Chocolate Archives - Retro Food For Modern Times

25
Jul
2023

July 2003 – What’s In The Fridge?

categories: 20 Years Ago Today, Chocolate, Pizza, Steak

Hello, retro food lovers! Let’s take a trip back twenty years to July 2003. While where there, why not pick up the current copy of Delicious Magazine and try to make a meal with ingredients that we can find in our fridge. I set a rule for myself with this one that at least 2 ingredients for each meal had to come from my fridge. For the purposes of full disclosure, I have also listed items I have used from my freezer, pantry and those I bought for the recipes. Before we head to the recipes, let’s set the scene for what else was happening in July 2003!

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl was #1 at the box office, followed by Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Bad Boys II. Doesn’t sounds like I would have been going to the movies a lot in July 2003! Instead, I was likely staying at home reading the best-selling Da Vinci Code by Dance Brown and listening to Beyonce’s Crazy in Love. But enough about me, let’s get to our menu!

The Menu – July 2003

BROCCOLI, PANCETTA AND FETA PIZZA

There was a cheese fondue in the magazine which very nearly became the entree for our July 2003 menu but in the end I chose the pizza. The recipe comes from an advertisement for Ardmona Rich and Thick Chopped Tomatoes which was absolutely brilliant and why I decided to use this recipe over the fondue. The advertisements which ran for a number of years featured celebrities not known for their intelligence advertising pureed tomatoes! Rich and thick tomatoes from the rich and…you get it. The ad certainly caught my eye! Also, this was the only recipe in the magazine where I did not have to buy any ingredients, although I substituted a few:

Fridge ingredients

Broccolini (subbed for the broccoli in the recipe)
Proscuitto (subbed for the pancetta in the recipe)
Feta cheese

All of these were leftovers from other things I had made which would have otherwise likley gone to waste

Other ingredients

Puff Pastry – from the freezer
Tinned tomatoes – from the pantry

Broccoli and Pancetta Pizza Recipe

Beef Carpaccio with Parmesan, Horseradish and Raw Beetroot

This is a Jamie Oliver recipe that I made to use up some leftover beetroot. I generally hate beetroot but the fussiest eater in the world likes it so we had half a beetroot in the fridge left over from a roast dinner he had made. A lot of people, including me, give Jamie Oliver a hard time but seriously…this might be one of the best things I have eaten all year!!! It was perfectly pitched. Everything went together so well. It was an absolute dream of a dish! 10/10 Mr Oliver, this one was outstanding!

Fridge ingredients

Beetroot
Horseradish (originally from our garden)
Sour cream (instead of the creme fraiche in the recipe)
Parmesan cheese

Other ingredients

Thyme – from the garden
Lemon – from the garden
Olive oil, salt, pepper – from the pantry

Bought ingredients

1 steak – I was not going to buy a whole fillet for two people!
Rocket -(this cost all of 36 cents!)

Carpaccio recipe:

Chocolate Chestnut Log

On first reading, I thought this would be a cake. Instead, imagine a melt-in-the-mouth mousse with a swirl of chestnut surrounded by a swirl of chocolate chestnut. Delicious but very rich!!!! (Not thick though). If the carpaccio was something I would gladly eat every day, this is a dish I would save for special occasions.

Chocolate Chestnut Log Recipe:

Fridge ingredients

Butter
Egg

Other ingredients

Sugar – from the pantry
Brandy from the drinks cabinet
A can of chestnut puree which had been in the pantry for far too long!
Cocoa powder – from the pantry

Bought ingredients

Dark Chocolate

My Nigella Moment – Fillet of Beef Bourguignonne

For first-time readers, this refers to the moment at the end of Nigella Lawson’s cooking shows when she sneaks back to the fridge to have another bite of something delicious. In the context of these Twenty Years Ago posts, it is something contained in the magazine that does not fit with the overall menu theme but I’m sneaking it in either because I made it and it was really good, or I just didn’t have time to make it but it was one of the most appetising things in the mag!

I feel a bit sorry for the cheese fondue recipe in the July 2003 issue of Delicious Magazine. It got pipped at the post for the starter and again for the Nigella moment. Those of you who know me, and whose jaws are dropping that I didn’t pick the fondue (twice), take a look at this picture:

The perfectly cooked beef, the glossy sauce, the wine-soaked onions – this dish looks so beautiful and luxurious to me and something that I would definitely cook if I was having a group of people for dinner. Something this size though would feed us both for a week. I’m holding on to this recipe though! Next time we do magazines in my Foodies club, this is exactly where I am heading!!!!

Well, the July 2003 issue of Delicious proved to be an absolute treasure trove of recipes and definitely filled the brief of being able to base a meal, largely on ingredients that were in my fridge!

19
Mar
2023

White Lady

categories: 20 Years Ago Today, Chocolate, Icecream

I was inspired to make a White Lady by two things. In Murder is Easy by Agatha Christie, Bridget recalls a poem by Frances Darwin Cornford called To a Lady Seen From a Train which mentions a white woman. Simultaneously, I found a recipe for a dessert called a White Lady inthe March 2003 edition of Delicious Magazine. This makes this post not only a Dining with The Dame adjacent post but also a Twenty Years Ago Today adjacent post. I do so love it when things come together!

Part of the poem recalled by Bridget runs as follows:

O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody loves,
Why do you walk through the fields in gloves

Now, as you can tell from the fragment above, this is not a great poem. But something about it roused the ire of other poets of the time. And in what, I imagine to be some sort of precursor to a modern-day rap battle, the poet A.E Housman parodied To A Lady Seen From a Train as follows:

O why do you walk through the fields in boots,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody shoots,
Why do you walk through the fields in boots,

And that was not the last word on the subject either. Another poet, G.K Chesterton wrote his own poem called The Fat White Woman Speaks in response to Cornford

Why do you rush through the field in trains,
Guessing so much and so much.
Why do you flash through the flowery meads,
Fat-head poet that nobody reads

Move over Ice Cube, your beef with N.W.A has nothing on Chesterton! Also, this is not about to become a poetry blog, even though I seem to be talking about it a bit recently!

I mean really! Little did that poor woman taking a shortcut through a local field realise that she was going to be weight shamed, accused of being utterly unloveable and have it lamented that she is not the target of a sniper!

In contrast, we are celebrating her with a White Lady or Dame Blanche which is a Belgian ice cream sundae.

White Lady – The Recipe

The White Lady was delicious! But also serves as a warning. Ladies, if you are walking through fields, maybe take your gloves off so you don’t incur the wrath of battling poets!

Have a great week!

13
Sep
2020

Chocolate Coconut Truffles

categories: Chocolate, Classic Recipes, Sweets

I was in dire need of comfort food this week. And not just any sort of comfort food – I was after the kind of comfort tthat only chocolate and condensed milk can give! It was definitely time to make Chocolate Coconut Truffles!

These little babies are a stalwart of the school fete or bake sale because they are not only delicious but have only four ingredients and are incredibly easy to make! Now that’s a win – win – win! It really is a marvel how anything with just four very simple ingredients can taste this good! Mind you, they are a pretty good four ingredients.

The love of condensed milk runs deep in my family. I have been known to eat it off a spoon directly out of the tin. The biggest lover of condensed milk in my family was my grandfather. When he passed his bar exam, his parents were, of course delighted and said that he could have anything he wanted as a present. They were thinking trip abroad, motorbike or some other big-ticket item. Papa thought long and hard and then asked if he could have a can condensed milk all to himself.

Isn’t that just the sweetest (no pun intended) thing you have ever heard? All that sugar didn’t hurt him either. He went on to be a Supreme court Judge in Sri Lanka and in his spare time discovered a species of fish.

Sweet Treats For a Sh*tty Week

Why I was in need of chocolately, coconutty comfort food this week? At the moment, we are allowed outside of our houses for one hour each day for exercise. One measly hour. So, during one of these hours, I was walking through the local park with the fussiest eater in the world and the dogs. All of a sudden I felt the most terrible pain in my head. I was being attacked by a wasp!!!! The worst thing, apart from the blinding pain, was that it got all tangled up in my hair so the FEITW couldn’t even get it away from me for AGES during which it just kept stinging me!!!

Then, on top of that I had an episode where I couldn’t breathe – might have been the mask I was wearing, might have been a panic attack, might have been a result of the sting as I have had allergic reactions to bee stings before.

All up, it was an incredibly painful and terrifying experience. I had to go straight to the doctor and I am still taking medication to bring the swelling down and have had raging headaches, bouts of sleeplessnes, and dizziness.

I told one of my friends this tale and after the requisite sympathy she said “There you are minding your own biz and something comes out of the blue and totally f*cks everything up. If that isn’t a perfect metaphor for this year, I don’t know what is. It would only be better if it stung you in the arse” I think she has a point.

The point of both of these stories is that sometimes, the simple things are all we need to bring us joy.

And wasps are arseholes.

Here’s the recipe!

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Chocolate Coconut Truffles

Print Recipe

A tasty treat that is simple to make and delicious to eat! Perfect for a bad day or an emergency bake sale!

Author: Taryn Nicole
Prep Time: 15 min
Total Time: 15 minutes
Yield: 20 1x

Ingredients

Scale

250g plain biscuits. I used Morning Coffee but any plain biscuit will do.
395g can of condensed milk
1 cup dessicated coconut
2 tbsp cocoa
Extra coconut for rolling

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Instructions

Crush the biscuits into crumbs
Combine all ingredients except the additional coconut into a bowl and mix together.
Roll mixture into walnut-sized balls.
Roll balls in extra coconut.
Place in fridge for half an hour to firm.
Enjoy!

Notes

The mixture will not stick to your hands if they are damp when you are rolling the truffles into balls.

Have a great week friends and bee safe!!!!

PS. This probably comes close to what I looked like in the park as I was being stung!

via Imgflip

15
Jul
2016

Cowboys, Caviar, Casseroles and Cocktails

categories: Cheese, Chilli, Chocolate, Cocktail, Corn, Eggs, Kahlua, Salad, Vodka

Dear readers

I had such high hopes for this post. Then they were totally dashed by a twist of fate that…well…I guess if I’d seen it coming it wouldn’t be a twist would it? But I’m jumping ahead of myself. First, I was totally delighted when Greg from Recipes4Rebels asked if I would join in a cookalong for Cowboy Day! This event occurs on the fourth Saturday of July each year and is celebrated all over the world!

Obviously, this is not the fourth Saturday in July, however, as I will be sunning myself on the beach at Sanur in Bali that day, with Greg’s blessing I am posting my ventures into Cowboy Cookin’ early! And it’s a three course meal y’all. (Because 1 that’s how cowboy’s talk and 2 cocktails are a course aren’t they? This one is almost a meal! But again, getting ahead of myself!)

So now onto my foiled grand plans. My idea was that I would find a cocktail called a Bali Cowboy – possibly a more tropical version of this cowboy cocktail and I would make it for my post and then, on the day itself, I would tweet another picture of me in Bali with with my Bali Cowboy and it would in a glass as big as my head and it would be blue and loaded with umbrellas and pineapple wedges and all the other tropical cocktail paraphenalia.

A quick google soon showed me that there is such a thing as a Bali Cowboy. It is NOT a cocktail. Turns out that a Bali Cowboy is a male prostitute who hangs around Kuta Beach willing to sell his services to any rich (ie all) Western women who care to pay for them. So, whilst I’m not 100% ruling out a photo of me with a Bali Cowboy on Cowboy Day, the likelihood of it happening has dropped significantly!

So, new ideas had to be found. Starting with some caviar. Because we’re classy cowboys! It’s Cowboy Caviar of courseWhere has this salad / dip been all my life? If this is what cowboys eat, then I want to be a cowboy. It’s all kinds of beans and corn and tomatoes and avocado . Truly delicious! I loved this!

So, for the second course, I went straight to the top. And by that I mean Mr John Wayne himself.

Turns out The Duke and I share a love of eggs, cheese and chillies. Now, just one thing about the John Wayne casserole…. To my mind, when you combine egg yolks to beaten egg whites with other stuff, in this instance cheese and chilli and you them put that in an oven and cook until it’s all puffed up and golden, that’s not so much a casserole as a soufflé.

You be the judge:

I’ll sit quietly over here and let my case speak for itself.

By the way, cooking this for an hour would be way too much. You are seeing about 35 minutes and I think it was over. I would cook this…half an hour max. Also, the tomato didn’t do much. I would actually leave it out and cook this for 20 minutes total.

The ~~soufflé~~ casserole was good but I think I was so blown away by the Cowboy Caviar that it kind of paled by comparison. I will definitely make it again though!

And now for my grand Cowboy finale, I am turning to to person who started all of this, yep, Greg. This cocktail /dessert is A-MAZING! So, so good. Cowboys and cowgirls, can I present, the Giant Martini!

There is no other word for this but absolutely divine! The giant in the Giant Martini doesn’t refer t to it’s size (but you could scale it up very easily) but to the fact that it was created on the set of Giant by Liz Taylor and Rock Hudson.

Git along little doggie, this cocktail is all mine!

And you too!

Ah yes, Greg’s site on the PC, a cocktail in front of me and The A-Z of Cooking behind it. Just a regular day round these parts!

Many, many thanks to Greg, this was so much fun! Thank you so much for including me! I always say this but you hear so much about the internet being a a horrible vicious place, I am always delighted and totally honoured to make new friends, like Greg, on here.

Ok, I’ve gotta go, 5:30am start tomorrow! But I’m loving and leaving you with some some super rhinestone cowboy singing!

Find out all about the Cowboy Day Cook A Long here. Hopefully my attempts will inspire you to bigger and better things on the day!

The recipe for Cowboy Caviar I used came from Cookie and Kate.

The Giant Martini recipe is here.

Kiss me and smile for me, I’ll be back here in a couple of weeks but if you can’t smile without me, I’ll be tweeting and instagramming from Bali throughout.

Loving you, leaving you, now!

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29
May
2016

REPOST – Devil’s Food Cupcakes

categories: Cake, Chocolate, Food Heroes, Nigella Lawson

What better way to end my devil themed blogiversary party than with some Devil’s Food from the Domestic Goddess?

I adapted Nigella’s recipe into cupcakes and much deliciousness ensued!

These were easy to make, and tasted amazing! A deep chocolate flavour and they were (apologies in advance) super moist. They also lasted for close to a week in the fridge…we are after all only two people and the mix made 15 cupcakes. I took half into work to share the love but someone managed to eat all of his half by himself. Not so fussy after all it appears!

If you head over to You tube you can see Nigella make this cake herself and hear her utter my favourite phrase of the clip when she speaks about mixing the cocoa, muscovado sugar and hot water into a “malevolently dark syrup”. It is Devil’s Food Cake after all!

I pretty much followed Nigella’s recipe except that I added a tablespoon of coffee granules into that same “malevolently dark syrup” because it wasn’t already rich and dark enough! Also because I made cupcakes, I adjusted the cooking time. Mine were in the oven for 18 minutes.

Can I just say….that frosting!!!!! OMG. I ate so much of it I felt sick. Then I ate some more because it was so good!

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Devil’s Food Cupcakes

Print Recipe

A luscious chocolate cake with a rich chocolate frosting. Sinfully Good!

Author: Taryn Fryer
Yield: 12 1x

Ingredients

Scale

For the Cake

50 grams best-quality cocoa powder (sifted)
100 grams dark brown muscovado sugar
250 millilitres boiling water
1 tbsp coffee granules (optional)
125 grams soft unsalted butter (plus some for greasing)
150 grams caster sugar
225 grams plain flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large eggs

For the Frosting

125 millilitres water
30 grams dark brown muscovado sugar
175 grams unsalted butter (cubed)
300 grams best-quality dark chocolate (finely chopped)
Sprinkles to decorate

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Instructions

Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4/350°F.
Line muffin pans with cupcake liners. I made 15 cupcakes from this mixture but the number of cupcakes will depend on the size of your containers.
Put the cocoa, the coffee, if using, and 100g / half cup dark muscovado sugar into a bowl with a bit of space to spare, and pour in the boiling water.
Whisk to mix, then set aside.
Cream the butter and caster sugar together, beating well until pale and fluffy.
While this is going on, stir the flour, baking powder and bicarb together in another bowl, and set aside for a moment.
Still mixing, add the vanilla extract into the creamed butter and sugar . Then drop in 1 egg, quickly followed by a scoopful of flour mixture, then the second egg.
Keep mixing and incorporate the last of the flour. Then fold in the cocoa mixture, scraping the mixing bowl well with a spatula.
Divide this batter into the cupcake liners, filling to just over halfway.
Place in the oven and cook until a skewer comes out clean – it was around 18 minutes for me but will depend on the size of your cupcakes.
Remove from the tins and cool on a wire rack.

For The Frosting

Put the water, 30g / 2 tablespoons muscovado sugar and 175g butter in a pan over a low heat to melt.
When this mixture begins to bubble, take the pan off the heat and add the chopped chocolate, swirling the pan so that all the chocolate is hit with heat, then leave for a minute to melt before whisking till smooth and glossy.
Leave for about 1 hour, whisking now and again.
Spread or pipe the frosting over the cupcakes.
Decorate with sprinkles or your decoration of choice.

Notes

If you want to make this as a large cake, watch Nigella’s You Tube clip or you can find the recipe here

https://www.nigella.com/recipes/devil-s-food-cake

If you’re serving these to guests or even if there is just two of you, make sure you spirit one of these away in case you have the need for a Nigella inspired midnight feast!

Have a great week!

Category: Chocolate

The Menu – July 2003

BROCCOLI, PANCETTA AND FETA PIZZA

Fridge ingredients

Other ingredients

Broccoli and Pancetta Pizza Recipe

Beef Carpaccio with Parmesan, Horseradish and Raw Beetroot

Fridge ingredients

Other ingredients

Bought ingredients

Carpaccio recipe:

Chocolate Chestnut Log

Chocolate Chestnut Log Recipe:

Fridge ingredients

Other ingredients

Bought ingredients

My Nigella Moment – Fillet of Beef Bourguignonne

White Lady – The Recipe

Sweet Treats For a Sh*tty Week

Here’s the recipe!

Chocolate Coconut Truffles

Ingredients

Instructions

Notes

Devil’s Food Cupcakes

Ingredients

For the Cake

For the Frosting

Instructions

For The Frosting

Notes

If you want to make this as a large cake, watch Nigella’s You Tube clip or you can find the recipe here