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!
I 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
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.
So 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.
The 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.
I 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.
Then, shake, rattle and roll!!!
Don’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
Trim the edges so you have a nice clean line before serving.
Eat and transport yourself back to the streets of Barcelona…
Enjoy!
Have 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!
I solemnly promise that will be my only egg pun for this whole post.
But really, what is Easter about if it’s not about eggs?
What?
Well, yeah, ok sure it’s about Jesus….but eggs are important too.
This year I made my own chocolate eggs.
Home Made Easter Eggs
And ok, so Adriano Zumbo is not shaking in his shoes just yet but I get some points for trying right? Can’t this be like Little League and I get a medal just for turning up?
For those of you who don’t know Adriano Zumbo, he is a mad-scientist genius baker (kind of like an Australian Heston Blumenthal but with more macaroons and fewer snails). He makes things like this gorgeous V8 cake.
Think it looks simple?
Think again.
Because when you cut this baby open you get this:
Yeah…uh huh and OMG wow!!!
Maybe I’ll try to make that next Easter never.
For anyone brave enough to try, you can get the recipe by clicking the link below:
However, ’nuff about Zumbo, back to my eggs. They weren’t just any plain old chocolate eggs. Uh uh. No way.
They also had a peanut butter fudge filling:
And in true retro style the peanut butter fudge mix has a secret ingredient.
Mashed potato.
Yes, I did just say mashed potato.
And it works surprisingly well. You can’t taste it but it gives the peanut butter a firmer texture. Actually the texture is very similar to that of my one of my all time favourite decadent little treats – a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. And when I say “a” Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, I of course mean a four twin pack.
I even had to check that there wasn’t mashed potato in a Reese’s PBC. There isn’t but there are two things that don’t actually have names, just initials. And you have to love a list that contains non-fat milk and milk fat right next to each other. So, that would be milk right?
You can check the full list out here.
I’m not going to come over all Michael Pollan about this (guess who finally finished reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma?) but you know what? I’m really not sure about eating the stuff that is just initials. However, whilst we’re on the subject of Mr Pollan, here is what he has to say about TBHQ, one of the ingredients in my possibly formerly beloved peanut butter cups:
But perhaps the most alarming ingredient in a Chicken McNugget is tertiary butylhydroquinone, or TBHQ, an antioxidant derived from petroleum that is either sprayed directly on the nugget or the inside of the box it comes in to “help preserve freshness.” According to A Consumer’s Dictionary of Food Additives, TBHQ is a form of butane (i.e. lighter fluid) the FDA allows processors to use sparingly in our food: It can comprise no more than 0.02 percent of the oil in a nugget. Which is probably just as well, considering that ingesting a single gram of TBHQ can cause “nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse.” Ingesting five grams of TBHQ can kill.
Hmm…compared to lighter fluid, the mashed potato suddenly seems a bit more attractive does it not? And yes ok, you would probably have to eat your own weight in them to get that gram of TBHQ but it was enough to make me walk away from the rack of peanut butter cups today. Damn you Pollan.
Melt 2/3 of the chocolate in a bowl over hot water and coat the moulds with the melted chocolate. You may need to do this more than once to get the desired thickness of chocolate shell.
Place the chopped potato into a saucepan and cover with water. Boil until tender.
Drain and mash.
Add your condensed milk, just as you would add regular milk to normal mashed potatoes.
Allow this mixture to cool.
Mix in your peanut butter and confectioner’s sugar. It should form a fairly thick paste.
Add more condensed milk or confectioner’s sugar if required.
Spoon this mixture into the chocolate lined moulds.
Melt the remaining 1/3 of the chocolate. Use this to seal the mixture into the moulds.
Chill until the chocolate hardens then press your eggs out of the moulds.
Notes
You will also need Easter Egg Moulds. I bought mine from a craft shop for around $4.
Ox Eye Eggs
In my last post I assumed that everyone would know what Egg in a Hole was. I then further confused the issue by using the name we call these things in my family which is an Ox-Eye egg.
I actually managed to trace back the source of why we call it that. It comes from this book which I inherited from my…hmmm…I’m not sure of our exact relationship…maybe my second cousin? A great cousin? My nana’s sister’s daughter.
My Learn To Cook Book
This was possibly my first cook book and the ox-eye eggs have become a family favourite. I will return to this book in due course because the illustrations are awesome but here is the recipe for the original ox-eye eggs:
I prefer to do mine in a frying pan than in the oven as I think it gives you a little more control over your preferred degree of yolk runniness but the choice is yours!
And look at this for an amazing breakfast – seriously, if I’d thrown some cheese on this plate all my five favourite food groups would have been covered – eggs, bacon, avocado, and bread!
Ox Eye Eggs, Bacon and Loaded Guacamole
Loading up that toasted circle with a piece of bacon, some guac and some semi-runny yolk? Probably about as close to heaven as I’m going to get!!!
The Perfect Bite!
And that’s Easter 2014 done!
Next time, a double whammy, a retro treat from Salads from All Seasons and a Daring Kitchen Challenge. I’m 3 months behind on my Daring Kitchen stuff and I’m really nervous about all of them – for very different reasons – again which we will get to in due course.
February’s challenge was Salad Dressing – and if you’re thinking that should be fairly impossible to fuck up, well, you haven’t seen the recipe I’m planning on using.
Hint – it too has a secret ingredient, which incidentally has been mentioned in this post. And it’s not mashed potato. If only.
I’m loving my extended Easter break. Hope your week is fabulous whatever you are doing!
One of the reasons I love old cookbooks is sometimes you get a little insight in to the lives of the people who owned them previously. My latest favourite vintage find, Salads For All Seasons is no exception.
There is an inscription on the front inner cover that reads “To Ann, Happy Christmas 1985. Love Aunty Ev & Uncle Bill.
Thing is…the book was published in 1971. I don’t want to judge but I dunno….unless it’s an absolute classic, giving someone a 14 year old cookbook makes me think that some regifting may have been at play here.
I suspect Ann may not have been the favourite niece.
Avocado and Aguacate Dressing
In the foreward Elizabeth Durack Clancy O.B.E. says:
“I commend this book because it is so useful and practical. “The wilful extravagant maid” can learn some fresh devilment from these pages but the “housewife that’s thrifty” is equally catered for.”
Hmmm…I’m thinking Aunty Ev may have been one of those “thrifty housewives”. And good old Ann, a maid of will and extravagance. It’s all starting to come together….it certainly explains the parsimony of the Christmas present. And the lack of a term of endearment in the greeting.
Next up, the introduction where author Rosemary Mayne-Wilson tells us:
“Salad used to something served on Sunday evenings. It consisted of neatly shredded lettuce, tomato wedges, hard boiled eggs and a slice of cheese. It was served with the sliced leftovers of the Sunday roast. Generally it was put straight on the plate, but when there were visitors it was served in a crystal salad bowl. To make it daring, a blob of mayonnaise was added, but this ‘extra’ was confined to adults”
Personally, I’d be quite happy eating that salad. But more importantly, who knew mayo was a rite of passage?
Wasabi Leaves
Then again, have you heard of those Menarche Parties that people are throwing their daughters these days? I swear, if my parents had ever done anything like that to me, I would still be locked in the bathroom, listening to The Smiths on repeat and sobbing “You hate me don’t you? You really fucking hate me.”
You can view the full horror by clicking on the link below but just to whet your appetite, included in the party pack provided by…
wait for it…
Menarche Parties R Us.com ((2021 Update – sadly this site no longer exists))
(I swear you couldn’t make this shit up if you tried)
…are 2 games. One of these is called “Pin the Ovaries” and the other is called the “Puberty Marshmallow Game”.
(2021 Update – sadly this site no longer exists)
Pinning ovaries sounds like something a serial killer would do. And I never want to know what a puberty marshmallow game entails.
For the love of God, bring back the dob of mayo on the Sunday Night Salad. “You’re a woman now Ann, have some Hellman’s”.
“Gee thanks Aunty Ev. Any chance of some tips on frugality?”
Wow,that was a spectacular digression. Where we we? Salad. Yes. Right. Ok. Sorry, I’m still being gobsmacked by the puberty marshmallow game.
Salad. We’re here to talk about salad.
Cuban Aguacate Salad 2
Back to the Introduction of Salads For All Seasons – after dropping in the comment about the mayo, in a lovely piece of randomness, Rosemary Mayne-Wilson tells us:
“Of course this has all changed and now nearly everyone owns a wooden salad bowl”
Bear with me while I nip across to Ebay because I am one of the few who own nothing of the sort. And now I desperately want one. I really want one that looks like this:
But I’m guessing I might have to make do with something a little more mundane.
And it will come in handy because I’m thinking that this could be a long haul. There is so much that is both amazing and godawful in Salads for All Seasons, that I think it’s worth spending some time here.
I was going to work through it from start to finish…until I read some of the recipes and paused for a moment of sanity. So we’ll be kind of working our way through in a fairly random order but skipping some of the truly awful and the just plain boring.
But just to get us off to a to an extravagant and devilish start, put your hot pink dancin’ shoes on, because your tastebuds are going to be doing the Rhumba with this awesome Cuban inspired salad.
[amd-zlrecipe-recipe:2]
Cuban Aguacate Salad
Who knew you could put rum into salad dressing? It’s certainly efficient – you can toxify and detoxify at the same time!!! And it tastes great!
I”m going to be spending my week, trying not to think about marshmallows! Hopefully Salad dressing liberally dosed with Bacardi will help that act of forgetting.
Remember way back when I made the Spaghetti Bolognese that had the chicken livers in it? You know, “the best Bolognese ever” that prompted me to implement the “Don’t ask, don’t tell rule?” into all future cooking ventures? Well, it happened again this week with the Almost Emerald and Ruby Fruit Salad, and we’ll definitely go there but first….
Topaz and Ruby Fruit Salad
You might be looking at the above picture and wondering why the featured item is called an Emerald and Ruby Fruit Salad. Because emeralds are green right? Any fool knows that. And, you might assume that, this is one of those quirks of vintage cookbooks that I would normally mock mercilessly.
Unfortunately, wrong and wrong.
Sometimes, the fault lies entirely with me. I’ll pause while you pick your jaws up off the floor. But just to prove a point, let’s count all the ways I failed to notice a fairly crucial part of Nancy Spain’s recipe for Emerald and Ruby Fruit Salad.
1 The name. Emeraldand Ruby.
2 Nancy also very kindly provides a picture of said Emerald and Ruby fruit salad. And even more kindly, it is one of the pictures in the all colour cookbook that is in glorious technicolour. And yep, it’s green.
Emerald and Ruby Fruit Salad
3 The recipe quite clearly states that layer 1 consists of lime jelly and strawberries.
4. Emeralds are green. Even failing all of the above. Logic would dictate that the Emerald layer of the Emerald Fruit Salad would be green.
So, given all that and that I trotted all the way to the shops and bought some lime jelly specifically to make my Emerald and Ruby Fruit Salad, how on earth did I manage to use lemon i.e. yellow jelly in the first layer?
I know . I was astounded at my level of dumbfuckery too. Feel free to roll your eyes and face palm as much as you want. I deserve it. But once you’re done, let me introduce you to my…(erm..just hold on a moment whilst I google yellow gemstones….) highly delicious Topaz and Ruby Fruit Salad.
Topaz and Ruby Fruit Salad
It still looks pretty but…doofus mistake right? It also then really threw me for the second layer. I had lime jelly left. But, now the recipe called for lemon jelly. Dilemma – use the lime jelly and hope it turns out ok? Or head back down to the shops and buy some more lemon jelly? In the end, I bought more lemon jelly. I figured the avocado, mayo and salt combo was going to be enough of a sell even using the correct recipe. Who knew what would happen if I threw the lime into the mix?
Topaz and Ruby Fruit Salad
So, now to the next part of this saga.
I live with the fussiest eater in the world. And high on the lengthy list of foods he doesn’t eat are avocado and mayonnaise.
So, I was kind of surprised to get a phone call at work on Monday, after making this on Sunday.
“You know that jelly thing?”
“Uh huh”
“I saw you put the avocado in”
Fuck it. Now I”m going to have to eat the whole thing myself. I’m going to be eating jelly until Easter.
“But I took some to work to have for snack and…it’s surprisingly good. What else is in there?”
Oh…ermm…jelly. Lemon Jelly.
“Just lemon jelly and avocado?”
Yeah..pretty much…bit of lemon juice…
“Wow…who knew…it’s really good”
Good. I’m glad you like it.
I’m going to hell. I really am. But you know, it also kind of proves my point. Tonight if I served up a salad containing avocado and mayo, it would be left on the plate. And he would probably eat two slices of the Emerald and Ruby Fruit Salad for dessert to make up for it.
I 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.
So what’s so good about this recipe? Well, potatoes and mayo…
The 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.
I 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.
Then, shake, rattle and roll!!!
Don’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.
Eat and transport yourself back to the streets of Barcelona…
Have 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!
