Strawberries 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
Feb
2016

REPOST – Strawberries in Grand Marnier with Mint Sugar

categories: 1970's recipes, A-Zof Cooking, Mint, Strawberries

The good news, is that with this post, we are done with the letter F in the A-Z of Cooking. The chapter heading promises that we will be “Finishing with Flair”. The bad news is that without seeming like Mary, Mary Quite Contrary right from the get go, another F word springs to mind when I consider the contents. Except for these Strawberries in Grand Marnier. They were good! Although how could a combination of fresh sweet strawberries combined with luscious orange liqueur with mint as it’s cheerleader not be delicious?

We’ll get to them later. However, back to Finishing with Flair – we have already mentioned this so called Mango Mousse. The picture of which contains bananas, oranges, passionfruit, eggs and nuts. The recipe below has none of these. The Mango mousse recipe actually sounds really nice. Maybe I am just being a brat for not making it. Then again, if they can’t be arsed putting the right picture with the recipe, what are the chances that recipe will turn out?

That fear of 1977 desserts not being all they were cracked up to be was born out when I made the Continental Chocolate Squares featured on p28. The picture from the A-Z of Cooking is on the left, with the Squares looking rather decadent. Mine are on the right looking a lot more Raggedy Anne. I think I tried to cut them when the chocolate topping was still too hard from being in the fridge and I could not get a nice clean line. Maybe I should have glammed them up by adding some candlelight!

What both of these pictures fail to convey is the overbearing sickly sweetness of the filling. It contained 4 cups of icing sugar which was far too much! I love sweet food but this was way too much for me and prompted the fussiest eater in the world to ask if I was trying to put him into a diabetic coma. It is a shame that the middle layer was awful because the base which was chocolate and walnuts and biscuits was quite nice. It is probably worth someone spending some time on trying to get that filling right because this could have been amazing. I just don’t think that person will be me! Although, now I kind of want to. So maybe it will rear its head in another incarnation down the track.

There was a lovely sounding recipe in this section for French Cherry Fritters. This is the one I would have loved to make but you had to deep fry the fritters and I do not have a deep-fryer. This however is one I am going to:

a) Play around with until I can perfect a baked version

b) borrow a deep-fryer. i think my mum has one.

Until then, it’s Strawberries with Grand Marnier. Adding the mint sugar was an idea I borrowed from Sabrina Ghayour in Persiana. She makes a number of herb sugars to sprinkle over fruit and now it is something I do all the time!

I served this with some white chocolate dipped almond bread which was every bit as delicious as it sounds!

Initially I thought this might be a bit too simple to blog about – soak some strawberries in booze. And done.

And it is very simple. But sometimes that is all you need to finish a meal with flair!

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Strawberries in Grand Marnier with Mint Sugar

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A simple way to finish your meal with flair!

Author: Taryn Fryer

Ingredients

Scale

1 punnet of strawberries
2 tbsp Grand Marnier
Handful of mint leaves
3 tbsp caster sugar
White Chocolate Dipped Almond Bread to serve (optional)

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

Halve the strawberries and place in individual serving dishes.
Sprinkle each dish with 1/2 tbsp of Grand Marnier.
Leave to stand at room temperature for at least an hour.
Meantime, make your herb sugar.
Place your mint and your sugar in the bowl a mortar and grind with your pestle until them mint is finely ground and well combined with the sugar, which will be a lovely green.
Alternatively, place both in your food processor and whiz until you achieve the same effect

Notes

You could use basil instead of mint. Or a mix of basil and black pepper.
Any Orange flavoured liqueur could be used instead of Grand Marnier.
Any left over herb sugar can be used to rim a cocktail glass, or used in place of regular sugar in anything else you are making – I’m thinking lemonade would be amazing.

Nutrition

Serving Size: 4

Ok so that’s F done.

Coming up we have G is for Good Health. I have actually already made the Cheese & Date Bread from this section so we may skip it altogether as there is not much else to get excited about. So, possibly our next venture into the A-Z will be The Gourmet’s Touch. Ooh la la. Exciting times ahead! Possibly.

Have a wonderful week lovely people and this week, what ever you do, I hope you finish it with flair!

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13
Jun
2014

B is for Baby Bundt, Bacon & Bay and Blonde Bombshells

categories: Bacon, Cake, Canapes, Chocolate, Cocktail, Habanero, Hors D'oeuvres, Parfait Amour, Prunes, Sparkling, Spice Peddler, St Germain, Strawberries

B is also for Bozo, Blog and Birthday.

As in guess which bozo forgot to celebrate her own blog’s 2nd birthday on May 25th?

So, today we’re having a Belated (don’t worry, I promise I won’t capitalise every word that starts with a B) Birthday, (no really, I won’t) celebrating my second annivesary with food using the second letter of the alphabet. See what I did? Second year, second letter?

You’d think I planned it.

Maybe you should keep thinking that….I”m all for anything that makes me look better!!!

So anyway, it’s my birthday so let’s get this party started. And I’ve said it before, and no doubt I will say it again, (purely because I’ve got a bottle of the stuff that isn’t going to drink itself) a retro party isn’t a retro party without Parfait Amour. And any party is better with a blonde bombshell!

Nope not like this, the blonde bombshell I am referring too is a cocktail made with the aforementioned Parfait Amour. I’m not sure why it’s called a Blonde Bombshell as it comes out a gorgeous dusky pinky purple.

First Course – The Birthday Blonde Bombshell

It’s my party…cocktails count as a course….in my perfect world, we would skip main meals altogether. We would move from cocktails to fingerfood to dessert.

Wow!!! I think I may have found my Parfait Amour drink of choice. This was lovely!!! Sweet and florally and almost kind of musky…it reminded me a little bit of Turkish Delight…maybe it was the roses in the Parfait Amour. Very girly, very pretty. Easy to drink….hmmm….maybe getting rid of that bottle won’t be as hard as I previously thought!

Second Course – Bay Wrapped Bacon and Prunes

This is basically a take on a Devils on Horseback. But wrapped in a bayleaf. And I added a little smear of my Strawberry Habanero Sauce to the bacon before wrapping it around the prunes.

Note for the unwary – grilling bay leaves makes your entire kitchen smell like you’ve been smoking marijuana. For about a week. Which is fine until you have a plumber come to fix your leaking tap and they ask you if you can score them some bud.

I barely even know what that means.

Despite that, you really can’t go wrong with these…salty, sweet, spicy, crispy…The bay leaves added a slight resiny flavour that was quite pleasant but prevented the bacon from getting really crispy which was slightly disappointing.

I served it them with some more of the strawberry habenero sauce. And the saltiness was a great foil to the sweetness of the Blonde Bombshell.

Delicious!

But now to the piece de resistance. The dessert.

So….what’s better than a triple chocolate baby bundt?

A QUADRUPLE chocolate baby bundt.

And what’s better than a quadruple chocolate Baby Bundt?

A Quadruple Chocolate Chilli Baby Bundt!

Third Course – Quadruple Chocolate Chilli Baby Bundt

So, if you’re following me on Instagram you would have already seen me post my first experiment with the Spice Peddler’s Mexican Chilli Chocolate Cake Mix. That was a Chili Chocolate Cupcake with a Chilli Toffee Shard topped with Vanilla Icecream and my Strawberry Habenero Sauce. OMG, I thought this was the best thing ever…so, so good. The cake was fudgy and spicy and delicious, the vanilla icecream and chilli sauce worked together perfectly and the chilli toffee was a cute and quirky touch. Basically, this was me on a plate!!!!

Chocolate Chilli Cupcake with A Chilli Toffee Shard

Gahhh….so how do you top that?

Well, I found a recipe for a cake called a Tyroler in a Delicious Magazine and I had a little play with it. And came up with the Quadruple Chocolate Chilli Baby Bundt. I used the Spice Peddler Mexican Chilli Chocolate Cake Mix as my base and it was super delicious!

This was really good. Then again, how could it not be?

It had quadruple chocolate.

And a touch of chilli.

And walnuts.

And rum soaked sultanas.

And did I mention quadruple chocolate?

So, it may have been belated but worth the wait because these were all awesome!!!!

I’ll try to be on time next year and if not, I can always repost this and rename it Birthday 3 – Cocktails, Canapés and Cake.

Hope you all have a fabulous week!!!!

(Recipes below)

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