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Category: Fruit

29
Apr
2013

Retro Food For Modern Times: A Retro Rosy Rosé Punch

categories: Drinks, Fruit, Punch, Rosé, Roses, Wine

I had a strange week this week which was topped off by an amazing punch inspired by Mary Meredith’s Good Cooking For Everyone.

Her Rosé Wine Cup is by far the prettiest picture in Good Cooking For Everyone. Here is my version:

Retro Rose Punch — Retro Rosy Rose Punch

This was lovely – light, refreshing and delicious.

It was a gorgeous pale blush colour and looked and tasted like summer in a glass! And, it had the most amazing rose scent!

But first, here is a brief summary of my week.

#1 Surprise!

The surprise in Mary Meredith’s Apricot Meringue Surprise is macaroni. Yecchhh!

Apricot Meringue Surprise 001

I like to think she got confused. I think she meant to make mac and cheese and apricot meringue pie but had a few too many swigs of the cooking sherry. And you know when you’re a bit tipsy and feeling no pain? “Leave it in, it’ll be alright…”

#2 World Gone Mad

Dear Beauty Parlour

No, I do not want to tweet or post on Facebook the appointment I just made with you.

No one else is remotely interested in my beauty treatments. I’m only barely interested myself. Please find some other way of advertising your services…I suggest you try advertising.

#3 Pity The Apricot

Mary Meredith continues to use apricots in bizarre ways. If the macaroni meringue surprise wasn’t enough, look at her salad platter.

You may think, given her fondness for them (as previously discussed here) that the items on the platter between the apricots are grilled bananas. It would possibly be an improvement if they were. Those babies? Kippers

Yes, kippers. As in smoked herrings that will make your house reek for a week if you ever cook them. And if that combination wasn’t had enough on its own, you could smear your kipper and apricot delight with some apricot jam mayo.

Apricots, what did you do to Mary Meredith to make her hate you so?

#4 The Place Beyond The Bus Stop

Dear State Government

If you truly want to reduce the road toll, you might want to reconsider allowing people to put posters like this on bus stops without warning local residents. It’s nigh on impossible to keep your eyes focussed on the road ahead with this looming up on your left. (Believe me, I have tested this many, many times over the last few days and I’m pretty sure it can’t be done.)

P.S. I am by no means suggesting you remove the poster. A strategically placed traffic light would suffice. One that stays red for a while.

#5 I’m on a mission

A search of my cupboards revealed I don’t own a punch bowl. Look out Ebay, I’m coming for you!

Here is Mary Meredith’s version of the Rosé Wine Cup. So pretty!

#6 Bubbles

We celebrated my new job with some lovely bubbles.

Good thing really, to fill my time I’d started writing crackpot letters to local businesses.

#7 Rose Petal Ice Cubes: Trickier Than You Would Think

One of the things that made the Rosé Wine Cup recipe so appealing to me was the rose petal ice cubes. However, there were no instructions on how to make them.

I tried to make these three times.

The first time I used rose petals from my garden but they were too big to fit into my teeny ice-cube trays.

I then stole commandeered some smaller roses from my neighbour…I don’t think he’ll miss them….

Neighbour's roses

The problem, even with the smaller petals, is that rose petals float.

You may think these photos look lovely and serene. The reality was me poking petals back into the water shrieking “Sink, you utter bastards, damn you sink” at them.

Rose Petals For Icecubes

: Rose Petals for ice-cubes

The only way I found to do it was to put the rose petals into the ice-cube trays and fill half way with water. Once that was frozen and the floaty little fuckers were anchored in a block of ice, I could then fill to completely cover them.

Who knew ice-cubes could be so tricky?

I used boiling water to fill my ice-cube trays and some of the colour leached from the already pale petals. I would probably use a darker coloured petal next time to have more contrast. Or just not use boiling water! Bu then again, maybe the hot water released the oils that gave this the glorious scent….

#8 The Devil Was Missing Some Details

I was very much looking forward to sipping my punch whilst nibbling on some Devilled Chestnuts, recipe courtesy of Mary Meredith’s Good Cooking For Everyone.

I was totally disappointed with these. Even though they looked super cute both in the teeny cases and stabbed onto brightly coloured cocktail sticks the recipe didn’t work. I might experiment a bit and redo them but in the meantime here is a picture of how fun they looked! The big petalled rose is from my garden.

#9 The Retro Rosy Rosé Punch

I did not follow the recipe for the Rosé Wine Cup as per the recipe exactly. I was a sickly child and Cherry Brandy reminds me of the vile cough medicine I was constantly given. Proust had Madeleines. My overwhelming scent memory from childhood is Brondecon.

We’d also recently bought a bargain case of some French Passionfruit Lemonade and given that we have bottles of it lying around, I used that instead of plain lemonade.

I used a cheap and cheerful cleanskin rosé and cassis to replace the Cherry Brandy.

Rose Wine cup recipe 001

This was really lovely and something I will definitely make again, it was also light on alcohol so something you could drink all afternoon without getting too messy.

I’m going to spend the week hanging out at the bus stop, have a great one, wherever you spend yours!

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15
Apr
2013

Retro food For Modern Times – Yes, We Have No Bananas

categories: Bacon, Bananas, Books, Chicken & Poultry, Desserts, Orange Flower Water, Pie, Rhubarb

Bananas are not my favourite fruit. I put it down to an ill-advised visit to a…(please don’t let my mum be reading this)… “show” in Amsterdam when I was, younger and more prone to ~~drunkenness~~ peer pressure than I am now. It took many a year before I could even look at a banana (or anyone dressed in a Batman costume) without an inward cringe and a slight sense of shame.

But, even a banana-phobe like me could not resist trying out the recipe for Rhubarb and Banana Pie in Good Cooking For Everyone. Here is a sneak peek at how that turned out before we turn to some less appetising uses.

OMG that pie was good!!!

I’m conquering my fears in more ways than one this week – bananas and homemade pastry! If only Christian Bale would drop by we could go for the hat trick. Anyway, I had a little flick through Good Cooking for Everyone whilst I was waiting for my pastry to chill and there seemed to be a lot fewer recipes containing bananas than I remembered.

Here is what was listed:

However, my eagle eye soon discovered out the recipes Mary Meredith tried to hide. So, today, allow me to present the Banana File of Shame (and a really, really, good pie recipe)!

Mary Meredith seems to have had quite the predilection for bananas and bacon as they feature in three recipes. I had no idea this was a thing but Niki Sengit gives the combination a stamp of approval in her Flavour Thesaurus (one of my favourite food books) so I guess it must be. Like Mary, Niki also gives a recipe for Bacon Wrapped Bananas. However it is the cheese sauce in Mary Meredith’s recipe that moves it from what Niki calls “fun” to what I call “Ewww”!

Bacon and Banana Corkscrews

Then there are Bacon, Kidney and Banana Kebabs. I have never cooked with, or even knowingly eaten, kidneys. And after reading the second sentence in this recipe which made me gag, it will probably stay that way! The faint of stomach may want to skip recipe.

Bacon, Banana and Kidney Kebabs 001

There is also a sneaky use of bananas in the Sunrise Breakfast. I initially thought the things on the serving platter with the tomatoes were sausages. But who ever heard of people eating sausages for breakfast? Crumbed bananas make far more sense. If you’re insane.

Mind you, I’m obviously a bit slow because I made the same mistake with the Sunday Chicken which also features bananas cunningly disguised as sausages.

Another combination I would never have thought of but Niki assures me that breaded chicken with banana was served on the Titanic and features in F. Scott Fitzgerald‘s novel Tender is the Night! Mary Meredith also features chicken and bananas in her recipe for Stuffed Boned Chicken.

I would have included the pages on how to bone a chicken. Unfortunately, the 13-year-old boy whose sense of humour I stole was snickering so hard at the phrase “boning a chicken” that I had to let it go.

Mary is also not afraid to take food from other climes and destroy them with the inappropriate inclusion of the banana.

A recipe called Flamenco Rice should invoke Spain. It should bring up images of a glamorous Spanish woman, holding the edge of her brightly coloured ruffled dress and twirling, or clicking her castanets to the tune of a classical guitar. Or, at the very least, Paella.

Fried eggs and fried bananas on a bed of rice served with tomato sauce is not flamenco. It’s not even the Macarena.

flamenco 001

France also does not fair well. Bananas as an accompaniment to Fondue? No thanks.

Fabulous copper fondue pot though!

Finally, the hidden gem in the shape of a Rhubarb and Banana Pie. This was awesome!

I made a few small changes to the recipe as given. I wanted a really short, almost a shortbread, crust so I used the Almond Sweetcrust Pastry in Alan Campion and Michelle Curtis’ In The Kitchen instead of that suggested by Mary. If you are scared of large quantities of butter look away now.

I mastered the pastry only to discover my pie dish had disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle that hovers over my house. But, in the spirit of keep calm and carry on, I crossed my fingers and rolled the pastry into a soufflé dish.

I added 1 teaspoon of Orange Flower Water into the mix before I loaded it into the Pie Crust. I love the mix of rhubarb and orange!

Banana and Rhubarb Pie ingredients loaded into crust

The pie was fabulous, the flavours worked beautifully together and the pastry was light and crisp. I kept my rhubarb and my banana relatively chunky which made for an interesting mix – one mouthful would be heavily rhubarb in flavour, the next would be almost entirely banana. If you wanted less sharply defined flavours, you could cook the rhubarb to soften it, then mash be bananas in.

I may be biased but I think mine looks pretty good, despite the use of a soufflé dish!!!

Mary's Rhubarb and Banana Pie — Mary’s Rhubarb and Banana Pie

Rhubarb and Banana Pie Recipe

Almond Sweetcrust Pastry

They say the best way to get rid of your phobias it to face them. So, this week I’m going to be spending a lot of time looking at pictures of Christian Bale on the internet.

And no, it’s not pervy. It’s therapy!

Enjoy whatever catches your eye this week.

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08
Apr
2013

Retro Food For Modern Times: Good Cooking for (Almost) Everyone (1981)

categories: 1970's food, Bacon, Books, Cake, Prunes, Sandwiches, Vintage Cookbooks

Hello there, time to take a look into a new book.

Welcome to Mary Meredith’s Good Cooking for Everyone.

Good Cooking For Everyone by Mary Meredith 002

Let me just start with a little quibble. When i think of 1981, I think of this:

And not so much this:

Mary Meredith 001

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not having a go at Mary here. This book was first published in 1970 and this was a probably a perfectly acceptable photo back then. Eleven years later, you’d think that maybe the publishers could have forked out for a new publicity photo. Maybe one using that new technology of colour.

The 500 “specially selected recipes” in this book do address a wide audience, if not exactly everyone.

In keeping with the Livvie theme above, there are sandwiches that would suit people watching their weight:

Lettuce and Lemon Sandwiches 001

And recipes for those who are most definitely not.

Mary calls this “California Stuffed Forehock.” I prefer to think of it as “The Reason Elvis (Permanently) Left the Building”. The prunes in the recipe could explain why he was found on the toilet.

Californian Stuffed Forehock 001

Enough for 4 people or one bacon lovin’ popstar!

From The King, to proper royalty, Mary Meredith also provides us with a dainty dish to set before a king. Four and twenty blackbirds anyone?

Cutlet Pie

In fairness to Mary, it’s not actually blackbirds but a mix of lamb kidneys and cutlets. In fairness to modern sensibility, I was staring at this picture wondering how to describe the sheer awfulness of a pie with bones in little bootees sticking out of it. Mark looked at it over my shoulder. “You’re not making that are you?” he asked, sounding a little shaky. I assured him I was not. “Good” he said. “Because it looks fucking horrible.” Description problem solved.

Then, there are recipes for people who want their cakes to look like footwear. (Why? WHY???)

Shoe cake - who doesn't want to eat an old boot on their birthday! — Shoe cake – who doesn’t want to eat an old boot on their birthday!

And recipes for people who want to traumatise their children. Never mind the chocolate-roll cats at the front, what are those weird shiny pink things with faces ? Apart from the stuff of nightmares?

Children's Party Food — Children’s Party Food

I did however manage to find one group of people for who Mary was not catering for. I was searching the index of this book when, in the B’s, I came across:

Baked Lemon Potatoes
Batch of scones

It’s an odd way of listing these items but there were corresponding entries under L, P and S so whilst kooky, they weren’t entirely random. (But again, maybe something that should have been corrected in the 1981 edition.)

I also noticed under M:

Making a jug of cocoa

Using this logic surely every recipe should be listed under M?

Making Lettuce and lemon sandwiches
Making Elvis Has Left The Building, etc.

And just to be really irritating there is no corresponding entry under C listing:

Cocoa, Making a jug of

I’m sorry cocoa drinkers of the world, I guess if you were of a logical mind in 1981 and wanted to find out how to make a jug of your favourite drink (without having to scan through 499 other recipes), you were S.O.L.

I’m spending the weekend with a jug of margaritas… it was going to be cocoa but the recipe was too damn hard to find!

So much for an alcohol free April!

Whatever your tipple, have a great week.

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28
Mar
2013

Retro Food For Modern Times – Let’s See How Far We’ve Come – 1971 vs 2013

categories: 1970's food, Books, Jelly, Pears

I have spoken previously about my abhorrence of food made to look like animals. It’s one of the reasons why Easter isn’t my favourite holiday.

Chocolate? Good.

Chocolate posing as rabbits and chickens? Not so much.

Not to mention the Easter Bilbies…

I have nothing against bilbies, I think they’re kind of sweet when they are found in nature where they belong. Where they do not belong is in my Easter Basket.

However, given the time of year and the predilection for animal shaped food items I thought I would have a quick look at two recipes, one from the Party Cookbook (1971), the other from a modern book to see how our tastes have changed.

Let’s start with the 1971 recipe for White Mice in Jelly.

White Mice in Jelly 001

I didn’t make this because

a) It’s food made to look like rodents, and

b) I’m not fond of pears. I find them largely tasteless and a little gritty.

But imagine these sans lettuce leaf and cheese and drowned in a vat of Lucozade and you get the general idea of the White Mice in Jelly.

1971 verdict – I guess they’re kind of cute. If you like eating facsimile vermin and gritty fruit, knock yourself out.

Moving to 2013, I found the following recipe in Luke Nguyen‘s Greater Mekong Cookbook. I assumed his Chargrilled Coconut Mice would be an Asian version of the above, maybe made from a tropical fruit dipped in coconut. A cutesy way to end the book, like the puppy story at the end of the news.

Then I actually read the recipe and..oh….oh…OH! For the love of hopscotching Jesus…no!

Chargrilled Coconut Mice 001

Don’t get me wrong Luke, I like you. I think you are charming television host and a great chef. I follow you on social media. But seriously? REAL FUCKING MICE? Have you lost your mind?

I didn’t make this one either because

a) It’s food made of rodents and

b) Telling me to not freak out and use quail doesn’t work. The word mice has already been mentioned. Several times. I don’t give a crap if they are naturally clean I’m not throwing a few mice on the barbie!

2013 Verdict – Is this really what we’ve come to? We’ve had the foams and the bacon ice-cream and the molecular gastronomy, we’re now eating vermin? Bring back 1971!

Just in case the recipe wasn’t bad enough you can watch Luke cooking the mice here:

http://www.sbs.com.au/food/recipe/15919/Chargrilled_coconut_mouse_or_quail

Gross.

So…in deference to the ethos of 1971, bring out the bilbies and hand me the rabbits; this Easter I’m eating vermin. But only of the chocolate variety!

Chocolate Bunny red ribbon

Happy Easter everyone!

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25
Mar
2013

Retro Food For Modern Times: Angels, Devils and Cheesy Devils on Horseback

categories: 1970's food, Bacon, Goat's Cheese, Hors D'oeuvres, Oysters, Prunes

No, it’s not my review of the new Dan Brown blockbuster, it’s bacon! Lovely, crispy, salty bacon wrapped around…stuff that isn’t bacon.

Angels, Devils and Cheesy Devils on Horseback

I love bacon even though it was my undoing. I was a very happy vegetarian for two years in high school. If my mother is reading this, right about now, she will be having a little snicker to herself and muttering “Huh…The only vegetarian in the world who didn’t eat vegetables.” And there is a grain of truth in that. I did spend two years eating not much more than tomato and cheese sandwiches and the occasional omelette.

Until I was brought down by bacon.

(Cue dramatic music…wow, this could be turning into a Dan Brown novel).

Angels on Horseback (picture from The Party Cookbook).

I used to have tennis lessons, very early, every Sunday morning. The family that lived next door to the tennis courts would, without fail, have a fry up for breakfast every week. The smell of bacon would drift out over the tennis court in a haze of mouth-watering deliciousness. “Eat me, eat me, ” it taunted.

Over weeks of this, bacon came to represent so much more than a tasty breakfast dish, it became a symbol of a better life. The kind of life where, on Sunday mornings, people had leisurely cooked breakfasts and listened to Mozart and spoke French whilst doing the Sunday crossword in less than twenty minutes. It represented a glamour and sophistication utterly removed from my reality of huffing and puffing around a glorified field, still half asleep, wearing a polyester track suit that did not so much keep the cold out as keep the sweat in and having someone repeatedly yelling at me to hit a damn ball over a stupid net. I began to yearn for bacon in the same way I yearned for Paris and champagne and pink Sobranie cigarettes in one of those long cigarette holders like Audrey Hepburn’s in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

I was a weird child.

Angels on Horseback - Ingredients — Angels on Horseback – Ingredients

I have no idea whether the neighbours were the glamorous types I imagined them to be or a bunch of suburban lard-arses who are now appearing on The Biggest Loser so that their fat-clogged arteries can be given a second lease of life. I suspect the latter. If so, can I suggest that the producers of the show make them play tennis. At seven. On a Sunday morning. In winter. I’ll be lurking somewhere near by with a portable grill and a couple of rashers. Let’s see how they like it.

Anyway, I lasted about three months before I caved. One cold wintry morning I came home from said lesson. Mum asked if I would like my tomato and cheese sandwich plain or toasted.

“I want bacon” I snapped in the snotty way only a 16-year-old can. Then I stomped upstairs to my room and listened to The Smiths until mum called me back downstairs for a plate of lovely, lovely life-affirming B & E.

History lesson over. And that’s about all the history I can give you because the reasons oysters are linked with angels, prunes with devils and either wrapped in bacon is termed “on horseback” are lost in time. Maybe that could be the subject of the next Dan Brown… an obscure culinary term could lead Robert Langdon on a search that reveals the long hidden conspiracy behind whether Elvis really did die on his toilet. (If you’re reading this Brown, back off now. I know what you’re like. The Fried-Peanut-Butter and Bacon-Sandwich Code is mine.)

Inspired by the Angels on Horseback recipe in The Party Cookbook I recently went on a bacon rampage and made three versions of this classic hors d’œuvre.

Angels on horseback recipe 001

If you like it spicy, adding a dash of tabasco sauce to the Angels only makes them more delicious!

For Devils on Horseback, substitute Prunes for the Oysters above and leave out the paprika.

Devils on Horseback and Cheesy Devils on Horseback - Ingredients — Devils on Horseback and Cheesy Devils on Horseback – Ingredients

For Cheesy Devils, stuff the prunes with Goat’s Cheese before wrapping in the bacon.

Some people like to serve their Devils on Horseback with Mango Chutney. I’m not a big fan but I did have some Kashmiri Date Chutney in the fridge and this was quite nice as a dip for the Cheesy Devils.

These were all delicious and I would make them all again. In order my preference was Angels on Horseback, Cheesy Devils, then Devils on Horseback but I would not discount any of them.

I no longer desire the Sobranies, but Angels on Horseback with a Glass of champagne and the Sunday Cryptic crossword? C’est parfait!

Have a great week!
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