Grapefruit Archives - Retro Food For Modern Times

29
Sep
2024

September 2004 – Feeling Fruity

categories: 20 Years Ago Today, Asparagus, Avocado, Champagne, Delicious, Duck, Grapefruit, Orange, Prawns, Raspberry, Strawberries

Hello friends and welcome to September 2004. Today, we’ll be exploring a fun fruit-forward menu via Delicious Magazine. But as usual, before we dive into the menu, let’s take a look at what we were watching, reading, and listening to in September 20 years ago.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t rushing to the Cinema in September 2004. Resident Evil: Apocalypse was #1 at the box office, followed by Hero with Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow at number 3. However, all of these titles are drawing total blanks for me! On the other hand, I am very well aware of the number one book on the best seller lists – it was The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, which I think has been number one on the charts since I started doing these Twenty Years Ago posts!

While I may not have been greatly enamoured with the books and films of 2004, the music was another matter. 1985 by Bowling for Soup was #7, and American Idiot was #8. Finally, something for me!”

Speaking of other things for me, let’s get it started in here (BTW, that was #2 in September 2004) with our feeling fruity menu!

The Menu – September 2004

I designed my September 2004 menu using AI. It was a hard slog, and there were times when I was ready to throw my laptop against the wall. However, in the end, it was worth the effort. Even if I do say so myself!

Wicked Champagne Cocktail

This Jamie Oliver recipe was very simple – pomegranate juice with sparkling wine. But it was also a great way to start our fruity theme for September 2004!

Wicked Champagne Cocktail Recipe

Prawn, Grapefruit and Avocado Salad

This was divine!!! All my favourite flavours!

Prawn, Grapefruit and Avocado Salad Recipe

Duck Breast with Raspberry Vinaigrette

Another winner! I had some pink pickled onions from something else I had made in the fridge and I added them to this recipe. I think they worked well with the rest of the ingredients but, they could easily be left out.

Duck Breast with Raspberry Vinaigrette Recipe

Raspberry and Strawberry Mousse Cake

Oh. My. Lord. This was heaven!!!! And for something that looks so gorgeous was very easy to make!

Raspberry and Strawberry Mousse Cake Recipe

Orange and Rosemary Tisane

Drinking this made me feel very Poirot! The blend of orange and rosemary was very pleasant and refreshing.

My Nigella Moment – Asparagus Maltaise

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 may not fit with the overall menu theme but I’m sneaking it in because it is too good not to share.

This month’s Nigella dish actually fits the theme. It is an Asparagus Maltaise. Now I only learned recently that Hollandaise was the OG way of saying that the sauce came from / was isnpired by Holland! It’s kind of in the name when you think about about it, but I had never put the two together before. So…Maltaise is a Hollandaise with Orange.. inspired by…Malta?

If you’re wondering why my sauce is pink…well the recipe called for Blood Orange and the Blood orange I bought (not on purpose, I literally grabbed the first blood orange I saw at the supermarket) were the darkest I have ever seen!

The juice looked like red wine!

It was that depth of colour that turned my sauce pink! I thought this looked spectacular! Pink and green are one of my favorite color combinations. And the flavour of that blood orange was spectacular!

This was delicious!!!! One of the dishes that makes me so glad I am going back and exploring these magazines!

Asparagus Maltaise Recipe

What a month!!!! I loved cooking these recipes! They were all amazing!!! And helped me to get my seven a day! Have a great week!

21
Jul
2024

Grapefruit Oat Brulee

categories: 1970's recipes, 500 Recipes for Quick Meals, Breakfast, Desserts, Grapefruit

Hello friends and welcome to a recipe which is top ten, maybe even top five of everything I have cooked this year! Grapefruit Oat Brulee is delicious, quick, has only four ingredients and is (mostly) a healthy snack/dessert/breakfast. You might even find yourself eating it for all of the above, it’s that good! The recipe comes from 500 Recipes for Quick Meals by Marguerite Patten (1972).

I mean really…how good does that look? These photos make me want to run out and buy a bag of grapefruit immediately just so I can recreate this dish over and over again. I made these a while ago, and even now, looking at the pictures is making my mouth water.

My only word of advice, apart from urging you to purchase your own bag of grapefruit without delay, is that this dish can be quite messy to eat. Consequently, I discovered that segmenting the grapefruit before broiling is the most efficient method. I want to give credit where credit is due: I’m actually grateful to Marguerite for omitting this step from the recipe. It unintentionally empowered me to experiment with several grapefruits to develop a user-friendly process for you, dear readers!

How To Segment A Grapefruit for Bruléeing

First, cut the grapefruit in half.
Then, to stabilize the grapefruit, cut a small slice from its bottom.
Next, use a sharp knife to carefully separate the pith from the grapefruit flesh, loosening the segments. Then, using the same knife, meticulously slice along each segment of the grapefruit.
This methodical approach will make eating your grapefruit a lot easier!

Grapefruit Oat Brulée – The Recipe

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Grapefruit Oat Brulee

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A delightful recipe for breakfast or dessert – take your pick!

Author: Taryn Nicole

Ingredients

Scale

2 grapefruits
30g butter
2 tbsp rolled oats
2 tbsp golden syrup

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Instructions

Halve the grapefruit, and prep as outlined above.
Melt the butter in a saucepan
Add the oats and golden syrup.
Mix thoroughly.
Sprinkle oat mixture over the grapefruit.
Place under a medium hot grill (broiler) until lightly browned and crisp on top

Notes

Adapted from a Margeurite Patten recipe found in 500 Recipes for Quick Meals (972)

For a a less oaty version of this, you can check my recipe for Bruléed Grapefruit here.

Next week in the July 20 years ago Today post, there will be one…actually….maybe even two recipes that are also in my Top Ten things I’ve cooked this year! July has been a good month for recipes! Speak you then!

04
Apr
2020

Bruléed Grapefruit

categories: Breakfast, Grapefruit

I am not normally a breakfast person. If I am super organised I throw some granola and yogurt into a bowl and eat that once I get into the office. Or I will grab a bagel on my way. But usually, my breakfast is a coffee (or two). Nowadays, maybe because I am walking my dogs early in the morning or because I am at home and surrounded by food, by about 10:30 I am HUNGRY! Bruléed grapefruit, which many of you will recognise as the darling of the 1970’s diet book has become my breakfast of choice.

Why?

It can be made in stages so easy to do between calls
So tasty!
All those 1970’s diet books can’t be wrong – this is kind of healthy for you!
Using a culinary blowtorch is fun!
It looks so pretty and colourful, it cheers me up (all these days we need all the cheering up we can get!).

How are you all coping with life in social isolation? I am in week three of work from home and oh boy, it’s a rollercoaster. I woke up with a sore throat the other morning and immediately assumed I had the ‘rona. Which I do not. The days seem to drag even though my work has seemingly doubled. And how can I go from looking totally respectable in my bathroom mirror to looking like trash 5 minutes later on a video call? But I’m still working which is something to be very grateful for when there are so many people being laid off so the vortex of ugly between my bathroom and my computer seems like a small price to pay!

Variations

I like to top my bruléed grapefruit with some coyo and usually either some granola or chopped pistachio nuts. Of course on the day I decided to take photos I had neither in the house. So, I topped it with a maraschino cherry. Which was delicious!

Other toppings could include:

Greek or Flavoured Yoghurt or whipped cream
Berries or other fruit
Nuts or seeds of your choice
Vanilla ice cream (hey, you’re working from home, who’s going to know!)

Another way to mix this up is to vary the flavourings in the sugar:

Add some cinnamon for a warming and sweetly spicy effect
Adding lavender or other flower infused sugar will bring out the floral notes in the grapefruit
Give it an Asian twist by adding a little chilli, some chopped up crystallised ginger and a dash of salt

Hmm…my recipe plugin is not working at the mo so here is recipe old school style

Bruléed Grapefruit

1/2 ruby red grapefruit
1 tbsp caster sugar
A large dollop coconut (or other) yoghurt
1 Maraschino cherry

Place the grapefruit cut side adown on kitchen paper and leave for around 5 minutes to drain any juice from the top. The drier it is, the better it will brulée.

Sprinkle the sugar on the cut side of the grapefruit.

Set your blowtorch to high and move to and fro over the grapefruit to caramelise the sugar. (If you do not have a blowtorch, set your grill (broiler) to high, wait until it is hot and set your grapefruit under it until the sugar caramelises).

Serve immediately with a dollop of yoghurt and a cherry on the top!

I have no stories since it is week 3 in the house but I thought it might be interesting if we started to share how we are entertaining ourselves during social distancing. This is what I’ve been up to:

Doing

This puzzle again….Arrgghhhh…what is wrong with me?

Watching

I watched Dare Me on Netflix which I really liked. I am about halfway through The Haunting of Hill House which I am loving but I can only watch in small doses because it scares the hell out of me.

For film club I need to watch The Martian and Stand By Me.

Hmm…maybe we all need to watch The Martian…

Reading

I am reading Two Can Keep a Secret which is the sequel to One of Us is Lying which I loved!!!! As well as an Agatha Christie for the next Dining With The Dame.

What are you reading, watching doing during lockdown? I would love to get ideas for new things!

Stay home, stay safe, eat grapefruit for breakfast!

24
Dec
2018

Nakatomi Towers Cocktail

categories: Cocktail, Grapefruit, Movies, Sake

Yippy Ki Yay People of the World! I joined a film club. And, to celebrate, I made a very down low version of Jane Rocca’s Nakatomi Towers cocktail. The original recipe contains fancypants ingredients like Shochu and yuzu but two days before Christmas, I have enough to do without trying to source either of them so we’re going basic. And you know what? My version is delicious!

So, my work team decided to form a film club! One of my work buddies had 12 themes for films and there are six of us, so we each got randomly allocated a theme and a time. Turned out…I was up first. With the theme of “Blockbuster”. It was actually one of the easier themes. I flirted with Home Alone for the seasonality, and Inception because it made the bucks. But when we talk blockbuster and this time of year? There can only be one!

Ah, Die Hard…I had not seen Die Hard for many a year and, truth be told, I was wondering whether it would stand the test of time. It does! I made some popcorn and spent a rainy Sunday afternoon totally absorbed in the antics of John McLaine, Hans Gruber and co. So absorbed that I then watched A Good Day To Die Hard which is the only one of the franchise I own. Don’t do that, it’s terrible. But Die Hard the original – awesome!

Then, during the week, I happened to be flicking through the pages of Jane Rocca’s The Fashionable Cocktail (I can thoroughly recommend it) and I came across the recipe for a cocktail called Nakatomi Towers…and this post was born!

This is the original recipe but the shops at this time of year are a hot mess and even if I was willing to brave the great unwashed, given I have never seen a yuzu in my life, my chances of finding one on the eve of Christmas eve were slim. My tiny local bottle-o had Sake so that was going to sub in for the Shochu and I had a grapefruit in the house. I also don’t see the reason for simple syrup if you are going to add lemonade so we can cut that step out too…It’s Christmas, we’re all busy, let’s not take time consuming steps unless they are absolutely necessary right??

I do like the thought of muddled apricots though!

Okay Hans, sure whatever. Calm the farm down dude. It’s Christmas! Have a cocktail and enjoy!

Let’s get to the recipe shall we? Are we good to go?

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Nakatomi Towers

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A delicious cocktail celebrating the blockbuster “Die Hard”

Author: Taryn Fryer

Ingredients

Scale

2 Apricots
45 ml Sake
45 ml red grapefruit juice
Lemonade
Ice Cubes

To Garnish

Apricot slice
Grapefruit wedge
Maraschino cherry

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Instructions

Muddle the apricots in your shaker.
Add some ice cubes, the sake and the grapefruit juice to the shaker.
Shake it like a polaroid picture.
Put fresh ice cubes into a glass.
Strain the apricot / sake mixture into the glass.
Top with lemonade.
Garnish with a slice of apricot, a wedge of grapefruit and a maraschino cherry.
Take a sip and murmer “Yippy Kay Yay!”

I really like the kind of funkiness the sake brings to the Nakatomi Towers. It works really well against the sweetness of the apricots, the tanginess of the lemonade and the bitter of grapefruit. For a cocktail that I “dumbed” down the flavours are quite complex. And not heavy on the booze so if you want to have more than one it’s….

So tell me… What movie would you have chosen given the theme “Blockbuster”?
And where do you stand on Die Hard being a Christmas movie?
For the record? In my opinion – it’s a movie set at Christmas, not a Christmas movie. But let the debate begin!

Have a wonderful Christmas everyone!

17
Sep
2016

Tanis Inspired Cocktails #3 – The Navigator

categories: Cocktail, Gin, Grapefruit, Podcasts, Tanis

The huge reveal of Tanis Episode 209 was that The Navigator is…

Yeah right, as if I’m going to spoiler that!

No way! You have 21 fascinating episodes of murder, madness, conspiracy and stray right feet washing up on beaches before you can get to that reveal. Having said that, there’s no need to be daunted, the Tanis back catalogue is still small enough that you could binge listen to it all in a weekend.

So get onto it. It is actually one of those things that is also worth a second (or third ) listen.

You could have a Geoff Van Sant moment and grab a beer while you listen. Or, even better, make this super dry, super citrussy cocktail called The Navigator.

The Navigator & Clues to Tanis

The Navigator is to Eld Fen what the runner is to Tanis. Basically, to get there you need one. And you also need a map.

But maybe not a map like this.

Because even when you have a Navigator / Runner, you can only get to Eld Fen / Tanis when the stars don’t align.

As soon as I heard about the stars not aligning my first thought went to the line from Space Oddity, “And the stars look very different today”. I don’t think it’s at all relevant but except maybe for the writers tipping their hat and giving a little nod to the late, great Mr David Bowie. I hope it’s that and the twist about to come is not aliens.

The Navigator Cocktail

I found this on the ever reliable, always excellent Difford’s Guide.

Dry Gin, Limoncello and Pink Grapefruit Juice…three of my favorite things! I added some additional lemon juice to mine. I figured that if I was going to cut open a lemon from the garnish, I may as well use some of it in the drink too!

This is so good! The stars all align with The Navigator. It is:

Lipsmackingly dry from the gin
Sweet from the limoncello
Sour from the lemon juice
Bright with a hint of bitter from the grapefruit.

It’s like a flavour explosion in your mouth.

The Navigator could easily become one of my favorite cocktails!

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The Navigator

Print Recipe

A refreshing dry and tangy citrus cocktail

Author: Taryn Fryer

Ingredients

Scale

2 shots dry gin
3/4 shot Limoncello
1 1/4 shot freshly squeezed pink grapefruit juice
1/2 shot freshly squeezed lemon juice
Lemon wheel to garnish

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Instructions

Shake all the wet ingredients with ice.
Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
Garnish with the lemon wheel.
Enjoy!

Tanis Speculation

I have no doubt Nic is about to go into the forest again but with whom? Per the first series, you need four. So, Nic, The Navigator and two others.

If I was Nic, I’d take Geoff Van Sant and MK. But then, given the choice, I’d probably take GVS and MK anywhere with me. They’re the best. I think GVS is my secret podcast crush. What can I say, I happen to have a thing for guys with messy hair and alert eyes who like a drink or two. And in my head he looks like Paul from Orphan Black. And that is never a bad thing!

And MK is just the best. She may also be my secret podcast crush!

I can’t wait…the series two final is fast approaching….I will try to align my fourth (and final) cocktail with that happening!

Breaking News!

Ladies of the PNW who need a thrilling secret conspiracy to liven up their lives? GVS is trying dating again. Why not have a beer with him?

‘kay people of the internet, we’re done.

Keep looking!

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Category: Grapefruit

The Menu – September 2004

Wicked Champagne Cocktail

Wicked Champagne Cocktail Recipe

Prawn, Grapefruit and Avocado Salad

Prawn, Grapefruit and Avocado Salad Recipe

Duck Breast with Raspberry Vinaigrette

Duck Breast with Raspberry Vinaigrette Recipe

Raspberry and Strawberry Mousse Cake

Raspberry and Strawberry Mousse Cake Recipe

Orange and Rosemary Tisane

My Nigella Moment – Asparagus Maltaise

Asparagus Maltaise Recipe

How To Segment A Grapefruit for Bruléeing

Grapefruit Oat Brulée – The Recipe

Grapefruit Oat Brulee

Ingredients

Instructions

Notes

Variations

Doing

Watching

Reading

Nakatomi Towers

Ingredients

To Garnish

Instructions

The Navigator & Clues to Tanis

The Navigator Cocktail

The Navigator

Ingredients

Instructions

Tanis Speculation

Breaking News!