World Cooking - Retro Food For Modern Times

Category: World Cooking

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!

07
Jan
2024

Huli Huli Chicken Wings

categories: 1950's recipes, Chicken, United States of America

Aloha friends and welcome to 2024! Whilst most of us are looking ahead, I am reflecting on the last “20 Years Ago Today” post I wrote. In that post, I said, “couscous is the only food I can think of where the same letters are repeated”. The very next day, I was searching through my file of blog-worthy recipes. And, found a recipe for Huli Huli Chicken Wings. So, we are taking a little trip back to 1950’s Hawaii for a taste test! Never let it be said that I am not happy to prove myself wrong in the search for delicious food.

If someone else hadn’t already come up with the catchphrase of “finger licking good” I’d be using it right now to describe these wings. The Huli Huli sauce is so good! It’s sweet and sour and full of umami and sticky and just plain delicious. I made these a little while ago and as I am writing this now my mouth is watering thinking about them! Guess what’s going back on the menu for next week!

Huli Huli Huh?

Ernest Morgado, the founder of the Pacific Poultry Co served his mum’s teriyaki-style chicken to a group of farmers back in 1955. They loved it and he decided to market it as Huli Huli Chicken. Huli means “turn” in Hawaiian. The original way of cooking this was to place the chicken between two racks and to grill it, preferably over charcoal. It was turned during cooking hence, huli huli!

Schools and other charities often sold Huli Huli chicken as a fundraising item. In Australia, outside every Bunnings (large hardware store) we also have fundraising food stalls. We get the cheapest sausages imaginable, slapped into usually dry and equally cheap white bread, some BBQ’ed onions if you want them, and some sauce. It is usually revolting but there is something about that BBQ aroma that draws you in, even though you know it you will regret it as soon as you take that first bite.

I think Australian fundraisers could learn a lot from the Hawaiian way of doing things. I mean, why have this?

When you could have this?

Huli Huli Chicken Recipe

My recipe comes directly from the Australian Women’s Weekly website. I have also copied it out below:

I can also heartily recommend the pineapple salad that accompanies the Huli Huli chicken wings in the above recipe. To me, it was the perfect fresh and zesty offset to the sweetness of the chicken. And that hit of chilli in the salad somehow brought everything together!

Well, if this is the standard of cooking I get when I prove myself wrong, I am willing to be proved wrong again and again! Please let me know if you can think of any others! Otherwise, have a great week!

26
Aug
2023

Riceycoco

categories: 1970's recipes, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, The Caribbean, World Cooking

Greetings friends and welcome to Jamaica! Today, on the back of my trip to tropical FNQ (Far North Queensland), I am featuring a recipe from the Caribbean. Riceycoco comes to us via the pages of Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery (1972). It also comes very high on the list of words I find pleasant to say! And that is all the justification I needed to make it!

Riceycoco, is as the name suggests, rice cooked in coconut milk. It is traditionally eaten for breakfast which reminded me of a Sri Lankan dish called Kiribath (milk rice). There the difference ends. Kiribath is eaten with chutneys and sambols as a savoury dish whereas Riceycoco is sweet. I am not fond of a sweet breakfast so I ate mine as a dessert, similar to a rice pudding. To amp up the tropical vibes, I added some mango to the mix.

Rice and coconut milk is a classic in many Asian countries and I enjoyed the twist of having a sweet version of something I am more familiar with as a savoury dish. It was also a nice reminder of the tropics now we are back in cold, grey Melbourne! Its also a very soothing comfort food – a little bit like being cocooned in a warm cuddlepillar!

Riceycoco – The Recipe & Notes

I used coconut milk from a can instead of fresh coconut milk.
I also swapped out the brown sugar for maple syrup.
I served some additional coconut milk on the side.
This would also be spectacular with a dollop of coconut yoghurt.

If you want to be reminded of the tropics, like a sweet breakfast or want the nursery comfort of a rice pudding why not give Riceycocoa try Even just so you get to say the name a few times!

Have a great week!

24
Jul
2023

The Return of the Australian Vegetable Cookbook

categories: 1970's recipes, Australian Vegetable Cookbook, Blue Cheese, Cornwall, Leeks, Lettuce

Hello friends, today I am revisiting a book I first wrote about in 2012 – The Australian Vegetable Cookbook. I am taste-testing two recipes from that book – a Cornish Leek Pie and a Roquefort Wedge Salad. The book contains a lovely line drawing and a brief history of each vegetable. So, without further preamble let’s get to the recipes!

Cornish Leek Pie

I was dubious as to how authentic the Cornish Leek Pie would be. However, I found a few references to a Leeky / Likky Pie which dates from 1865 and is remarkably similar!

I layered boiled leeks and bacon into a pie dish and covered with pastry. Now, I made a mistake here as the recipe quite clearly says to season the layers with salt and pepper. I thought the bacon would be salty enough which turned out to be true so I didn’t add salt. But I totally forgot about the pepper. But by the time I remembered the pepper, the pie was already in the oven.

Then, the recipe itself got weird. After cooking for a while, I needed to make a hole in the pastry top and pour in a mixture of cream and parsley. I have never added ingredients to a pie in this way before! But it did allow me to add the missing pepper in with the cream and parsley. I thought it would be really hard to cut a hole in the pastry once it was baked so I did this before it went into the oven.

The recipe which I have linked above adds eggs and cream to the bacon and leek mix which I think would be a lot more sensible. This would have thickened up on cooking to form a quiche-like filling. As it was the cream did nothing except make everything a bit wet! It also kept bubbling up out of the hole in the pastry and made a bit of a mess.

There was nothing wrong with the cornish leek pie. It was just not something I would make, in the format given in the Australian Vegetable Cookbook. Full marks for the illustrations though! They are beautiful!

Cornish Leek Pie – The Recipe

Roquefort Lettuce Wedges

The night after I made the Cornish Leek Pie I made the Roquefort Lettuce Wedge from the same book.

The roquefort dressing was sooo good! But overall this dish lacked something. I served it on a gorgeous plate I bought when I was in Darwin earlier this year to try to fancy it up a bit. Plate 10/10. Dish…kind of meh…I would defintely make this again, However, I would add some bacon or croutons or some chives to the salad (or all three) just to make it a bit more interesting!

They say you can’t step in the same river twice and, to be honest I was disappointed with my revisiting of The Australian Vegetable Cookbook. There was nothing wrong with either recipe but they were also not amazing. One or two more ingredients to each one might have brought a bit more flavour or texture or just some va va voom to the dish.

Whether this was due to bad recipe choices on my behalf or a comment on the state of vegetable dishes in the 1970s remains to be determined. There are still a number of recipes I have flagged as “to be cooked”. so I may well have another crack at it in the future. Just not for a little while!

Roquefort Lettuce Wedge – The Recipe

I hope your cooking adventures this week fare a little better! Have a great week!

09
Jul
2023

Chinese Lemon Chicken: Evil Under The Sun

categories: Chicken, China, Dining With The Dame, Poirot

Hello crime readers and food lovers! Welcome to Dining with the Dame for July and a collab with Jenny from Silver Screen Suppers. We have been reading/watching Evil Under The Sun. I loved this book. It reminded me of both Triangle in Rhodes and Death on the Nile, books I also loved. Maybe I just love an ill-fated love triangle. I was very disappointed that there was no food mentioned in this one – it is set in the delightfully named Jolly Roger Hotel (based on the Burgh Island Hotel). I would have thought that we might get the details of at least one meal in such a grand establishment but sadly that was not to be. Enter Jenny to save the day with a recipe for not just any old Chinese Lemon Chicken but David Suchet’s Chinese Lemon Chicken!!! I almost feel like we have two special guests this time round, Jenny and David Suchet! What an amazing dinner party that would be!

Evil Under The Sun -The Plot

Hercule Poirot is on holiday at the Jolly Roger Hotel in Devon. The hotel, which as mentioned has a very real-life counterpart, is located on a causeway that is underwater during high tide, accessible only via boat (book) or sea tractor (real life). One wonders why Hercule Poirot who, as we know suffers badly from “la mal de mer” would choose to holiday on an island remains unexplained in the book. The Poirot episode of Evil Under The Sun, explains this by saying that the hotel is a wellness spa that Poirot must attend for his health.

We have:

Stephen Redfern and Arlena Marshall, both married, (not to each other) having a very public attraction to each other
Two upset spouses
Arlena strangled to death on the beach
One of the other guests almost beaned by a bottle thrown out of a window
An oddly timed bath
A troubled teen buying candles
Arlena’s husband and his childhood sweetheart both being lying liars who lie
Drug smuggling in Pixy Cove
A reverend obsessed with evil in general and evil women in particular

Good thing we have Poirot on hand to solve the mystery of whodunnit!

Evil Under The Sun – The Covers

Again, the Christie covers do not fail to disappoint. Except maybe that Hawaiian Dancing Girl in Les Vacances D’Hercule Poirot…which…nice try French people but not really relevant! The impressionist-style Russian title (top left) is gorgeous! I also really like the second row far right which to me has a bleached-out California 1960s vibe. It may be more Helter Skelter than Hercule Poirot but is very attractive all the same. I also really like bottom row, second from the right, which gives a nod to Arlena’s red hair, green Chinese hat and Linda’s foray into witchery.

The Recipe – Chinese Lemon Chicken

Chinese kimonos are optional but heartily recommended!

I was feeling lazy the first night we ate this and served it with some bought fried rice and spring rolls. The second night, I stir-fried up some kale and cashew nuts to eat with the Chinese Lemon chicken. Both worked really well.

Emily Brewster said..”this isn’t the sort of place you’d get a body!”

Hercule Poirot stirred a little in his chair. He protested. He said:

“But why not Mademoiselle? Why should there not be what you call a “body” here on Smuggler’s Island?”

Emily Brewster said: “I don’t know. I suppose some places are more unlikley than others. This isn’t the kind of spot –” She broke off, finding it difficult to explain her meaning.

“It is romantic, yes, ” agreed Hercule Poirot. “It is peaceful. The sun shines. The sea is blue. But you forget Miss Brewster, there is evil everywhere under the sun:

Agatha Christie – Evil Under The Sun

A Slight Tangent on Poirot’s Attire

“There was one very important person (in his own estimation at least) staying at the Jolly Roger. Hercule Poirot, resplendent in a white duck suit , with a panama hat tilted over his eyes, his moustaches magnificently befurled, lay back in an improved type of deck char and surveyed the bathing beach”

Now, if like me, you are not 100% familiar with male couture of the late 1930’s and have only a limited idea of what a duck suit is…let me give you some advice. Unless you specify 1930’s duck suit in your search, you are more likely to get a whole heap of this:

And not a lot of this!

Also, speaking of costumes, I have not seen the Peter Ustinov version of Evil Under The Sun but I will pay good money for it, just to see this scene!

Magnifique, as Poirot himself might say! (Peter Ustinov also looks like je might be about to tuck into a place of Chinese Lemon Chicken in that kimono!)

And on Casting…

I know that the Poirot version of Evil Under The Sun is not held in high regard by many people. However, I think Michael Higgs is perfectly cast as Patrick Redmond. He is undeniably handsome but also has a slightly dissolute air about him – a combination the French would call louche and good girls everywhere who love a bad boy call hot! (Also louche is one of my favourite words and finally after 11 years I get to use it on the blog!)

Equally Tamzin Malleson is perfect as Christine Redmond:

Links to The Christieverse

Mrs Gardner mentions “That business in Egypt when Linet Ridgeway was killed” referring to Death on The Nile (and also possibly setting the scene for another love triangle?)

When Colonel Weston talks of “that affair at St Loo” he is referring to Three Act Tragedy

Other Food & Drinks Mentioned in Evil Inder The Sun

Strawberry Jam
Dry Martini
Bacon and Eggs (of course)
Cup of Tea x 2
Poisoned Chocolates
Devonshire cream
Sandwiches

Thanks to Jenny for providing the David Suchet recipe, I hope you enjoyed your foray into the world of Agatha Christie! For everyone else, please pop over to Silver Screen Suppers to see Jenny’s take on the recipe. (I will link to it when it is up).

August’s read will be N or M. I finished reading it today and it is a super Tommy and Tuppence World War 2 Thriller! I am reading ahead because I am on holiday for part of August so need to be super organised to make sure I can get that post out before I leave.

Have a great week!