Fish - Retro Food For Modern Times

Category: Fish

30
Jan
2022

The Eye of The Tiger

categories: Cocktail, Drinks, Fish, Gin, Holidays

Hello friends! This weekend people all over the world are celebrating Lunar New Year and the start of the year of the Tiger. Traditional foods for Lunar New Year include long noodles (symbolising long life and happiness) dumplings and spring rolls to bring wealth and fish to increase prosperity. Well, here at Chez Retro Food, we’re also celebrating the Year of the Tiger, but in our own special way!

Let’s get to it!

I always think that any occasion should be celebrated with a cocktail. And Lunar New Year is no exception. The Norwegian Tiger’s Milk Cocktail comes from a book called The Australian Hostess Cookbook (1969) and a chapter called “A Party on the Nullabor Plain”. Now for those of you unfamiliar with the Nullabor Plain, it is an area of some 200,000km (that would be 76, 000 sq miles for those of you who are not used to the metric system) that is both flat and largely treeless. Plain is putting it mildly.

I mean, does it not just scream party central? But I digress. If the location seems bonkers let’s further examine the cocktail.

Norwegian. Tiger’s Milk.

Nope.

The World wildlife fund reliably informs me that tigers are very versatile creatures and can live in a variety of habitats – rainforests, savannahs, grasslands and mangrove swamps. Tigers.org.za further specifies that they are most commonly found in China, Korea, Russia and Southeast Asia with Sumatra being the only island inhabited by tigers today. Not even a whisper of Norway. And, I’m no geography expert but I’m pretty sure the landscape of Norway is not rampant with savannahs. Fjords yes. Mangrove swamps? No.

(Also note the natural habitat of the tiger is not an “exotic” animal part in Oklahoma. But don’t even get me started on that one!)

Maybe if you are partying on the Nullabor Plain in 1969 a Norwegian Tiger makes sense. They took a lot of drugs back then.

Norwegian Tiger’s Milk Cocktail

Copious amounts of drugs may also explain the ingredients. Equal parts gin, vanilla ice cream and creme de cacao. It really sounds like something someone with the munchies would pull together.

It also means that whatever measurement you use, (I used 30ml of each) you get a lot of booze and not much ice cream.

I used a cherry-infused gin which came in a Gin Advent Calendar I bought at Christmas.

The Norwegian Tiger’s Milk was a LOT nicer than I thought it would be! It tasted like a slightly weird in a good way Bailey’s Irish Cream. Mine had that hint of cherry but I think without that the similarity to Baileys would be even more marked. It was also much more of an after-dinner drink than an aperitif but I’ll forgive myself that. And maybe have another after dinner! I’m not driving and there is a little bit of gin left in that tiny Advent bottle!

We are continuing the theme of Tiger’s Milk with our starter.

Tiger’s Milk Ceviche

We are heading to Mexico for our starter. Also not a natural habitat of the tiger. However, Tiger’s Milk is the name of the liquid used to “cook” the seafood in a ceviche.

This was soooo good! I love raw fish and this was zingy with citrus and fiery with chilli and crunchy with tortilla chips and loaded with fresh veg and herbs! This is the kind of dish I could eat every day.

And it’s so pretty too! Look at all those colours!

I used salmon for my fish because I could not get the kingfish specified in the recipe. I also threw in some tiny tom berry tomatoes for extra colour and as mentioned subbed in some crunchy tortilla chips for the tortillas.

The recipe for the Tiger’s Milk Ceviche comes from the Matt Preston Cookbook – Yummy Easy Quick Around The World.

Tiger’s Milk – Hangover Cure?

Tiger’s milk is supposedly a hangover cure par excellence. Maybe for the morning after a few too many Norwegian Tiger’s Milks? However, I’ve been hungover once (maybe twice) in my life 😂 and I’m going, to be honest with you. When I am in that very precarious and fragile state, given the choice of Uber Eatsing a Big Mac and a very large coke and downing some salmon soaking citrus liquid? I’ll take those two all-beef patties etc any day of the week!

Would you drink the tiger’s milk?

Later this week I’ll share the rest of our tiger-themed celebrations!

19
Oct
2021

A Murder on The Orient Express Collab

categories: Celebrity Recipes, Desserts, Dried Fruit, Film, Fish, Poirot

All aboard! Welcome friends to a cooking and murder collab between Silver Screen Suppers and Retro Food For Modern Times. Jenny and I have been tallking about doing this literally for months! I am breaking my usual Dining with the Dame Format to cook recipes by the stars of the 1974 version of Murder on The Orient Express and half a world away in London Jenny is doing the same. Jenny provided the recipes and we agreed to watch the film on the same day!

Murder on The Orient Express 1974 – The Film

As with the Kenneth Brannagh 2017 film, the 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express is a star-studded affair! The rather schlocky trailer describes it as the “Who’s who in the whodunnit”.

Albert Finney stars as Poirot Agatha Christie herself gave Albert the thumbs up in his portrayal of Poirot. (He was excellent, and his denouement at the end is amazing – he had to learn 8 pages of script off by heart to do it – but for me, David Suchet is, and will only ever be, the true Poirot).

Others in the cast include Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Jacqueline Bisset, Sean Connery, Sir John Gielgud, Anthony Perkins, Vanessa Redgrave and Michael York to name but a few! Ingrid Bergman won an Oscar as best supporting actress for her role in this. Albert Finney was nominated but missed out to Art Carney from Harry and Tonto.

The film follows the story of the Agatha Christie novel with the luxurious Orient Express train stuck in a snow bank with no one being able to get on or off the train. One of the guests is stabbed to death in the night. It is up to Hercule Poirot to discover whodunnit!. He soon learns that the victim is connected to the kidnapping of Daisy Armstrong 5 years before. And the group of seemingly disparate strangers on the train may not be all they seem!

The stroy is based on two true events, the first being the very famous kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby i n 1932, the second was an incident when the Orient Express was trapped for 6 days in a blizzard in Turkey in 1929.

But now, we would like you to head over to the buffet car to sample today’s menu,

The Menu

Trout in Cream Saice

For your dining pleasure on today’s journey from Istanbul to Caiais, we are delighted to be serving Trout with Cream Sauce, a recipe by Ms Ingrid Bergman.

This was delicious! Trout is such a delicate fish and the lemony cream sauce was a perfect accompaniment to it. I served mine with chips (very un Orient Express), beans, broccolini and some cherry tomatoes. It was also incredibly easy to make!!! Without the chips, it is an elegant and light dish which would be worthy of the Orient Express!

The whole time I was making the trout I was singing the Billy Bragg / Wilco song :

Ingrid Bergman, Ingrid Bergman
Let’s go make a picture
On the island of Stromboli
Ingrid Bergman

And I deft anyone who knows this song to do otherwise!

Ingrid Bergman plays Greta Ohlsson in the film and she won the Academy Award for best-supporting actress for her role. I would give her an Oscar for that trout recipe because it was chef’s kiss mwah!!!

Prune Fool Syllabub

To end your meal, we are serving Prune Fool by Ms. Wendy Hiller. Wendy plays Princess Dragomiroff in Murder. I feel that the Prune Fool, despite its name has the hint of gravitas equal to such a grand dame!

I LOVED the Prune Fool! The prunes and currants (I didn’t have sultanas in the red wine combined beautifully with the cream and shortbread. Eating this made me feel like a grownup. for something that is so simple to make, the end result is sophisticated.

I feel both of these dishes would meet Poirot’s approval!

Just as an aside, it appears as if, whilst on the Orient Express, Poirot has eschewed his normal tisanes and sirops for a little glass of…creme de menthe? Drunk via a straw no less.

But, I digress, back to the Prune Fool.
I know I am biased but how pretty is it?

Here’s the recipe:

Cooking for this was so fun! I loved the film as well! And it is always fun to have a shared project. Thank you Jenny for the recipes and for joining in particularly on one of the big hitters like Murder on The Orient Express. (Let’s not wait 6 months before we do another!!!) And if anyone else would like to Dine with the Dame and me, please let me know!!!

If you would like to see what Jenny cooked and how she celebrated Murder Sunday, head over to Silver Screen Suppers for a look!

I’ll be back next week with a more traditional version of Dining with the Dame – Murder on the Orient Express 2 (Electric Boogaloo).

Have a great week and happy watching!

10
Oct
2021

Sole au Vermouth – Lord Edgware Dies

categories: Dining With The Dame, Fish, Poirot

Hello crime readers and food lovers! Today we are Dining not only with Dame Agatha but also with Vincent Price. What a combo!! And it’s not the first time these two have met either. But more about that later. On the menu is Sole au Vermouth from Vincent Price’s A Treasury of Great Recipes. And top of our reading list is Lord Edgware Dies. This is another absolute cracker of a novel. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Lord Edgware Dies is a novel, where if you pay close attention and you know some Christie tropes you can, I think, quite easily figure out whodunnit it. I won’t mention the specific trope here because spoilers but let’s just say that people of a certain profession are quite often the villains in the novels so far!

Lord Edgware Dies – The Plot

Jane Wilkinson aka Lady Edgware wants a divorce. She asks Poirot to speak to her husband about granting her one. Although reluctant to do so, Poirot speaks to Lord Edgware, only to find that he says he has already agreed to a divorce. Then…wait for it….Lord Edgware dies (quelle surprise!). He is murdered in his home. His butler and housekeeper claim that Lady Edgware was the last person to see him alive as she visited the house that evening. However, 12 people swear to her having been at a dinner party with them at the time of the murder.

It is up to my beloved trinity of Hastings, Japp but mostly Poirot to figure out who did him in!

On top of a dead Lord we also have :

An actress who died from an overdose of veronal
A mysterious gold case
A dead actor
Altered letters
A mysterious American widow
An impoverished nephew who stands to inherit the Lord’s considerable wealth

Lord Edgware Dies – The Covers

Finding non-English Christie covers has become quite an obsession of mine. Here we have a Farsi version, a Russian edition, two French versions, and another possibly Eastern European edition. Dead centre is the Tom Adams version which eschews the normal symbolism for a pretty graphic knife in the head. It is not a corn knife, which was the murder weapon in Lord Edgware Dies but in “Tom Adams Uncovered” Tom Adam says that it was “nice little paper-knife of mine”. He also says he thinks Agatha Christie was not happy with the cover.

It is also definitely of a piece with Adams’ illustration for The Murder of Roger Ackroyd:

The Recipe – Sole au Vermouth

‘We will dine first Hastings. And until we drink our coffee, we will not discuss the case further. When engaged in eating, the brain should be the servant of the stomach.”

Poirot was as good as his word. We went to a litlte restaurant in Soho where he was well known, and there we had a delicious omelette, a sole, a chicken and a Baba au Rhum of which Poirot was inordinaltey fond”

Agatha Christie, Lord Edgware Dies

Disclaimer, we do not have sole in Australia so I cooked flathead. It tasted lovely and I very much liked VP’s idea of browning the sauce.

Other Food Mentioned in Lord Edgware Dies

Champagne, cocktails and old brandy in an immense goblet

Coffee (twice)

The ever present Whisky Soda (twice)

An omeltte (three times)

A chicken

A Baba au Rhum – I was tempted to make one of these but given I have already made a Savarin of Rum which is very similar I felt I would hold off. Given Poirot is said to be fond of them, I’m sure I will have another opportunity.

Next chronologically in the Christie canon is 1934’s Three Act Tragedy. But we may be skipping that one for the moment as we have a very special Christie collab coming up…stay tuned!

Have a great week, and for another great collab, here is something else combining Vincent Price and Agatha Christie.

05
Sep
2021

The Mystery of American Sardine Toasts

categories: 1960's recipes, Daily News, Fish, Sandwiches, Sardines

A recipe from The Daily News Cookbook called American Sardine Toasts caught my eye recently. Without wanting to labour the point too much, we Melbourrnians recently spent our 200th (non-consecutive) day in lockdown which means I have now been working from home for around 18 months. I have also recently been working all the hours so my need for quick and easy meals, be they work from home lunches or speedy suppers when I am too tired to cook has become paramount.

And this could well be the recipe that gets me through! Oh, and Uber Eats, but you’re not here to hear me talk about my local Thai!

In case you are wondering what an American Sardine Toast is? It’s kind of a tuna melt but with sardines.

As soon as I read the recipe, I constructed a narrative in my head which went a little like this. Someone in what was then Ceylon had travelled to America and had a tuna melt. They had then brought the concept back home – except maybe 1960’s Ceylon did not have access to canned tuna so they used what they had – sardines! And no doubt the local newspaper, The Daily News, was keen to publish a recipe from the country that epitomised all things new and bright and shiny and voila the recipe for American Sardine Toasts or as they call it, Sardine Toasts, American came into being

Except….DJ….cue the X Files Spooky Music.

The Mystery

According to writer Warren Bobrow, the tuna melt was invented in 1965 in Charleston, South Carolina. But the recipe for American Sardine Toasts appears in my mum’s 1964 edition of the Daily News Cookery Book! There’s definitely something fishy about that!

So if not based on the tuna melt, what is this recipe based on? What makes it an American Sardine Toast instead of just a regular sardine toast?

I even wondered if I was reading the name incorrectly. Instead of the Sardine Toasts being American was it that the sardines came from America? So not American (Sardine Toasts) but (American Sardine) Toasts? The actual name Sardine Toasts, American would indicate the former but who knows with this book! Sadly the American provenance of these toasts has been lost to history.

Luckily for us, the actual recipe has not and these hit the spot of being quick, easy and delicious and so will go on heavy

The Recipes

Yes, recipes! I took the OG recipe and modernised it to make it easier for WFH lunches. It also works well as a light supper too.

Here’s the original:

And here’s my version:

American Sardine Toasts

Print Recipe

A quick and easy alternative to a tuna melt!

Author: Taryn Nicole

Ingredients

Scale

2 slices of toast

Butter

1 can of sardines in tomato sauce

1/4 red onion, finely chopped

80g grated cheddar cheese

I tbsp finely chopped parsley

Salt and pepper

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

Lightly butter the pieces of toast

Place 2 sardines on each piece of toast, making sure you get some of the tomato sauce from the can as well.

Sprinkle some chopped onion on top of the sardines.

Sprinkle the cheese over the top.

Place under a grill (180C) for 5 minutes or until the cheese has melted.

Season with salt and pepper.

Sprinkle the chopped parsley over the top.

Cut each piece of toast in two.

Eat immediately!

Have a great week!

07
Aug
2021

Fish Finger Bhorta

categories: Fish, Nigella Lawson

It will come as no surprise, says the person who recently made a cake from Pepsi Cola and Peanut Butter, that every now and then, I like to indulge in a little bit of what might be called trashy food. Such was the case this week when, due to an event being cancelled because of lockdown, I found myself with an evening free and all the ingredients for Fish Finger Bhorta in my fridge! I have been dying to try this recipe ever since I read about it in Nigella Lawson’s Cook, Eat Repeat but had never actually got around to shopping for the specific ingredients.

And when I say ingredients I mean spinach. I always have fish fingers in my freezer (for me they are one of life’s great comfort foods), onions and the requisite spices in the pantry. But I usually just buy those one-serve packets of baby spinach from the supermarket and use the whole pack in whatever I need spinach for.

However, again, thanks to lockdown and idiot people who had stripped the shelves of the local supermarket of all the pre-packed spinach, I had to buy loose spinach from the greengrocer. Apparently, I have no idea how much spinach is required for one meal and bought way too much. So I had leftover spinach. I had a night free. I was in lockdown, in the middle of winter. If ever there was a time for comfort food in the shape of a fish finger bhorta this was it!

So, you might be wondering, what on earth is a bhorta? (I am going to assume we all know what fish fingers are). Well…the best I can figure out from the interwebs is that bhorta (aka Bhurta) is a spicy Bangladeshi concoction of mashed-up stuff. Can be veg, can be chicken, in this instance via Nigella the substance to be mashed is the humble fish finger.

This was soooo good!!!! I was a bit worried when Nigella said to cook the fish fingers for around 25 minutes. That’s about double the amount of time I normally cook them for. However, who am I to question the Queen? The fish fingers were gloriously crunchy, the onions delightfully pickle-y, the rest was a spicy mustardy melange of yum! And just look at the colours!!! The bright orangy yellow of the crumbed fish against the vivid pink of the pickled onions, the bright green of the coriander and the darker green of the spinach! This is not only a delicious meal but also a bit like a work of modern art!

And all that spinach makes it healthy too!

Now, I am never going to question Nigella who is one of my food heroes…but…oh lord…dare I even say it? But..you know what may make this even better? A little bit of raita or other yoghurty something on the side. Just to add a bit of creaminess to the crunchy, spicy, herby, mix.

Actually, you know what though? I don’t think Nigella would mind. After all, she freely admits to adapting this recipe from a tweet by Ash Sarkar. And in her introduction to the recipe she says

This dish says something so fundamental about what cooking is, about how we adapt to ingredients that are new to us and make them part of lives…..Honest borrowing is the natural province of the cook and recipes are living evolving entities”

My yoghurty thing on the side is just another evolution!

Here are two traditional bhortas for those who might want them:

Aloo Bortha

Chicken Bartha

And here is Nigella’s recipe.

Have a great week!