Retro Food For Modern Times

15
Aug
2021

Limoni di Amalfi Cotti Al Forno

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!

07
Aug
2021

Fish Finger Bhorta

categories: Fish, Nigella Lawson

It will come as no surprise, says the person who recently made a cake from Pepsi Cola and Peanut Butter, that every now and then, I like to indulge in a little bit of what might be called trashy food. Such was the case this week when, due to an event being cancelled because of lockdown, I found myself with an evening free and all the ingredients for Fish Finger Bhorta in my fridge! I have been dying to try this recipe ever since I read about it in Nigella Lawson’s Cook, Eat Repeat but had never actually got around to shopping for the specific ingredients.

And when I say ingredients I mean spinach. I always have fish fingers in my freezer (for me they are one of life’s great comfort foods), onions and the requisite spices in the pantry. But I usually just buy those one-serve packets of baby spinach from the supermarket and use the whole pack in whatever I need spinach for.

However, again, thanks to lockdown and idiot people who had stripped the shelves of the local supermarket of all the pre-packed spinach, I had to buy loose spinach from the greengrocer. Apparently, I have no idea how much spinach is required for one meal and bought way too much. So I had leftover spinach. I had a night free. I was in lockdown, in the middle of winter. If ever there was a time for comfort food in the shape of a fish finger bhorta this was it!

So, you might be wondering, what on earth is a bhorta? (I am going to assume we all know what fish fingers are). Well…the best I can figure out from the interwebs is that bhorta (aka Bhurta) is a spicy Bangladeshi concoction of mashed-up stuff. Can be veg, can be chicken, in this instance via Nigella the substance to be mashed is the humble fish finger.

This was soooo good!!!! I was a bit worried when Nigella said to cook the fish fingers for around 25 minutes. That’s about double the amount of time I normally cook them for. However, who am I to question the Queen? The fish fingers were gloriously crunchy, the onions delightfully pickle-y, the rest was a spicy mustardy melange of yum! And just look at the colours!!! The bright orangy yellow of the crumbed fish against the vivid pink of the pickled onions, the bright green of the coriander and the darker green of the spinach! This is not only a delicious meal but also a bit like a work of modern art!

And all that spinach makes it healthy too!

Now, I am never going to question Nigella who is one of my food heroes…but…oh lord…dare I even say it? But..you know what may make this even better? A little bit of raita or other yoghurty something on the side. Just to add a bit of creaminess to the crunchy, spicy, herby, mix.

Actually, you know what though? I don’t think Nigella would mind. After all, she freely admits to adapting this recipe from a tweet by Ash Sarkar. And in her introduction to the recipe she says

This dish says something so fundamental about what cooking is, about how we adapt to ingredients that are new to us and make them part of lives…..Honest borrowing is the natural province of the cook and recipes are living evolving entities”

My yoghurty thing on the side is just another evolution!

Here are two traditional bhortas for those who might want them:

Aloo Bortha

Chicken Bartha

And here is Nigella’s recipe.

Have a great week!

25
Jul
2021

Cowboy Day – Pepsi Cola Cake with Broiled Peanut Butter Frosting

categories: 1960's recipes, Cake, Cook A Long, Cowboy Day

Yippee Ky Yay Cake Lovers, number 5 is alive!!!! This weekend, courtesy of the nicest man on the Internet, Greg Swenson, we are celebrating Cowboy Day with a Cookalong. I have chosen to bake a cake (because every celebration needs one) from Greg’s book, Recipes for Rebels: In The Kitchen with James Dean – and oh (cow)boy, what a cake it is. Pepsi Cola Cake with Broiled Peanut Butter Frosting.

You might be wondering what is the connection between a cake made from Pepsi and Cowboys? Well, hear me out here. It is a little like one of those puzzles you used to do at school where you change one letter at a time to turn one word into another…

But here me out:

James Dean played a cowboy in the film Giant
James Dean’s first paid acting job was in a Pepsi Commercial
Pepsi is a key ingredient in this cake.

Cowboy to cake in less steps than it will take you to go from bath to tubs!

Good lord, just look at that face!!! If that is not a textbook definition of impossibly handsome, I do not know what is.

Something that is most definitely not impossibly handsome is the Pepsi-Cola Cake. It is a massive brute of a thing (might one say a Giant?) that erupted like a volcano in my oven. It reminded me of the ads we used to have for Picnic bars – deliciously ugly.

I mean, ok, it doesn’t look quite as much like a pooh as a Picnic bar but at the point of removal from the oven, it did not look good.

But as the picnic ad states that’s what wrappers are for. And the wrapping on the Pepsi-cola cake is some divine Peanut Butter frosting.

I mean it’s still not the prettiest cake in the world. But, do not let it’s somewhat less than gorgeous faced fool you. Remember the delicious part of deliciously ugly? Well this cake has a ton of delicious! The cake itself is moist and fudgy, a little like a brownie. The slight slatiness in the peanut butter frosting is a perfect accompaniment to the sweetness of the cake. Beware though the Pepsi Cake is not just rich. It is filthy rich!!!

I have a sweet tooth and even I would recommend cutting what you think is a normal-sized slice of cake then cutting that in two. And bada bing bada boom that’s elevenses and afternoon tea sorted!!!!

Pepsi Cola Cake – Recipe

So, the recipe for this cake made me laugh. I love the way they ask for non-sweetened cocoa powder. I mean, when you already have 2 cups of sugar and a cup of Pepsi in your cake I guess you have to draw the line somewhere.

Here’s the recipe!

This was so much fun! I loved cooking this cake and being able to take part in the world wide cookalong to celebrate Cowboy Day 2021! Thank you Greg for organising and inviting me to contribute!

Have a great week everyone!!!!

19
Jul
2021

Date and Frangipane Tart

categories: Desserts, Name Plates

Hello, people of the internet. Greetings from lockdown 5 thanks to a few people in Sydney having a “Let them eat cake” attitude to the health of the people of Victoria. In return, we are going to stay at home and eat a delicious Date and Frangipane tart so, in the long run, we win. In the short term? F*** you Gladys. Your lax excuse for a lockdown in Sydney has put so many Victorian lives in danger.

Well. That was truly not how I intended to start this post. But sometimes you just need to give in to what your subconscious mind needs to say. Now my little rant is over, this is how I meant to start. What do an almond cream filling for pastries, a tropical flower, stinky gloves and a 16th century Italian Maquis all have in common?

The answer is that all are called Frangipane.

Back in the day, the leather gloves worn by the nobles would often get very stinky so Frangipani the man invented a bitter almond perfume to remove the reek from said gloves. This perfume was either made from, or inspired by, the scent of the frangipani flower.

French chefs of the time were inspired by the scent of the perfume to make an almond pastry filling which they called frangipane

I could not find any pictures of the eponymous Frangipane. So here is a random 16th century Italian nobleman with some tart, flowers and, of course, some stinky gloves.

Seriously though, this tart is delicious. And the apple juice and brandy caramel sauce? That Italian nobleman will be chef kissing and announcing “Bella, bella”.

Here’s the recipe from Neil Perry via Good Food

Have a great week! I’ll be at home, planning something very special for this coming weekend!

12
Jul
2021

Damn The Weather – The Sittaford Mystery

categories: Cocktail, Dining With The Dame, Gin

Hello crime readers and food lovers! Today we are drinking with the Dame because the Sittaford Mystery, as wonderful a story as it is, (and it is an absolute cracker) did not have the most inspiring food within its pages. So, I am playing with the atmospherics of the book and sharing a cocktail called Damn The Weather with Dame Agatha.

The Sit-tea -ford Mystery?

Despite having hardly any food and passing references to generic cocktails, what the Sittaford Mystery has in abundance is tea:

p73 – A good cry and good cup of tea – there’s nothing to beat them, and a nice cup of tea you shall have at once, my dear
p74 – I’ll send the tea up to you
p75 cup of tea
p 76 Strong tea, bread and butter. Devonshire cream and hard-boiled eggs
p 86 I ought to be able to produce a quiet cup of tea,
p178 Tea was laid ready. Mrs Willett poured out
p179 She must be sipping tea with that determined ladykiller Captain Wyatt
p186 A cup of tea

Despite its prevalence, there was no way I was going to do a post on the perfect cup of tea. Least of all because I don’t like it.

And bread and butter and hard-boiled eggs also seem a little….well…basic.

Next to tea, this is quite a boozy book with more than one reference being made to generic “cocktails” and also to brandy. I found a recipe on Difford’s for a cocktail called Damn The Weather which seemed very fitting to the setting of the book. Let’s see why.

The Sittaford Mystery – The Setting

The scene that met his eyes was typical of the English countryside as depicted on Christmas cards and in old fashioned melodramas. Everywhere was snow, deep drifts of it….up here on the fringe of Dartmoor it had attained a depth of several feet”

– The Sittaford Mystery, Agatha Christie

Sittaford is a tiny village, pretty much cut off from the rest of the world due to the terrible weather. Which makes it the perfect setting for one of Christie’s closed circle mysteries.

The Sittaford Mystery – The Plot

Mrs. Willett, the winter tenant of Captain Trevelyan, and her daughter Violet have invited guests for afternoon tea. After eating, the group decide to do a bit of table-turning (ie summoning the dead). A message comes from beyond telling them that Captain Trevelyan is dead.

A Short Aside on Table Turning

To my mind table-turning has to be the most inefficient way of contacting the spirits ever. From what I can gather the table rocks back and forth for each letter…so even to spell out the first part of the message TREV DEAD that is 20 + 18 +5 +22 rocks of a table. 65 rocks of a table to spell a four-letter word? No thank you. How long did that take? How bored do you have to be for that to become viable entertainment? I mean even trapped in a snow storm Dartmoor in the 1920’s I would be spelling out H-E-L-L -N -O on the table turning.

Anyway, after they have spent HOURS ( my words, not Christie’s) getting that 8 letter message, Major Burnaby, the Captain’s best friend decides to trek the 6 miles on foot to the Captain’s house to make sure he is all right.

He is not.

Trev is indeed dead, having been hit over the head with a sandbag. Estimated time of death? Five twenty-five. The exact same time as the ghostly message from beyond.

(Cue spooky X-files type music).

As if that is not enough, we also have:

An errant nephew being arrested for the murder
An escaped criminal
A reporter keen to get a good story
The mystery of just why the Willetts wanted to rent Sittaford House in the first instance
Retired police inspectors
Newspaper prizes
Boots hidden in the chimney
Aunts in the know and,
Maybe my favourite Christie heroine yet, the adorably plucky Emily Trefusis. (I am going to forgive her madly standing by her man, even though he is an idiot) because I love everything else about her.

The Sittaford Mystery has an average rating of 3.76 on Good Reads and comes in at # 26 at the time of writing on the All About Agatha podcast rankings. I feel Iike it a bit better than that but, I have not read all the books yet!.

The Covers

The covers for The Sittaford Mystery (called The `Murder at Hazelmoor in the United States) are amazing!

I love the nods to the table-turning at the weather and also the dead body on the carpet. I also like that the French version is called 5:25. You might also be wondering why some of the titles are called Murder At Hazelmoor and not the Sittaford Mystery. This was because the American publishers of the book thought their audience would prefer murder to mystery. Tell me, which title do you prefer?

The Recipe – Damn The Weather

You can find the Difford’s guide recipe here.

Other Food Mentioned in The Sittaford Mystery

Whisky and soda
Tea, bread and butter, Devonshire Cream and hard-boiled eggs
Eggs and bacon (i think every book thus far has referenced b&e)
Cold tongue, pickles, stilton, biscuits and soup
Beer
Bullseyes
Pate sandwiches

Oh, so maybe there was more food than I remembered! Still the Damn the Weather was a fabulous cocktail.

Just a quick note on the adaptation of The Sittaford Mystery. It’s kind of terrible. For some reason, they made it a Miss Marple instead of a stand-alone mystery as written. And to be honest Miss Marple does not do a lot. It’s worth a watch but it is not the best Christie adaptation out there.

Next up in the Christie list is Peril at End House for anyone who wants to read along.

Have a great week!