Retro Food For Modern Times

17
May
2021

Lamb Rissoles with Mint Jelly

Do you ever look at a recipe and think “That’s absolutely bonkers! Why on earth would you do that?” It happened to me with a recipe from the Daily News Cook Book for Jellied Lamb Rissoles. The idea behind the original was to crumb and fry some spicy lamb meatballs, then dip said fried meatballs in mint jelly and allow the jelly to set around the meatball. I think we can all agree that the recipe is very set in its time – ie when coating all sorts of things in aspic or jelly was the height of fashion.

HowEVER….the recipe asks you to go to the bother of crumbing and frying meatballs, which is one of my least favourite kitchen tasks. Admittedly, it is worth all the pfaffing about if you get a lovely crispy crumb coating on your meatballs. But then you have to dip that delightful crumb crust into a liquid jelly and let it sit in said liquid jelly until the jelly sets. Now, I could be totally wrong but to my mind, that would make the crumb crust into a soggy mess.

No thank you Daily News.

However once the idea of lamb rissoles with mint jelly takes hold, it is very hard to dislodge the idea. Plus the idea of rissoles reminded me of one of my favourite scenes from The Castle:

If you have not seen this film, you really need to. It is such a delight. Make these rissoles, grab a cold beer and watch The Castle immediately!

So, for anyone who wants to try out the original recipe here it is. Please let me know how it does turn out. I am very happy to be proved wrong if anyone is willing to take the risk of a soggy crust on my behalf!

The Revamped Lamb Rissole with Mint Jelly

A little note here. You can go a little wild with the chilli in these as the mint jelly will provide some cooling relief…see, I am willing to take a few risks after all!! If you cannot get hold of lamb, beef or pork would work here although lamb and mint is a delightful classic combo!

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Lamb Rissoles with Mint Jelly

Print Recipe

A SriLankan-inspired appetiser adapted from the classic “Daily News Cookery Book”. The kick of heat in the rissoles will be offset by the calming cool of the mint jelly so feel free to increase the amount of chilli you would normally use.

Author: Taryn Nicole
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 20 minutes
Yield: 25 1x

Ingredients

Scale

For the Rissoles:

500g minced lamb

I onion finely chopped

1–2 green chilli, finely chopped (depending on the heat of the chillies and your tolerance)

1 tsp mixed spice

2 slices white bread, crusts removed

1 beaten egg

Juice of 1 lime

Salt and pepper

For the Crumb:

Breadcrumbs – around 1 cup

1 beaten egg

Oil for frying – traditionally this would have been fried in dripping but I prefer to use canola oil.

To Serve

Mint Jelly

Coriander leaves (optional)

Chilli slices (optional

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

Mix all the ingredients for the meatballs together and shape into 25 meatballs.

Place the beaten egg into a bowl and the breadcrumbs on a plate.

Dip the meatballs in the egg then roll in the crumbs.

Place in the fridge to set for around 30 minutes.

Heat the oil. I used a wok but any deep sided pan or a deep fryer would work. Fry the meatballs in batches until golden brown (around 5-7 minutes).

Check a meatball to ensure it is cooked through. If not, you can pop them into the oven for around 5-10 minutes at 180C until they are.

Serve while still hot with a scattering of coriander and chill if liked and some mint jelly as a colling dip on the side.

Enjoy!

On a personal note, I have not posted for a while – I went on a little holiday, then had a sick dog, then I got sick so it’s been a busy few weeks! Hopefully I am back on track now though and looking forward to getting back into the groove of blogging.
OH, and I just realised today this blog turns 8 years old!

Well, I am off to celebrate, have a wonderful week!

12
Apr
2021

The Red Signal Cocktail

categories: Cocktail, Dining With The Dame, Vodka

The Red Signal Cocktail came about by a bit of an accident. I recently tried to make a cocktail called the Seamist. Except, I could not get some of the ingredients so I had to improvise. The finished version looked beautiful and tasted lovely. It is the exact sweet/sour fruity taste that I love in a cocktail plus a tinge of dryness from the cranberry and a touch of bitterness from the grapefruit.

But there was something about it that was not right. And it bugged me for days on end. It tasted great, it looked beautiful. So what was wrong with it?

She Comes in Colours Everywhere

Let’s digress for a moment. As a child, I was OBSESSED with paint charts. I have already mentioned that I was a weird only child. But I don’t think I have mentioned that my parents would quite often spend their weekends going to display homes and DIY stores and inevitably during these excursions, I would pick up a paint chart (or two). I would then try to memorise all the names and the matching colours. And then get them to test me on the way home. Or during the week. Yes. School wasn’t enough. I wanted to be tested on random things outside of school as well.

For a while there I wanted to be the person who named those colours. Actually, you know what? I still do want that job! So, believe me when I say that I know my Paris Creek (pale slate green grey) from my Camisole Quarter (pale pink) to my Shampoo (mid Blue).

I. Know. My. Colours.

And the colour of this cocktail is not a Seamist. No wonder I felt in my deepest soul that there was something wrong with it!

Seamist is a pale grey green with a tiny touch of blue.

And I think we can all agree that this cocktail is possibly the very opposite colour of a greeny-grey.

So, the name of Seamist had to go. Life is hard enough at the moment without having additional cognitive dissonance caused by the colour of a cocktail! And because I had played around with the ingredients, it wasn’t a true Seamist anyway.

So, then the dilemma became what to call it.

The Red Signal

Luckily, for all of us, I happen to be reading The Hounds of Death. This is a book of short stories by Agatha Christie where each story has a spooky or supernatural twist. I am still undecided on what to do with the volumes of Agatha Christie’s short stories. When I started the Dining With The Dame series, I only ever considered her novels. And believe me, it’s hard enough to find food references to blog in some of the novels, let alone something a tenth of the size!

But, lo and behold, in that collection, there is a story called The Red Signal.

Is a tale of

Premonitions and intuitions
Seances
Falling in love with the wrong person
Madness and murder
And a weird sixth sense called The Red Signal!

Now…you tell me Isn’t The Red Signal a much better name for this cocktail?

The Recipe

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The Red Signal Cocktail

Print Recipe

A sweet sour cocktail inspired by the Agatha Christie short story – The Red Signal.

Author: Taryn Nicole
Prep Time: 3 minutes
Total Time: 3 minutes
Yield: 1 1x
Category: Cocktails
Method: Shake

Ingredients

Scale

3 parts cranberry juice

3 parts pink grapefruit juice

2 parts vodka

Lemon and lime quarters

Ice cubes

Mixed berries for garnish

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Instructions

Shake the juices and vodka in a cocktail shaker over ice.

Gently muddle the lemon and lime quarters in a highball glass to release some of their citrus oils and some juice. Add ice cubes to the glass.

Strain the cocktail into the glass and give a light stir.

Garnish with mixed berries of your choice.

Other food mentioned in The Red Signal

Welsh Rarebit

Have a great week friends and remember if you feel “the red signal” pay it some heed!

Or make this cocktail!

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!

28
Mar
2021

Cherry Brandy – Murder at the Vicarage

categories: Dining With The Dame, Drinks, Marple

Hello crime readers and food lovers! Today we are drinking with Dame Agatha and Miss Jane Marple. The beverage of choice as we journey to St Mary Mead and murder most foul will be homemade cherry brandy.

I must confess, I was not looking forward to Miss Marple. For all his pomposity, I very much like Hercule Poirot and I love the interplay between Poirot, Hastings and Inspector Japp. Poirot and Japp are also crime-fighting professionals which gives them some cred.

I also like the pluckiness of the female heroines we have met so far like Bundle and Anne Beddingfield and the adventure-seeking Tuppence. Miss Marple though? Has always struck me as being just an old biddy busy body. So I was delighted to read this very early on in The Murder at The Vicarage.

“My duty,” said Griselda. “My duty as the Vicaress. Tea and scandal at four-thirty.”

“Who is coming?”

Griselda ticked them off on her fingers with a glow of virtue on her face. “Mrs Price Ridley, Miss Wetherby, Miss Hartnell, and that terrible Miss Marple.”

“I rather like Miss Marple, ” I said. “She has, at least, a sense of humour.”

“She’s the worst cat in the village,” said Griselda.

Then a bit later on:

There is no detective in England equal to a spinster lady of uncertain age with plenty of time on her hands.”

Knowing that other people shared my view made me like this book a lot more than I thought I would. And I really liked this book! Despite Marple.

The Murder At The Vicarage – The Plot

Colonel Protheroe has been murdered. With a gun. In the study of the Vicarage. It seems like no one in St Mary Mead liked the Colonel. Even the vicar had been overheard saying that anyone who killed him would be doing the world a service.

As if that’s not all, we have:

Shennanigans with the handsome painter who is setting all the female heart’s aflutter
Suspicious husbands
A girl called Lettice. Maybe this is only interesting to me, given I was very nearly called Romaine.
Irregularities in the church accounts
False confessions aplenty
A mysterious woman in the village aptly called Mrs Lestrange
Suitcases containing stolen silverware and picric acid found in the woods
Threatening phone calls
Slashed paintings

It might actually be a good thing that the wicked cat Miss Marple is around to bring the villains to justice!

I LOVED the sense of humour in this book:

Unblushingly I suggested a glass of vintage port. I have some very fine old vintage port. Eleven o’clock in the morning is not the usual time for drinking port but I did not think that mattered with Inspector Slack. It was, of course, cruel abuse of the vintage port but one must not be squeamish about such things.

Murder in The Vicarage – The Covers

There are some truly bonkers covers for this book. My favourite of course is Tom Adams’ surrealist vision for Fontana which features a tennis racquet embodied as a vicar. More disturbing is the cover bottom right which makes it look as if it might have been the KKK who put Colonel Protheroe away!

Even stranger – in these early covers? Not a Marple in sight! As much as I am not really a fan, what kind of sexist ageist BS is that?

Murder at The Vicarage – On The Screen

Murder at the Vicarage featuring Geraldine McEwan as Miss Marple is on You Tube.

Persons of note in the episode are:

Mark Gatiss as Ronald Hawes the church curate.
Derek Jacobi as Colonel Protheroe
Jane Asher as Mrs Lester
Tim McInnerny as Reverend Leonard Clement
Miriam Margolyes as Mrs Price-Ridley

“Of course, of course” said Miss Marple. “I quite understand. Won’t you sit down? And might I offer you a little glass of cherry brandy? My own making. A recipe of my grandmother’s”

– Murder at The Vicarage

The Recipe – Cherry Brandy

Unlike Miss Marple, my grandmothers didn’t hand me down a recipe for cherry brandy so I had to find one on the internet. I used this recipe from Larder Love and I really liked the result. Not a bit like that awful cherry cough syrup which was my fear! I popped in two star-anise as well as the cinnamon called for in the recipe. The resulting cherry brandy had a lovely subtle spiciness to it.

Other Food Mentioned in The Murder At The Vicarage

“Oh, we’ll go!” she said cheerfully. “A glass or two of homemade liqueur is just what one needs on Sunday evening. I think it’s Mary’s blancmange that is so frightfully depressing. It tastes like something out of a mortuary”.

Whisky and Soda

The next book, if you are reading along, is The Sittaford Mystery. Snuggle in, this one will see us snowbound in a tiny village on Dartmoor.

Have a great week!

26
Mar
2021

REPOST – The Margaret Fulton Cookbook – Eggs

categories: Eggs

We can all take a lesson from the French when it comes to cooking eggs. In France the egg comes into its own, not only as a simple as delicious breakfast food, but as gourmet fare as well

– Margaret Fulton

We can also all take a lesson from modern sensibility in creating an introductory photo for a chapter.

1977 says…Copper pots, geraniums, mushrooms and tomatoes on top of omelettes, more tomatoes, more mushrooms, is that some cheese on the left? There’s definitely a teapot and some mugs and some eggs. So busy…

The modern response:

Modern minimalism for the win!