Category: Fruit

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.

01
Dec
2012

Retro Food For Modern Times: Three Sweet Treats inspired by a Luscious Liqueur

categories: Caramel, Chocolate, Desserts, Italy, Liqueur, Mango, Meringue, Raspberry, Strawberries, Zabaglione

I was recently strolling around my local purveyor of fine alcoholic beverages (or as we like to call it, our second home) when a retro looking bottle caught my eye. A very glamorous Elke Sommer looking woman is being draped in a fur coat by a man who looks like a 1970’s tennis player or a porn star (possibly both). The label promised “an experience of elegance and lingering pleasure” which only further reinforced the boom chicka wah wah soundtrack that was going through my head. The name: Kellermeister Sable. According to the back of the bottle, Sable is a

“base of ruby tawny into which we have steeped dark German Chocolate, special spices and three year old brandy”

You know those moments when Homer Simpson goes into the donut fugue state? I think I lapsed into something very similar. Standing there mumbling to myself “Ruby Tawny…dark chocolate….special spices….brandy…ruby tawny…..” Ruby Tawny may well become the name of my first-born child. I hope it’s a girl.

The bottle, in all it’s gorgeous retroness did give me pause though. I honestly wasn’t sure if it was meant to be retro chic. Or it just came from South Australia. If anyone from South Australia wants to dispute the implication of this statement I suggest they first go and count the people with mullets walking down Rundle Mall. They can lodge their complaints when they have a number less than ten.

Ok, we may have lost South Australia forever so the rest of us might as well get on with it. Sable is meant to be retro chic and forms part of the Kellermeister Retro Range which includes this and two Moscatos which I am very keen to try. One is called Pink Minx. This may become the name of my second born child. Again, a girl would be good.

The Sable is great on it’s own as a little tipple – rich, silky, porty, chocolatey loveliness in a glass. If I was prone to swooning I would. However, as I do not live in a Jane Austen novel I will remain upright and advise that this is utterly delicious and is likely to become a staple on my drinks trolley for some time to come! This will be my go to product for those days when you just want a little something sweet and lovely after dinner! Or mid afternoon….or…you know…whenever….

The loveliness of the Sable does not stop with drinking though. It is equally good in food.

I’ve now made three recipes with it and they were all gorgeous (even if I do say so myself). If you cannot get Sable, your liqueur of choice can be substituted in all of these.

First up was a Raspberry Meringue Roulade which I adapted from a Bill Granger recipe.

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling

Raspberry Roulade and a glass of Sable – a lovely afternoon tea tipple

I then made a Strawberry and Mango Zagablione where I used the Sable instead of marsala. This tasted divine! The zabaglione was also lovely swirled into some plain yoghurt the following day.

Finally, I used some Sable in my version of the Australian Gourmet Traveller Chocolate and Caramel Tart. I adapted the original recipe as I am not that good with pastry and I used a bought caramel. This is a truly decadent recipe and tastes like heaven! My only word of caution is give yourself plenty of time to make this. I started mid afternoon. I added the final layer at midnight. This takes a LONG time to make as you have to let each layer chill before adding the next one. It is worth it though as this is absolutely delicious!

I love the ombre effect of the four layers!

Enjoy!

14
Oct
2012

Retro Food For Modern Times: The Knickerbocker Glory Years – Martin Lampen

categories: Almond, Books, Chocolate, Desserts, England, Icecream, Jelly, Strawberries, Tuile

“The Knickerbocker Glory Years” is Martin Lampen’s hilarious homage to all that is awful in British food. From A – All You Can Eat £5.99 to Z – Zest, the book lays out the dark side of British cooking.

I really liked this book. Lampen’s humour is of the very dry British style. If you do not like my excerpts you will probably not like the rest of the book. If you do like them, try to hunt down this book as you will thoroughly enjoy the rest of it. Also, the same book is called “Sausage in A Basket” in some parts of the world.

Many of the entries are short. For instance, the entry for Wood Fired Pizza is:

“Big Fucking Deal”

The longest entry is 13 pages and documents Lampen’s first dinner party in all it’s excruciating awkwardness. This is the type of book you can dip in and dip out of as you require, it doesn’t have to be read from cover to cover.

Given that I touched on the 1970’s fondness for Ham Steak and Pineapple in the last post, Lampen’s take on Gammon is:

“The pig is slaughtered, its hind legs are removed, cured, glazed in honey and sliced into steaks. If this isn’t indignity enough, the steaks are then topped with a single wet pineapple ring from a dented tin and a waxy maraschino cherry.

Yes, gammon steak when topped with egg or pineapple is a peculiarly British dish: a bloated pink slab of fatty meat, topped with a garish fruit hat. Rather like a ‘Nikita’-era Elton John”

On the subject of pineapple, the entry for Tropical is:

“In Britain, any food or drink – be it a concentrated juice, cordial or sugary carbonated fizz – containing lemon, lime, pineapple or mango is tagged as ‘tropical’.

It’s important to note that other items included in the taxonomy ‘tropical’ are tuberculosis, typhoid, tularemia, (and) tropical storm Arlene”

Or, this for Guacamole:

“A filthy Soylent Green-style dip, guacamole is usually served with stale Doritos, a mountain of melted Cheddar cheese and mayonnaise on chain-pub’s nacho platter . It’s made from dead people.”

As for the eponymous Knickerbocker Glory Lampen has this to say:

“The knickerbocker glory, a layered dessert served in a tall glass and made with ice cream, tinned peaches, chocolate or fruit sauce and strawberry puree was the first post war dessert to be made in Britain that did not contain suet.

For a young male aged between eight and fourteen in the 1980’s, the knickerbocker glory was the greatest sensual experience one could imagine. Greater even than being interfered with by Bananarama”

For those of you who have no idea what Bananarama is, firstly it was a they and they were an immensely popular girl band of the 1980’s.

In homage to this book I made my own Knickerbocker Glory and it was about the funnest thing I have eaten all year!!! And I know full well funnest isn’t a word, but it was so much fun I lost all thoughts about grammar.

My version of Knickerbocker Glory differs from Lampen’s in that I always thought Knickerbocker Glory should contain jelly. My version contained the following layers:

Strawberry jelly (Jello)
Vanilla ice cream
Chocolate cookie crumbs
Sliced Banana
Strawberry Jelly
Strawberry Ice-cream
Frangelico Fudge Sauce (Recipe follows or you could just use your preferred chocolate sauce)
Chopped nuts
Rosewater & Almond Tuile (Recipe follows or you could use a bought wafer)
Strawberry Garnish

For something that is largely put together from bits and pieces, this looks spectacular! And tastes even better!!!

Enjoy!

Recipes:

Frangelico Fudge Sauce

This makes 6 cups, you can obviously adjust quantities down if you do not want this much. This is so easy to make and absolutely delicious!

1 litre cream

250g dark chocolate

200g marshmallows

Frangelico to taste

Heat the cream, chocolate and marshmallows slowly until melted and well combined.
Stir in Frangelico to taste.

Almond and Rosewater Tuiles

These are a little troublesome to make but are worth it in the end!

50g caster sugar

30g unsalted butter at room temperature, plus extra for greasing

1 egg-white

1/4 tsp rosewater

Finely grated rind of 1/2 an orange

35g plain flower

30g flaked almonds

pinch of salt

Make a template by drawing a triangle, circle or any shape you want on a plastic lid or a sheet of firm plastic, then cut the shape out. The shape should be no larger than 5cm in diameter. Set the template aside.
Beat sugar and butter with an electric beater until pale and creamy. Add eggwhite and beat on lowest speed until incorporated.
Add rosewater, orange rind, flour and a pinch of salt. Mix lightly until combined, then refrigerate for 1 hour to rest. (The batter will keep in the fridge for 2-3 days.
Preheat oven to 180°. Place template on a baking paper lined tray, add a teaspoon of the batter into the template and spread the mixture with an offset palette knife so that it fills the template in a thin even layer.
Repeat until the baking tray is full. Scatter almond flakes over each until tuiles are golden brown on the edges (8-10) minutes. While still warm you can shape around a rolling-pin if desired or cool on tray and carefully remove.
Repeat with remaining batter.
Tuiles will keep in an airtight container for 3 days.

12
Oct
2012

Retro Food For Modern Times: The Busy Woman’s Pineapple Soufflé

categories: 1970's food, Desserts, Jelly, Pineapple

All eras have their food fads – remember when everything was daubed in pesto? And/ or sun-dried tomatoes? What about Tandoori chicken served ad nauseam outside of its natural habitat of an Indian restaurant? Tandoori Chicken Caesar Salad, Tandoori Chicken Pizza, Tandoori Chicken Pie, Tandoori Chicken Pasta with Sun Dried Tomatoes and Pesto…for the love of God, stop. Just because something tastes good doesn’t mean it has to be used in every known recipe in the world.

Back in the 1970’s pineapple was the weapon of choice. It was everywhere! It was stabbed on toothpicks with a cube of generic cheese and possibly a brightly coloured cocktail onion to form the signature hors d’oeuvre of the decade, it was grilled with ham steaks to provide the first course of the generation and, combined with the glacé cherry, formed the classic upside down cake.

It was also:

Made into Salads:

Used as a receptable for prawns:

In increasingly odd ways (also note the ubiquitous curly parsley):

For main course, there was the exotic appeal of a sweet and sour:

Or a pineapple and pork casserole:

For dessert, apart from the classic upside down cake, pineapple was also a favourite topping for cheesecakes:

Or, as in the case of this post, made into a pineapple soufflé. The recipe for pineapple soufflé appears in a number of cookbooks of this vintage so must have been a popular dish of the time. Also, just to be really confusing, this is not a soufflé as in the French baked dessert but is more a mousse type concoction. I have no idea why this is also called a soufflé. Maybe in the ’70’s “foreign” terms were interchangeable. I guess we should consider ourselves lucky it’s not called Pineapple Bourguignon…

This recipe is so easy to cook and goes a mad, almost flourescent yellow when you first mix the jelly and cream together:

The end result is lovely. The tanginess of the lemon and the pineapple cut through the heaviness of the cream so you don’t get that horrible creamy coating on your tongue. It is a lovely light and refreshing dessert. I’ll definitely be making this again and am already thinking about how I could use the same techniques with different fruit and jelly combinations – strawberries with strawberry jelly? Maybe my favourite rhubarb with raspberry and rosewater jelly… In the meantime though, just enjoy this as is!

17
May
2012

Food For Lovers – The Three Course Love Feast

categories: Apples, Bacon, Cabbage, Chicken & Poultry, Corn, Cream Cheese, Cucumber, Food For Lovers, Ginger, Sultanas, Walnuts

As a concept, Kelly Brodsky’s Food For Lovers falls on the kooky side of the spectrum. Is this echoed in the food?

Well, sort of…

There are a number of odd recipes. Many of which rely on inappropriate uses of pineapple:

Pineapple isn’t automatically an ingredient I would expect to see in a recipe entitled Braised Wine Steeped Beef. And yet, Kelly Brodsky takes it there.
The stuffing mix for the Veal with Cashew Nut Stuffing recipe on p65, contains bacon, cashew nuts, calves liver and pineapple. If mixing offal and pineapple was a good idea, surely it would be pizza by now.

And if that wasn’t enough, there’s the veal scallopine sandwich:

Ok. Pineapple is the least of the problems in that recipe which actually sounds frighteningly modern. I”m sure something similar is being served in a fast food restaurant somewhere even as I write this.

Monosodium glutamate also features prominently in the recipe ingredients. As does canned asparagus.

However, Food For Lovers also contains a lot of good as well. I marked up over 30 that I would be prepared to make and I have made four, all of which were delicious!

So now, here is my Food For Lovers Three Course Love Feast.

Cucumber Stuffed With Cream Cheese

These were great!

2 large cucumbers, leave the skin on1 cup cream cheese
1 tbsp lemon juice
10 chopped anchovies
1 tbsp chopped chives
Ground black pepper

Scoop out the centres of the cucumbers.

Combine the cream cheese, lemon juice and anchovies and stuff this mixture into the cucumbers.

Place in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Serve sliced very thin sprinkled with the chives and black pepper on crackers or buttered crusty bread.

(Brodsky suggests serving with a dab of mayonnaise, I tried both with and without mayo and preferred it without)

Sautéed Cabbage and Bacon

1/2 head of cabbage

3 bacon rashers, chopped

1 clove or garlic chopped

Dash of lemon juice

Finely shred the cabbage and steep it for 5 minutes in boiling salted water. Whislt this is steeping, sauté the bacon. Add the cabbage and garlic. Sauté Lightly. Sprinkle with a dash of lemon juice and serve.

(Broiled) Chicken With Corn Stuffing

I always thought that broiling was what Americans call grilling. The original recipe for this cooks it in water. Maybe she meant boiled? Either way, I roasted my chicken and it was super!

4 lb chicken
1 1/2 cups dry whole wheat breacrumbs
1 cup whole corn kernels
2 tbsp butter
1 cup chopped celery
1 finely chopped green pepper (I”m not a fan of this, I used a red onion in mine)
1/2 cup chopped mushrooms
Chicken Stock
I also added a clove of garlic, crushed, 1/2 a chilli and some thmye and sage leaves)

In a large pan, heat the butter and saute the celery, pepper (onion), corn, mushrooms and garlic.

Take off the heat, add the herbs and breadcrumbs, salt and pepper. Moisten with chicken stock. Cool. Then spoon into the chicken.

(I actually prefer to cook my stuffing in a separate dish).

Roast as per your preferred method. If unsure, Jamie Oliver has a solid method.

Gingered Dutch Apple Cake

This was very yummy!

3 tbsp butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1 cup sifted self raising flour
1/2 cup milk
1 cup stewed apples
1 tsp cinnamon
dash of lemon juice
2 tbsp brown sugar
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup sultanas
1 tbsp chopped preserved ginger

Cream butter and sugar. Add the egg and beat well. Then stir in the flour a few spoonfuls at a time, alternating with the milk. Pour into an 8 inch tin.

Combine the apples, cinnamon, lemon juice, brown sugar, walnuts, sultanas and ginger. Spoon on top of the cake mixture. Bake in a 190°C oven for around 45 minutes.

Slice and serve still warm with cream.