World Cooking - Retro Food For Modern Times

Category: World Cooking

25
Sep
2021

Melktert

categories: 1970's recipes, Africa, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, Pastry, World Cooking

My recipe for Melktert comes from the South African chapter of Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery and it is a baked custard tart. It is called Melktert because the day before the recipe for the OG Milk Tart went to print, someone broke into the printing press and stole all bar one of the vowels.

Some people would tell you that it is a dish that originated in Holland and it kept the Dutch spelling when it came to South Africa. However, we at RFFMT prefer not to allow truth to get in the way of a good story. Besides the visual image of a never say die printer triumphantly adding e’s to where the i and a had been, humming a prototypical version of The Shamen’s 1992 hit Ebeneezer Goode as he did so was too good not to share.

I pondered whether in homage to the melktert, I should also write this post using the letter e as my only vowel.

That idea lasted all of about 5 seconds – I got as far as “Here. Melktert. Sweet” and gave up.

The Melktert was delicious! Just the right amount of sweetness and the almonds on top gave a nice crunch. There was a lot of the filling mix leftover so I think next time I make it I will try a deeper dish which would also mean there would be more of the slightly cinnamon-y custard which could only be s a good thing! The recipe does state a deep pie dish!

Melktert :The Recipe

That’s all folks, nothing much else to say except:

Melktert – Excellent? Yes!

Enjoy your weekend!

15
Aug
2021

Limoni di Amalfi Cotti Al Forno

categories: Italy, Lemon, Starters

To vaguely paraphrase The Arctic Monkeys we are going from the rubble to The Ritz. I’ve lately dabbled in some trashy food but the next two posts are going to be pure class. Hello Limoni di Amalfi Cotti Al Forno! You can tell this one is high-end because it has a name in a foreign language. Unless you are Italian. Then they are plain old Amalfi baked lemons.

I am going to confess straight up that my lemons are not Amalfi lemons. They are good old down home straight from the ‘burbs East Keilor lemons via the tree in my backyard! You can probably expect a lot of lemon recipes in the coming weeks!

We have just now entered LOCKDOWN SIX so it seemed like a good time to transport myself somewhere else! The Amalfi coast seemed like not a bad option! This is a Jamie Oliver recipe so you can expect fresh vibrant flavours and Limoni di Amalfi Cotti al Forno delivered! These little morsels were delightful and totally took me to a little open-air trattoria by the coast on a warm sunny day.

This is where I went when eating these!

Now, where’s my glass of prosecco?

Limoni Di Amalfi Cotti Al Forno – The Recipe

I think these would also be great placed on a bbq and as soon as it is warm enough to eat outside here, I will be putting that to the test!

You could play around with the flavours in the OG recipe too – add some olives or garlic, swap out the basil for dill or parsley, use sun-dried instead of fresh tomatoes., add some little marinated mushrooms…but speaking of the recipe, here it is!

You can use the leftover lemon flesh in anything where you would normally use lemons – I made a hot lemon and honey drink with mine.

These were so delicious and brought some much-needed summer sunshine and Italian sophistication into a dreary lockdown winter day!

Have a great week friends!

04
Apr
2021

Eggs Hamine

categories: 1970's recipes, Africa, Easter, Eggs, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, World Cooking

Happy Easter to those who celebrate it! At Maison de la retro foods, we are supplementing our chocolate eggs with some North African Hamine Eggs. These came to us via Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery. The book offers two versions of this recipe. There is the traditional way:

In Egypt there are special shops selling them; there, after the eggs have been cooked for 3 or 4 hours, they are put under the ashes of a fire and left for as long as 8 hours – this makes them as creamy as butter”

– Good Housekeeping World Cookery

Never mind the pyramids and the Sphinx. Get me over to Egypt pronto for some of those buttery eggs!!!

Eggs Hamine – The Recipe

The non-traditional version of these eggs is so easy!

Put the brown outside skins of some onions into a saucepan of ocld water with the eggs and boil for 2 hours or as long as possible. The onion skins turn the shells of the eggs and the whites brown. Shell and halve the eggs and serve hot or cold with lemon wedges, salt, pepper and mixed spices”

I cooked my eggs in the slow cooker for a full 8 hours.

Pre – Water

4 hours – One of the eggs cracked during the cooking but did not ooze out like they do when they crack during normal boiling.

Eight hours!

Note, if you decide to make these in your slow cooker, the onion skins will stain your slow cooker brown along with the eggs. Get ready to soak and scrub to remove it!

Eight hours and fifteen minutes!

I sprinkled my egg with some salt and some dukkah and dug in! It was delicious. There was a faint taste of something – not exactly onion but slightly savoury to the egg which was different to a normal boiled egg. I would not say that it was buttery but the white seemed more delicate than a normal boiled egg.

I was also very surprised to see that the onion skin dye had penetrated not only into the white which became a gorgeous soft caramel colour but also the yolk! This was startling because it is so strange to have a monochrome egg!

These were nice and an interesting experiment but for me, it was a long time to wait for a fancy boiled egg so I will probably not make them again. If I ever do get to Egypt though, I will be making a breakfast beeline for the Hamine Eggs shops!

Making these eggs might be a fun thing to do with kids for Easter or for a science project on osmosis.

Happy Easter everyone!

14
Mar
2021

Raiff of Cheese

categories: 1970's food, 1970's recipes, Africa, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, World Cooking

Hello Globetrotters and food lovers! Given we can no longer travel in actuality I guess the next best is to travel virtually via our tastebuds. And today, we are turning the page in Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery to a whole new continent! And what better way to celebrate anything but with some cheesy pastries otherwise known as Raiff of Cheese!

So, where are we off to? Here’s a clue:

I hear the drums echoing tonight
But she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation
She’s coming in, 12:30 flight
The moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation

Yes, my friends, we are going to be blessing the rains down in Africa for the next little while. And I, for one, am here for it! Africa is a real knowledge gap for me in terms of food. I have cooked tagines and couscous, I have eaten Doro Wat and Injera in an Ethiopian restaurant and I have read about Bunny Chow and Sosaties. But that’s pretty much it for what is a massive continent! So, this will be a journey of exploration for me. Not that I am expecting Good Housekeeping from 1972 to provide any 100% authentic recipes but I”m hoping it will be enough to give me a taste of African food!

These cheese pastries or Raiff of Cheese come from the North African section of World Cookery. I chose to cook these because they reminded me very much of the Cheese Pastries we love at our local Syrian restaurant. Believe me, I could sit and eat plate after plate of their Bourak B’jebneh! I was also inspired by the menu at Shaam to use haloumi as the cheese in my pastries.

Raiff of Cheese – Recipe and My Variations

I used bought filo pastry because life’s too short to make homemade filo. If you do want to do that, here’s a recipe and good luck to you! I do want to try to make my own haloumi one day though. I think it would have been nice (but maybe not very North African) to sub in some mozzarella for the haloumi to give the pastries some lovely melty cheesy stretchiness. Next time maybe!

Another little change I made to the recipe as given in GHWC was to add in a little sauteed leek and the very last of the chervil from my garden. This combination features in many of the other North African recipes and it just so happened that I had half a leek in the fridge. I had no idea that either of these were used so extensively in North African cooking. Like I said, journey of exploration!

Finally, to serve my cheese pastries, I added a little drizzle of pomegranate molasses – the sweet-sour of this being a perfect counterpoint to the salty haloumi and some toasted sesame seeds to add some nutty crunchiness. Any chutney or relish would be good with these.

I’m not sure how authentically North African these cheese pastries are but they were really tasty. And as sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti I’ll be making these again!

Have a great week!

28
Feb
2021

Fish and Chips – The Seven Dials Mystery

categories: Dining With The Dame, England, Fish

Hello crime readers and food lovers! Today we are eating some fish and chips with Dame Agatha. And discussing The Seven Dials Mystery. This book could best be described as a caper – I thought it was a really fun romp of a read. The book features Lady Eileen Brent (aka Bundle) and Inspector Battle who we first met in The Secret of Chimneys. I very much liked Bundle in the Secret of Chimneys and I like her even more in this one! She is mostly fearless, smart and funny – my kind of heroine!

The Seven Dials Mystery – The Plot

Chimneys is being rented to Sir Oswald and Lady Croote who are hosting a house party. One of the guests, Gerry Wade is a chronic oversleeper much to the dismay of Lady Croote. Gery’s habitual lateness is putting strain in the running of the house. His friends decide to sneak 8 alarm clocks into Gerry’s room all set to go off at different times of the morning in the hope that the resulting cacophony will get the sleepyhead up at a decent hour. The clocks go off but Gerry does not wake up. Then or ever. Gerry has been murdered! And weirdly enough, there are now only 7 alarm clocks in his room…

On top of a missing clock and a dead body we have

Mysterious references to The Seven Dials in hidden letters and on the lips of a dying man
Another murder – by gunshot this time
Seedy nightclubs in a London area called Seven Dials
Secret letters
Shady Russians,
Sinister secret societies of seven who wear masks of clock faces
Stolen chemical formulae
And a marriage proposal for Bundle!

The Covers

There is not much variety in the covers for this book. Nearly all of then feature clocks of some sort. I like the image of the burning gloves but my favourite is the very are deco looking version (bottom left and below. The back of this cover also contains an image of Bundle’s reckless driving which features in the story.

Note the above version of The Seven Dials Mystery will set you back a cool £819 GBP so maybe not one for most of us! At the other end of the spectrum, you can get the Tom Adams cover version on Ebay for $1 AUD at the moment.

The Recipe – Fish and Chips

Full disclosure here. I was getting myself into a bit of a tizzy about this meal. I have one deep fryer which meant that either the fish was going to get cold while I cooked the chips or vice versa. My solution was to make the fish as per the recipe below but to use frozen oven fries.

Second disclosure. I would normally never make fish and chips at home – to me, this is a meal best eaten as a take away ideally by the seaside.

I used John Dory as my fish because that is the fish used by our favourite pub fish and chips. In Seven Dials, they would traditionally use cod.

I added some dill and a little homegrown horseradish into my tartare as well as all the ingredients listed in the recipe.

“Where did everyone go?”

“To the Seven Dials Club of course, ” said Bill, staring. “Wasn’t that what you were asking about”

“I didn ‘t know it by that name,” said Bundle.

“Used to be a slummy sort of district round about Tottenham Court Road way. It’s all pulled down and cleaned up now. But the Seven Dials Club keeps to the old atmosphere. Fried fish and chips. General squalor.”

Agatha Christie, The Seven Dials Mystery

Other Food Mentioned in The Seven Dials Mystery

Quails
Omelette (I feel every Christie book so far has mentioned an omelette)
The lightest thing in souffles
Grapes for dessert
Oysters
Lobster
Dry biscuits

The next book, if you are reading along, is Murder at the Vicarage. Yes, March will bring our very first Miss Marple murder mystery!