Retro Food For Modern Times

21
Mar
2021

Oysters Kilpatrick

categories: Bacon, Classic Recipes, Oysters

I made Oysters Kilpatrick recently because I thought they might make a nice Irish-themed edition of Name Plates for St Patrick’s Day. I should have probably done some research before cooking them because, despite their Irish-sounding name, Oysters Kikpatrick are not Irish! And they may actually not even be called Oysters Kilpatrick!

So, if they are not Irish, where are they from? These yummy bites of seafood heaven were created by the chef of the Palm Court Restaurant in San Francisco’s Place Hotel, Ernest Arbogast. He named the dish after Colonel John C. Kirkpatrick, who managed the hotel from 1894 to 1914. Kirkpatrick was also not Irish coming from American and Scottish stock.

Oh, and yes, you read that correctly. Oysters Kilpatrick is named after John Kirkpatrick. How and why the change to Kilpatrick came about seems to be lost in history. Also, there are plenty of places that call the dish Oysters Kirkpatrick. Initially, I thought there might be variations due to geography but I found two restaurants in the same city serving them but one was Kirk and one was Kil…

Just to further confuse the issue there are several sites on the interwebs that call this an Australian recipe!!!

Seriously, is this the most confounding recipe ever? First, they’re not Irish, second, it has two names! What is going on? Choose a lane, Oysters Kilpatrick!

Oysters Kilpatrick – The Recipe

If the name is confusing then the ingredients also seem to change at will – oysters, bacon and Worchestershire sauce are the mainstays but to these can be added:

- Balsamic Vinegar
- Barbecue sauce
- Chorizo instead of bacon, shallots and Brandy (Ooh, la la..so.fancy!)
- Tomato Ketchup (I do NOT endorse this!)
- Cheese (Errgghhh…as much as I usually love cheese that one can go get shucked!)

I used Matt Preston’s recipe which contains Soy Sauce which is also not a conventional addition to Oysters Kilpatrick. However, seeing as everything else is confusing about this recipe…why the shell not? It was an absolute pearl of a recipe!

Have a great week my friends! And if you make these Oysters Kilpatrick, make sure you share them around. You don’t want anyone to think you are shellfish!

And tell me – what’s your preferred name? Kilpatrick or Kirkpatrick?

14
Mar
2021

Raiff of Cheese

categories: 1970's food, 1970's recipes, Africa, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, World Cooking

Hello Globetrotters and food lovers! Given we can no longer travel in actuality I guess the next best is to travel virtually via our tastebuds. And today, we are turning the page in Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery to a whole new continent! And what better way to celebrate anything but with some cheesy pastries otherwise known as Raiff of Cheese!

So, where are we off to? Here’s a clue:

I hear the drums echoing tonight
But she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation
She’s coming in, 12:30 flight
The moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation

Yes, my friends, we are going to be blessing the rains down in Africa for the next little while. And I, for one, am here for it! Africa is a real knowledge gap for me in terms of food. I have cooked tagines and couscous, I have eaten Doro Wat and Injera in an Ethiopian restaurant and I have read about Bunny Chow and Sosaties. But that’s pretty much it for what is a massive continent! So, this will be a journey of exploration for me. Not that I am expecting Good Housekeeping from 1972 to provide any 100% authentic recipes but I”m hoping it will be enough to give me a taste of African food!

These cheese pastries or Raiff of Cheese come from the North African section of World Cookery. I chose to cook these because they reminded me very much of the Cheese Pastries we love at our local Syrian restaurant. Believe me, I could sit and eat plate after plate of their Bourak B’jebneh! I was also inspired by the menu at Shaam to use haloumi as the cheese in my pastries.

Raiff of Cheese – Recipe and My Variations

I used bought filo pastry because life’s too short to make homemade filo. If you do want to do that, here’s a recipe and good luck to you! I do want to try to make my own haloumi one day though. I think it would have been nice (but maybe not very North African) to sub in some mozzarella for the haloumi to give the pastries some lovely melty cheesy stretchiness. Next time maybe!

Another little change I made to the recipe as given in GHWC was to add in a little sauteed leek and the very last of the chervil from my garden. This combination features in many of the other North African recipes and it just so happened that I had half a leek in the fridge. I had no idea that either of these were used so extensively in North African cooking. Like I said, journey of exploration!

Finally, to serve my cheese pastries, I added a little drizzle of pomegranate molasses – the sweet-sour of this being a perfect counterpoint to the salty haloumi and some toasted sesame seeds to add some nutty crunchiness. Any chutney or relish would be good with these.

I’m not sure how authentically North African these cheese pastries are but they were really tasty. And as sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti I’ll be making these again!

Have a great week!

07
Mar
2021

Inflatable Flamingo

categories: Cocktail, Gin, Rosé

Summer is officially over here but hopefully even as the days grow shorter and colder we will still have time for a few more summery cocktails like the Inflatable Flamingo! The name is so reminiscent of relaxing by, or in, a pool that you can almost feel the warmth of the sun on your skin. And Inflatable Flamingo is also a very cool name for a very fun drink!

Don’t let it’s pretty pink innocent nature fool you though, the Inflatable Flamingo packs quite a punch with a combination of gin and rose that could leave you…wait for it….legless if you have too many! Ah flamingo jokes….most of them are outstanding but if you really feel you need to put your foot down, I’ll flaminstop.

I used the Four Pillars Christmas Gin from 2019 as my gin base which added some spice into the summer berry flavours of rose and berries but your favourite gin will work well. A Hendrick’s would also be quite fabulous in this!

The recipe makes around 9 serves so why not make up a pitcher of these, grab some friends and hit the pool? Or maybe just float on down the street?

The recipe for the Inflatable Flamingo comes from Adriana Picker’s gorgeous book, The Cocktail Garden. Not only does this book have some great cocktail recipes (Peach and Pineapple Sage Old Fashioned anyone?) but the most beautiful illustrations as well!

The Inflatable Flamingo – The Recipe

Inflatable Flamingo 4 — Recipe via cooked.com.au

I quite often sing to myself when I cook and as I was making the Inflatable Flamingo the song running through my head was Float On by Modest Mouse, particularly the bit that goes:

Alright, already
And we’ll all float on, alright
Already, we’ll all float on, alright
Don’t worry, even if things end up a bit
Too heavy, we’ll all float on

They seemed like some wise words for modern times.

Take care my friends and float on!

28
Feb
2021

Fish and Chips – The Seven Dials Mystery

categories: Dining With The Dame, England, Fish

Hello crime readers and food lovers! Today we are eating some fish and chips with Dame Agatha. And discussing The Seven Dials Mystery. This book could best be described as a caper – I thought it was a really fun romp of a read. The book features Lady Eileen Brent (aka Bundle) and Inspector Battle who we first met in The Secret of Chimneys. I very much liked Bundle in the Secret of Chimneys and I like her even more in this one! She is mostly fearless, smart and funny – my kind of heroine!

The Seven Dials Mystery – The Plot

Chimneys is being rented to Sir Oswald and Lady Croote who are hosting a house party. One of the guests, Gerry Wade is a chronic oversleeper much to the dismay of Lady Croote. Gery’s habitual lateness is putting strain in the running of the house. His friends decide to sneak 8 alarm clocks into Gerry’s room all set to go off at different times of the morning in the hope that the resulting cacophony will get the sleepyhead up at a decent hour. The clocks go off but Gerry does not wake up. Then or ever. Gerry has been murdered! And weirdly enough, there are now only 7 alarm clocks in his room…

On top of a missing clock and a dead body we have

Mysterious references to The Seven Dials in hidden letters and on the lips of a dying man
Another murder – by gunshot this time
Seedy nightclubs in a London area called Seven Dials
Secret letters
Shady Russians,
Sinister secret societies of seven who wear masks of clock faces
Stolen chemical formulae
And a marriage proposal for Bundle!

The Covers

There is not much variety in the covers for this book. Nearly all of then feature clocks of some sort. I like the image of the burning gloves but my favourite is the very are deco looking version (bottom left and below. The back of this cover also contains an image of Bundle’s reckless driving which features in the story.

Note the above version of The Seven Dials Mystery will set you back a cool £819 GBP so maybe not one for most of us! At the other end of the spectrum, you can get the Tom Adams cover version on Ebay for $1 AUD at the moment.

The Recipe – Fish and Chips

Full disclosure here. I was getting myself into a bit of a tizzy about this meal. I have one deep fryer which meant that either the fish was going to get cold while I cooked the chips or vice versa. My solution was to make the fish as per the recipe below but to use frozen oven fries.

Second disclosure. I would normally never make fish and chips at home – to me, this is a meal best eaten as a take away ideally by the seaside.

I used John Dory as my fish because that is the fish used by our favourite pub fish and chips. In Seven Dials, they would traditionally use cod.

I added some dill and a little homegrown horseradish into my tartare as well as all the ingredients listed in the recipe.

“Where did everyone go?”

“To the Seven Dials Club of course, ” said Bill, staring. “Wasn’t that what you were asking about”

“I didn ‘t know it by that name,” said Bundle.

“Used to be a slummy sort of district round about Tottenham Court Road way. It’s all pulled down and cleaned up now. But the Seven Dials Club keeps to the old atmosphere. Fried fish and chips. General squalor.”

Agatha Christie, The Seven Dials Mystery

Other Food Mentioned in The Seven Dials Mystery

Quails
Omelette (I feel every Christie book so far has mentioned an omelette)
The lightest thing in souffles
Grapes for dessert
Oysters
Lobster
Dry biscuits

The next book, if you are reading along, is Murder at the Vicarage. Yes, March will bring our very first Miss Marple murder mystery!

26
Feb
2021

In a Pickle about Piccalilli – REPOST

categories: Pickles, Tasty Reads

When i was a child, one of my favourite things to eat was a McDonald’s Cheeseburger. The worst thing – the pickle. I goddamn hated those pickles. Now, I love all sorts of pickles and this recipe for Piccalilli was a beauty! It is super quick and super tasty. And also very pretty with all it’s different colours.

I was inspired to make some pickles after a visit to Meatmaiden. One of their entrees is a “Quick Pickled Heirloom Veg with Chilli and Goat Curd”. These are just clean, fresh, , delicious and a perfect counterpoint to the meat, meat and more meat of the rest of the menu.

I found a recipe for a quick Piccalilli in Slow, one of the Tasty Reads Book Club books.

According to the fount of all knowledge, Wikipedia, Piccalilli is

“an English nterpretation of Indian pickles, a relish of chopped pickled vegetables and spices”

dating back to 1758.

But enough education.

You wouldn’t think that pickles were that contentious….but hooley dooley did this cause a commotion in la maison de la retro food.

“That’s not piccalilli,” said the Fussiest Eater in the World.

“Is so” I said.

“Not like any I’ve ever seen” he muttered.

The thing is, he has only ever known piccalilli as this luridly coloured, mushed up kind of chunky paste in a jar. I have never been able to bring myself to taste this because to my eye it looks totally unappealing!

Piccalilli Recipe

I didn’t make the ham hock terrine but if you feel so inclined, this is a two for one!

I”m not sure where you fall on the spectrum of piccalilli, all I can say is this fresh version was delicious and even if you are a diehard lurid yellow stuff in a jar fan, it’s certainly worth a try! And it might just change your mind!