Hola Amigos! Today I am presenting an Argentinian dish from Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery (1972). Estofado is a stew made with beef, Spanish sausage, wine, and vegetables. And it is soo good! Absolutely delicious. We loved it!
The only drawback with the Estofado was that it takes over 3 hours to cook so it would not usually be an after-work dish. I was prepared though and left the office an hour early the night I planned to make it. The good point about the Estofado is that once you have browned the meat, the sausages, and the onions, you add all the other ingredients and then leave it alone for a couple of hours so you can get on with your work (or your life)! Just don’t stay too close to the kitchen because the aroma of the slow-cooked meat and the wine and herbs is quite distracting!
I quite like to hum a tune while I cook. And during the cooking of the Estofado, I found I was singing “Estofado…” to the tune of “Desperado”. I don’t really know the words to Desperado though so my version went:
“Estofado, why don’t you come to my tummy,
You’re smelling so good I know you’re going to be yummy”
I always remember my blogger pal Jenny’s advice on photographing brown food so I served my Estofado with some butter-roasted cabbage and a Parmesan crisp to try to relieve the browness of it all. I’ll be the first to say that my Estofado was not a pretty dish, this is hearty, warming tasty comfort food! And delicious. I will be making this all through winter!
Also, as with most slow-cooked, braised-type dishes, the Estofado tasted even better the following day.
Estofado Recipe
My short trip to Adelaide was amazing. As well as getting through a lot of work stuff I was also able to fit in a quick visit here, I had a delicious lunch here and had an amazing dinner at Two Pot Screamer! On my second and final day we popped across to the Adelaide market for lunch and a Portuguese tart that was to die for! Whenever I go to Adelaide I am always very impressed by what a great food and wine city it is. I can’t wait to get back there!
Hello Friends! I was inspired to make Manakish by Appointment with Death, the latest book in the Dining with The Dame series. The book is largely set in Jordan and although no Jordani food is mentioned (quelle surprise). I thought Manakish would be a good representative dish for that post. I made my version of manakish, took the photos, and then decided to do something else for the Appointment with Death post. But the manakish was really tasty. Too good not to share! So here it is…actually before that. Let’s talk about what it is. Manakish or Manouche is a traditional Jordani flatbread usually with a topping of zaátar or cheese. Mine is a not traditional. It is at best manakish adjacent or as I like to say, manakish-ish. Now, we’ve got through that…here it is:
The Recipe – Manakish
I used this recipe from Hungry Paprikas for the base recipe for my manakish. Per the recipe, I used feta, mozzarella and nigella seeds. And then I added a little sprinkle of Zaátar, some red onion slices and a few chilli flakes. I really had to restrain myself from adding olives, mushrooms, etc as if this was a regular pizza! This was very tasty despite so few ingredients! Sometimes, less really is more!
The salad you can see in the first photo and below is my version of a tomato, pomegranate and caramelised walnut salad from Gourmet Traveller which felt Middle Eastern enough to work well with the Manakish. Also, the cherry tomatoes and the parsley are from my garden! I used olive oil and lemon juice in my dressing to keep it simple. I had also decided to forgo the candied walnuts in the recipe for plain walnuts. Do not do this. They were divine. I wish I had made far more of them than I needed because they were decidedly more-ish!
I would love to see Petra, it looks stunning and is definitely on my bucket list of places to go!
Via Vogue
In the short term though, I will have to content myself with eating Manakish and reading Appointment with Death. The post for which will be up in two weeks’ time!
I am literally at this moment watching The Deer Hunter for my film club. I can see why it’s seen as a classic but so far (about 1.5 hours in) it has been unremittingly grim and I am not expecting a change of tone any time soon. Far less harrowing, this week I am hosting our Tasty Reads Cookbook Club where we are cooking from Recipetin Eats. If you are not a fan, I can recommend it!
Hola Amigos! Today we are taking a trip to South America via Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery (1972) for some croquetas de carne from Argentina. And to accompany them we are staying on the same continent but jumping forward in time to 1990 for some Peruvian Salsa. OMG, these were good! I mean not good for you – these are a treat for once-in-a-while. But…for those times when you get a craving for meaty cheesy fried balls with a spicy salsa…these will become your go-to. And once you have tried these croquetas de carne, believe me, those cravings will come far more regularly than before!
Croquetas de Carne
I have made croquettes once before with a ham and egg filling and the method was quite different. In that recipe, you made a fairly thick bechamel and then combined the ham and hard-boiled eggs and some herbs into the bechamel. With this one, you make your meat filling and then the roux/bechamel-type sauce in the same pan as the meat. It was kind of nifty as it meant you only used one pan. And less washing up is something that always makes me happy! 🤗
The croquetas de carne reminded me of our Sri Lankan short eat of Frikkadels which are also crumbed fried meatballs.
Croquetas de Carne – The Recipe
As good as these croquetas are, they did lack a little something-something. The croquetas are very rich; there is meat and cheese and a fried crumb! I felt something was needed to cut through the heaviness of the croquetas. Now, it just so happened that I made the croquetas on the same day that I wrote the post on my Moscow Potatoes. It was incredibly serendipitous that as I was begining to think about what I might serve with the croquetas that I happened to have the magazine page that contained the recipe for the Moscow Potatoes and Peruvian Salsa open right in front of me! Even better, I had all the ingredients for Peruvian Salsa in the house!
The chilli and lime in the salsa cut through the richness of the croqueta’s perfectly!
A match made in heaven! Or South America as the case may be.
Peruvian Salsa – The Recipe
A Return to The Compton-Batts
It wasn’t until just now that I had probably a tenth look at the menu put forward by the Compton-Batts that I realised how…well the magazine article calls their menu eclectic. I would probably go with batshit (erm Battshit anyone???) crazy. Here it is:
Moscow Potatoes
Pickled Fish
Blackened Tuna Sashimi
Chilli Stir Fried Lamb
Peruvian Salsa
Vegetables Cooked in Virgin Olive Oil
Asparagus with Parmesan
Berry Pudding with Armagnac Chantilly
First that is a LOT of food.
Second, it is a lot of food that does not really go together.
The Moscow Potatoes are, if not exactly Russian, inspired by Russia.
We then move across to…I don’t know where for the pickled fish. I initially would have thought this might be an escabeche so Spain, but there is ginger in the recipe which I don’t think is traditional in an escabeche. There is coriander in the garnish and coriander and ginger to me says Asia. I will say though that the recipe sounds delicious and I may well end up making it! Also, the recipe says to use white fish but the picture of the pickled fish looks like salmon to me. So the pickled fish is an enigma all round. Here’s a picture of it
Pickled Fish
The sashimi is obvs Japanese. But why would you have pickled fish and sashimi?
Then we have Chilli Stir Fried Lamb which uses a Chinese cooking method combined with Indian-style spices such as cumin and cardamom.
And the Chinese / Indian main is accompanied by a salsa from Peru. Which it doesn’t really need given it already has chlllies and lemon in it.
Also accompanying our stir fry we have some vegetables roasted in olive oil and some asparagus with Parmesan which for simplicity I am going to say is Italian-influenced. Here’s a pic of the asparagus which is drowning in olive oil. So again, two sides both drenched in olive oil and neither works particularly cohesive with the main dish!
Asparagus with Parmesan
Then for dessert there is a berry pudding (not a pudding but some berries soaked in port and Cabernet Sauvignon) served with an Armagnac Chantilly. So French inspired.
That is one wild menu I thought as I reached for another croqueta de carne dipped in some Peruvian Salsa. I’m glad I’m keeping it simple!
I was doing some reading the other day and, no, not an Agatha Christie, even though I am about half way through Hercule Poirot’s Christmas for the next Dining with The Dame. I was reading some poetry (because in my head I am the cool intellectual girl who reads untranslated French poetry whilst drinking black coffee at a cool café in the hippest arrondissement in Paris).
In reality I was likely lying on my couch in dirty sweatpants, shoving salt and vinegar chips into my face. Regardless of the setting though, whilst I was reading came I across a poem by Edith Sitwell called “When Sir Beelzebub” The opening lines of which are
When
Sir
Beelzebub called for his syllabub
in the hotel in Hell
Where Proserpine first fell,
Blue as the gendarmerie were the
waves of the sea,
Which got me thinking…why aren’t there more poems about dessert? And why have I never made a syllabub? I’m still waiting for an answer on the first question. But as for the second?
No trip to hell required!
What is Syllabub?
Syllabub is a gorgeous British dessert which originated in the 16th century. It is a whipped cream dessert, originally flavoured with sweet wine or cider. My version uses rosé as the wine and pairs the rosé flavoured cream with a rhubarb and rosewater compote.
I really like the word syllabub. It sounds so slinky and smooth. But with a hint of bite with that last b. Which pretty much describes the syllabub. The silky smooth cream has a little kick of rosé and the rhubarb compote is tangy with hints of orange and rose. Layer it into your prettiest vintage glasses so you can see the contrast of the cream against deep crimson rhubarb.
It also looks very pretty when you put your spoon in and the layers get all mixed up and marbled. Maybe I have been reading too many Agatha Christie’s but my first thought was a rather macabre “like blood in the snow”! 😂 I could totally imagine Miss Marple eatiing syllabub too!
Place rhubarb, sugar, orange juice and zest into a saucepan.
Add rosewater to taste (please see note below).
Cook over medium heat until the rhubarb is soft but is keeping it’s shape. If the mixture starts to stick you can add a tablespoon or so of water but you don’t want the rhubarb mixture to be too wet.
Allow to cool
For the Cream
Add the rosé and sugar to a small saucepan and bring to the boil, over a high heat stirring occasionally. Reduce the heat and allow the mix to reduce by a third.
Allow to cool.
Whip the cream to stiff peaks.
Fold in the rose mixture.
Layer the rhubarb and cream mixtures into a glass.
Top with a strawberry and some flaked almonds for crunch!
Notes
Rosewater can be overpowering. Start with half a teaspoon before cooking the rhubarb and add more after cooking if you want to boost the flavour.
A Very Brief Side Note on Edith Sitwell
Edith Sitwell, the writer of “When Sir Beelzebub” was a fascinating woman. Six foot tall, she had a distinctive dress style – turbans and the most amazing jewellery. She was also an innovative poet. One of her poems, Gold Coast Customs was written in jazz rhythms and she wrote a wrote poems to music in a show called Facade which was performed behind a curtain pained with a face. The words were read through a megaphone via a hole in the mouth. (This to me sounds very Mighty Booshy…I wonder if they might have been inspired by her.
She was also not one to mince words and had some scathing things to say about people including the critic F.R Leavis (For those fans of Bridget Jones out there Yes, “the F.R. Leavis who died in 1978.”) whom she called a “a tiresome, whining, pettyfogging little pipsqueak”. She also called D.H. Lawrence a “a plaster gnome on a stone toadstool in some suburban garden”. So in 1953, some bright spark had the idea for Dame Sitwell to interview Marilyn Monroe, assuming, oif course that they would hate each other and the Sitwell’s scathing critique of Monroe would create a commotion and of course increase circulation!
I’m sure, much to the chagrin of a features editor, the two liked each other!
via The Guardian
The meeting between the two occurred in the Sunset Tower in Hollywood which is certainly not a hotel in hell! I wonder if they might have eaten some syllabub!
For most people of my age the word flan conjures up the episode of Friends where Monica makes a birthday flan.
Monica Geller : We’re not having cake. We’re having flan.
Chandler Bing : Excuse me?
Monica Geller : It’s a festive custard Mexican dessert.
Well, today we having Flan de Café which is a coffee flavoured Mexican custard dessert direct from the South American chapter of Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery. Now, I know Mexico is not in South America, and I know you know that Mexico is not in South America. Good Housekeeping? Maybe not so much!
To amp up the coffee-ness of my flan, I baked them some vintage tea cups.
What did not need to amped up was the coffee flavour. I used the lower level of coffee suggested by the recipe which was 6 tablespoons and thought my heart was going to pop out of my chest for about an hour after eating it! I was WIRED! Talk about a major flan high!
I would probably halve the amount of coffee for future makes. Outside of a power punch of caffeine, the flavour was lovely, the light touch of orange added a refreshing note and the custard was silky and smooth. The Brazil nuts added a nice crunch as well as some garnish. I added some extra orange zest to the top of the flans to brighten them up. I chose not to use the recipe’s serving suggestion because I have a bit of a yecchh factor with raw eggs and I could not find guava jelly anywhere.
Flan De Café – The Recipe
Festive Flan Fun
As I was making the flans, I remembered something I heard wayback one of those science shows for kids. They said that there was enough oil in a brazil nut to act as a candle. For some weird reason, that piece of trivia has stuck in my head! Well, I had Brazil nuts and I had a flan which, after all is a festive dessert!
I really didn’t expect this to work particularly as the nuts kept breaking when I tried to chop them into anything resembling a taper. However….
Success!!!! Now that’s a really festive custard dessert!
