Bula friends! Which means hello in Fijian becaue today we are taking a trip to the South Sea Islands. Our guide is Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery (1972). We are starting our culinary journey to these tropical shores with a very yummy starter of Fish in Lolo Sauce.
What is Fish In Lolo Sauce?
For those of you who have read my post on Tiger’s Milk Ceviche, the concept of Fish in Lolo Sauce should be quite familiar. It is, at it’s most simple, raw fish in coconut cream.
Now technically you should grate your own coconut and make your own coconut cream. I’m 100% sure that a Fish in Lolo Sauce made with freshly coconut cream is an absolute joy and would be a perfect thing to eat at at a beachside restaurant in Fiji. Here maybe?
Doesn’t that look like paradise?
However, for a quick meal on a Tuesday night, I think we can skip the home grating and use a bought coconut cream. I loved this! You could virtually taste the tropics in every bite. It certainly brough a little bit of sun to a very dark and gloomy Melbourne winter day!
I served mine as a starter alongside some potato chips and on some scallop shells. I quite liked the saltiness and crunch of chips against the coconutty creaminess of the fish. If you wanted to serve this as a more substantial meal, I would suggest a simple bowl of boiled or steamed rice with maybe some steamed green Asian veg. My personal favourite is Chinese Broccoli but bok choy or pak choy or just plain old ordinary broccoli and beans would be great!
Fish in lolo sauce is also a fairly heatlhy recipe. Well…if you ditch the potato chips! 😊
Fish In Lolo Sauce – The Recipe
The recipe says to use white fish. I used salmon because whilst I love raw fish, I want to err on the side of caution and my local fishmonger sells a very reliable sashimi grade salmon. I’ve also included the recipe on how to make your lolo from scratch if you are so inclined! Please let me know if you do!
If you would like a virtual trip to Fiji, then Fish in Lolo Sauce might be the recipe for you! I’ve also got a main, and a dessert coming up if you would want to make an entire meal of it!
When you can’t find the music to get down and boogie, all you can do is step back in time. Ball of confusion when nothing is new and there’s nothing doing, step back in time
– Kylie Minogue, Step back in Time
I feel that ball of confusion is probably a polite way to describe 2020. Maybe in a subconscious desire to block out the present, I decided to step back in time with dessert on Christmas Day. And when I say step back, I mean step waaaayyyy back. We ate a dessert that could have sat on the table of poor old Mad King George – an 18th-century trifle! Fitting I think as so many of us came near to losing our sanity at least once over the last 365 days!
You will note that most of the pictures of my trifle have the dish adorned with some ivy leaves. I not only did this to up the Christmassy green and red of the recipe but when washing said dish before making the trifle I dropped it in the sink and broke a bit off the bottom. It still stood perfectly well but was not very sightly! It was way too late to go and buy another trifle dish so it had to be disguised!
The recipe called for Boudoir biscuits. I had never heard of them before. But, in my imagination they are a glamorously louche biscuit eaten by the French only in the privacy of their bedrooms. Turns out it is just the French name for what we here would call sponge fingers or savoiardi. It also turns out that pretty much every country has a different name for these sweet treats – my favourite being the name used in Uruguay and Venezula – “plantillas” meaning little plants!
So first thing we do it give our little plants a good old watering in some booze. I used marsala because I had some but the recipe suggests sherry. I also really like the label on the marsala bottle. It has a jaunty little horse, with what looks like a plant pot on its side, pulling a wagon containing what is presumably a keg of marsala. Is the plant meant to be a boronia plant? And is the plant the same thing that the little horse is wearing on his head?
I topped the soaked biscuits with custard and then topped the custard with the syllabub. The recipe asks for the trifle to syllabub be decorated with “blobs” of red currant jelly. I went to 3 supermarkets but I could not find red currant jelly for love or money! The shelves were piled high with all sorts of condiments containing cranberries. But no redcurrants in sight! I subbed in some raspberry jelly and fresh raspberries for my topping.
The trifle was delicious!! And proof that a step back in time can be a wonderful thing!
This will be my last post for 2020 so, as ever thank you all for reading and commenting and being a part of this! I wish you and yours a fabtacular year ahead!
Happy Pieathalon People of the internet! Yep, it’s that special time of year when a group of bloggers get together and bake the good, the bad and the ugly of vintage pies! It’s also my birthday week so it’s double the celebrations for me! Pie and champagne! Life, my friends, is good indeed!😍
Let’s get down to it, shall we?
The Pie
Pie choice day is always exciting. What will that email from Yinzerella reveal? There is always a slight worry in the excitement – I am happy to have an odd pie – but not too odd. One of my favourite parts of Pieathalon is that I get to eat a pie so I always give a little silent prayer. “Please do not let this contain anything disgusting like offal or beetroot. Or sugary onions.” Speaking of the sugary onions, my recipe came from The Nostalgic Cook who sent Jenny the Sweet Onion Pie recipe last year!
Luckily the Gods, (and Kari and Yinzerella) smiled down on me. The pie I received was a gorgeous sounding Honey Cream Cheese Pie from Sunset’s New Kitchen Cabinet Cookbook from 1938. It is described as a “not-quite-so rich version of the very rich German Cheesecake. This Honey Cream Cheese Pie will be welcomed by everyone”. It was more than welcomed by me. I had most of the ingredients which is important when you are leaving the country for a month! I did not want to buy things only to have to throw away any leftovers because we were going away!
This book looks great. I love the little cartoony insets. The recipe page also had a v cute cartoon for a less than appealing sounding carrot mould.
Speaking of which…remember a few Pieathalons ago, when I made the Lime Jello Pie? I totally forgot that I had moved it to the fridge in the garage so the housesitters could use the main fridge. When I opened the garage fridge about a week after we got home, it was like I had just put it in there. It had not changed one iota in the month it had been in there.
Terrifying!!!!!
The Song
Every year I get a song stuck in my head at Pieathalon time. For my first Pieathalon it was Waterloo by Abba. For the lime jello pie I went a bit hair-metal and subbed in the words “Lime Jello Pie” into “Sweet Cherry Pie”
There were two contenders this year. The first was, of course “Sugar Pie Honey Bunch” by the Four Tops. But nah, too obvious. The song that stuck was “Honey Child, what can I do?” by The Ballad of The Broken Seas. Which became Honey Pie what can I do? Which then morphed into….no, we’ll get to that…
Ch…ch…changes
The recipe for the pie says that it is big! Enough for 8 which was way too big given our impending departure. There were three eggs in the original recipe and everything else was easily divisible by three so I decided to make a third of the original recipe. And also that small pies were going to be easier to distribute out if we didn’t eat them all. It might be weird to give the neighbours who are picking up our mail a half-eaten pie. But I think, perfectly acceptable to give them a few freshly baked tartlets as a pre-emptive thank you.
The Bake aka Honey Pie what did I do?
I baked my pies on Saturday afternoon where there was a LOT happening. We were still booking some accommodation so there was stuff happening on the internet, there were phone calls, there was washing and packing and I don’t know just a lot of things going on. I was also obsessing about the nutmeg. Personally, I don’t like it so was trying to decide if I used it on all of the pies, or none or some.
But the making of the pies went perfectly. There was enough mixture for the 6 small pies and some leftover. I had a little taste of the raw filling, it was really good!!! I nutmegged three of the six tarts, popped them in the oven and went to hang out the washing.
When I came back inside I noticed a jug of milk on the bench. And realised that I had totally left the milk out of the recipe!!!!
It was too late to do anything about it. I briefly contemplated pulling the pies out of the oven, scraping out the filling, adding the milk and refilling them but they were already a little bit too set for that.
So, there was nothing to do but to sit and wait to see how these milkless tarts would turn out.
My song quickly became “Honey pies what did I do?”
The Verdict
The honey cream cheese pies looked so gorgeous when they came out of the oven, gorgeous golden domes. The smell of the baking was divine. And they tasted delicious!
We had one each while they were still warm from the oven and they were like a cross between a cheesecake and a Portuguese tart. So tasty.
I don’t know what the milk would have done to these but they were so good without it that I will not add it in when I make these again, which I will definitely do!
We had no leftovers to give neighbours or anyone else! I ate the last one the following night as we waited for the Uber to take us to the airport. With a little glass of sparkling wine, it was the perfect end to Pieathalon 2019 and the start of the holiday!
Thanks as ever to the amazing Yinzerella who organises this whole shebang each year!
You can find her Pieathalon recipe over at Dinner is Served 1972 and check out all the other pieathletes per the links below. Why not start with Kelly over at the Velveteen Lounge who got my recipe for Angel Pie?
Here is the full list of this year’s participants. Some of the links will not be working yet, I will update later today as people post their recipes!
The Irish artist Francis Bacon once famously declared
Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends.
Today, friends we are looking at some sham or mock foods. And we may not have champagne but we have a cocktail that looks like this and tastes super delish!
We’ll come back to the cocktail later.
Believe me, we might need a stiff drink or two after the horrors I’m about to inflict on you.
So, I was flicking through the pages of “Possum Pie, Beetroot Beer and Lamingtons” and I noticed a trend for mock food.
STARTERS
MOCK OYSTERS AKA WHAT TO EAT WHEN THE WORLD ISN’T YOUR OYSTER
So what would you expect to be in a mock oyster? My first thought was maybe a mussel? Oysters are spendy. Mussels are cheap. Open your mussels, add some bacon, Worcestershire sauce and a dash of Tabasco sauce, pop it under the grill and you might have a fairly close approximation of a Kilpatrick Oyster.
Alternatively, why not give brains and walnuts a whirl?….
I don’t know WTF a mix of brains and walnuts would taste like (and I don’t ever want to know) but I’m willing to bet it isn’t oysters!
Not a fan of un-oysters? What about some delicious crispy fried non- whitebait?
MOCK WHITEBAIT BECAUSE EGGY CHIPS DOESN’T SOUND CLASSY
Okay, I think we can all agree that this is not NEARLY as bad as that brains and walnuts combo. But no one is going to be fooled!
MAIN COURSES
MOCK DUCK – FAKE FOOD OR REAL GANGSTER?
I’m just going to say this right now. This recipe makes no sense.
I kind of get the oyster thing and even the whitebait thing on a monetary level. Oysters are expensive. Whitebait not so much but eggy fries would be cheaper still. I totally understand why people might want to take a cheap ingredient and dress it up to taste like something a bit fancier. Now it may be different where you live, but here? Steak, good steak, is far more pricey than duck.
I also have absolutely no idea of what kind of 50 shades of bondage moves you would need to tie a steak into the shape of a duck.
And finally…I don’t care what shape you tie your steak into. It will not taste like duck
For a far more interesting Mock Duck, let’s take a trip on the way back machine to 1900 in New York’s Chinatown. Here, a “cherubic, ever-smiling, moon-faced Machiavelli” gangster called….wait for it….Mock Duck was terrorizing rival gangs. If you have ever heard the term “hatchetman” you have Mock Duck and his gang, the Hip Sing, to thank. The term was coined due to their practice of carrying hatchets with sharpened blades in their sleeves. Mock Duck was a total badass who wore diamond buttons on his shirts and a chain mail vest to stop bullets! More about Mock Duck’s Exploits can be found here.
MOCK SQUAB PIE – ITS A CONSPIRACY OF BAD TASTE
The word squab always reminds me of a scene from the movie JFK when Tommy Lee Jones says “Hope you like squab.”
Except, he says it with a Southern drawl so the A in squab lasts for like an hour.
Squaaaaaaaab.
Well, if you like squab but are having trouble finding some, look no further.
So squab tastes like meaty apple pie? In that case Tommy Lee, “No, I don’t like squaaaaaaab”.
SOMETHING ON THE SIDE
IMITATION SPINACH – IT’S NOT EASY BEING GREENS
I might be talking from a very 2019 Melbourne centric stance here. But spinach is EVERYwhere. I cannot think of a place where I could be where I was not in walking distance of a bag of spinach. Why you would then want to imitate it is unfathomable to me. No spinach? Have beans. Or cabbage. There are lots of other vegetables out there. We don’t need to fake spinach.
And also Pumpkin shoots? I have no idea where I would find any sort of pumpkin shoots, let alone tender ones. I guess you need a vegetable garden. In which case you could probably just grow spinach.
SHAM GINGER – WHAT NO COPYCAT MARYANNE?
This one is just ridic. Making sham ginger from cucumbers and ground ginger? Why not just use the ground ginger?
DESSERTS
LETS END IT ALL WITH SOME CHEESECAKE PUDDING
So, cheesecake…technically not a cake. But always containing cheese right?
Not so much.
Q: How disappointed would you be if someone told you they were making cheesecake for dessert and it turned out to be sieved potato with a smattering of sultanas?
A:
I THINK WE ALL MIGHT NEED A DRINK!
In fact, it’s time to totally relax because all the bad food is behind us and kick back with a glass of the very appropriately named Tequila Mockingbird Cocktail! This is soooo good. Fruity, sweet, spicy and with a little kick of da da da da da da da…Tequila!
I hope you enjoyed this little foray into the weird and…well…certainly not wonderful world of mock foods. Tell me? Do you have recipes for Mock Food in your collection? Have you ever made a mock food? And did it taste like the real deal?
Why should you invite a mushroom to your birthday?
Hands up all of you who thought I was going to go with that corny old “Because he’s a fun guy” schtick? Well boo to you!!! My jokes are never that bad. Are they? I’m actually terrible with jokes. The only one I can ever remember is “Why are pirates called pirates?” And the answer is “Because they are” Only you have to say the “are” in that pirate voice. “Arrrre” See? The only joke I know and it’s not even funny written down.
So, mushrooms, parties…I made a cake!!! In fact I made lots of little cakes. And they looked kinda like mushrooms. And you should definitely have them at your next party!
Oh and the taste? So good. Chocolate, marzipan and sour cherry jam….how could you go wrong?
Have I ever mentioned exactly how much I love marzipan? Well, it’s this much – I ate the left over marzipan from making this recipe by itself. Then I bought another pack and ate that by itself too. Then I felt sick for about three days. But it was worth every minute of it.
My mini mushroom cakes are based on a recipe from The A-Z of Cooking which has it as one large cake. This is from the Children’s Favorites sections which means we have hit C. Why does it feel like I have been cooking from this book for YEARS? How can we be only up to C?
To be honest, I’m not sure of the validity of the mushroom cake as a child’s favourite. Teddy Bears, Thomas The Tank Engine, one of those awesome Barbie Pool Party Cakes – hmm whatever, yes and definitely yes, yes yes! (Note to self, Make Barbie Pool Party Cake for next year). I’m not sure there’s many children asking their mum to bake them the fungi cake. Not even back in the hippy ’70’s.
Mushroom Cake – Original
You start with one big or lots of little chocolate cakes. I used the recipe from The A-Z of Cooking but you could use any chocolate cake you wanted. This would be A-MAY-ZING using your favourite brownie recipe too.
Here is the original recipe, my slightly tweaked recipe is below.
Mini Mushroom Cakes1
Spread the top your cakes with the sour cherry jam,
Roll out your marzipan until quite thin, then cut into rounds large enough to drape over the top and sides of your cake. Trim additional marzipan so the marzipan is flush with the bottom of the cake. Turn over so the uncovered part of the cake is now facing the top.
Roll another long thin piece of marzipan. Spread with the sour cherry jam and roll up, lengthways. Cut this into 4-5 pieces depending on how long you want your stalk. Repeat until you have the same number of stalks as you do cakes.
Pipe or spread your icing onto your cakes. I spread mine and made the mushroom gills with a toothpick.
Then place your stalks onto the middle of each cake.You may need to hold these in place with a little dob of jam or icing.
Mini Mushroom Cakes3
Despite their dubious credentials as a children’s favourite, these mushroom cakes are just adorable and so tasty, and you know what would make then even better and certainly not kid friendly? Douse the cakes with a little bit of kirsch before adding the jam.
