(If you didn’t put your hands up, you’re dead to me)
Chef Boy-ar-dee Pizza
And what’s better than a pepperoni pizza? Nothing!Except maybe this:
Vintage Pizza Party 3
And what’s better than this recipe for Pepperoni, Mozzarella and Mint Pizza? Absolutely nothing! Although The Gaylords come a very close second.
I adapted this recipe from My Table: Food for Entertaining by Pete Evans, mainly just to make it a bit quicker. I’m far too lazy to make pizza dough on a Friday night so my base of choice is pita bread and I use a bought tomato paste mixed with some garlic and herbs for the base. If you want to be entirely DIY, Pete’s recipe is here.
Pepperoni Pizza with Bocconcini, Olives and Mint
My quick version is here:
This is so good – the combination of the pepper mix and the mint just lift this out of normal pizza realm into a taste sensation that wil get your tastebuds dancing just like the hipster groovers in the photo below.
Vintage Pizza Party Chef Boy-Ar-Dee
And if that plain old thing got them going, I guess my version would have had them doing a bit of this…
Or maybe some of this:
Just not this…
Yep, this is Friday night perfection on a plate!
Pepperoni Pizza with Mozzarella and Mint
Yay, it’s Christmas! I’ll celebrate with a very special cocktail next time round.
I’ve been doing some wicked multitasking over the last few weeks – moving house has taken up just about all the time, energy, patience and sanity I had left…which, particularly in the case of the last two was not a huge amount to begin with.
So, how to get through the move, life in general, and a couple of cooking challenges for the month? Multitasking is how. November’s Daring Cooks’ Challenge had us on a roll! Olga from http://www.effortnesslessly.blogspot.com/ challenged us to make stuffed cabbage rolls using her Ukrainian heritage to inspire us. Filled with meat, fish or vegetables, flexibility and creativity were the name of the game to get us rolling!
The Spice Peddlers this month sent their Big 5 Pepper Steak Rub which consists of black, green, white, pink, Szechuan and Tasmanian pepper plus cardamom, garlic salt, nutmeg and cloves. This is a delicious blend which should by no means be limited to Pepper Steaks…although, having said that, it would be pretty great used like that.
So, the basic recipe for the cabbage rolls can be found here along with a vegetarian and a fish version which I am just itching to try!
I made some changes to the original recipe. I’m not a huge fan of pork so I used lamb mince as my meat of choice. I also added a teaspoon of the Big 5 Pepper Steak rub into the lamb mixture.
When I made my rolls, I had a quite a bit of the meat mix left so I made up some meatballs and lightly fried them up before adding them to the pan with the rolls. As I was frying them up, I also sprinkled more of the Pepper Mix into the pan so the meatballs picked up the pepper mix and got a kind of crunchy peppery coating on them. Delish!!!
Then into the oven with tomato sauce, another light sprinkle of the Pepper Mix and some salt to finish and a lovely hearty meal was had by all.
Perfect timing too because, whilst Melbourne’s weather cannot compare with the Ukraine, it has been an unusually cold summer and the cabbage rolls and a glass of red were the perfect accompaniment to a chilly night where we had to put the fire on! The warming spices in the Big 5 Pepper Rub were a perfect blend for this hearty and warming dish.
Stuffed Cabbage Rolls
This wasn’t the quickest of things to make as it has many moving parts – pre-cooking the cabbage, and the rice, making the filling and the tomato sauce, then the baking all takes time. However, no single part is difficult and it is delicious and was as good, if not better when re-heated for lunch the following day
Also, I used half the quantity in the given recipe and, as you can see, it made a huge amount….
Meantime, i was inspired by this recipe’s Ukrainian heritage to have a look at some of the great old posters produced in the Eastern bloc…
I think this is the one that insprisred the Franz Ferdinand cd cover:
Franz Ferdinand
Last month’s Bloody Mary was kind of a hit so I’m going to be spending the new few days thinking about how I can incorporate the Big 5 Pepper Steak Rub into a cocktail…stay tuned!
Artichokes didn’t feature on the menu when I was growing up. I’m also not overly fond of the ones you get in the deli which taste more of the vinegar they come in that anything else. So, I had actually never eaten a fresh artichoke until last year…I‘m not sure what prompted me to buy some because let’s face it, they’re not an attractive proposition.
Water Lily Lamb Salad
I don’t mean the way they look, that’s awesome – the amazing colours, the gorgeous mix of purple and green and their sculptural shape…
They are almost like something that should be in should be in a bouquet rather than on your plate and, just to prove that point, here’s one I prepared earlier….
Artichoke-Kale-bouquet
Gorgeous. And functional. If you get a little peckish…pull off a leaf and have a nibble. Win. Win.
So, when I say they are unattractive, what I really mean is that they are hard work.
Imagine trying to explain the artichoke to someone from another planet…
“Well you’ve got to trim off the leaf tops with scissors, then brush them with lemon so they don’t go brown”
Yeah but if you didn’t cut them, you wouldn’t have to…
“Never mind about that. Then you have to scrape out the choke…
Scrape out the what?
“The choke…it’s kind of a hairy bit at the bottom…”
It has a hairy bottom? And you EAT this?
Uh Huh.
Removing the choke
Why’s it called a choke?
Not sure but if you don’t remove it all sometimes the fuzz can get caught in your throat and apparently it can be very painful.
Oh my God. This hairy bottom vegetable wants to kill you. You humans are bonkers. Anyone else would run a mile from this thing…There’s no way I”m eating that. Might come in handy as a weapon though…
Ok, so I”ll just dip these deliciious leaves in melted butter and eat them myself shall I?
What?
That’s a traditional way of eating them. You dip them in melted butter and then you drag ’em through your teeth…
Why aren’t more foods dipped in melted butter? As far as I can ascertain the only things that are regularly dipped in butter are artichokes and lobsters both which are pretty good anyway. Why aren’t we doing this with some of the revolting stuff (beetroot springs to mind) to make it taste better? I guarantee more people would like Brussels Sprouts if they came liberally doused in melted butter. Just saying.
Anyway I digress. You know what is also good? Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens…but a few more of my favourite things are mayonnaise, lamb and capers.
And all of these delicious things can be found in the Nancy Spain recipe for Water Lily Lamb Salad. And this time, I really did prepare one earlier….
Water Lily Lamb Salad 2
Apart from the cutest name ever, the Water Lily Lamb Salads are pretty damn good and would make a great starter for a springtime lunch. It’s such a lovely way to present the meal as well…albeit, I cooked my artichokes for the full 25 minutes as recommended by Nancy and they kind of fell apart, hence my slightly awry water lillies in the photos! Tasted great though. Still, I’ll cook them a lot less next time. You could sub in chicken for the lamb as an equally deliciious variant. Or an egg salad would be incredible…
And, if you needed any further incentive to eat artichokes, Marilyn Monroe was crowned the Artichoke Queen Of California in 1947. And look where it got her…
No, not dead of a barbiturate overdose at the tender age of 36…wow, you people are cynical…
Marilyn Monroe – Artichoke Queen
I”m going to be spending my week hanging around greengrocers, waiting to be crowned queen of something.
Then again…why limit myself to produce when I can crown myself
Just so we’re clear? Free on E is not my memoir of rave and single life in the ’90’s but a new thing I thought would be fun – I could cast my eye over some of the cookbooks available for free as ebooks and…you know…do what I do. Read. Cook. Mock. Eat.
And occasionally give a little “Eek” of delight when I find a hidden gem.
And because they’re readily available and free you can read, cook, mock and “Eek” right along with me!
Ice Cream Muffins
Anyone actually wanting my memoir of rave life in the ’90’s? Sorry, that’s a completely different e-book that will be available for purchase in the not too distant. Just kidding. Unless anyone would actually pay money for it. In which case….hit the contact me button immediately. I’ll start writing….
Anyway, my first venture into “free on e” was “Rapid Recipes for Writers And Other Busy People” By Marsha Ward.
Oh boy.
Marsha, Marsha, Marsha….
To put it nicely, the 31 recipes in here are mostly pretty ordinary. I was seriously struggling to find one that I wanted to cook. There’s a lot of ground beef, a lot of canned soup and frozen vegetables. This is a typical example:
Boss Beef Dish
Make patties of:
2 lbs ground beef
4-5 grated potatoes
1 grated onion
1 tbsp garlic salt
2 eggs.
Brown both sides of patties in skillet.
Add mixture of:
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
1 1/2 cans water
1 lb frozen peas.
Simmer until warmed through.
Blecchhhh….
Then there’s
Garlic Baked Potatoes:
Cut a small triangle out of each potato; add 1/2 tsp garlic powder and replace triangle. Put a pat of butter on or margarine on potato, wrap in foil then bake in over or on coals in barbecue or campfire. Salt and pepper maybe added to margarine for extra flavour.
Hmmm…Enjoy that mouthful of burnt garlic powder. Why not just add the garlic powder to the margarine? Whilst we’re on the subject of garlic powder? It’s the devil’s work. Second only to margarine. Don’t even get me started on that particular rant…
I was just about to agree with the reviewer who said this book wasn’t worth free when I came across the recipe for:
Ice Cream Muffins
1 ½ cup self-raising flour
2 cups soft vanilla ice cream
Mix until dry particles are moist. Grease muffin tins; bake 20-25 minutes at 450 degrees F.
“No way” I thought. “There’s no way that’s going to work. That’s about the dumbest thing I ever heard”.
So, I made them.
Yeah, I don’t get how my mind works either.
And…believe it or not, they worked!
Ice Cream Muffins
Don’t get me wrong, these weren’t the best muffins I’ve ever eaten but they were recognizably muffins and they were made out of ice cream and flour! That’s kind of awesome. And the possibilities are only as limited as the flavours of ice cream available to you. I didn’t have vanilla and I wasn’t about to buy some for a recipe that I was sure wasn’t going to work so mine were actually rum and raisin muffins.
Ice Cream Muffins
This exercise also reminded me that if you ever need a dose of kooky in your life, spend an hour or so reading Amazon reviews. They’re hilarious!!! This gem was in the review section for Rapid Recipes for Writers.
Let’s break this baby down shall we?
I’m not a good judge here. Didn’t stop you from writing a review though, did it!
This is an actual cookbook! Yeah. Uh huh. What did you think it was? A rubber chicken?
AND a lot of the recipes had MEAT. Maybe they don’t tell you in NaNoWriMo circles that it’s bad form to start a sentence with “and”*? Or that it’s kind of annoying when you capitalise RANDOM words.
I’m a vegetarian who doesn’t cook. So why buy a cookbook then? Oh, that’s right. You didn’t realise it was a cookbook (sigh…facepalm).
When you’re reviewing a book, it might also be useful to tell people more about the book than yourself**. I believe all we learned about “Rapid Recipes for Writers ” was that it was an actual cookbook! That contained MEAT.
What do I know though? Five out of seven people found that review helpful. Which only serves to confirm my belief that five out of seven people are idiots. Which I guess dear, smart, funny, cute, discerning reader leaves you and me!
We’ll head back to Vietnam next week….
Bye for now.
*For the pedants, I’m perfectly aware I started at least 3 sentences with “and” in this post. Please refer to sentence 3 in **below.
** For the most part people reading Amazon reviews are not remotely interested in what you eat or anything else about you. If you are that self-obsessed, maybe you should try blogging. The added benefit of which is, that when it’s your blog, you can start sentences with whatever the hell you want.
My favorite thing to eat is finger food. And it doesn’t have to be fancy – I’m just as happy with a mini-quiche or a party pie as with a teeny Peking duck pancake or a tempura prawn on a stick with wasabi mayo.
If I was ever going to open a restaurant, all it would serve would be tiny bites. And champagne. Cocktails of course. But the entire menu would be finger food. It would be a cocktail party restaurant. Anyone wishing to fund this establishment…you know where to find me.
Finger food has been on my mind recently as I have been drooling over the contents of Lydia France’s Party Bites which is like setting a child loose in a sweet shop – I want that one! And that one! And I REALLY want that one!
I was also not the only one who thought this book was looked delicious. Oscar’s been suffering from a little bit of separation anxiety since I have gone back to work and I came home one day to find the book, which I had left on the couch was not exactly how I had left it….
No so much dog eared….
I then had to go fess up to the library – the upside of which, after exchange of some financial compensation, the book, albeit slightly chewed now belongs to me!
There is a recipe in Party Bites which is a modern take on the old retro favourite of a cube of cheese on a stick with a bit of something. This is often to be had with pineapple in the fabulously kitschy Cheese and Pineapple Hedgehog:
Then there is the equally retro but less whimsical Aussie Staple of kabana and cheese….
Kabana And Cheese
No Australian barbeque of the 1970’s or 80’s would have been complete without a tray of this. Often, the kabana and cheese was topped with chunk of pineapple, a gaudily coloured cocktail onion or, if you were really classy, a stuffed olive.
The idea is actually sound. Who doesn’t love a meaty cheesy snack? And if topped with something sweet or sour or salty…well, so much the better. We here at Retro Food For Modern Times are not subscribers to the minimalist maxim that less is more. We believe that more is more. With a cherry on top!
The main problems with kabana and cheese is that kabana is kind of gross and although this combination might be tasty, it is drop dead boring. So, how do you give the ubiquitous kabana and cheese a modern twist whilst still retaining some of the kookiness of the cheese and pineapple hedgehog? Hello Lydia France’s Spanish Men…or should that be Hola los hombres españoles!
Here’s Lydia’s Version:
Spanish Men – Lydia France
And here are mine…my Spanish men look a little drunk and definitely more chunkier. I think my Spanish men may have been hitting the Rioja a little too hard….
My Spanish Men
For all their wonkiness, I loved them. These were sooooo good! Serrano ham, where have you been all my life? If you weren’t so damn expensive I would be feasting on you non-stop.
The salty olive, the sweet quince paste, the meaty deliciousness of the serrano and the creaminess of the cheese combine to create a little piece of heaven on a stick!
Spanish Men I love you!
Mario Casas
And you’re not bad either Mario Casas…
I’m going to be spending my week checking out Spanish cinema. Enjoy your week whatever you do!
