Category: Fish

Vincent Price’s Buckingham Eggs Jaffle

You made a what???

For for those of you who are already totally confused, let me explain.  A Jaffle is an Australian term for a toasted sandwich. And it is a much loved food for breakfast, brunch, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, supper, a midnight snack or any of the times inbetween.

And I made one based on Vincent Price’s Buckingham Eggs.  And it was very good!

Buckingham Egg Jaffle2Like I guess many of my generation, the first real inkling I had of Vincent Price was as the voice in Thriller….

I had no idea he could not only cook, but cook like a boss,  until I started blogging.  It’s one of the reasons why I am so excited that the 50th edition of Vincent and Mary Price’s A Treasury of Great Recipes is about to be released.  And I am reliably informed by Jenny of Silver Screen Suppers that, in her view, it is the best cookbook ever written!  And Jenny knows her stuff!!!

Only a few more sleeps ’til that happens but first, Jenny invited her blogging pals to take part in a cookalong with some of Vincent and Mary’s recipes.

I hadn’t really intended on making the Buckingham Eggs for the cookalong .  I was totally primed to make Vincent Price’s Champagne Chicken but, it was only 10:00am. Possibly a little too early for a roast dinner.  But I was hungry and a jaffle seemed like the perfect thing to tide me over til dinner time. A quick glance at the fridge revealed eggs, cheese and anchovies. I had a thought process that went something like this:

  • You could make the Buckingham Eggs
  • But I want a jaffle
  • The Buckingham Eggs sound really good.
  • So does a jaffle.
  • Anchovy and Mustard butter…-
  • Egg and Cheese Jaffle
  • Hmm…what if we…
  • I like where you are going with this

And thus the Buckingham Eggs Jaffle was born. I’m sure neither Jenny or Vincent would disapprove of my tweaking the recipe slightly to satisfy both the devil and the angel on my shoulder!  For the purists, here is a link to the original recipe as cooked by Jenny:

Buckingham Eggs

For my version, I made English mustard and anchovy butter. I could not find any anchovy paste, so I mashed up an anchovy. The mustard adds some heat and makes it a beautiful colour!Buckingham Eggs1I could just eat this on toast forever and be totally content!

But, wait, there’s more!

Eggs and cream and cheese and onions. I meant to add some Worchestershire Sauce but I totally forgot!  Oh well, all the more reason to make it again next Sunday!

Buckingham Eggs3Now, add the onions to the egg mixture and scramble them really lightly.  You need them to thicken up but still be quite moist as they will continue to cook once they are in the jaffle iron.

Now, butter both sides of the bread (if you’re feeling decadent ) or the one side if not.  Place the buttered sides on the surface of the jaffle iron. This is important otherwise your bread will stick like crazy. Place the cheese on one side and the thickened egg mixture on the other side.

Buckingham Eggs4Fold The Iron over.  Trim any bits of bread hanging out of the iron and place over a low heat.

Jaffle 3

The only tricky bit is that once the iron is closed you have no way of telling how much the inside has cooked unless you open it up and have a little peek.  Make sure you turn it over at least once so both sides get toasty.  As a general rule, once the outside is a dark golden colour, the inside will be perfect.  This is the colour you are aiming for:

Buckingham Eggs5At the risk of sounding a bit hippy dippy, when cooked like this, the egg and cream mixture and the cheese become one in a gorgeous creamy melange.  This is surrounded by crispy, salty, slightly spicy bread…..OMGZ delicious.

Buckingham Eggs6This made a super brunch, but if darkness is falling across the land and the midnight hour is close at hand, this would also make a super late night snack!

A massive thanks to Jenny for including me and to Vincent and Mary Price for the recipe.

For all the deets on the cookbook launch and activities around it, click any (ALL) of the links below:

Vincent Price Treasury Cookalong with Silver Screen Suppers
Vincent Price Legacy Tour – for details of celebratory events in the UK
Amazon Page for the 50th Edition of A Treasury of Great Recipes
Treasury of Great Recipes Facebook page
Silver Screen Suppers Facebook page
Champagne chicken up next!  Stay tuned….

 

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The Margaret Fulton Cookbook 11- Fish

Fish…is fresh when the eyes are bright, the flesh is firm, the gills red and the scales do not come off easily.  Fish should smell of the sea.

The biggest crime is to overcook fish.  Whichever method of cooking you choose, watch your fish with loving care, serve it with a glad heart and a touch of parsley, a wedge of lemon or a dash of paprika”

– Margaret Fulton

Fresh lively vibrant seaood

THEN:

 

Fish - MFCB 1977Yikes!  So much fish, none of it looking all that appetizing.  And that fake background of the sea.  Because that’s where fish comes from kids.  Just in case you didn’t know….

NOW

I really want to be on a beach somewhere watching the sunset and eating some fish and chips as mouthwateringly delicious as these.

Margaret Fulton's Fish and Chips

Margaret Fulton’s Fish and Chips

 

What do I love about this photo?  The crispy fish, the sharp salt crystals, the hazy tartare sauce in the background, the muted colour sheme that makes the fish, the chips and the lemon just pop…so, in short everything!.

Hope your having a great week!  Now go eat some fish and chips…you know you want to!

 

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Brazo Di Gitano – The Gypsy’s Arm

Cross my palm with silver and I will tell you tales of magic and wonder.  Or just keep reading ‘cos I cooked something really good!

GypsyI see, in your future a little taste of Spain….because today in a final piece of birthday indulgence, I bring to you The Gypsy’s Arm…aka The Brazo Di Gitano.

And what you may ask is the Brazo Di Gitano?  Well remember back at Christmas when my family took against me for bringing a Potato Salad Roll  to our Christmas festivities?  I felt then that despite their negativity it was my duty to bring the PSR to the world.  This did not start well.  My St Patrick’s Day Corned Beef PSR was an mitigated disaster.  But redemption is at hand with The Gypsy’s Arm. 

I LOVE this recipe.  And yes, I am yelling at you because it’s that good. It’s like someone took every lovely taste of Spain and mixed it together and then wrapped it up in potato.  And mayo.

Gypsy's Arm
Gypsy’s Arm

 Why a Gypsy’s Arm?  I have no idea.  But when something tastes this good why question it?  I found the original version of this recipe in Anya Von Bremzen’s The New Spanish Table which I thought was an amazing book even before I discovered it had a potato salad roll.

New Spanish TableSo what’s so good about this recipe?  Well, potatoes and mayo…

 But also tuna, tomatoes, olives, capers, red onions and anchovies.  And to make things even better, I added some avocado to mine, hence the greenish tinge. 

Gypsy's Arm2The flavours of this dish took me right back to a trip to Barcelona a few years ago.  It really is Spain on a plate.  And so easy.

Make your mashed potato and spread out on a tray.

 Gypsy's Arm3I left mine a bit chunky so it was still a bit like a regular potato salad.  Then put your tuna filling on  top.  Spread to the edges.

Gypsy's Arm4Then, shake, rattle and roll!!!

Gypsy's Arm5Don’t worry if it cracks a little, or a lot, you can just press it together.  Plus you will shortly be adding your mayo (and avocado topping) so small cracks won’t matter.

Then, channel your inner Gaudi and decorate the outside of roll as you see fit. 

Gypsy's Arm7
Gypsy’s Arm7

 Trim the edges so you have a nice clean line before serving. 

Gypsy's Arm6Eat and transport yourself back to the streets of Barcelona…

Enjoy!

Barcelona Barcelona4 Barcelona Gaudi Barcelona1 Barcelona - Casa Batllo 4 Barcelona - Casa Batllo Barcelona3 Barcelona2Have a great week!  And there are only 2 days to go for the Birthday giveaway.  Subscribe or get one of your friends to subscribe to win a fabulous vintage cookbook.  Prize drawn on Monday!

 Recipe Card

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Nova Scotia Eggs, A Confession, Pompeii & Doctor Who

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. 

Nova Scotia Eggs 1
Nova Scotia Eggs 1

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. 

Nova Scotia Eggs - Recipe
Nova Scotia Eggs – Recipe

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.

 Nova Scotia Eggs2

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. 

Nova Scotia Eggs3
Nova Scotia Eggs3

 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?

Nova Scotia Eggs4
Nova Scotia Eggs4

 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?

Nova Scotia Eggs5
Nova Scotia Eggs5

 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.”

Nova Scotia Eggs5
Nova Scotia Eggs5

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. 

 

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  • It’s Breakfast Week at The Kitchn! – Breakfast Week 2015
  • Live Below The Line: Day 4 breakfast, 14p
  • Recipe: Smoked Salmon Egg Boats – Breakfast Recipes from The Kitchn

Rocking The Casbah

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!

THE FOOD OF MOROCCO // BRIK WITH TUNA, CAPERS AND EGGS

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.

Tuna Brik
Tuna Brik

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.

Tuna Brik
Tuna Brik

 THE FOOD OF MOROCCO //POTATO TAGINE WITH OLIVES AND HARISSA

This tasted as good as it looks.  And one for my vegan friends!!!  The colours are so beautiful and the flavours blend together beautifully!

Potato Tagine With Olives and Harissa
Potato Tagine With Olives and Harissa

 THE FOOD OF MOROCCO // THE BIRD THAT FLEW AWAY

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!

The Bird That Flew Away2
The Bird That Flew Away2

 THE FOOD OF MOROCCO INSPIRED // ARTICHOKE SALAD WITH ORANGE, LEAFY GREENS AND DATES.

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!

Artichoke, Orange, Leafy Green and Date Salad
Artichoke, Orange, Leafy Green and Date Salad

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!

 

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