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Category: Fruit

12
Mar
2013

Retro Food For Modern Times: Lessons Learned From Masterchef and Two Ways with Oysters

categories: Bananas, Lemon, Oysters, Starters, Swiss Cheese, Tabasco, Worchestershire Sauce

“It’s a brave man who first ate an oyster”

I had a dilemma this week. I was reading “The Party Cookbook” and found a recipe for a little dish called Osborne Oysters. Now, it just so happened that with the half dozen oysters we buy as a little treat each Saturday, I had all the ingredients on hand to make this dish.

But, let’s face it. Oysters aren’t cheap. And this recipe consisted of a few ingredients that I would never have put together – what if it tasted as bad as it sounded? On the other hand, what if it turned out to be a magical combination that would have the likes of Heston Blumenthal lamenting “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Just to be clear on what I was up against, here are the ingredients for Osborne Oysters:

No, you don’t need to adjust your screen….that is an oyster, a banana and some Jarlsberg. Now you see my dilemma? My gut instinct is that those are three things that should never even be seen together (which is why one lives on the land, one in the sea and one on a tree) let alone combined into a dish. I was still torn though, a little Heston Blumenthal devil on my shoulder was urging me to do it. Then a tiny angel looking suspiciously like Marco Pierre White jogged my memory of a more recent seafood – banana melange.

Early in the current series of Masterchef: The Professionals, one of the candidates made a name for himself by serving Marco Pierre White a fish stew with a banana flavoured aioli.

That name was buffoon.

Marco described it as one of the worst things he had eaten. Ever.

So the big question. Did I make and eat Osborne Oysters?

Not on your life. I listened to my inner MPW and ate those oysters in my preferred fashion…with lemon, Worchestershire sauce and Tabasco. And they were delicious!

My preferred Oyster mix (although I don’t usually measure it out) is:

½ teaspoon lemon juice

3 drops Worchestershire sauce

1 drop Tabasco

Et Voila…down the hatch!

Oysters My Way - Good to Go — Oysters My Way – Good to Go

I always follow this up with some bread and butter. I have no idea why but Oysters make bread and butter taste even better than normal!

For anyone ~~more stupid~~ braver than me…here is the recipe for Osborne Oysters:

Osborne Oysters Recipe

For everyone else, if you take one thing away from this week’s post it’s to always listen to your inner Marco.

Enjoy your week.

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19
Feb
2013

Singers and Swingers in The Kitchen – Roberta Ashley (1967): Lemon Cake, Orange Jello and Confusion

categories: Cake, Jelly, Lemon

Hello and welcome to the new look Retro Food For Modern Times. I’m still tweaking the design so feedback would be greatly appreciated!

I also know I have gone overboard on this book. I promise this will be my last post from it. ~~For the moment.~~

Finally, if anyone has come to this page by Googling “swingers” and “jello”, this probably isn’t what you’re looking for. It’s about cake. Seriously, stop reading now. You’ll only be disappointed. It wasn’t even a particularly nice cake!

Ok, so now that the perverts are gone, lets talk cake. Although, maybe I should have let them stay. It worked for that “Fifty Shades of Grey” lady. Maybe I should become the E L James of smutty cooking. I could go all breathy and talk about “Beating the eggs and whipping the cream” whilst heaving my bosom about. Or would that just make me Nigella? (Who I absolutely adore. Please don’t sue me. I love you).

Anyway, back to the cake. The recipe comes from Chad Stuart. And before you even start to think “Who the f…” let me interrupt you right there. Chad Stuart is one half of the British folk duo Chad And Jeremy.

Same question huh? I thought so. Click the link if you really want to find out. It doesn’t really matter but just for the hell of it, Chad Stuart is the speccy one in the photo below, not the one who looks a little bit like a young Ryan Gosling if you squint and look at the screen on the correct angle.

So, the cake.

I had never heard of a cake that used Jelly / Jello as an ingredient but was not averse to trying it. There were only a few ingredients and I have an incredible fondness for a lemon syrup cake!

Orange-Lemon Cake Ingredients — Lemon Orange Cake Ingredients

The batter turned a bright orange and went quite bubbly. It tasted slightly chemical and overwhelmingly of oil. The oil was my fault. The recipe states vegetable oil. I should have used a more neutral oil like canola instead of a fruity olive oil. There was still too much of it though, you can see it pooling around the edges of the bowl in the picture below.

I think the slight chemical taste probably came from the cake mix. It could also have been some sort of weird mental effect – my mind thinking that it wasn’t “real” cake so should not taste like one. I’m someone who often likes the raw batter better than the cooked cake so the initial taste was disappointing.

Lemon Orange Cake BatterThe first weird thing happened when I took the cake out of the oven. There was a white….(I want to say bloom but that reminds me a little too much of mould or algae)….froth?…on the surface of the cake, about an inch in from the border of the tin. This was probably caused by all those bubbles in the mixture, although these had not been as prevalent when I’d spooned it into the pan.

The froth didn’t impact the taste but it was unsightly and as the cake wasn’t iced, it meant I had to keep looking at it.

There was also some sort of Jedi mind trick going on with the taste of the cake. It was an orange cake in colour so in my mind, it should have also tasted of orange. It didn’t. It tasted pretty much of nothing. I’m not sure why, maybe the excess of oil neutralised the other flavours.

Adding the syrup, if anything, made it even weirder. Not the least of which because I have no idea what a poultry nail is. I poked my holes with a skewer like a normal person. What I ended up with was an orange cake that tasted of lemon.

This cake caused my brain to melt. Seriously. It messed with my head. The oily batter, the weird froth, the colour not matching the flavour, it was not a pleasant experience or one that I am likely to repeat without significantly changing the recipe.

If I was going to make it again I would use a more neutral oil and cut down on the amount. I would have the colour of the cake match the colour of the syrup – if using orange jelly/o, I would use orange syrup. How awesome would this look with a blood orange syrup?

I’m off to hunt for a new book for next time. Enjoy your week!
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10
Jan
2013

Strawberry Fields Forever Part 2 aka Strawberries Gangland Style

categories: Desserts, Salad, SemiFreddo, Strawberries, Tarragon

I have some weird little strips of paper in my “recipes to be made” folder. They are not so much recipes as hints, maybe even whispers of things to make. I have no idea where they came from – they are numbered and printed so I presume from a list of some sort. Anyway, each of these is an absolute gem, if a little vague.

Take for instance, strip #58.

“Hull and quarter some strawberries; at the last minute, combine with a little chopped tarragon, black pepper and balsamic vinegar. Goat’s cheese is good too”

That’s all folks.

I had strawberries galore (huh, sounds a bit like the name of a Bond girl), I had tarragon, black pepper and balsamic…

Ingredients for Strawberry Tarragon Salad

I know it’s only just over a week into the year but I strongly believe this salad will be one of my top ten finds of the year.

This was soooooo good. The sweet strawberries, the aniseedy tarragon, the sticky sweet sour balsamic and the warming zing of pepper are…mindblowingly awesome!

I neither hulled nor quartered my strawberries…who can be bothered following so many steps in a recipe…

Strawberry, Tarragon, Black Pepper, Balsamic Salad

The recipe suggests that goat’s cheese would not go astray here. I didn’t have any (why would I? I didn’t have sugar. Why on earth would I have goat’s cheese?) but I mixed up some sour cream and mascarpone and dobbed that on and it was delicious. Goat’s cheese would be amazing. I also would like to try blue cheese.

The vinegar that the strawberries soaked in went all thick and syrupy and took on a pinkish tinge from the strawberry juice. I siphoned this back into a small bottle for later use as it seemed too good to throw out.

And speaking of awesome, my White Chocolate Strawberry Cheesecake Semifreddo for Mark’s birthday? Amazing!!! Another good contender for top ten for the year. I hope I haven’t peaked early!

I used this recipe from a Delicious Magazine:

http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/6801/strawberry+cheesecake+semifreddo

with the addition of White Chocolate into both the base and the filling.

Why white chocolate?

I was leafing through one of my favourite food books, Niki Sengit’s Flavour Thesaurus to see if she had anything to say about strawberries and tarragon (she doesn’t, although there is a section on strawberries and anise). This book is a must have for any serious foodie and even the not so serious ones as some of the entires are hilarious!

Niki has the following to say about strawberries and white chocolate:

“In fancy chocolate shops, I sometimes see slabs of white chocolate spattered with clots of freeze dried strawberry, like stucco after a shoot out. White chocolate makes for a better combination with strawberry than milk or dark because, like strawberry and gangland comparisons, it’s a little cheesy”

I couldn’t resist. So I bought a family block of white chocolate and melted half into the biscuit base and half into the filling. It was sensational. And just right for a birthday celebration on a hot night. We had dinner at our favourite Thai restaurant then came home for some bubbly and the semifreddo. It was a delightful way to end a lovely day!

And in honour of Niki, and with a slight nod to the K-pops, but mostly because White Chocolate Strawberry Cheesecake Semifreddo is too much of a mouthful, from now on, in this house at least, it will be known as Semifreddo Gangland Style.

08
Jan
2013

Retro Food for Modern Times – Strawberry Fields Forever, Part 1

categories: Mango, Strawberries, Tarragon, Vodka

Let me take you down ‘cos I’m going to...

…my local green grocer where they are currently selling trays of strawberries for $6. My sincere apologies to John Lennon for that absolute travesty but just in case you are not utterly awestruck by this, let me reiterate. A tray of strawberries for $6. That’s 16 punnets. For $6 dollars. The world may have not ended on December 21^st but it has surely gone mad!

How do farmers make any money when the (literal) fruit of their labour is being sold off at about 40 cents a punnet?

Maybe because the week before Christmas punnets of strawberries were selling for $4 each!

I know, it’s not the farmers, it’s the wholesalers and the grocery shop owners and all the people in between who add their mark up. The farmers probably got paid the same for the $4 strawberries as they did for the 40 cent strawberries.

My joy at my bargain buy lasted until I had to carry, not only all of my regular fruit and veggies, but an additional four kilos of strawberries, from the shop to my car. By the time I reached the car (it was a hot day and I had parked some distance away from the shop to get a spot in the shade), I’d stopped thinking “I’m the best shopper in the world! ” and “I’m in berry heaven” to “What on earth am I going to do with four kilos of strawberries?” and “How can four kilos of strawberries actually weigh a ton?”.

My first task, on getting home, was to sort the strawberries – a few in each punnet were overripe and were starting to get a bit manky. The perfect ones went into a colander and the fridge for eating. We have been feasting on these all week.

The almost perfect berries went into a bag and into the freezer whole. I puréed the somewhat bruised berries and placed them in 6 containers in the freezer where they will be great for smoothies, muffins, etc later in the year. Finally, my kitchen helpers, Oscar and Lulu, were on hand to dispose of the fourth group being the few badly bruised berries that were left.

We have been eating strawberries all week – by the handful whenever we feel a bit peckish; for dessert with cream (Mark) and ice cream (me) and for breakfast with mango and vanilla yogurt:

Strawberry, Mango and Vanilla Yogurt Breakfast

I have started making a strawberry liqueur based on the link below with some tweaks inspired by other recipes, most notably, I am putting the sugar in from the start.

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/06/homemade-strawberry-liqueur-recipe.html

I searched high and low for tarragon yesterday; I went to three greengrocers and I could not find it for love or money. I decided to use basil instead.

I was so excited about making the liqueur and trying to track down the tarragon, that I completely forgot to check the other ingredients. I knew I had strawberries, I had vodka. I was searching for tarragon. And who particularly someone who bakes regularly, doesn’t have caster sugar? Me apparently. Grrr… Such a newbie mistake!!!

So today, I ducked into the supermarket to pick up the caster sugar and found piles of tarragon. As I had another recipe for tarragon and strawberries I was aching to try, I bought a bunch and pulled the basil out of my would be liqueur and popped in the tarragon and sugar. All the sugar sank to the bottom and when I tipped it upside down to mix it in, it made these drippy pale pink stalactite type things that looked awesome! The mixture is also already a fabulous pink colour. And it’s only Day 2. Imagine Day 30.

It’s Mark’s birthday tomorrow and the temperature is set to soar. Baking in my tiny kitchen when it’s anything above 30 degrees outside is not something I relish. So, I’ve decided that he will get a White Chocolate Strawberry Cheesecake Semifreddo in lieu of a traditional birthday cake. I’m aiming for quirky but cool. We’ll see how that works out. I also need to get busy making it. Which means that my strawberry and tarragon salad recipe will have to wait until the next post.

On a more sombre note, and speaking of temperatures soaring, many parts of Australia are currently experiencing devastating bushfires and my heart goes out to all those who have lost loved ones, homes and belongings in this tragedy and to the brave people, many of whom are volunteers, who are so valiantly fighting the fires. You are in my thoughts and prayers.

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01
Jan
2013

Retro Food For Modern Times – Holiday Wrap Up

categories: Chocolate, Desserts, Eggs, Jelly, Lemon, Lime, Limoncello, Mushrooms, Vol Au Vent

Happy New Year!

Here’s what’s been going on since I last posted.

On Christmas Day, we gathered at my mum’s for a family lunch. I made the carrot and orange flower water salad featured in the last post and a lemon and lime tart with limoncello as my contribution to the meal. The tart was meant to look like this…

Sadly, it didn’t. I lack confidence with pastry so thought I would make it with a crumb crust. But I didn’t let the crumb set long enough so when I poured the filling in it all came loose and mixed in with the filling. I ended up covering it with a meringue (thanks again for that idea Monica) but when it was cut it didn’t have a nice sharp line between meringue, filling and base. It tasted wonderful; it looked terrible. I hate that. Why is it always when you have to cook for a large group of people that things go awry?

I was lucky enough to get lots of lovely vintage and vintage inspired presents – a selection of some are below!

Over the break I finally got to visit the Gusto exhibition at the State Library which explores the culinary history of Victoria. Among other treasures, they had an amazing array of vintage cookbooks which I was just itching to get my hands on!

The days between Christmas and New Year are tinged with sadness for me as my Nana passed away during this period a few years ago. In memory of Nana, I cooked some devilled eggs which was a dish she used to make quite often. My deviled eggs weren’t nearly as good as Nana’s stuffed eggs but they weren’t terrible….maybe next year I’ll get Nana’s recipe and do it properly! In the meantime, the recipe I used is here:

Asparagus rolls were another of Nana’s specialties. Nana’s asparagus came straight from the tin, the rolls were made with white bread with the crusts cut off, and the asparagus was melded to the bread with a mixture of butter and finely grated cheese. There may have been some mustard in there too…again, I’ll have to snaffle the exact recipe, if such a thing exists, off mum for next year. Ribbon sandwiches were another of the lovely, dainty things she made…..it’s funny, for someone who had a very sweet tooth, all of the best of Nana’s recipes were savoury high tea type delicacies.

On a more mundane level, I remember school holidays sitting in front of the television watching Days of Our Lives eating hard-boiled egg and tomato sauce sandwiches that Nana had made for me. Just in case you were wondering, these were eggs mashed into tomato ketchup on white bread. I kind of shudder at the thought of them now but back in the day….delicious!

Every year in the school holidays Nana would take me into the city and we would have Frog in a Pond at the Coles Cafeteria. I think Frog in a Pond maybe a uniquely Australian dessert so for those of you who have no idea what I am talking about here it is…

A link to the recipe is here:

http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/18303/frogs+in+the+pond

I made us some mushroom vol au vents…can you get more retro than a vol au vent? They were light and lovely after the rich food at Christmas. The recipe I used is here although I cheated and used bought shells. One of my goals for this year is to master pastry!!!

In between some house renovations, we had a boozy lunch and some fabulous cocktails with some girlfriends one day. The cocktails were served in jam jars and look almost as good as they tasted!

Ended the day on the couch watching Bond on the telly. The Spy who Loved Me…which has to be the best Bond song ever if not quite the best movie.

We had a very quiet New Year’s Eve as the dogs get frightened by the fireworks and we didn’t want to leave them alone at home. I lit a tea light – in one of these gorgeous candle holders made from vintage doilies – and reflected on the year gone and the one to come. 2012 was a turbulent year for many reasons and in some ways I was glad to see the back of it. I have a feeling 2013 is going to be a fabulous year! I also wish the same for everyone reading this and hope all your hopes and wishes come true.