Yesterdays Recipes, Cooked Today
Many a good cook’s reputation has been built on the ability to make an omelette.
– Margaret Fulton
Many a photographer’s reputation was ruined by putting feathers in an already overcrowded photo of an omelette.
Gross. And unhygenic.
In contrast, the modern photo tips a wink to the Elizabeth David classic “An Omelette and a Glass of Wine”.
Gorgeous.
Here’s the recipe
Enjoy!
Today is a twofer as I have a whole mess of things that I want to get out before I go on holidays….less than a month to go now!!!!
I was intending to do two posts from The Margaret Fulton Cookbook, which is the current selection over at The Cookbook Guru. But they were both about eggs so I thought I may as well combine them and do a kind of then and now. Because you see, one of these recipes comes from the 1977 edition of the book which I own. And the other comes from the 2010 edition which I borrowed from the local library. Neither features in both.
So, this time, it’s up to you to guess which is which….leave a note in the comments along with what you most like to cook and, if you get it right, I will send you a vintage Margaret Fulton Recipe from the 1977 version. You can choose from:
But now, on with, on with, on with the show.
I was really worried about this one. Because tuna is pink and egg yolks are yellow and olives are black and the good Lord only knew what colour of hot mess might end up being crammed into some poor unsuspecting egg whites!
I think that colour is called puce. But that is not a nice word, particularly when describing food. Actually I have no idea what that colour is called. But it’s inoffensive, and given the ingredients, could have been a lot worse!
I made these for dinner one night.
When I get back from holiday I am going to start a series of posts on the stuff that I eat when Mark is working nights. Sometimes it’s the best. And sometimes, I steam a bunch of asparagus, make some toast into soldiers and microwave a jar of hollandaise sauce. And I sit and dip.
I won’t post that but I do find I tend to veer from the more experimental or foods he is not fond of (vis a vis the AMAZING prawn and fennel fritters I made the other night) to just plain lazy which can also sometimes be pretty awesome. Both of these recipes are from what I call “Me Alone” nights.
Whilst the Eggs Tapenade were pretty good on the night, I had some left over which I took for lunch the following day and….AWESOME….I don’t know what happened in my fridge overnight but those ingredients totally chilled out and got to know each other a little better and the result was spectacular! If you make this try it out – eat one fresh, then let the mix sit overnight. And let me know if you too could really taste the difference!
Crush the olives in a mortar or chop in a food processor. Add the anchovy fillets, capers, tuna and the juice of half a lemon. Pound or process until the mixture has formed a fairly smooth paste.
Still pounding, or with the motor running add the oil in a slow steady stream.
Taste and add more lemon juice and pepper to season.
Set aside (can be made a few days ahead and stored airtight in the refrigerator).
Halve the eggs lengthwise. Mash or sieve the yolks and mix with the tapenade. Pipe or spoon into the egg whites and arrange on a serving platter.
(I also decorated my eggs with some chopped parley, chopped piquillo peppers, capers, toasted pine nuts and a sprinkle of smoked paprika).
How could I resist a recipe with this name? And thank the Lord for the night time. And this recipe. Because it lead me to MY discovery of the year. And I’m highlighting the word my here because I really don’t know if this is a super amazing thing that not so many people know or if you have all known about it forever and I was the one “discovering onions”. I have absolutely no idea of what that means either but it is a phrase my family use when you come late to the party on anything.
Mum. Elucidate. Please.
But here is my discovery and it has seriously CHANGED. MY. LIFE. You can poach an egg to perfection. In a microwave.
Perfectly poached eggs in 50 seconds.
FOR SERIOUS.
Here is a link.
And if you all knew this and didn’t tell me before? You’re too mean! I love a poached egg. I also love a poached egg with a creamy ham and mushroom sauce with a dash of cayenne!
The recipe says to serve this with toast triangles as a lunch dish. I popped mine on a toasted English Muffin and had it for another dinner alone!
Saute the mushroom in 2/3 of the butter in a frying pan. Add the ham and half the parsley. Heat through on a low heat.
Mix cream, egg yolks, remaining butter and lemon juice in a double boiler. Stir with a spoon or whisk until slightly thickened then season to taste with salt.
Heap ham mixture into a serving dish (or an English Muffin) and arrange eggs on top.
Spoon sauce over eggs and sprinkle with parsley.
So, retro lovers over to you.
Which is the vintage recipe and which is the modern? You’ll have a week from the date of posting to post your guess and the section of the Margaret Fulton Cookbook from which you would like your recipe to come. And if you cook it really quickly, you could even get if featured on the Cookbook Guru which is featuring this awesome book until the end of June.
Good luck and have a great week!
Breakfasts and Brunches start the “B” section of the A-Z of Cooking. I chose a smoked salmon and egg combo called Nova Scotia Eggs which was, not surprisingly, delicious. You’d have to go a long way to go wrong with those ingredients.
Having said that, the recipe did it’s best to bamboozle me. Coat the eggs in mayonnaise it says. It actually had me questioning the word “coat”. Because to cover the eggs completely, which would be the normal translation, seems like a LOT of mayo. Then again it also calls for 8 tablespoon of mayonnaise to cover 4 eggs. I’ll say it again. That’s a shit ton of mayo.
Who knows, maybe Canadians really, really like mayo. Although having said that, I have no idea if the Nova Scotia eggs have any actual connection to Canada.
I also feel that unless I get something off my chest, I will probably never get to find out. You see, I am carrying a deep dark secret in relation to Canada. Well, in relation to two Canadians specifically but I get the feeling they are very community spirited. Do ill by two of them and the whole country takes against you. Anyhow, I feel that until I publicly right this wrong, I may never be welcome in the land where pines and maples grow, great prairies spread and Lordly rivers flow!
It happened like this.
A few years ago we holidayed on the Amalfi Coast. Whilst we were there we did a half day tour of Pompeii. The problem was that we booked ourselves onto a triple language tour. This meant that for each point of interest the tour guide stopped and spoke about it in Italian, English and Russian. Then there was time for questions. Of which the Italians and Russians had plenty. And she would duly translate the answers into the other two languages. Kudos to the tour guide for being fluent in three languages when sometimes I feel like I struggle with just one, but it meant the going was SLOW. So slow that, had there been glaciers in the vicinity, we could have watched them moving and marvelled at their speed compared to our progess through Pompeii.
An hour in, and we weren’t even inside the walls. He was starting to get antsy. “Come on, this is crap, we’re never going to see anything at this rate. And don’t you know about it?”
I may have slightly bigged up my knowledge of Pompeii. I had studied it in art class in high school for what seemed like an eternity however, high school was OMG, 20 years ago.
Excuse me while I have a minor major flip out about that.
OK. I’m back. I’m centred and TWENTY YEARS?
Holy Crap.
Back to Pompeii…anything to blank out the horror….During the next few Russian and Italian sessions we started a muttered debate. He wanted to leave the group and strike out on our own, armed with our purchased tour book and my…ahem…vast knowledge. I was equally adamant that we had paid for a guided tour and dammit, a guided tour we would have.
“Are you guys thinking about ditching this ?” Our conversation was interrupted by a whisper coming from a guy standing beside us. (We were all being very quiet so as not to disrupt the relentless Italian / Russian chatter).
“Yes” Him.
“No” Me.
“Cos we are too”. They were a Canadian couple on honeymoon and after a few more murmered exchanges we decided to very quietly leave the group and explore on our own.
“And we don’t need a guide. Taryn knows all about it.”
Why is there never a bottomless volcanic crater around when you need to push someone into one?
In retrospect, it was the best thing to do. The four of us covered an amazing amount of ground and had a great time doing it. They had a different book to us so we were all sharing what we had and we all got on really well. Then we reached a point where apparently, back in the day, you could look across and see the cave of the oracle of Cumae. And something in my brain clicked.
“You know that in the days before Vesuvius erupted the Oracle of Cumae told them to get out of Pompeii. Twice. But the people were so hedonistic and so consumed by their material possessions that they refused to go”. All of a sudden, I was Simon Schama. I knew all about the Oracle and the prophecies and I was not afraid to tell the world. The lovely Canadian couple were quite impressed. They even took notes. And He was impressed. Dammit, I was impressing myself. Who knew I paid that much attention in art history classes?
Much later in the day, when we were on the bus back to where we were staying in Positano, he asked if he could see the guidebooks. I handed them over and he started pouring over them with an intensity I have rarely seen.
“Whatcha looking for?”
“All that stuff about the Oracle…did you read that in here?”
“I dunno.Maybe…or maybe in the book at the hotel. Or maybe from memory. Why are you so interested?”
“I want to see if they say if that’s where they got the idea for the episode of Doctor Who”
Oh. OH.
“The w…w…what?”
“You know, the episode of Doctor Who where they go to Pompeii. And the oracle tells the people to leave. Twice”.
“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”
Except I kinda, sorta, maybe did. So, lovely Canadian honeymoon couple from Pompeii, whose names I have completely forgotten specifically and people of Canada in general. I’m really sorry. I have a very, very bad feeling that instead of telling you some amazing actual factual history, that I may have just given you the summary of the plot line of an episode of Doctor Who.
In terms of accuracy, it might have been better if I’d just sung that Bastille song to you.
Feel free to update the Canadian Wikipedia entry on Pompeii any day now folks.
And enjoy the Nova Scotia eggs, they are delicious. I made them for you!
And please let me in if I ever come visit, I really want to try some poutine.
Have a great week!
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!
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.
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.
This tasted as good as it looks. And one for my vegan friends!!! The colours are so beautiful and the flavours blend together beautifully!
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!
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!
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!
Have a great week!
In his introduction to the Crespéou in Plenty More, Yotam Ottolenghi says
If I was going to sum up my cooking style in five words, 70’s-style-retro-picnic-bling would not be them”
Huh…Weirdly enough that’s exactly the style of cooking I aspire to.
Still, with an introduction like that, there was no way I was not making a Crespéou! I was already thinking about having a month of food I have no idea how to pronounce (Kouign Amman anyone?). Google tells me this is Cresp-ay-oo. And also that it’s from Provence and so-called because the layers look like crepes. Never say I don’t do the research hard yards for you…
So what is this unpronounceable piece of 70’s style crepe like Retro Picnic Bling?
Well, it’s layers of three differently flavoured omelettes stacked on each other and baked. One red, one yellow, one green. Which just goes to show the difference between those classy people of Provence and around here. We’d be calling it something dumb arse like “Traffic Light” Special.
Yotam suggests red peppers for this layer. I used sun-dried-tomatoes because red peppers and I have a love-hate relationship. Without the love.
Hmm, I have realised in looking at this picture of the red layer that I may have put in fresh coriander rather than ground. Oops.
Still, I think that is one of the benefits of a dish like this. You can mix up the flavours. I have seen other recipes where people have used, zucchinis, mushrooms, olives, all sorts of things. It could really become a “clean-out-your-fridge” type dish.
Crespéou -Yellow LayerThe yellow layer was intriguing. I have never used turmeric in an omelette before. It really works!!! If I was going to mix this layer up a bit thin crispy discs of pan sautéed potato would be great!
The trick with this dish is to leave the top of your omelettes much more runny than you would any other omelette. The idea of this is that when you stack them and bake them the egg will solidify and the layers will stick together.
Another genius combination – green onions, green chilli, basil, tarragon and cumin!!! Wow!!! This layer was really perky and fresh!!!
Once you have cooked all your omelettes, stack them up as neatly as possible. And into the oven they go to cook up that last bit of runny egg.
Once cooked through, you can eat your Crespéou as is or trim the edges with a sharp knife to be able to see the layers. I used a small square pan so I cut mine into four cubes…
These were superb. I had it for lunch I think 3 days running and looked forward to it on day three as much as I did on day one.
And I know what you’re all thinking. Which layer tasted best? I did separate one of my cubes and ate each later alone. And they were all really good. But the combination was a-may-zing!!!!
Yotam Ottolenghi also says of the Crespéou that:
“If there is one recipe that might make me cringe in years to come, it will, for sure be this one”
I say “I love you. Can you not be so happily gay and be my boyfriend? You could cook me Crespéou and we could go on a picnic in a field in Provence and I could dance around listening to “Total Eclipse of the Heart” on a vintage Walkman. Or…hold your head up high and embrace the Crespéou for the lunchbox saviour that it is. And I’m sure even better on picnics. Especially picnics in Provence. With heaps of rosé wine and 1970’s disco music on your vintage Walkman.
Which is fairly redundant – I can’t think of ANYTHING that wouldn’t be better on a picnic in Provence with heaps of rosé wine and 1970’s music on your Walkman. Can you?
Speaking of which…before she was Totally Eclipsed in the Heart Bonnie Tyler was Lost in France which would actually be the perfect musical accompaniment to the Crespéou…
The full recipe can be found in Plenty More or online here
Bonnie Tyler being Lost in France is here:
Make. Listen. Drink lots of rosé and imagine yourself lost in France.
This week, I’m cooking up some more 70’s Style Retro Picnic Bling courtesy of Jane Grigson! Have a tres fantastique week what ever you get up to.
And turn around bright eyes.
And P.S. – I’m totally contemplating the name of this blog to Retro Picnic Bling. Loving it madly!!!