A quiche is an open-faced tart with a savoury custard filling. It was originally made with bread dough but short pastry has been substituted in modern recipes.
The pastry should be rolled as thinly as possible…there should be a lot of creamy filling on very little pastry.
– Margaret Fulton
Both of these look pretty good. But I am very fond of a quiche so more is pretty much more for me!!! But I totally understand why most people would prefer the understated elegance of the modern photo
“When a substantial first course is called for, it is hard to improve on a savoury tart served warm”
– Margaret Fulton
I so totally agree!
MFCB Olive And Onion Tart
I think the Onion and Olive Pie looks pretty good in both of these pictures. It’s certainly the best looking item on the 1977 page. In the modern picture though, it really shines.
Both make me wonder why this is not called a Tomato and Olive Pie.
If like me, you really want to eat this, here is the recipe. From the 1977 version. This ain’t called Retro Food For Modern Times for nothing.
Onion and Olive Tart Recipe
Have a great week…if you want to know what I’m up to on holidays check out my daily Instagram!
Mexican was a recent selection at the Tasty Reads Book Club. I chose Cantina by Paul Wilson for my book because it is food porny to rival Sabrina Ghayour’s Persiana!
Cantina
Take a look at these pictures from Cantina.
Pacific Oyster Cebiche with Melon Salsa.
Dani made this as her bring along to the discussion and they are even more delicious in real life than the picture.
Cantina Cebiche
Ranchero Style Beef Broth With Bone Marrow Toasts
Personally, I’m not sure about eating the Bone Marrow Toasts but they LOOK amazing!
Cantina Ranchero Style Beef Broth
Street Style Tostadas With Seared Tuna and Wood Grilled Vegetables.
Would it be wrong to say this just made me want to lick the page?
Cantina Street Style Tostadas
Gorgeous right? However, as you may have spotted, this is not your typical bean and burrito Mexican. There is not a yellow box in sight. As a Mexican Dorothy might say, “We’re not in Chipotle anymore Toto”. Cantina delivers high end, highly complex Mexican food. For instance, those “Street Style” Tostadas?
22 ingredients – minimum. But you also need a base. So depending on which of the bases you choose you can add another
7 ingredients if you use the Jalopeno and Finger Lime Crema
13 ingredients if you use the Veracruz Sauce
8 ingredients if you make the Sesame Pipian. But hold up. One of the “ingredients” of the Sesame Pipian is a Tomatillo Verde which in turn contains another 8 ingredients…so that would be another 15 ingredients.
Thirty. Seven. Possible. Ingredients. And up to three separate recipes. For “street style” tostadas. And ok, I get it, sometimes you need a lot of ingredients to get a depth of flavour and that alone would not necessarily be enough to put me off a recipe.
However, these recipes were further complicated by a lot of the ingredients not being readily available in Australian supermarkets meaning a lot of ingredients having to be bought on the internet or having to drive across town to pick them up. And then some could only be bought in bulk – hence the almost kilo of padron peppers sitting in my freezer!
Not to mention that cooking from Cantina was like going down the rabbit hole – one recipe lead to another which required another…it seemed never ending! Here is a prime example.
Heirloom Tomato Escabeche
I made this – it was one of the things I took to the Book Club Night. It’s a salad. It’s a fancy salad. It’s maybe the BEST salad I have ever eaten. But it’s a salad.
However to make this salad, as per the recipe, you need to first have made the Mexican pickles. And you also have to have made the Pasilla Chilli relish.
Then you make a lime crema base…
THEN you make the salad.
Then you collapse in a corner quietly sobbing…or….erm…you know….
I did LOVE this, it was so pretty and also incredibly tasty. But so much work for a salad. Bear in mind this would usually be an accompaniment to something else – which probably also had multiple elements. It was hard enough cooking one thing. An entire meal would have sent me loopy!
Cantina Heirloom Salad Escabeche
But to really demonstrate how this book just about sent my sanity to the edge and had a damn good crack at ruining my relationship you can go no further than….
Hanger Steak with Huitlacoche Mustard and Salsa Negra.
Cantina Hangar Steak
That pictures looks pretty damn simple right? It’s steak, salad and a condiment. How hard could it be?
Let me step you through the timeline of this one meal shall I?
Week -1:
Order Huitlacoche off internet.
Day of the Hangar Steak
6:30pm – Get home from work
6:45pm: Make my Latin Spice Rub. This stuff is awesome. Because you make much more of this than required, I have sprinkled this over everything since I made it and it makes everything – steak, chicken, fish, eggs, calamari – taste better. Just beware it is hot, Hot, HOT so if you don’t like it spicy, go very easy!
Cantina Latin Spice Rub
6:55pm – Soak the dried porcinis
6:58pm – Chop onions and garlic.
7:03pm. Open can of huitlacoche. What is in the tin looks like corn covered in snot. Wonder if you have got a dodgy tin.
7:05pm. Google huitlacoche. Realise it’s supposed to look like that. Wish you hadn’t bought it.
7:15pm. Heat oil and cook onions garlic and both types of mushrooms
7:20pm. Add huitlacoche and porcini liquid.
The recipe them says to cook for 10 minutes until the liquid has reduced to a glossy sauce. This never happened. For a start it was way too chunky – bear in mind the recipe does not even tell you to chop your mushrooms (which I did) but what I had in my saucepan after ten minutes looked like chopped mushrooms and corn covered in snot.
7:40pm. “When are we eating? I’m hungr….what on God’s green earth is THAT?
“It’s mustard”
“It looks like mushrooms and corn covered in snot. Why are you making mustard? Can’t we just have Colman’s?”
“You can’t have Colman’s, we’re having Mexican. It’s special Mexican mustard.”
“It looks revolting”.
It didn’t look great. And I don’t want to be pedantic (I so totally do) but surely…a major component of anything called mustard should actually be mustard?
And don’t even get me started on the Apricot and Mescal Aioli that contained no mescal and was not any sort of aioli I ever had.
7:45. I’m staring at a hot mess in a pan, thinking maybe if I blended it it would look a little bit more like the mixture in the picture.
7:55. After some blending with the hand mixer, we now have something that looks pretty much like the picture in the book. Which is to say, like baby poo.
I’ve now been cooking for an hour and have….a spice rub and some sort of condiment which probably should not be called mustard. Which he is refusing to eat and I’m losing interest in by the second..
Never mind. The rest is steak and salad. Easy Peasy.
8:00pm. Rub the steaks with the spice rub. That can sit for a while because now, we need to turn to page 36 to make the Latin Vinaigrette for the garnish. Yes. Even the garnish requires you to move to a different page.
Latin Vinaigrette contains 10 ingredients. Roll eyes, sigh. Make Latin Vinaigrette.
8:10. Latin Vinaigrette Made.
8:15pm. Start on the Salsa Negra.
8:16pm Turn back to page 36 to make Salsa Mexicana for the Salsa Negra
8:17pm Salsa Mexicana requires a Zesty Lime Dressing found on page 37. Sigh, roll eyes start muttering swear words underbreath.
8:20pm. : “When are we eating? ”
“Soon. I just need to make the steak. And the salad”
“I thought that’s what we were having”
“It is” This through gritted teeth.
“But…you’ve been cooking for hours…why is there no steak? Or salad?”
“Because it’s Mexican and it’s driving me insane. I just need to make this dressing first. And I really need you to be quiet.”
“I thought you just made dressing”
“I did. That was a different dressing”
“Right. So you’ve been cooking for ages. And you’ve made a mustard that isn’t even a mustard and two salad dressings? When will you cook the steak? I’m starving!!!!”
“Just. Don’t. Speak. This Mexican is doing my head in and the more I have to chitter chatter with you, the longer this is going to take.”
8:30pm Zesty Lime Dressing Made.
8:40pm Salsa Mexicana made.
8:45pm “Where’s the can of black beans that we absolutely definitely had in the cupboard?”
“I ate them for lunch…”
“But….the salad is back bean salad. How are are supposed to have black bean salad with no black beans?”
“We have white beans”
“You can’t make black bean salad with white beans”
“Don’t be a bean racist”.
“Shut up”
We didn’t have white beans. By now I was slightly hysterical. Two hours and no beans to make the bean salad.
8:55pm “I’m hungry….when are we eating?”
“Shut up, I need to think”
“I’m going to have some cereal”
“Don’t eat cereal, we’re just about to have dinner”
“A likely story…”
9:05pm. We had couscous in the fridge. I ended up making the black bean salad with couscous.
9:15pm. The steak finally hits the grill.
9:30pm. Nearly three hours later, we sit down to eat. It was good. It was really good. The couscous was fine – maybe even better than black beans. But it was steak and salad. And it had taken nearly three hours to make. And i was in such a bad mood by the time it was ready I didn’t really enjoy it on the night. Next day for lunch though? Super!
And here in lies the what I feel is the dilemma of Cantina. Two and a half hours of cooking is WAY to long for a weekday meal. Ok, you could make the rub and the dressings and the mustard before hand but that it still time spent somewhere. And for me this is not a dinner party dish either. It’s something…I’m just not sure what – it’s too complex for a casual meal but not fancy enough for a dinner party meal.
Oh, and that so called mustard? I wouldn’t even bother with that. I didn’t like the taste of it and there was enough flavour in the rub and the dressings and the other bits and bobs so that you would not miss it.
And finally…here it is:
Don’t get me wrong. It was DELICIOUS. Nothing I made from Cantina was bad. Except for maybe that mustard. But you had to work hard for that goodness.
Will I cook from Cantina again? Hmmm….Possibly. There are still a few recipes I really want to try. But I would do it on a weekend. Ideally a long weekend.
Here is some of the other stuff I made:
Jalapeno and Finger Lime Crema
Mexican Style Pickles
Loved them!
Baked Devilled Eggs with Sobrasado
I did a cheaty version of this in that I swapped in similar stuff I had for the listed ingredients such as barley wraps for the corn tortillas, pancetta and salami for the serrano ham and sobrasado, cheddar cheese for the Mahon…It was still awesome if not exactly remotely authentic.
Chorizo with Apricot and (no) Mescal Aioli
Pumpkin Soup with Chorizo Migas
I had to buy achiote paste for this and didn’t like the flavour of it at all.
I do enjoy saying Chorizo Migas in a very bad (a la Speedy Gonzales) Mexcan accent though.
Your’re meant to drink this alternating with sips of a shot of tequila. I just put my tequila in the drink along with all the rest of the stuff. Loved this!
Here is the recipe for the Spice Rub, direct from Cantina. And also serves as my Spice Blend for a Daring Kitchen Challenge MONTHS ago. And hey, I guess the Hangar Steaks cover off on their Grilling challenge!
[yumprint-recipe id=’33’] I honestly feel like cooking from Cantina once a week which is what I try to do with the Tasty Read selections almost broke me. And, if the end result hadn’t almost invariably been delicious I would have gladly tossed the book in the trash multiple times. Instead, it’s filed away in the bookshelf just waiting for the right occasion. So, just know this. If you ever come to my house and I make you Mexican food that looks lovely and casual, know that I must REALLY like you! Because that stuff is hard!
It’s been a while since we dipped into the pages of The A-Z of Cooking…and yep, we’re still only up to C. This time though we head away from the fun, fun, fun of Children’s Favourites and into the darker world of cost savers. Retro Frugality can a very scary place!
Chili Con Carne4jpg
Surprisingly, all three recipes featured in this section were things I would have been happy to make. There was the Chili Con Carne, a Tagliatelle with Bacon and Tomato Sauce and an Oxtail Casserole. I REALLY wanted to make the Oxtail Casserole just because the others are things we probably eat fairly regularly and I have never cooked with o before. But, someone had a hissy fit in the butcher when I asked for oxtails. Sometimes it’s difficult trying to be a retro food blogger when you live with the fussiest eater on the planet!!! It will be made though. I have enough meals alone to warrant making some, even if just for myself.
A-Z of Cooking – Chili Con Carne Ingredients
But for now, we needed a meal to be eaten together and, turned out, we had everything to make this chilli already in the freezer, fridge and store cupboard. This is really important as you will soon find out that not all my ventures into Mexican cooking have been so expeditious. You will also notice that there are no green peppers, as specified by the recipe ingredients, and there are mushrooms which are not mentioned. I am not fond of bell peppers of any sort as they tend to repeat on me for HOURS after I have eaten them. Plus, I had mushrooms and, in the cost cutting vibe of this post, waste not, want not right?
Chili Con Carne Recipe
I had one problem with this recipe. And that was the lack of cumin. Funnily enough, as I was writing this post, I was watching a Heston Blumenthal show where he made chili con carne and he too mentioned how important it was to have cumin in your chili recipe.
Then again, Heston’s’ chili contains 27 ingredients and at least 3 processes….I love Heston, I really do. But 27 ingredients for chilli? And that doesn’t even include the muffins?
I’m sure Heston’s recipe is the best chili you’ve ever eaten. I’m equally sure that the A-Z of Cooking’s Cost Saving Recipe won’t be.
BUT. And it’s a big but. (Sir Mixalot would be proud).
Chili Con Carne 5
Is this a tasty dish? This recipe lacked some flavour, most notably cumin. And personally, I would have increased the chilli content too. However, I think the mushrooms added some umami that would not have been present had the green peppers been used instead. And it was tasty even without the cumin. So yes, big tick on tasty.
Does it fill the brief of being a cost saver? Absolutely. The basic chili cost around $7.00. And that made 4 large or 5 medium sized serves.
Should this become something that is in your repertoire of basic dishes that you can then flavour and snazz up whatever way you want? Totally!
Is it something you will make over and over? You bet!
It’s a good, solid, basic chili recipe. Sure it’s not Heston. But it not everything needs to be. In fact, nothing except food at The Fat Duck should be.
And if you want to jazz it up, any, or all, of the following would make good additions:
Avocado Salsa
Corn Chips as dippers
Warm tortillas
Pico Di Gallo
Guacamole
Grated Cheese
Sour Cream
Pickled Jalapenos
Cojita or crumbled feta cheese
Tabasco or other hot sauce
This is great, quick easy weeknight cooking, it is also great, maybe even better the next day for lunch or dinner.
Chili Con Carne4jpg
Eat, enjoy! With the money you save on this why not treat yourself to a margarita or two.
Hope your week is fabulous.
