have ever seen.
This for example is the picture of Willy Wolfe. He looks like he’s just slipped a date rape drug into that glass of wine.
Then there’s Gadabout Guy.
Now, in my mind a gadabout guy is a handsome, debonair, cultured ladykiller, who spends his time flitting from cocktail party to sexy soiree to a jazz club in Paris in the 1950’s. He’s James Bond, he’s Cary Grant, he’s Alain Delon….
Brodsky’s version:
Uncannily similar aren’t they?
However, as we all know the proof of the cookbook is neither in the bizarre text or the even weirder drawings; it is in the eating. Stay tuned for The Food For Lovers Love Feast…
As a concept, Kelly Brodsky’s Food For Lovers falls on the kooky side of the spectrum. Is this echoed in the food?
Well, sort of…
There are a number of odd recipes. Many of which rely on inappropriate uses of pineapple:
Pineapple isn’t automatically an ingredient I would expect to see in a recipe entitled Braised Wine Steeped Beef. And yet, Kelly Brodsky takes it there.
The stuffing mix for the Veal with Cashew Nut Stuffing recipe on p65, contains bacon, cashew nuts, calves liver and pineapple. If mixing offal and pineapple was a good idea, surely it would be pizza by now.
And if that wasn’t enough, there’s the veal scallopine sandwich:
Ok. Pineapple is the least of the problems in that recipe which actually sounds frighteningly modern. I”m sure something similar is being served in a fast food restaurant somewhere even as I write this.
Monosodium glutamate also features prominently in the recipe ingredients. As does canned asparagus.
However, Food For Lovers also contains a lot of good as well. I marked up over 30 that I would be prepared to make and I have made four, all of which were delicious!
So now, here is my Food For Lovers Three Course Love Feast.
Cucumber Stuffed With Cream Cheese
These were great!
2 large cucumbers, leave the skin on1 cup cream cheese
1 tbsp lemon juice
10 chopped anchovies
1 tbsp chopped chives
Ground black pepper
Scoop out the centres of the cucumbers.
Combine the cream cheese, lemon juice and anchovies and stuff this mixture into the cucumbers.
Place in the fridge for a couple of hours.
Serve sliced very thin sprinkled with the chives and black pepper on crackers or buttered crusty bread.
(Brodsky suggests serving with a dab of mayonnaise, I tried both with and without mayo and preferred it without)
Sautéed Cabbage and Bacon
1/2 head of cabbage
3 bacon rashers, chopped
1 clove or garlic chopped
Dash of lemon juice
Finely shred the cabbage and steep it for 5 minutes in boiling salted water. Whislt this is steeping, sauté the bacon. Add the cabbage and garlic. Sauté Lightly. Sprinkle with a dash of lemon juice and serve.
(Broiled) Chicken With Corn Stuffing
I always thought that broiling was what Americans call grilling. The original recipe for this cooks it in water. Maybe she meant boiled? Either way, I roasted my chicken and it was super!
4 lb chicken
1 1/2 cups dry whole wheat breacrumbs
1 cup whole corn kernels
2 tbsp butter
1 cup chopped celery
1 finely chopped green pepper (I”m not a fan of this, I used a red onion in mine)
1/2 cup chopped mushrooms
Chicken Stock
I also added a clove of garlic, crushed, 1/2 a chilli and some thmye and sage leaves)
In a large pan, heat the butter and saute the celery, pepper (onion), corn, mushrooms and garlic.
Take off the heat, add the herbs and breadcrumbs, salt and pepper. Moisten with chicken stock. Cool. Then spoon into the chicken.
(I actually prefer to cook my stuffing in a separate dish).
Roast as per your preferred method. If unsure, Jamie Oliver has a solid method.
Gingered Dutch Apple Cake
This was very yummy!
3 tbsp butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1 cup sifted self raising flour
1/2 cup milk
1 cup stewed apples
1 tsp cinnamon
dash of lemon juice
2 tbsp brown sugar
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup sultanas
1 tbsp chopped preserved ginger
Cream butter and sugar. Add the egg and beat well. Then stir in the flour a few spoonfuls at a time, alternating with the milk. Pour into an 8 inch tin.
Combine the apples, cinnamon, lemon juice, brown sugar, walnuts, sultanas and ginger. Spoon on top of the cake mixture. Bake in a 190°C oven for around 45 minutes.
Capsicums repeat on me so I always sub something else into recipes containing them. In this instance it was chopped cherry tomatoes.
