Cheesecake Archives - Retro Food For Modern Times

Category: Cheesecake

28
Oct
2023

October 2003 – The White Menu

categories: 20 Years Ago Today, Cheese, Cheesecake, Delicious, Desserts, Fish, Meat, Mozzarella

Hello retro food lovers and welcome to October 2003 where today I am using Delicious magazine to create a white menu. White food has the double reputation of being 1) boring and 2) overly processed so my aim with this menu was to try to combat both of those. But first, let’s take a look at what was happening in pop-culture in October 2003.

School of Rock was #1 at the box office and The Five People You Meet In Heaven was the best-selling book. Number 1 on the pop charts was Where Is The Love by The Black Eyed Peas. Two weeks earlier it was White Flag by Dido which would have fit in perfectly with this menu! Let’s hope I won’t have to wave a white flag with my menu!

Now I also realise that this view of my cheesecake is not white, however it just looked so good, I couldn’t resist sharing it!

The Menu – October 2003

I found this menu template on Etsy. Isn’t it gorgeous? We’ll be seeing it a lot more from now on!

Mozzarella and Grilled Chilli Salad

This was AMAZING! So tasty and the perfect way to kick off a meal! I loved the simplicity/minimalism of this Jamie Oliver recipe. It also not only looked beautiful on the plate but tasted divine! Another recipe from this same article, a squid and cannellini bean salad nearly made the cut for the main dish in the menu and is something I am still very keen to try!

Mozzarella and Grilled Chilli Salad Recipe

Fish Stew With Lemongrass and Lime

This is an Ainsley Harriott recipe and was also divine! It was light and refreshing and, as he says in his intro, very different from the usual tomato-based fish stews. Like the mozzarella starter, this would be a perfect summer meal.

Lemongrass and Lime Fish Stew Recipe

Low Fat Cheesecake

I felt bad that I could not deliver a cheesecake for the Birthday Party, Cheesecake, Jelly Bean, Boom! menu. Because I LOVE cheesecake! So I was delighted to find one in this issue of Delicious. And this was a beauty too. It’s a pretty classic baked cheesecake. Even though it is low fat, it feels rich, The rest of this menu is light though so this seemingly decadent dessert won’t weigh you down too much!

Low Fat Cheesecake Recipe

My Nigella Moment – Beef with Lavender Mustard

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!

OMG, this beef just melted in my mouth! And if you’re thinking you don’t have any Lavender Mustard, come back next week. I’ll have a little treat for you. I added a spoonful of honey to my Lavender Mustard to give the required sweetness to this. Also, I misread the ingredients and I bought a rump roast and not rump steak for my version. I seared the meat as per the recipe and then roasted it until it reached 72C / 165F on my meat thermometer.

Well, Delicious Magazine from October 2003 really came through with a delicious white-themed menu for me! Certainly no Didoesque white flag moments for me!

18
Jul
2020

Ye Olde Crusty Cellar Cheesecake

categories: 1970's recipes, Australasia, Cheesecake, Desserts

At the best of times, a cheesecake (or really any item of food) hailing from “Ye Olde Crusty cellar” would not sound tempting. However, these are not the best of times, (these may well be the worse of times) and desperate times call for cheesecake! Have I ever mentioned how much I love cheesecake? Next to ice cream, it is probably my favourite dessert. Also, Fridge, Freezer, Pantry week has come around again and I had half a tub of cream cheese icing I wanted to use up. I did not want to make another cake with cream cheese icing so I thought I could hide it in plain sight as it were by mixing it with more cream cheese, sugar and lemon.

(Don’t ask me what look I was going for with the fruit decoration!)

The recipe for Ye Old Crusty Cellar’s Cheesecake came from the book 100 Fabulous Cheesecakes by Ellen Sinclair of The Australian Woman’s Weekly (1971). It is a real shame about the name because the Ye Olde Crusty Cellar cheesecake itself is delicious!!!

Ye Olde Crusty Cheesecake – The Recipe

I did not copy the recipe for Ye Olde Crusty Cellar Cheesecake exactly though. I changed a few things to suit my personal taste. You can decide if you make this whether to follow the OG version or mine. Here is the original with my notes on the crumb crust.

Here are the instructions on what to do with those ingredients to turn them into a crumb crust:

The two changes I made to this were:

I did not add any additional sugar as I thought an entire can of condensed milk would be sweet enough
I did not add the egg yolks. Largely because I could not understand what they were doing there. I totally understand eggs in a baked cheesecake but not in an unbaked. The only thing I could think that they provided was maybe an additional richness to the mix. Again, for my taste, cream cheese and sour cream are rich enough.

I was a bit worried that leaving them out would somehow mean that the cheesecake would not set. But the mixture firmed up beautifully in the fridge overnight to cream a filling that was both light, luscious and not too sweet!

Ye Olde Crusty Cellar – History

The Ye Olde Crusty Cellar was a wine bar opened at 255 George Street brSydney in 1931 by winemaker Leo Buring.

It was described as having:

“the head of Bacchus…to guide guests in and out’ with ‘shaded lights’ and a feeling of ‘cloistered gloom’.

Hmm, not sure cloistered gloom would be the ambiance I would be seeking were I to open a wine bar. But it worked for Leo! The “Crusty” was a destination venue, attracting crowds of visitors, many of whom would have sampled the cheesecake!

Sadly the “Crusty” closed in 1974 but luckily the recipe for us, it’s signature cheesecake lives on!

Have a great week everyone!

09
Mar
2015

Stuff and Nonsense – March 2015

categories: Books, Cheesecake, Persiana, Podcasts, TV

No retro food today just a random collection of what I’m doing and loving at the moment. I love it when other bloggers do this so I thought I might give it a go. The title for this is inspired by this gorgeous song by Missy Higgins, covering an old Split Enz song which I have just rediscovered on my ipod.

Stuff I’m Listening To

A workmate suggested the Welcome To Night Vale podcast to me. And I am loving it!!! Quirky kooky at it’s best!!!

Stuff I’m Reading

I joined a book club!!! Our book of the month is Us by David Nicholls. I am so excited to read this. I loved his last book, One Day. Also a bit scared about the whole book club thing. First meeting next Monday!

I have just finished reading this which I loved. This was one of those books where I just wished I had had the idea to do it. This was so funny although it did get a bit repetitive at times but this may have been because I read it in pretty much a day. And like most diets, it left me wanting more!

Blogs

I’m loving Flawless Visions take on MKR. Hilarious

So sad that Yinzerella is taking March off.

Stuff I’m Watching

MKR as mentioned.

I’m loving season 2 of Broadchurch

Stuff I’m Cooking

I took a fairly ordinary baked vanilla cheesecake and fancied it up with the addition of some Chambord and a take on Sabrina Ghayour’s Strawberries with Basil Sugar. This was delicious!!!

Have a great week. And beware the hooded figures in the dog park!

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