Vegetables - Retro Food For Modern Times

20
Jul
2018

Tomato and Tarragon Soup with Sun Dried Tomato Bread

categories: Bread, Soup, Tarragon, Tomatoes

Bonjour mes amis, aujourd’hui nous faisons une soupe de tomates inspirée par un jardin d’herbes françaises.

It is actually a tomato and tarragon soup but the French word for tarragon is “estragon” which I kept reading as “oestrogen”. That’s not generally an ingredient I want in my soup so we’ll keep it English!

It also seems to be a particularly French time of year, Bastille Day just, gone, the World Cup victory and the Tour De France. And of course, nothing says celebrate like soup right? Don’t answer that.

Whatever, this soup is super! 😏

Back in the summer, I grew both tarragon and tomatoes in the backyard. But it wasn’t until late in the season after the tomatoes had finished that I came across this recipe for tomato and tarragon soup. I had never heard of that combination before – tomatoes and basil? Definitely. Chives – most certainly. Parsley – why not? But tarragon? Not so much.

Since then, I have learned that they are both ingredients in a Sauce Choron which is a tomato flavoured Bearnaise sauce. The only comment I have to make about that is “What took me so long?” Next summer, Salmon with Sauce Choron will be featuring on the menu but for the meantime as the cold of winter sets in, I will remind myself about the joys of summer produce by remembering how good this soup was!

The tarragon here is homegrown even if the tomatoes are not.

This was a lovely soup; light and very fresh. It tasted of summer! The recipe came from a book called Recipes From a French Herb Garden by Geraldene Holt.

Next month, I am heading to France. On my travels, I will be visiting the Ville Rose (Toulouse). And then on to Bordeaux. Where I definitely will not be sampling any of the local wines!!!! 😉 Given it will be the height of summer when I am there, I wonder if there will be a tomato and tarragon soup on the menu anywhere?

This was a lovely soup; light and very fresh. It tasted of summer! It is so cold and miserable here in Melbourne at the moment but even looking at these photos brought back memories of warmer days and anticipation of the warm weather ahead in Europe!

I served the soup with a sun-dried tomato bread which I feel is a very 90’s adaptation of the Spanish Pan con Tomate where bread is rubbed with olive oil, garlic and tomatoes. In this version, I chopped up some sun dried tomatoes, some garlic, added some finely chopped basil and a little bit more tarragon and mixed these through some butter. I then spread this onto some rustic, toasted bread and popped it under the grill until golden.

Teamed with the soup it was a double delight of tomato-ishness. And tarragon-yness

Here is the recipe for the soup:

And the bread:

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Sun Dried Tomato Bread

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Delicious herby, garlicy, tomatoy bread, perfect for dunking into soup!

Author: Taryn Fryer

Ingredients

Scale

2 slices of rustic style bread
1 tsp butter
4 sun dried tomatoes, finely chopped
1/4 clove of garlic, finely chopped
1 tsp mixed chopped herbs, (I used basil and tarragon)
Salt and pepper to taste

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Instructions

Combine the butter, cheese, tomatoes and garlic. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Spread over the bread.
Transfer to a baking tray and place under the grill until golden brown.

Have a great week everyone!

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17
Mar
2018

REPOST Dublin Coddle – For St Patrick’s Day

categories: Bacon, Budget Recipes, Cabbage, Holidays, Ireland, Potato, Sausage, St Patrick's Day

Isn’t Dublin Coddle the most adorable name for anything ever?

It sounds like a cuddle and that is exactly what you are going to get from this hearty and warming mix of sausages, cabbage, bacon and potatoes.

I don’t seem to have the best of luck with Irish recipes (remember the corned beef potato salad?)

I had planned to make a totally safe homemade Irish Cream because hot damn do I love a little bit of Bailey’s! However what they don’t tell you in most recipes for it is that, because it contains fresh cream, homemade Irish cream has a fairly limited lifespan. As I am trying to moderate my diet and alcohol intake at the moment drinking a whole bottle of whiskey and a shit ton of cream over the space of about 5 five days did not seem like a viable option.

Fun…just not a viable diet option!

🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀

So Dublin Coddle it was. And whilst this was nowhere near as awful as the debacle that was the potato salad, the recipe I used for Dublin Coddle (sorry I cannot remember from whence it came) was not without problems.

It asked that you layer thinly sliced potatoes into the bottom of a baking dish then piled your sauteed cabbage, onion and bacon on top and topped that with sausages. Then you added stock to the dish.

And therein lay the problem. Even though I cooked this for absolutely AGES, the potatoes at the bottom didn’t cook at that well and were totally soggy. And, as viewers of the British Bake Off know all too well, no one likes a soggy bottom!

This was good but I wonder how much better it would have been if the potatoes had gone on the top and gone all crispy and delicious?

I will actually make it that way next time and update you on how it turns out! The good thing about this recipe is that it was traditionally made from leftovers so you can play around with ingredients and cooking techniques as much as you like!

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Here’s the recipe!

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Dublin Coddle

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A delicious hearty meal, perfect for St Patrick’s Day

Author: Taryn Fryer

Ingredients

Scale

8 sausages – the recipe said pork, I used beef
2 onions, sliced
2 rashers of bacon, sliced
2 cups of cabbage, sliced
stock or water (I used vegetable stock)
Oil
salt and pepper
parsley
Dijon mustard

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Instructions

Heat a little oil in a large pan and brown the sausages. You may have to do this in two lots.
Remove the sausages from the pan and set aside.
Add a little more oil if required and brown the bacon and onions.
Toss the cabbage through the bacon and onion mix and cook for a few minutes.
Layer the potatoes in a lightly oiled casserole or baking dish.
Top with the cabbage and bacon mix. Season well and almost cover with the stock.
Top with the sausages.
Bake at 190C until the potatoes are tender.
Sprinkle with parsley and serve with mustard.

Nutrition

Serving Size: 4

Meantime, enjoy your St Patrick’s Day!!!!

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07
Mar
2018

REPOST: All The Z’s – Part 5 – Zurich Mushroom Tartlets

categories: 1970's recipes, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, Mushrooms, Switzerland, Vegetarian

Hello, and welcome to the fifth and final post of the Food that starts with Z mini-series…We’re heading to Switzerland for some Zurich Mushroom Tartlets. And I have a new book to cook from! Pack your passports friends, we are taking a trip around the world via Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery from 1972.

The book promises

222 illustrations, 48 in full colour
672 pages
2316 recipes from all over the world

The World in 1972

So what was this world of 1972 that we are about to enter into? What was the zeitgeist that spawned this tome?

www.thepeoplehistory.com tells us that

1972 This year is marked as a black year in history due to the use of terrorism entering sport with the massacre of 11 Israel Athletes by Arab Gunman. Also this is the beginning of the biggest political scandal in modern times and the start of the Watergate Scandal. On the other side of the Atlantic a worsening of the problems between the IRA and the British government see wrongs from both sides and innocent lives are lost.

Hmm…cheerful.

But who knew years were colour-coded? Who has that job? And can I have it when you’re done?

On a happier note, in 1972 you could buy these awesome shoes for just $9.97.

And this wig was a bargain at $20. The resting bitch face is possibly a sign of the troubled times…

Or maybe she was just worried about getting her wig wet. Problem solved by this umbrella for a mere fiver. Look how much happier this woman is now she doesn’t have to worry about wet hair.

Switzerland 1972

So in the midst of all this trial and trib, what was going on in the notoriously neutral country of Switzerland? Well, hold onto your hats because while chaos and panic were overtaking the rest of the world? The Swiss were creating an International Convention on Safe Containers.

The Swiss are an orderly, well-mannered, and meticulous people. This is why you could probably take your safe container and join a group of Swiss people mushroom foraging around Zurich without fear of dying from some fungi-induced poisoning.

Which brings us back to do…oh…oh..oh (If ANY of you thought we were going to get through a post on Switzerland WITHOUT a Sound Of Music reference, then you don’t know me at all do you?).

ZURICH MUSHROOM TARTLETS

Let’s start with the recipe. It’s a very good place to start…(Refer paragraph above re The Sound of Music) And let’s hope that it isn’t an omen of things to come…

Hmmmm….make the pastry it says Without actually telling you how to do that. So, If they’re not going to tell you?

I will. Here’s what you do.

Put your flour back in the cupboard, your egg and butter back in the fridge and tip your salted water down the sink. Then you get in your car and drive to the nearest supermarket and by some ready-made pastry shells.

Because if they can’t be bothered, why should you?

I used a mix of mushrooms for my tartlets and added some herbs from the garden into the mix.

I pan-fried the small fancy mushrooms in so they could be artfully strewn over the top of the tarts whilst I cooked the regular ones as per the recipe.

IWhile the mushrooms were cooking, I warmed the shells in the oven, then tipped the filling into them.

A sprinkle of parsley and some smoked paprika and these were good to go!

And they were delicious! Creamy and earthy with a lovely crisp and light pastry.

Despite the initial setback with the pastry, the Zurich Mushroom Tartlets were a good start to this book. Easy to make, quick, and tasty! Best eaten in front of the telly watching The Sound of Music, Or wearing your best curtains. Or both.

Have a great week!

22
Jan
2018

All The Z’s 3 – All The Zucchini – REPOST

categories: Flatbread, Salad, Turkey, Vegetables, Vegetarian, Zucchini

You knew it was coming right? There was never going to be a showcase of Z recipes without a recipe for zucchini. Except there’s not just one zucchini recipe…there’s going to be four. Because it’s midsummer and my zucchini plants have gone berserk. I have been eating zucchini at least once a day for weeks. I have given away dozens of them. And they just keep coming! So I have to keep finding things to do with them. Here is a summary of this summer’s dishes…so far…

This flatbread recipe which is below came via Australian Gourmet Traveller and it is so good – not to mention almost too pretty to eat! If you don’t want to make your own bread, you can sub in a flatbread of your choice. But the bread is pretty easy and gives you a huge dose of smug!

Seriously three zucchini plants are producing enough to feed a small army! And they grow so quickly. One second they are tiny, the next literally as big as my arm!

But here’s the thing…up until recently, I wasn’t that big a fan of zucchini. I recall it from childhood as being a bland soggy mess. My conversion came when I tasted it raw in a salad one day. And it was super good! The above salad is so easy to make and became my go-to whilst on holidays – I chopped a heap of carrots, zucchini, celery and cheese and kept them in a container in the fridge. Whenever I got a bit peckish, I would get out some lettuce, sometimes crumble in some hard-boiled egg, add a splash of dressing and roll up for a healthy, tasty snack! The recipe is from my old fave Rosemary Mayne Wilson’s Salads For All Seasons.

Rosemary suggests a mayo dressing for this salad. I vote no on that. My preferred dressing for this salad is a vinaigrette with a good dollop of mustard in it. Try it…you won’t regret it.

Turkey and Zucchini Patties with Cacio e Pepe Zoodles

Okay, here’s one for the meat eaters! Although I was not very complimentary about a lot of the meals in Pete Evans’ paleo cookbook, Healthy Every Day, these turkey and zucchini patties were an exception. They are awesome! I make them all the time (sometimes I even have to buy zucchini to make them!). I don’t use the egg in this recipe as I find the mixture is already quite wet without it. (Pete also doesn’t tell you to squeeze the water out of the zucchini which you need to do).

And here’s Pete’s recipe:

The eagle-eyed of you may have noticed the fourth dish nestled in below the turkey patties in the photo above. The last recipe in the zucchini extravaganza is a Zoodle Cacio e Pepe. (Zucchini noodles which cheese and pepper). A lot of recipes I have found for this cook the zoodles. We’re not going there. I far prefer raw zucchini to cooked so mine is kind of a Cacio e Pepe carpaccio…

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Zoodle Cacio e Pepe

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Ingredients

Scale

1 zucchini
2 tbsp Grana Padano or Parmesan cheese
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tbsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp lemon juice
1/2 finely chopped mint (optional)

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Instructions

If you have a spiralizer, make noodles out of your zucchini.
If not, use a vegetable peeler to make long thin strips of zucchini.
Place in a bowl and toss through the olive oil, lemon juice, black pepper and cheese.
Top with the mint if using.
Serve straight away

Have a wonderful week! I’m off to harvest more zucchini!

Before we go though, tell me what is your favourite zucchini recipe?

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10
Nov
2017

REPOST – Recipe Revamp – SS’s Stuffed Onions

categories: 1970's food, 1970's recipes, Onions, Recipe Revamp, Retro Cookbooks, Sausage

The story for these Stuffed Onions starts WAAAAAAYYYY back to my first Pieathalon in 2015. My pie was a Belgian Onion Pie chosen for me by the wonderful S.S. from A Book Of Cookrye. If you are ever in need of a chuckle, giggle or even a downright belly laugh, you must check this blog out. S.S. has a wit drier than the Sahara. You know, I try really hard to be funny. I feel with S.S. that it is just effortless. A Book of Cookrye is always just so, so good!

Below the recipe for the Belgian Onion Pie that S.S sent me there was a picture of some little balls of delight (STOP IT. NOW! ) which I mistakenly took for a picture of the finished Belgian Onion Pies. I assumed that the recipe was going to be some wacky Belgian reverso situation where the onion was the “pastry” and the filling was…I have no idea…crumbly pastry?

Sadly this was not the case. But I hold out hope for the Belgians They invented Smurfs, they can invent a reverso onion pie if they really put their mind to it…maybe after Brexit is over they’ll have some time on their hands for pie shenanigans.

Anyhow, after probably eye-rolling and face-palming at my inability to understand the difference between a PIE and a STUFFED VEGETABLE, S.S then v kindly sent me the recipe for the stuffed onions. Which I promptly printed and lost. Then about six months later I found it again and made them. They were….flawed but had potential. I started thinking about how to improve the recipe. After a while I made them again. And again. Then, earlier this year I was getting ready to post the improved version when my laptop died and I lost all my photos and my improvement notes.

However, cursed as this recipe may be, it was also like a ghost haunting me. So, recently, despite history indicating that the Stuffed Onions post would never see the light o’ day, I made them again. With what I could remember of the improvements.

And they were fabby! So tasty!

I am still waiting for the world to implode when I post this though…

Let’s have a look at the original recipe and then have a chat about how I changed it.

Sausage meat is almost invariably going to have a high fat content. Adding cream to something that is already fatty made the mixture far too greasy. Believe me, your mouth will be coated in it and it almost feels like your whole face is smothered in a layer of grease. Mrs Dan Sartor may have been a fan of the feeling like she had been dragged backwards through a pork chop but I do not. So the cream is gone. As is the butter.
The wine does not have to be white. I used a beef sausage and felt a red was a better match for the robust onion and beef flavours.
Next…I don’t really understand inches but Google tells me that a 1/4 inch is 6mm which I feel is too much onion. I took mine back to 2- 3 layers of onion. Which is more than enough.
Depending on what kind of sausages you have you can also add in flavourings like chilli, garlic, a teaspoon of tomato paste, or even a couple of finely chopped mushrooms (Sorry Jenny) to the mix.
Finally save some of those breadcrumbs for a little sprinkle of the top to add a little bit of crunch. If you happen to have some dukkah to add to that sprinkle so much the better!
I served mine on a toasted piece of baguette. The main ingredients – sausage, onion, bread are reminiscent of a hot dog so you could use whatever you like on your hot dogs. I had some aioli and rocket but swap in whatever condiments you like! Or replace the aioli with a slice of cheese. Maybe if you are using a spicy sausage like a chorizo add some guacamole. And throw some black beans into your sausage mix….
You could pretty much style this baby up into anything you wanted just by changing the type of sausage and the condiments / veggies.

Here’s the updated recipe.

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Stuffed Onions

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A modern take on a vintage stuffed onion recipe!

Author: Taryn Fryer

Ingredients

Scale

8 medium onions
2 tbsp olive oil
2 sausages, your choice of flavour,
2 tbsp plus more for sprinkling over the top, breadcrumbs
1 handful of chopped parsley
1/2 tsp thyme leaves
1 cup beef or chicken or vegetable stock
1/2 cup dry white or red wine (your preference)
1 tbsp dukkah to garnish (optional)
8 small sprigs of thyme to ganish (optional)

Serving Suggestion

8 slices of baguette
Aioli
Rocket Leaves

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Instructions

Peel the onions and cut the top and bottom off so they sit flat.
Scoop out the insides so 2/3 layers of onion are left.
Finely chop half of the scooped out onion. (Save the rest for another recipe).
Blanch the cases for 5 minutes then leave to dry.
Heat the olive oil in a skillet then add the chopped onions. Allow them to soften and colour slightly – about 5 minutes.
Remove the sausage meat from the skins and crumble into the onion mix. Cook for around 5 minutes.
Drain off the excess fat and add half of the wine and the breadcrumbs..
Cook for a few minutes then add the herbs, salt and pepper.
Fill the shells with the stuffing mix.
Sprinkle with the remaining breadcrumbs and the dukkah if using.
Garnish with a ting sprig of thyme.
Arrange the onions in serving dish. Pour in the stock and the remaining wine.
Bake in a 180C / 350F oven for 45 minutes, basting occasionally.
Meantime, toast the baguette slices.
Spread with the aioli and the rocket.
Top with the cooked onions.

Notes

Stuffing ingredients and serving suggestions can be modified based on the type of sausages you use and your favourite condiments.

A huge thanks to S.S for the recipe! Sorry it has taken so long! Thanks also to Mrs Dan Sartor for the original recipe. And thanks also to my sadly deceased stepfather who, when ever anyone mentioned anything stuffed vis a vis “Hey I made stuffed onions today” would respond by saying something along the lines of “Oh…I”m sure they weren’t that bad” or “What’s important is that you tried”. Those jokes were running rampant through my head for entire length of this post!

Dad jokes are the worst!

Until you don’t have them anymore…

Huh…Way to finish on a downer.

Ummm….looks around frantically for something to lighten the tone….

Okay, here are some rather unappetizing vintage ideas for stuffed onions!

Here’s a thrifty way to “Satisfy your Inner Man”

I’m not sure. I feel like my inner man would prefer a steak…

And as for this next one all I’m going to say is creamed diced carrots.

You can fill in the blanks on that one….

Have a great week!

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Category: Vegetables

Sun Dried Tomato Bread

Ingredients

Instructions

Dublin Coddle

Ingredients

Instructions

Nutrition

The World in 1972

Switzerland 1972

ZURICH MUSHROOM TARTLETS

Turkey and Zucchini Patties with Cacio e Pepe Zoodles

Zoodle Cacio e Pepe

Ingredients

Instructions

Stuffed Onions

Ingredients

Serving Suggestion

Instructions

Notes