Category: Books


Nov
2012

Retro Food For Modern Times – The Australian Vegetable Cookbook (1977)

categories: 1970's food, Books

I’m not flat-out saying that the photographer of the Australian Vegetable Cookbook was a psychopath (he’s probably still alive and looking for his next victim)….I’m just saying that I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if that was the case.

Why would I even suggest such a thing?  Let’s just look at selection of photos:

Beetroot:

Broccoli:

Celery:

Eggplant…this is about where I started to see the pattern…

Lettuce:

Mushrooms:

Onions:

Parsnip:

Just in case you still haven’t got it, there is an almost always completely unnecessary knife in all of these pictures.  Sometimes it is coyly half hidden (Broccoli, onions) or off to the side, (mushrooms) but quite often front and centre, and in the case of the eggplant, gleaming evilly to boot.. It got to the point where I was searching pictures Where’s Wally style looking for the next one….I started to get disappointed when I didn’t find one. It was like a pictorial Stockholm Syndrome.

There is also a really scary looking chopper in the photo for Kohlrabi.  I don’t know much about Kohlrabi and maybe in Kohlrabi circles these implements are de rigueur but seriously this looks like it should belong in “50 Shades of Grey”, not in a vegetable cookbook!

Given this predilection, I couldn’t help reading the recipe for Broad (Fava) Beans and Bacon in full Hannibal Lector voice, finishing with “to be eaten with a glass of Chianti, Clarisse”.  I’m such a geek…

One of the best things about this book, and completely non-psychopathic is the pen and ink drawings of each vegetable.  These are lovely!

I can see a range of these  printed onto tea towels etc, as high-end kitchen ware. Imagine the peas above with a little bobble fringing….so vintage chic!

Along with the pen and ink drawings, there are  notes about the history, cultivation and some other fun facts about each vegetable  These can be interesting but, if you tend to be little bit….OCD like me, can seriously drive you insane…. Take for example, the seemingly innocuous statement on page 59 that:

“Eggplant (aubergine) is the fourth most important vegetable in Japan”

Most people would read that and move on with their lives.  I woke up in the middle of the night, wondering what numbers 1 through 3 were.   The book doesn’t tell you.  Which is really mean.  Who cares about fourth in anything?  Even bronze and silver are slightly dud…if you’re not going to tell me what THE most important vegetable in Japan is, don’t bother.  And…define importance?  Important how? Is it sacred?  Is is the (fourth) most grown? Eaten? Exported? Nutritious?  It’s half past three in the morning dammit and you’re giving me nothing!

Modern media is no help either.  If you Google “eggplant in Japan”, the top entry is about a Japanese comedian who, as part of a reality tv show,  was locked in an apartment and forced to enter magazine competitions until he earned $1 million yen.   For some bizarre reason he was also naked the whole time.  In order not to offend viewers, if his…erm…manly parts appeared on the screen they covered them with a cartoon of an eggplant.  No, really.  They did.  I couldn’t make this s**t up if I tried.

Ok, so back to…..what the hell was I talking about?  How on earth did I end up talking about naked Japanese comedians?  Well, I guess we kind of know why eggplants are important now.  They are to the Japanese what the fig leaf was to the Ancient Greeks.

Ah yes, back on track….now!  The descriptions of the vegetables  in these paragraphs sometimes makes them sound utterly repulsive.  Take for instance, the following:

“The edible part consists of a compact terminal mass of greatly thickened, modified and partly developed flower structures together with the supporting fleshy stalks.”

As if this isn’t bad enough, it then goes on to say:

“This terminal cluster forms a white succulent ’curd’  when cultivated for the table.”

I know these are probably very accurate scientific terms but who wants to eat a compact terminal mass?  It sounds like a tumour.  And as for a white succulent curd….yecch!  Cauliflower was never my favourite vegetable but it’ll  be a long time before I eat it again.  A length of time that will correlate precisely with the amount of time it takes for me to forget the words “compact terminal mass” whenever I see one!

That’s about enough for today, will speak about the revolting recipes contained inside next post!

In the meantime, hoping you can  forget the phrase “compact terminal mass”  as quickly as possible.


Oct
2012

Retro Food For Modern Times: The Knickerbocker Glory Years – Martin Lampen

categories: Almond, Books, Chocolate, Desserts, England, Icecream, Jelly, Strawberries, Tuile

“The Knickerbocker Glory Years” is Martin Lampen’s hilarious homage to all that is awful in British food.  From A – All You Can Eat £5.99 to Z – Zest, the book lays out the dark side of British cooking.

I really liked this book.  Lampen’s humour is of the very dry British style.  If you do not like my excerpts you will probably not like the rest of the book.  If you do like them, try to hunt down this book as you will thoroughly enjoy the rest of it.  Also, the same book is called “Sausage in A Basket” in some parts of the world.

Many of the entries are short.  For instance, the entry for Wood Fired Pizza  is:

“Big Fucking Deal”

The longest entry is 13 pages and documents Lampen’s first dinner party in all it’s excruciating awkwardness. This is the type of book you can dip in and dip out of as you require, it doesn’t have to be read from cover to cover.

Given that I touched on the 1970’s fondness for Ham Steak and Pineapple in the last post, Lampen’s take on Gammon is:

“The pig is slaughtered, its hind legs are removed, cured, glazed in honey and sliced into steaks.  If this isn’t indignity enough, the steaks are then topped with a single wet pineapple ring from a dented tin and a waxy maraschino cherry.

Yes, gammon steak when topped with egg or pineapple is a peculiarly British dish: a bloated pink slab of fatty meat, topped with a garish fruit hat. Rather like a ‘Nikita’-era Elton John”

On the subject of pineapple, the entry for Tropical is:

“In Britain, any food or drink – be it a concentrated juice, cordial or sugary carbonated fizz – containing lemon, lime, pineapple or mango is tagged as ‘tropical’.

It’s important to note that other items included in the taxonomy ‘tropical’ are tuberculosis, typhoid, tularemia, (and) tropical storm Arlene”

Or, this for Guacamole:

“A filthy Soylent Green-style dip, guacamole is usually served with stale Doritos,  a mountain of melted Cheddar cheese and mayonnaise on  chain-pub’s nacho platter . It’s made from dead people.”

As for the eponymous Knickerbocker Glory Lampen has this to say:

“The knickerbocker glory, a layered dessert served in a tall glass and made with ice cream, tinned peaches, chocolate or fruit sauce and strawberry puree was the first post war dessert to be made in Britain that did not contain suet.

For a young male aged between eight and fourteen in the 1980’s, the knickerbocker glory was the greatest sensual experience one could imagine.  Greater even than being interfered with by Bananarama”

For those of you who have no idea what Bananarama is, firstly it was a they and they were an immensely popular girl band of the 1980’s.

In homage to this book I made my own Knickerbocker Glory and it was about the funnest thing I have eaten all year!!!  And I know full well funnest isn’t a word, but it was so much fun I lost all thoughts about grammar.

My version of Knickerbocker Glory differs from Lampen’s in that I always thought Knickerbocker Glory should contain jelly.  My version contained the following layers:

  • Strawberry jelly (Jello)
  • Vanilla ice cream
  • Chocolate cookie crumbs
  • Sliced Banana
  • Strawberry Jelly
  • Strawberry Ice-cream
  • Frangelico Fudge Sauce (Recipe follows or you could just use your preferred chocolate sauce)
  • Chopped nuts
  • Rosewater & Almond Tuile (Recipe follows or you could use a bought wafer)
  • Strawberry Garnish

For something that is largely put together from bits and pieces, this looks spectacular! And tastes even better!!!

Enjoy!

Recipes:

Frangelico Fudge Sauce

This makes 6 cups, you can obviously adjust quantities down if you do not want this much. This is so easy to make and absolutely delicious!

1 litre cream

250g dark chocolate

200g marshmallows

Frangelico to taste

  1. Heat the cream, chocolate and marshmallows slowly until melted and well combined.
  2. Stir in Frangelico to taste.

Almond and Rosewater Tuiles

These are a little troublesome to make but are worth it in the end!

50g caster sugar

30g unsalted butter at room temperature, plus extra for greasing

1 egg-white

1/4 tsp rosewater

Finely grated rind of 1/2 an orange

35g plain flower

30g flaked almonds

pinch of salt

  1. Make a template by drawing a triangle, circle or any shape you want on a plastic lid or a sheet of firm plastic, then cut the shape out.  The shape should be no larger than 5cm in diameter.  Set the template aside.
  2. Beat sugar and butter with an electric beater until pale and creamy. Add eggwhite and beat on lowest speed until incorporated.
  3. Add rosewater, orange rind, flour and a pinch of salt.  Mix lightly until combined, then refrigerate for 1 hour to rest.  (The batter will keep in the fridge for 2-3 days.
  4. Preheat oven to 180°.  Place template on a baking paper lined tray, add a teaspoon of the batter into the template and spread the mixture with an offset palette knife so that it fills the template in a thin even layer.
  5. Repeat until the baking tray is full.  Scatter almond flakes over each until tuiles are golden brown on the edges (8-10) minutes. While still warm you can shape around a rolling-pin if desired or cool on tray and carefully remove.
  6. Repeat with remaining batter.
  7. Tuiles will keep in an airtight container for 3 days.
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Sep
2012

The Busy Woman’s Cookbook – Australian Woman’s Weekly (1972)

categories: Books

Strange things happened in the ‘70’s.  And for my next revelation…water is wet.  Yes, I know.  My acuity today is on fire.  I have a horrible headache.  It came on whilst reading this book.  Possibly due to the number of times I beat myself about the head with it exclaiming “WTF?  For the love of God, why?”

However, I digress.  One of the things that happened in the 1970’s was a glut of cookbooks aimed at the  growing number of women entering the full-time workforce.  They all touted their ability to save women time in the kitchen through the use of processed foods.  The result, in many cases, was a book which sacrificed taste and nutrition for what was often a false expediency.  The current wave of people wanting to do everything from scratch – bake their own bread, make their own preserves and pickles, cure their own olives etc,  may well be a backlash from the children of these busy women of the ’70’s!

Before I continue, I would just like to take a moment to say how much I love the Australian Women’s Weekly.  There is rarely a bad recipe in the modern-day magazine.   Their test kitchen is amazing and, just in case you’re reading AWW, the kind of place I would really like to work one day.  Disclaimer and hints for future employment over, sadly, this book mostly provides examples of the worst faults of this type of cooking.  Before we launch into the horror though, lets start with a positive.

This book has an awesome cover.

Just look at it.  The busy woman has a fabulous dress and great hair and makeup.  She has some amazing ceramic casserole dishes in a glorious 1970’s pattern on the dresser in the background.  Don’t look for too long though, or you may start to ask yourself some disturbing questions.  Like what EXACTLY is the busy woman doing?  Because it looks like she has made a tower of fruit and is now topping that tower with some flowers.

The message intended by the AWW in selecting this cover may have been something like :

“No longer a slave to the stove, the modern-day busy woman can spend time on creating a  delightful ambience for her guests”

The messages I took away after reading the book were:

“If you have time to faff about making flower towers you have time to cook something decent”

And

“I would prefer to eat those flowers than some of the meals contained in here”

And

“Good thing that candle’s not lit.  Material in the 1970’s was not known for its resistance to fire”

♦♦♦♦♦♦

The Busy Woman’s Cookbook repeatedly commits three crimes against food.

Crime Number One: Gilding A turd

I tried for a long time to think of a more delicate phrase for this.  I failed.  For those of you not familiar with this delightful expression, urban dictionary defines it as

“Wasting your time trying to  turn something completely worthless into something that looks (or tastes) good”

This is exemplified by the recipe for :

Culprit:  Gourmet Chicken Soup, page 4

To make gourmet chicken soup, you add tarragon vinegar, cream and a stock cube to a can of cream of chicken soup. So, not only is this recipe guilty of the crime of gilding, it is also guilty of the misdemeanor of redundancy.  Using soup to make soup is…stupid.  It’s even more stupid if you are time strapped.  You already have soup.  Why bother?  Ah, I hear you cry but we want this to be gourmet chicken soup.  Let me give you a clue.  Adding vinegar, cream and a stock cube will not make your canned cream of chicken soup gourmet.  It will make your canned cream of chicken soup taste like a more creamy (again with the redundancy), more vinegary and more salty canned cream of chicken soup.

There is not a single thing you can do to make canned soup taste like home-made.  So, if you must have canned soup,  ditch the accoutrements and revel in the tackiness of it.  Whilst your soup is heating, practice your best death stare in the nearest reflective surface.  If your guests are rude enough to comment on the cannedness of your soup, fix them with this death stare and say very coldly.  “Yes, it is canned soup.  You can eat it or wear it.”  Alternatively, you could just not serve canned chicken soup to guests.

I’m not a complete food snob.  There is a time and a place for canned soup.   It is when you are sick and are too ill to make something decent. Canned soup should be only eaten when you are wearing pyjamas and have a runny nose / sore throat/ cough / headache / hangover etc.

See also: Creamy Tomato Soup (made with tomato soup), p5, Orange Sorbet (made with orange squash), p40

Crime Number Two:  Hiding Your Love Away

Otherwise known as the anti-gilding a turd.  This is when you have some great ingredients and do your best to fuck them up.

Culprit: Oyster Soup, also page 4

Ok, so  here’s a little test for you.  You have a dozen oysters.  You have some bacon.  You are a busy woman and your guests are sitting in the dining room waiting for their first course.  What are your options?

1 The  Romantic: Put the bacon in the fridge and have it for breakfast tomorrow.  Serve the oysters as naked as God intended, maybe with a squeeze of lemon to tantalise the taste buds.

2 Spicy Salty Goodness: Whip up a quick Kilpatrick – chop the bacon, add a drop or two of Worcestershire sauce to the oysters (personally, I also like a drop of Tabasco) add the bacon, grill.

3.  The WTF.  Alternatively titled the  AWW Option.  Incidentally, in a book for the supposedly busy woman, the this  option takes longer to cook than the either of the ones I’ve suggested. And is disgusting to boot.

Oysters and bacon are good.  Don’t add them to instant mashed potato.  Don’t add anything to instant mashed potato.  It’s an abomination sprung from the deepest recesses of hell. And, if you weren’t already feeling ill, try imagining how this would look in a bowl – beige, lumpy and gluggy….ewwwwww.

See also: Cheese Wine Dip p6 – made by mixing wine with a jar of cheese spread.  Wine is a delightful substance and has given me many hours of happiness.  It should never be subjected to such horrendous treatment.

Crime Number Three:  Sometimes A Rose isn’t a Rose

This is the crime of taking a perfectly decent concept and ruining it.

Culprit: Asparagus Mornay, page 7.

I’m not sure why I find the idea of  heating the canned asparagus in its own liquid the most repulsive part of this dish.  It’s not as if I wasn’t spoiled for choice.

See also: Easy Chocolate Mousse , p36; Pears Belle Helene, p41

♦♦♦♦♦♦

Despite its many faults,  this book  is not  a complete waste of time.   The salad section is perfectly fine, there are also some good standard beef and chicken dishes, including one of my favourite childhood meals – Apricot Chicken made with a packet of french onion soup and a can of apricot nectar.  Delicious.  This was the first meal I ever made for my family.  I must have been about seven and found the recipe in one of my mum’s magazines – quite possibly a Women’s Weekly – and then badgered her to buy the ingredients so I could cook it.   After this original outing it became a family favourite.  We made a posher version than the one in this book where  we sprinkled flaked almonds over the top.  Now, that’s gourmet living!  The only reason I am not making it as part of this experiment is that if it turned out to be  horrible, I would feel like a my childhood had been stolen from me.   And a fairy would die.

The food styling in “The Busy Woman’s Cookbook is also delightfully odd.  How do you make your spaghetti and meatballs look authentically Italian?  Serve it with a backdrop of a Renaissance painting!

So, how to present your Kidneys Bordelaise?

Bordelaise means from Bordeaux (I had to Google that)so  maybe some a painting of some wine?  Grapes?  Rolling hills of French vineyards?  No?  What about a  random backdrop of a river scene?  I”m not saying it’s not Bordeaux.   Just not obviously so.

We’ll end with my favourite photo from the book, a photo that, unlike the Kidneys Bordelaise above, is for a perfectly edible dish too.   Over the next few weeks I”ll be trying out  a few more of these.   But for now, enjoy the psychedelic 1970’s delight of these funky mushroom glasses as the backdrop for a spinach and mushroom salad.

 

 


Jun
2012

Food For Lovers – Kelly Brodsky (1973)

categories: Books, Food For Lovers

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…


May
2012

The Italian Cuisine I Love – Jules Bond (1977)

categories: Books, Italy

Move over Ryan Gosling there’s a new man in my life.

I’m totally in love  with Jules J. Bond, the author of  The Italian Cuisine I Love.   For anyone (like me) who had never heard of Jules J. Bond before he was a:

“Widely travelled newspaper correspondent, author of cookbooks, food columnist, lecturer and well-known in gourmet circles.  He is a…Officer Commandeur of the Confrérie du Tastevin, Commandeur de Bordeaux, Member of the Wine and Food Society, the Escoffier Society and of the prestigious Club des vingt-six”

During the war he served as part of the Psychological Warfare Detachment which could make him a man who stared at goats.  Or a spy….J Bond?  Coincidence? I prefer to think not.

How suave can one man be?    Imagine being a guest at one of his dinner parties.  There would be great food, fantastic wine.   I bet he not only had a story or two to tell but that he also told them in a delightfully witty and urbane  manner.   And, should assassins  burst in and take you hostage during dinner, he would  have taken them down using nothing but an egg beater.  That is my type of man!

This is a cracker of  a cookbook too.  I picked it up for 50 cents at my local charity shop.  It contains over a hundred recipes so the bang for buck ratio is amazing.  The recipes themselves are a solid mix of Italian dishes from antipasto to dessert, ranging through soups, pasta, pizza, various meats and vegetables.  There is nothing odd about any of them – no odd uses of pineapple, no MSG  It’s almost disappointing.

There is a quirky side to The Italian Cuisine I Love and that is in the wonderful photos.  I noticed that a large number of these featured at least one bottle of wine and was beginning to thing that maybe Jules J. had a bit of a problem with the booze.  No, the photos were just supplied by the wine maker. And they are great photos too.  The Ruffino wine Company went to some trouble here.  Look at the trinket box in the photo for the Spring lamb, the  inexplicable use of corn in the picture of the rolled chicken breast, the bottle of wine somewhat coyly peeking out from behind an apple in the spaghetti carbonara picture.  This isn’t just advertising.  It’s art!

Other photos within the book, a selection of which are featured below, were supplied by the National Macaroni Institute.  Yes.  There was a National Macaroni Institute.  Who knew?  But again these are great photos.  I particularly love the one on the right.  That red soup tureen is awesome.  I’m searching for that and the matching bowls on ebay as we speak!  I’m not so sure about the lady with the tiny head in the picture of the spaghetti with veal and green peppers but, hey, at least they’ve tried.

The same can’t be said about the photo supplied by the Italian Tourist Office which is featured both on the back cover of, and within, the book entitled “Bowl of Fruit.”  Now, in all fairness The Italian Cuisine I Love does contain a recipe called “Fresh Fruit Bowl” but the contents of the recipe and this  photo bear little (or no)  resemblance to each other.  It’s just a  random photo of fruit.  I don’t know what the Italian Tourist office were thinking.   Why did they even have a photo of a bowl of fruit?  What kind of marketing strategy is that?  “Come to Italy.  We have apples.”  Seriously?  Is that the best you could do Italian Tourist office?

To add insult to injury, the fruit in the photo is not even in a bowl.  It’s in a basket.  Poor form, Italian Tourist Office.  Lift your game.

The Italian Cuisine I Love is one  of a series of books written by Jules J. Bond.  The series also included the Chinese, French, Hungarian, Jewish, Mid-Eastern, Mexican, Spanish and Viennese cuisines that JJB loved.  He was kind of slutty in his food loving.

Unfortunately for me Jules J.  passed away in 1993,  so I guess you can stop your sobbing, Gosling, you’re still top of the list.  But  until I found out that Jules J.  was no more (and even if he was, he’d be 97), he was giving you a run your for money.  Take heed.  Don’t be the Italian Tourist Office Ryan, be the National Macaroni Institute.

Just in case you were wondering.  The J stands for Jerome.

In the next few posts I’ll be cooking some of  the Italian food JJB loved…not including a bowl of fruit.