“When a substantial first course is called for, it is hard to improve on a savoury tart served warm”
– Margaret Fulton
I so totally agree!
MFCB Olive And Onion Tart
I think the Onion and Olive Pie looks pretty good in both of these pictures. It’s certainly the best looking item on the 1977 page. In the modern picture though, it really shines.
Both make me wonder why this is not called a Tomato and Olive Pie.
If like me, you really want to eat this, here is the recipe. From the 1977 version. This ain’t called Retro Food For Modern Times for nothing.
Onion and Olive Tart Recipe
Have a great week…if you want to know what I’m up to on holidays check out my daily Instagram!
My friend Sara recently sat, and passed with flying colours, her Australian citizenship test. By way of celebration, she asked me to bake her a cheesecake. Sara has asked me many times to make her a cheesecake and, to date this has not happened. This time was no exception
“In honour of your new Australianness I will make you a Skippy* Cake” I said.
There was a long pause. Then.
“What’s a Skippy cake?”
That night I emailed her this picture of a Skippy Cake which is from “The Party Cookbook” from 1971, edited by Ann Marshall and Elizabeth Sewell.
The next morning she sent me this:
Well, never let it be said that I’m the type of gal who goes around promising to make people Skippy Cakes and not delivering, so, here it is Sara, your very own Skippy Cake!
Skippy Cake 2
Actually, rewind and delete that. I am exactly the kind of gal who promises a Skippy Cake and does not deliver because sadly, Sara works in our Canberra Office and I am in Melbourne. Technically, yes that 1400 kilometre round trip is do-able in a weekend. But so is an ultra-marathon. And I’m not doing one of them either!
The Skippy Cake and the Mushroom Cake I made a few weeks ago got me thinking back to the awesome cakes my mum used to make me.
There was this when I was….hmmm….how old? Four? Six? If only it was completely obvious what year I was celebrating….
Five Cake
And she crocheted that purple dress for me too!
A few years later and I got my very own Dolly Varden! The utter joy of this was hard to describe. And her skirt is the exact same colour as my 5 year old birthday dress!
Dolly Varden
It’s just a shame you can’t see the detail in the dress. It was gorgeous! And every rose, every detail hand made! There was one to top that too. One year she made me a.market barrow full of fruit and vegetables and flowers. So imagine this:
But in cake and LOADED with vegies, fruit and flowers. Hundreds of teeny hand made fondant apples and roses and oranges and eggplant, bananas and tulips, pumpkins and tomatoes…it was loaded! And how did we repay her hours and hours of painstaking work? By not taking a single damn photo.
How much do we suck? We are the worst family in the world. Seriously.
So, filled with nostalgia, it was it was hardly surprising that my eye was drawn to this in my local supermarket on the weekend:
The cover calls it Australia’s most famous children’s cake book. Others go as far as to call it the “best book ever written in this country”.
And you know, there’s not that many children’s cake books that have a comedy routine and a song dedicated to them.
So fancy a peek at some of my faves?
For the budding artist there is a paint palette:
Got a mini-maestro in the house ? How about a piano cake? Can you believe it? A freaking piano! Can you see why this is Australia’s most famous children’s cake book?the best book ever written in this country? the best book ever written?
And the one I always wanted and never got. The Pool Party cake. If I didn’t already have an AMAZING cake figured out for my own birthday this year, I would be making this one. Next year for sure!
Pool Party Cake
I mean they’re no Skippy cakes but they are all kinds of awesome.
Not all is wonderful though. There is a very cryptic message in the forward where editor Pamela Clarke advises that “four of your little friends are missing”. I really want to know what those four missing cakes are. Obviously something nowadays seen to be massively politically incorrect – my money is on at least one Golliwog. It’s certainly not gender based stereotypes because the book is full of them. The section on boys cakes has 3 cars, a rocket and a helicopter. The girl’s cakes have a sewing machine, a stove and a dressing table. It would really piss me off except that stove cake is just adorable!
Stove Cake
Then, there is some stuff that borders on the downright creepy. Take this thing, called a Mary Jane, which looks like it should be the leading role in a horror film:
Mary Jane Cake
And surely you’d only make the Happy Clown if you wanted to psychologically scar your kids for life.
Happy Clown
But then clowns totally creep me out anyway. This is how much. You know that actor Brian Dennehy? I watched him in a movie where he played John Wayne Gacy aka The Clown Killer. This sounds like he killed clowns but he actually dressed up as a clown and killed young boys. Lots of young boys. And then buried them in the walls of his house. Since seeing that, I’ve never been able to watch anything with Brian Dennehy in it again. Because in my mind, he is a creepy clown serial killer. Which I’m sure he isn’t. I’m sure he’s a lovely man. But that movie scarred me. Don’t take my word for it. Watch this. And tell me it doesn’t give you the screaming heebie-jeebies. Mute your sound though, I don’t know what that noise is but it’s awful. The entire movie can also be found on You Tube if you want the full extent of the horror.
What? How did we get onto serial killing clowns? We’re meant to be talking about cake dammit. Children’s cakes in general. Skippy Cake in particular. Here is the recipe which I followed pretty much exactly. It’s a really nice butter cake even if you don’t want to go the full Skippy. Do try the toasted coconut over the icing though, that was delicious.
You don’t have to use all that food colouring. You could puree some raspberries for the pink cake. I didn’t even bother with the yellow colouring in the icing because kangaroos are brown or grey not yellow. I added some cocoa powder to the icing mix to make it brown but the coconut pretty much covered it all up anyway. And remember when I destroyed that curry with the bright green pandan essence? No you don’t because that’s a kitchen nightmare I’m saving for a special occasion. Well that’s what I used to make the grass.
The hardest part was making the kangaroo template:
Skippy Cake Template
The actual cake was lovely!
Skippy Cake 4
Skippy Cake1
For those of you who might not know, the cake was named after a very famous Australian kids tv show called Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. Skippy was a problem solving kangaroo. It was set in a national park and if hikers got lost, Skippy would find them or if someone fell into a hole in the ground Skippy would summon rescuers to help them. Iconic childhood viewing!
Also, you may be wondering what happened to The Skippy Cake seeing as Sara did not get it? Well it just so happens that it was my bosses birthday that same week and he just happens to support a football team called The Kangaroos.
I took the Boomerang part with Sara’s name off and we ate that at home and then I took The Skippy Cake into work and we had a birthday morning tea. I went back into the kitchen an hour or so later to wrap up the last few pieces for some of my friends who were not in that day and it had all been eaten so I think everyone liked it. My boss even took photos and showed his kids that night!
And I already have an order to make a cake for someone else’s birthday.
He wants a cheesecake….
It seemed quite appropriate that I made my Pieathalon pie on Eurovison weekend. After all, my pie was a Belgian Onion Pie with French Pastry Dough. And in 1974 ABBA won Eurovision with their song Waterloo which draws its inspiration from the site in BELGIUM where the Brits defeated the FRENCH army lead by Napoleon.
The coincidence is almost spooky.
But would this pie take me down like a diminutive French General? Or, like a bearded drag queen was I going to “rise like a phoenix” to Euro glory?
And I Have Met My Destiny (In Quite A Similar Way)
A few weeks ago, the lovely Yinzarella put out the call and 19 bloggers answered. We were going to take part in a global event to rival Eurovision, Pieathalon 2.
The History Book on The Shelf (Is Always Repeating Itself)
My recipe, which came from S.S. over at A Book of Cookrye is taken from The Cotton Country Collection from 1972:
Which looks and sounds like it comes more from the Mississippi Delta than any field in Flanders I ever saw. Which is fine, I just finished reading Miss Hazel and The Rosa Parkes League for bookclub. I’m feel like I’m down with the M, I, crooked letter, crooked letter….
I also recently made a French Apple Flan, so my credentials for France are also solid.
I have driven through Belgium on a bus.
I have watched “InBruges“. Twice.
They have waffles. And chocolate. And smurfs.
And that’s pretty much the sum total of my knowledge about Belgium. If there’s going to be a weak link here, it’s bound to be Belgium…is Pieathalon going to be my Waterloo?
My, My, I Tried To Hold You Back (But You Were Stronger)
I feel like the The French Pie dough recipe is very French. And by that I mean both annoyingly pedantic in some details (Triple sifting flour? Really?) and then just gives a big Gallic shrug and leaves others mostly up to your imagination. The implication being if you are that much of a dummy to not know what spices and liquid to use in your pie dough, you probably shouldn’t be making pie dough.
My imagination told me to use a pack of French Onion Soup Mix for both – a spoonful of the dry mix as my dough spice, then make up the rest of the soup and chill it down for my liquid.
My imagination is a psychopath.
The soup mix made the pastry quite salty. If I had added more salt by adding the soup, I’m pretty sure it would have become inedible. So, after a moment of panic and some highly creative swearing I used some pear cider as my liquid. Purely because I happened to be drinking it at the time of making.
And you know what? It worked!!! Really well. The sweetness took out some of the salt and I think the bubbles helped to make the pastry really light and crisp.
I loved this pastry. It had a real French Onion Soup flavour. I am going to make it again but into “cheese” straws to have with dip. And I will probably use Pear Cider as my go to chilled liquid again too!
Now to the first way I “tweaked” this recipe…you may know that have a weakness for small round food. I’m also very much of the mind that more is more. So, why make one pie when you can make a lot of pies?
French Pie Dough 3
And Now It Seems My Only Chance Is Giving Up The Fight
I was actually pretty confident with the filling. Because pastry is the hard part of any pie right? And honestly, I nailed that French pie dough like a….like a….French hammer…Yeah…just like that. (Note to self, find some better metaphors).
So bring on the filling….
First up -looking at this very cute picture made me think the pie was baked in onions. I’m not actually sure HOW you would bake a pie in an onion but I do know I want to find out. Another entry into the bucket list of weird food I want to make. I think it also may have sub-conciously influenced my idea to make party-sized pies instead of one big one.
Then? Chopping three large onions? There were tears before bedtime. Then I weighed the butter. Half a pound of butter seemed like an awful lot. I checked my measurements from ounces to grams and weighed it again. No, my measurements were right and that was still a, pardon me for using a very technical baking term, a shit ton of butter.
Suddenly my mountain of onions seemed like barely a hill next to that Everest of butter. In the end, I couldn’t do it. That skyscraper of butter was too overwhelming. I cut off about a third of it and stuck that back in the fridge. I felt really bad about this because I had wanted to follow the recipe exactly. But I was convinced this was just wrong.
And I could just add some extra butter if I needed, right?
Then I started to saute my onions. I was a bit worried that the onions would suck all the butter up and it would be too dry. It seemed ok when the onions were sautéing, however once I added the flour the butter problem became apparent….
Far from being too little butter there was still too much. WAY too much…it was pooling everywhere…
I made the decision to tip some more butter out….turned out to be about another two tablespoons.
I was kind of worried about doing this but as soon as I added the milk and cream, it all came together perfectly and I knew I had made the right decision. Look how lovely and smooth the filling looks.
I only had filling for ten little Belgian onion pies so I ate the additional pie shells. That pastry was awesome!!!!
Belgian Onion Pie 7
And half an hour later they came out like this. Puffed up, golden brown, the Belgian Onion Pie babies looked like little golden buttercups!!!
Belgian Onion Pie 8
I was so happy with these. And not only were the baby Belgian Onion Pies so pretty to look at, they were delicious too – the light crisp pastry, the creamy filling, they were gorgeous!!!! And they tasted just like French Onion Soup!
You could almost say they were souper!
Gahhh…….Thankfully, the Belgian Onion pies tasted better than my puns!!!!!
I Feel Like I Win….
So despite a couple of hiccups, Pieathalon 2 was a total success.
Huge thanks to S.S. for the recipe and Yinzerella for the opportunity. I LOVED it! Here is my slightly twisted Muriels Wedding thanks to you both:
“I used to sit in my room for hours and listen to ABBA songs. But since I’ve met you and moved to Sydney joined in Pieathalon , I haven’t listened to one Abba song. That’s because my life is as good as an Abba song. It’s as good as Dancing Queen”
High praise indeed!
And as a fitting finale to this Pieathalon, Ladies, Gentlemen…bring out your best moves and your favourite satin jumpsuit and join me, Toni Collette and Rachel Griffiths in a little celebration of all things Pieathalon. Feel free to sing along with my ever so slightly modified lyrics below as you bust a synchronised move…
The entire list of bloggers and pies are here. Please check ’em all out but check out Sarah who made my Fiesta Almond Peach Pie recipe first!
Mandee from Vintage Recipe Cards – Peach Pizza Pie
Susie from Bittersweet Susie – Blueberry Cream Pie
Ashley at A Pinch of Vintage – Pecan Pie
Saucy Cherie at cookbookcherie.wordpress.com – Prune Whip Pie
Kelli from Kelli’s Kitchen – White Christmas Pie
Heather from Yesterday’s Menus – Pasta Cheese Pie (link no longer works 7/11/21)
Jenny of Silver Screen Suppers – Magic Cream Pie
Kelly from The Velveteen Lounge Kitsch-en Web Series – Swiss Pie with Hot Dogs
Dr. Bobb of Dr. Bobb’s Kitschen – Mincey Peach Pie
Sarah from Directionally Challenged Cooking – Fiesta Almond Peach Pie
Clara at Heritage Recipe Box – Cottage Cheese Apple Pie
Poppy of “Grannie Pantries” http://granniepantries.blogspot.com – Brandy Alexander Pie
RetroRuth from Mid-Century Menu – Cheese Pie
S.S. of A Book of Cookrye – Gowanda Pie
Emily aka Yinzerella from Dinner is Served 1972 – Melton Pork Pie
Erica Retrochef from Retro Recipe Attempts – Steak and Mushroom Pie
Catherine at Battenburgbelle – French Onion Pie
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!
The selection for March and April over at The Cookbook Guru was The Food Of Morocco by Paula Wolfert which really fits in with my explorations into Middle Eastern Food via Persiana and MENA.
First, the book is ENORMOUS!!!! If you dropped this on your foot, you would be in serious danger of breaking a toe. Or two. It was really quite difficult to choose the recipes to try, there were so many and so many that sounded delicious.
Second, it is beautiful – not just the recipes, the photography, the writing, everything about it is lovely. I would love to have this in my own collection as it is so well curated and contains so much of interest but sadly, it is quite expensive so, at the moment is just on the wishlist!
I have been sick for nearly a week now so I have left my run here a little late. Thankfully the anti-biotics have started to kick in and hopefully I can get this post out whilst it is still April somewhere in the world.
I have made four things from this book and whilst I would have loved to have a post for each, for the sake of brevity, I’m putting them all together so I can get something out before Christmas!!! I have also not included any recipes as that would have taken even more time but, if you like the look of anything let me know and I can send ’em through!
THE FOOD OF MOROCCO // BRIK WITH TUNA, CAPERS AND EGGS
I was not familiar with the brik, (pronounced breek) which is a Moroccan snack consisting of a very thin pastry called warqa wrapped around various fillings, one of which is this delicious but to me, uncommon, combination of tuna and egg.
Not surprisingly there was no warqa pastry at the local supermarket and because I was running so late on this, I could not shop for it so I used the much more readily available filo pastry for my briks. You can apparently also use spring roll wrappers, or if really brave, make your own warqa pastry.
So first up you saute up some onions, then add your tuna, capers, parsley and some parmesan cheese. And yup, this mix just on it’s own tastes AMAZING. I’m surprised there was any left to make the briks. Personally, I blame the hosts of reality tv cooking shows for constantly telling people to taste their food during cooking!
Then you make place the tuna mix on the pastry but make a little hole to hold the eggs. I don’t think it matters if it spills over a little like mine did.
Tuna Brik
Then you quickly seal this up and drop it into some hot oil to fry up – the idea being you want your pastry crispy and your egg still a little bit runny.
So, did I cook the perfect runny egg brik?
Sadly, no. My egg was cooked through. 🙁
This was not all bad though, it certainly made it easier to take the remainder for lunch the next day. And OMG, so tasty. I’ll definitely be trying this again and trying to nail that runny egg.
Tuna Brik
THE FOOD OF MOROCCO //POTATO TAGINE WITH OLIVES AND HARISSA
This tasted as good as it looks. And one for my vegan friends!!! The colours are so beautiful and the flavours blend together beautifully!
Potato Tagine With Olives and Harissa
THE FOOD OF MOROCCO // THE BIRD THAT FLEW AWAY
This a lovely chickpea dish with a delightful name. Paula Wolfert explains that is it a “plat de pauvre” (a dish for the poor) that is made when you can’t afford to buy a chicken. It’s so good I think I would eat it regardless of whether I had a chicken or not!
The Bird That Flew Away2
THE FOOD OF MOROCCO INSPIRED // ARTICHOKE SALAD WITH ORANGE, LEAFY GREENS AND DATES.
A Spanish restaurant I am very fond of does a salad with oranges, artichokes and dates which is To. Die. For. In order to recreate it’s flavour, I used Paula Wolfert’s Orange, Leafy Green and Date Salad and added artichokes and some lemon and olive oil in the dressing. I think it worked really well and I loved the hint of orange flower water. It was not exactly my restaurant salad but it was pretty close. And look at how pretty it is!
Artichoke, Orange, Leafy Green and Date Salad
This was an amazing book and I am so glad that The Cookbook Guru drew it to my attention. The next few months we will be cooking from a book by a true legend of Australian Cooking, Margaret Fulton. I can’t wait. And I promise to be a bit more timely!
