Chicken & Poultry - Retro Food For Modern Times

21
Dec
2014

Festive Duck Salad & Oscar’s Story

categories: 1970's food, 1970's recipes, Celery, Cranberries, Duck, Holidays, Salad

A few of the recipes in Salads For All Seasons have odd names that have little bearing on the contents. Take the Sportsman’s Saturday Salad I made a few weeks ago. This one however is exactly what it says on the box. With it’s gorgeous shades of green and red, it’s very festive. It’s duck. And it’s salad.

And it’s deeeelicious!!!

I have a weird issue with duck. I love to eat it. Really love to eat it. But I find it very hard to cook correctly. I also have an issue in that we live very close to a lake. The ducks there are so tame; when they see you coming they come racing all the way across the lake because you might have food for them. Which we never do. Because we already have two walking, barking dustbins that are more than ready to consume any scraps. But seeing them and particularly the ever so cute ducklings in Spring does make me feel a bit guilty about eating them. Also I’m sure I heard somewhere that ducks mate for life and it always makes me sad that somewhere out there is a lonely duck who has lost the love of it’s life and will spend the rest of his or her life alone.

Ok, so now that I’ve put you off eating my yummy salad, let’s talk about something else for a while so we forget the lonely ducks.

Oscar also has a complicated relationship with the birds on the lake. The swans more than the ducks though. A swan at Williamstown beach had a go at Lulu when she was younger. She keeps her distance. He is just fascinated….
And now feels like a good time to tell you the Oscar story because it is our personal Christmas miracle.

December 2012, I was working at a place that I hated and was day by day destroying my will to live. Seriously. One of the few days of joy in those last 6 months was that, as a team, we worked with the RSPCA on Santa Paws. Santa Paws is a fabulous initiative where people bring in their pets for a photo with Santa that then gets printed onto Christmas cards, keyrings etc. It’s pretty cool. And not just dogs, people were bringing in goats and kittens and goldfish. It was awesome.

After our shift finished I asked if I could go have a look in the kennels. There was a very cute beagle but it was going to Beagle rescue the next day. In the next cage was a big lolloping gangly boy who came running over and as soon as I patted him fell over for a belly rub. And he was lovely and an incredibly weird combination of a Greyhound and a Staffordshire Bull Terrier.

Which seems like a combination that doesn’t work however you play it.

But there he was.

And then I read the sign on his cage. It said something like “I have been here for nearly 100 days and lots of people have looked at me; then they leave with their new puppy. I just want a home with a family who loves me as much as I will love them.”

OMG, it makes me cry even now.

The poor little fucker was two years old and it was his third time at the RSPCA. He had been born there; the last owners had brought him back because they could no longer afford to feed him. We also strongly suspect he has been massively ill-treated because even now, he will cringe at any loud noise, like a door slamming for the wind, he is pretty much scared of his own shadow.

So I went home and Mark was “So how was it, did you have a great time?”

And I started to tell him. And I got as far as “There was a dog and he had a sign…” and then I cried. For hours. And when he could finally get the story out of me, he cried. And then he sighed and said “So, when do we go get him?” Bear in mind at this time, we were living in a one bedroom apartment, and we already had one dog. A second dog was also going to be a stretch and a real life changer, and not in a good way, for us. But we reasoned, it would only be a couple of months until we moved into the house we were building so we all had a bit more room to breathe. That couple of months turned out to be nearly a year….

But who could resist that face?

The next morning we took Lulu and we went to get him. Our get-out card was that if Lulu hated him he couldn’t come. She is so bossy that we couldn’t have another dog that challenged her authority and fought with her all the time.

So we drove for an hour in a huge rainstorm where you couldn’t even see ten metres in front of the car and I was really scared driving in such bad weather but I did it because I was so happy that we could take him home. When we got there he came running up but then he turned away. He was really disinterested in us – as if he was sick of investing in people who weren’t going to take him.

Mark liked him and Lulu didn’t kill him. So it was pretty much a done deal that we were taking him.

Until they told us that we couldn’t.

Their dog psychologist had deemed he was food possessive and could not be in a house with another dog.

We argued and argued the point. We said Lulu is such a dominant dog she would NEVER let anyone come between her and her food but they stood firm. We could not take him.

I cried all the way home.

About four days later, I got a call from the RSPCA. “Are you the girl who wanted to buy Thor?” Oh, yeh, his former name was Thor….we didn’t want a dog called Thor so we renamed him. Anyway, yes that was me. “Well the psychologist has reevaluated him. He’s all yours.”

Two years on, I can’t imagine life without him. He is the sweetest, most gentle, most affectionate boy in the world. With an increasing cheekiness as his confidence grows. He knows this is his home and I hope he knows we will never abandon him. I am confident we have given him the best life he has ever had. We love him to death and, yes, the sign was true, he absolutely loves us in return.

If you’re wondering why so many of the photos show Osky sleeping or in some type of bed, it’s because greyhounds are surprisingly, incredibly lazy. He and Lulu get walked for about an hour every day and we are lucky enough to have an off leash park close by where, ideally, he can run with another dog. Ten minutes of flat out running during the walk and that’s him done for the day. He’ll snooze for most of the rest of the day, waking up only to eat. And there’s always time for a cuddle…

And then, it’s time for a bit more snoozing….

We might be good to get back to the salad now. The original recipe is here if you want it. I wasn’t taken by the idea of orange and egg so I omitted the egg and added some cranberries to my version. Also, I used homemade mayo, also from Salads from All Seasons but you can use store bought if you wish. Having said that, this one is super easy and tasty!

I cooked my duck according to the Gordon Ramsay recipe here and it worked pretty well. It was certainly the most successful I have been with duck.

You could also make this with some leftover turkey post-Christmas. It will lack some of the richness of the duck but will still be pretty good!

I”m going to try to get one more post in before the big day but just in case life gets in the way, Merry Christmas to you all from me and a special Christmas Angel.

We both hope it’s fabulous.

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29
Sep
2014

Hayman Island Chicken Salad

categories: 1970's food, 1970's recipes, Chicken, Pineapple, Salad

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.

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.

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….

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.

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?

Yep. Me too. (Sigh).

Oh well, at least I have the salad!

Have a great week!

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Hayman Island Chicken Salad

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Ingredients

Scale

4 cups cooked chicken
1 cup celery, chopped
1 tbsp spring onion, chopped
1 tbsp capers
1 avocado, flesh cut into cubes
2 oranges, segmented (the original recipe called for tinned mandarin segments)
1 can pineapple pieces
2 tbsp slivered almonds, toasted
3/4 cup mayonnaise
2 tsp lemon zest
dash of tabasco sauce (optional)
1 tbsp lemon juice
salt & pepper

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Instructions

Combine the chicken, celery, spring onions, capers and lemon juice.
Chill for 1 hour.
Mix lemon zest, tabasco if using, and mayonnaise. Chill.
At serving time, add the pineapple, avocado and oranges to the chicken mix.
Gently add the mayonnaise and carefully mix through.
Season to taste
Top with almonds and serve.

27
May
2014

Lets Get Chatty…Chatti Pathiri that is (Daring Kitchen)

categories: Chicken & Poultry, Chickpeas, Coriander, Curry, Daring Kitchen, India, Sambol

Here is something you don’t know about me.

You know how some people step up and excel under pressure? I’m not one of them. I warp. I buckle. I crumple and fold. When the going gets tough you can usually find me sobbing in a corner. And one of the things that really fazes me is cooking for other people – not so much for dinners but a bake sale? Guaranteed disaster. Last time? Yes, that was me running into the 7-11 well after midnight, (after the first four attempts at cupcakes had failed) wild eyed, smeared with flour and frosting and slightly twitchy. “Where’s your cake mix? I need a box of cake mix. And I need it now!!!!” I was like a demented Betty Crocker junkie desperate for my fix…..

Chatting Pathiri

Sigh.

The April Daring Cooks Challenge was brought to us by Joanne from What’s On The List. She taught us all about Pathiri and challenged us to create our own version of this inspirational Indian dish!

Challenge was right, I felt the first stirrings of panic rising even as I read the recipe….

So, let’s take a step back before I start hyperventilating (again) and look at this dish called Chatti Pathiri. For those of you, who, like me had never heard of Chatti Pathiri, the best way to explain is that it’s kinda, sorta like an Indian Lasagne where crepes step in for the pasta sheet and, in my case a spicy chicken and chickpea curry acts as the filling.

Yeah, you heard it….yummy, yummy crepes and delicious chicken and chickpea curry. And after you layer these two bits of deliciosuness, you slather them in coconut milk and bake it all together. And mark my words….It’s all good.

So why the fear? Why the cold hand of dread on my spine I hear you ask? Not because of the recipe, that was awesome!!! But because I kind of know Joanne. She reads this. She comments. She’s a lovely, friendly delightful person. And she has entrusted me (and yes, ok thousands of other people on the Daring Kitchen) with a recipe that is obviously very special to her.

And what if I took her delicious recipe and totally screwed it up?

Arrrgggghhhhhh!!!

The pressure….

(I know. Such a Drama Queen. Feel free to roll your eyes. I would be.)

Luckily for me, Joanne’s recipe proved to be idiot proof!!! And super delicious!!!! You can find it here.

I added a little bit more chilli and a can of chickpeas into the chicken mix but apart from that I used Joanne’s recipe as is.

I served my version of Chatti Pathiri with a coconut and coriander sambol and some cherry tomatoes drizzled with a little bit of pomegranate molasses.

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Coriander and Coconut Sambol

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A spicy and refreshing side dish, perfect for eating with your Chatti Pathiri or any other indian dish

Prep Time: 15
Total Time: 15

Ingredients

Scale

3 tbsp coriander leaves
75g coconut (freshly grated is best, I used dessicated)
3 green chillies, deseeded
1 clove of garlic
2.5 cm piece of ginger
2 tsp mint leaves
1 tsp sugar
Salt and freshly squeezed lime juice to taste

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Instructions

Place all ingredients, except lime and salt in a food processor and process until finely chopped.
Add salt and lime juice to taste.
Serve as an accompaniment to curries

Nutrition

Serving Size: 4

The sambol will last in the fridge for about a week if you seal it up. Which is perfect because the Chatti Pathiri is also pretty good reheated on the second day!!!

Joanne, if you’re reading this, thank you very much for the recipe. I loved making it and I loved eating it even more. I hope I have done your recipe and you proud!!!

If this has piqued your interest in Pathiri and /or you would like to see how other Daring Kitchen members interpreted the challenge, you can see some of the completed dishes on Joanne’s blog here.

Or just head over and have a read, you won’t be disappointed!

And speaking of reading, I joined the Goodreads Food and Fiction book. And here’s another thing you may not know about me – my first venture into blogging was trying to match food to the books I was reading. It’s an idea I return to every now and again and I may start adding in one or two of those in the not too distant. In the meantime, if, like me you love food and you love fiction…the Goodreads group may be something for you! You can find a link over on the right.

Have a great week!!!!

And if you want to get chatty, leave a comment!!!!

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15
Apr
2013

Retro food For Modern Times – Yes, We Have No Bananas

categories: Bacon, Bananas, Books, Chicken & Poultry, Desserts, Orange Flower Water, Pie, Rhubarb

Bananas are not my favourite fruit. I put it down to an ill-advised visit to a…(please don’t let my mum be reading this)… “show” in Amsterdam when I was, younger and more prone to ~~drunkenness~~ peer pressure than I am now. It took many a year before I could even look at a banana (or anyone dressed in a Batman costume) without an inward cringe and a slight sense of shame.

But, even a banana-phobe like me could not resist trying out the recipe for Rhubarb and Banana Pie in Good Cooking For Everyone. Here is a sneak peek at how that turned out before we turn to some less appetising uses.

OMG that pie was good!!!

I’m conquering my fears in more ways than one this week – bananas and homemade pastry! If only Christian Bale would drop by we could go for the hat trick. Anyway, I had a little flick through Good Cooking for Everyone whilst I was waiting for my pastry to chill and there seemed to be a lot fewer recipes containing bananas than I remembered.

Here is what was listed:

However, my eagle eye soon discovered out the recipes Mary Meredith tried to hide. So, today, allow me to present the Banana File of Shame (and a really, really, good pie recipe)!

Mary Meredith seems to have had quite the predilection for bananas and bacon as they feature in three recipes. I had no idea this was a thing but Niki Sengit gives the combination a stamp of approval in her Flavour Thesaurus (one of my favourite food books) so I guess it must be. Like Mary, Niki also gives a recipe for Bacon Wrapped Bananas. However it is the cheese sauce in Mary Meredith’s recipe that moves it from what Niki calls “fun” to what I call “Ewww”!

Bacon and Banana Corkscrews

Then there are Bacon, Kidney and Banana Kebabs. I have never cooked with, or even knowingly eaten, kidneys. And after reading the second sentence in this recipe which made me gag, it will probably stay that way! The faint of stomach may want to skip recipe.

Bacon, Banana and Kidney Kebabs 001

There is also a sneaky use of bananas in the Sunrise Breakfast. I initially thought the things on the serving platter with the tomatoes were sausages. But who ever heard of people eating sausages for breakfast? Crumbed bananas make far more sense. If you’re insane.

Mind you, I’m obviously a bit slow because I made the same mistake with the Sunday Chicken which also features bananas cunningly disguised as sausages.

Another combination I would never have thought of but Niki assures me that breaded chicken with banana was served on the Titanic and features in F. Scott Fitzgerald‘s novel Tender is the Night! Mary Meredith also features chicken and bananas in her recipe for Stuffed Boned Chicken.

I would have included the pages on how to bone a chicken. Unfortunately, the 13-year-old boy whose sense of humour I stole was snickering so hard at the phrase “boning a chicken” that I had to let it go.

Mary is also not afraid to take food from other climes and destroy them with the inappropriate inclusion of the banana.

A recipe called Flamenco Rice should invoke Spain. It should bring up images of a glamorous Spanish woman, holding the edge of her brightly coloured ruffled dress and twirling, or clicking her castanets to the tune of a classical guitar. Or, at the very least, Paella.

Fried eggs and fried bananas on a bed of rice served with tomato sauce is not flamenco. It’s not even the Macarena.

flamenco 001

France also does not fair well. Bananas as an accompaniment to Fondue? No thanks.

Fabulous copper fondue pot though!

Finally, the hidden gem in the shape of a Rhubarb and Banana Pie. This was awesome!

I made a few small changes to the recipe as given. I wanted a really short, almost a shortbread, crust so I used the Almond Sweetcrust Pastry in Alan Campion and Michelle Curtis’ In The Kitchen instead of that suggested by Mary. If you are scared of large quantities of butter look away now.

I mastered the pastry only to discover my pie dish had disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle that hovers over my house. But, in the spirit of keep calm and carry on, I crossed my fingers and rolled the pastry into a soufflé dish.

I added 1 teaspoon of Orange Flower Water into the mix before I loaded it into the Pie Crust. I love the mix of rhubarb and orange!

Banana and Rhubarb Pie ingredients loaded into crust

The pie was fabulous, the flavours worked beautifully together and the pastry was light and crisp. I kept my rhubarb and my banana relatively chunky which made for an interesting mix – one mouthful would be heavily rhubarb in flavour, the next would be almost entirely banana. If you wanted less sharply defined flavours, you could cook the rhubarb to soften it, then mash be bananas in.

I may be biased but I think mine looks pretty good, despite the use of a soufflé dish!!!

Mary's Rhubarb and Banana Pie — Mary’s Rhubarb and Banana Pie

Rhubarb and Banana Pie Recipe

Almond Sweetcrust Pastry

They say the best way to get rid of your phobias it to face them. So, this week I’m going to be spending a lot of time looking at pictures of Christian Bale on the internet.

And no, it’s not pervy. It’s therapy!

Enjoy whatever catches your eye this week.

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07
Feb
2013

Retro Food For Modern Times – Singers and Swingers – Roberta Ashley (1967): Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Spaghetti Bolognese

categories: 1960's recipes, Bolognese, Chicken Liver, Pasta

What do my latest kitchen rule and the American military have in common?

Hint – the answer is in the title.

Prompted by my latest foray into Roberta Ashley’s Singers and Swingers, the events of this week have led me to adopt a strict “need to know policy” in terms of the produce issuing from said kitchen.

The recipe in question was Noel Harrison’s Spaghetti Bolognese, inspired by a recipe by none other than Elizabeth David!

It obviously wasn’t all franks and beans for the celebrities of 1967, some of them were slightly more highbrow.

I dithered over making this recipe for about a week before deciding to go for it. The reason?

I don’t care if the recipe is inspired by the Grand Dame of British Cookery, a Spaghetti Bolognese without garlic is not any Spaghetti Bolognese I care to make!

That’s not true, well it’s partially true but the real reason for the prevarication was the presence of chicken livers in the recipe.

Ingredients - Noel Harrison's Spaghetti Bolognese — Ingredients – Noel Harrison’s Spaghetti Bolognese with a sneaky garlic clove thrown in!

I have never cooked liver before, in fact I have never, outside of a paté even eaten liver before. I am actually a bit frightened by the thought of offal. Still, one of my reasons for wanting to do this was to expand my horizons as a cook, so whilst it took a bit of internal debate there really was only one decision that made sense.

The texture of the raw liver was…ooky. It was softer than I thought it would be, almost a little spongy and a little….stringy. It was kind of gross. I would certainly not discount using chicken liver in a recipe again but I’m not scouring recipe books either!

Still, I persevered, (yay, me!) and the end result was a super Spaghetti Bolognese, even if I do say so myself. It was rich and flavoursome. There was an undercurrent of liver but the flavour certainly wasn’t overpowering. Bravo Noel Harrison and Elizabeth David!

I made the Bolognese sauce in the afternoon as I wanted it to simmer for a few hours. I had a gym class that evening, so just before I left I put the spaghetti on to boil and left Mark to fend for himself. When I got home, he had eaten his.

“Did you like it?”

“I was the best spaghetti Bolognese I have ever had…it was delicious” Proof is in the eating. he wiped his plate clean.

Wow! That’s some praise from a notoriously picky eater!

So, I then sat down to eat mine and, he was right, it was pretty damn good!

I’m putting my next comments down to delirium caused by too much exercise. Too much jumping around is not good for my brain! Because the next words out of my mouth were “Yeah, I was really worried about putting the chicken livers in there but they work”.

That was it. I continued eating, he continued watching tv.

End of discussion.

Or possibly not.

The next night, we were having left over Bolognese with garlic bread, also from the book. Or I thought we were. I ‘d started to reheat the Bolognese sauce when I heard a small voice behind me.

“I don’t think I can eat it”.

“Why”

“You shouldn’t have told me about the chicken livers”

“But you eat liver, you eat calves livers when we go out and they’re huge…the chicken livers were tiny”

“I know”

“You had chicken liver paté on toast for breakfast”

“I know”

“You said it was the BEST Spaghetti Bolognese you’ve ever eaten”

“That was before I knew about the chicken livers…I’ll have the garlic bread though, that looks great”

This example of man logic floored me. On a scale of one to ten where one is cold hard calculated rationality and ten is utter gibberish, surely this rates a 9.5?

So, from now on….any, and all, feats of kitchen wizardry are going to be hidden behind a veil, cloaked in a cone of silence and locked in a vault. From now on, nothing coming from my kitchen is being divulged to anyone. Ever.

Except for you dear readers…just don’t tell anyone!

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Category: Chicken & Poultry

Hayman Island Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Instructions

Coriander and Coconut Sambol

Ingredients

Instructions

Nutrition