Australasia Archives - Retro Food For Modern Times

Category: Australasia

07
Jul
2024

New Zealand Oyster Cocktail

categories: 1970's food, 1970's recipes, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, New Zealand, Oysters, Starters

Hello friends, I’m back. The old adage that time heals all wounds has lasted so long because it is true. I have had my period of grief. And whilst it is still not entirely gone, facing each day without tears is getting easier. And what better way to celebrate my return than with a spicy starter from the land of the long white cloud! Today’s New Zealand Oyster Cocktail recipe comes from Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery (1972). The book says that New Zealand men like food with no frills or foreign touches. Based on the two recipes I’ve made, my summary of New Zealand food is not “no frills” but “Ugly Delicious”.

This recipe was somewhat nostalgic for me as back in the day, our local pub used to do a “Bloody Mary Oyster Shot” as an starter. The New Zealand Oyster Cocktail had a very similar vibe. These aren’t pretty! But the best part about ugly delicious is the delicious. And these met that brief in spades, even without the added sprinkle of nostalgia!

New Zealand Oyster Cocktail – The Recipe

If you are entertaining and want a starter that takes less than a minute to make but has a wow factor and as mentioned tastes great, then the New Zealand Oyster Cocktail is for you!

My Variations

The recipe calls for Tomato Sauce which to me means ketchup. We’re classy people here at Retro Food for Modern Homes and ketchup is reserved for chips and pies. I used tomato juice which also added to the Bloody Mary feel.
For my piquant Table Sauce I used a mix of Tabasco and Worchestershire.
I made a little jug of the tomato juice, Tabasco, Worchestershire, Lemon juice and seasonings and added that to the oysters instead of adding each of these individually as the recipe suggests
Finally my serviing glasses were only large enough for one oyster but I prefer the idea of an indidivual serve rather than muliple oysters in the one cup!
You can also ditch the glasses all togther and pour your combined sauce and seasonings into the shell itself! This, to my eye looks a bit prettier but is harder to eat without spilling tomato juice all over yourself!
If you wanted to ramp up the Bloody Maryness of these, add a little splash of Vodka into your tomato juice mix!

Have a great week!

22
Jan
2024

Classic Pavlova

categories: 1970's recipes, Australasia, Desserts, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, Meringue

G’Day Mates! Today we are heading back to our old friend Goodhousekeeping’s World Cookery for a sweet treat from the Antipodes! People hotly debate whether the Pavolva was invented in Australia or New Zealand. We will not be entering into that discussion here. Neither does Good Housekeeping. They, rather wisely have a recipe for Pavlova in both the Australia and the New Zealand chapters! Nice diplomacy there GH!

I am using the recipe from the Australian chapter just because most of the other recipes in that chapter were awful! The recipes included things like Brain and Walnut Sandwiches, Sheep’s Tongues in Aspic, and a leg of lamb stuffed with kidneys, identified as Colonial Goose. I’m sure that 1970’s Australian cuisine was better than what is represented here. So Pavlova or Pavlova Cake as they call it, it was! Not that I minded because I adore a pav! It is one of my favourite desserts and reminds me of summer, Christmas and good times whenever I eat it!

Why Pavlova?

Anna Pavlova, the Russian Ballet dancer was the inspiration for the dessert. She toured Australia and New Zealand in 1926.

The lightness of the meringue represents not only the lightness of her steps but also her beautiful tutus. The Good Housekeeping Pavlova was wonderfully light. The meringue was crisp but it also had that lovely marshmallow inside which is the hallmark of a good pavlova.

Pavlova – The Recipe

I followed the recipe for the meringue as per Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery. However, when it came to the topping I went my own way. Pavlova can be very sweet so to add some tang, I add a dollop of lemon curd into my cream. My favourite toppings are the classic strawberry and passionfruit but you can add whatever fruit you like.

Have a great week!

13
Jun
2023

Broken Hill CheeseSlaw

categories: Australasia, Carrot, Salad

G’Day Food Lovers! People say that necessity is the mother of invention. In my case, it was the mother of trying out a bizarre little recipe called Broken Hill CheeseSlaw. Let me show you the finished dish before we get to the hows and whys!

Let’s start at the very beginning. One of my favourite sandwiches is chicken schnitzel and coleslaw. Or, as we in Australia call it, a chicken schnitty. Now, we don’t eat schnitty’s all that often because the fussiest eater in the world does not like crumbed food. 🙄

However, we did have schnitzel…well to be utterly honest it was Donna Hay’s Chicken Katsu the other night ( and lo and behold he actually enjoyed it). And there was a little bit of chicken leftover…actually no. I specifically katsu’ed an extra bit of chicken so I could have a schnitty and slaw sanger the next day!

Now, you may notice a distinct lack of sandwich in the above photo.

Here’s why

This is Frankie. We were dogsitting Frankie on Katsu night and Frankie was not happy about being dogsat. She howled the whole of the first night she was with us. And most of the second (which was katsu night). The only way I could get Frankie to stop howling was to pet her and cuddle her.

So, on day three which was the day I wanted my schnitty sandwich, I realised I had no bread in the house. And I wasn’t going out to buy any. My neighbours were already sleep deprived, as was I. from the nighttime howling. I felt that if there was also daytime howling interrupting people’s work we would become public enemies #1. It was already lunchtime and I was hungry! There was no time to wait for a delivery.

“I’ll make a bowl.” I thought. “Then I won’t need bread”. About then I realised I also had no cabbage for the slaw. Enter Broken Hill Cheeseslaw!

Broken Hill CheeseSlaw

Broken Hill CheeseSlaw (more than a food, it’s a way of life) is a mix of grated carrots, mayo and cheese which has been on the menu in Broken Hill (aka The Silver City) since the 1930’s. How or why the good people of Broken Hill decided to ditch the cabbage and embrace the cheese in their slaw is lost to time. Although there is a semi-viable theory here. However, it is still very much still a thing and even got its own dictionary entry in 2019!

Broken Hill CheeseSlaw – Tasting Notes

The cheeseslaw was somewhat surprisingly not terrible. Many times if you buy a schnitty and coleslaw sandwich you get the option of some cheese to be melted on top. And you know, one of my mottoes in life is if you ever get the option of cheese melted on top of anything, take it! I did feel like the cheeseslaw missed a little bit of bang – some spring onion, some pickled jalapeno etc would have cut through some of the fattiness of the cheese and mayo combo which the carrot did not do. I added some pickled onions I had in the fridge and some edamame from the freezer to my bowl to bring in that bite and also some greenery.

As a whole, my schnitty / katsu cheeseslaw bowl was totally delish! And something I will intentionally make again!!!

Broken Hill CheeseSlaw – The Golden Grater

So friends, there is an annual contest in Broken Hill for the best cheeseslaw – both traditional and contemporary. I’m already thinking – a Philly Cheesesteak / Cheeseslaw combo might be awesome!

If you have an idea for cheeseslaw, let me know and I will make the 820 km drive to represent you and me (and Frankie) in the competition for this year’s Golden Grater!

The Recipe – Broken Hill CheeseSlaw

Have a great week!

08
May
2023

Passionfruit Flummery

categories: 1950's recipes, Australasia, Desserts, Jelly, Passionfruit

Hello friends and welcome. Today I am featuring another recipe with a wonderfully evocative name – Passionfruit Flummery. The name flummery makes me think of something that is light and fluttery, like a gorgeous butterfly. And also something summery and maybe even a little bit shimmery! Now, I can’t promise fluttery or shimmery but this is a delicious summery dessert! This recipe for Passionfruit Flummery comes from 250 Quick and Easy Recipes which also contained the recipe for the wonderful Savoury Upside Down Pie.

So what exactly is a flummery. Very simply it is a whipped jelly confection. The whipping makes it feather-light and it almost melts in your mouth! The one odd, I thought ingredient was that you needed to add some flour to the jelly mix. I am not sure why – it did turn the jelly mix opaque rather than the normal clear colour but I can’t figure out if it serves another purpose as well. If we have any flummery experts out there, please let me know!

The other nice thing about this dessert is…you know those people who don’t like desserts that are too sweet? I personally am not one of them. I love a sweet dessert, however my flavour profile also runs to sweet / sour as being right in my wheelhouse. This is definitely a dessert for those people who do not like desserts that are overly sweet. The passionfruit and the citrus juices keep it fresh, zesty and light!

Passionfruit Flummery – The Recipe

The flummery will keep in the fridge for about a week – if you can make it last that long! It is very more-ish! I went in for a spoonful and ended up making a dent this big! I really could not stop!

Flummery Fun “Facts”

I found some facts about flummeries when I was researching this post. Now some of these seem to be more “ïnternet” facts than factual facts but let’s see how we go…

Flummerries started out as a sour porridge-like dish in 17th Century England
The name comes from the Welsh word “llymru” meaning sour oatmeal jelly boiled with the husks
The name was also spelt thlummery and flamery
In Australia and New Zealand, the name flummery was given to a mousse like dessert that used gelatine instead of cream which was more expensive

So far so good. However, I’m less convinced about this:

Flummery was a fall-back dessert in the New South Wales Town of Forbes in the 1950s.

Huh…weirdly specific. When I was in school we had to learn a song called The Streets of Forbes which is about the death of the bushranger Ben Hall. And that is pretty much all I know about Forbes. So maybe, there and nowhere else, people were scoffing down flummery like there was no tomorrow in the 1950’s. But I’m dubious.

I’m even more dubious about this one:

In the Queensland town of Longreach, it was staple food in the 1970s

Yep, right up there with flour, rice and corn…flummery!

Longreach

Of course then, I had to Google Longreach to see if there was any reason why it might be the whipped jelly capital of Australia. And I swear this is true…the very first question that pops up is:

Which is intriguing…what is the smell in Longreach? Is it something to do with the overconsumption of flummery?

According to this article the lanes of Longreach “were always foul with the rank and unpleasant smell of goats’ faeces and urine”.

.And based on that we can whip through the rest of the questions pretty quickly:

2) Zero is the number of days you need in Longreach. Unless you have no sense of smell. Then, stay as long as you like.

3) Longreach is famous for the stench of goats.

4) Whenever the wind is blowing those goaty fumes away.

Well, this post took a turn…we started with pretty butterflies and ended with dead bushrangers and stinky goats!

Have a great week, I hope it doesn’t end up with stinky goats!

26
Dec
2021

Saratoga Torte

categories: 1980's Food, Australasia, Desserts

You may be thinking that the recipe for Saratoga Totre comes from the American chapter of Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery. It does not. I found this recipe in the October 1986 issue of the Vogue Entertaining Guide I had never heard of Saratoga Torte and assumed it was an American dish. I was very surprised to learn that it is actually an Australian recipe. There is a small town called Saratoga on the Central Coast of New South Wales so it may have originated there.

Madelaine’s Saratoga Torte

Technically this recipe is called Madelaine’s Saratoga Torte however, as there is no mention of who Madelaine is or how her Saratoga Torte differs from anyone else’s, I am taking the liberty of dropping her name. The recipe comes from an article entitled “Anyone for Tennis?” focussing on mother and daughter entertainers Maria and Helena Law.

This is also the same edition of Vogue Entertaining that gave us this recipe for crumbed lamb cutlets.

Sao Biscuits

Sao (Say-O) biscuits are key to making Saratoga Torte. These are a savoury cracker biscuit that have been made by Arnott’s biscuits since 1906. Sao is possibly an acronym for Salvation Army Officer as one of the Arnott’s Brothers was indeed an officer in the Salvation Army.

If you are not in Australia and you want to make a Saratoga torte I would suggest substituting water crackers. However Sao’s are quite large so I would use double the number of water crackers.

Also, if you happen to be researching Sao biscuits stay away from any mentions of the soggy Sao. This is a practice apparently indulged in by groups of teenage boys. As with most things done by groups of teenage boys it is highly unsavoury.

You have been warned. Proceed down that path and anything that comes at you is on you. Which is potentially a very bad choice of words.

Let’s swiftly move on!

What is Saratoga Torte?

Imagine if you made a meringue mixture and you added crushed-up crackers and crumbled walnuts to the mixture. Then you baked that and topped it with whipped cream and flaked chocolate.

That, in essence is Saratoga Torte.

And it is delicious!!!

The nutty meringue with a little hit of salt every now and again from the crackers is so good! And the cream and little hints of chocolate are the perfect foil. A little hit of Amaretto or Frangelico in the cream would also not be entirely out of keeping.

This was a bit sweet, the next time I make this I will drop the sugar down to 3/4 of a cup and not a whole cup. The key to a lovely thick and glossy meringue is to add the sugar quite slowly and to make sure that each spoonful melts before you add the next one.

The Recipe – Saratoga Torte

Saratoga Torte is utterly delicious, very easy to make and also a little bit out of the ordinary. Why not make it as part of your New Year’s festivities?

Also, if anyone knows the origin of Saratoga torte or who Madelaine might be, please drop me a note in the comments!

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas!

I’m on holiday from work so hope to have another post for you before the new year. Whatever you are up to, I hope you have a wonderful week!