Retro Food For Modern Times

27
May
2020

The Clover Club

I was walking Holly and Oscar in the park one morning when I found a four-leaf clover. That time feels like a million years ago but it was on February 10th so only about 100 days ago.

Whilst I am not superstitious by nature, this felt like an omen. Things were going pretty well. Holly was settling into her new home with us, it was a glorious summer morning, all seemed well with the world. What could possibly go wrong?

Within weeks if not days? Welcome to the shittiest year of all of our lives.

It’s enough to turn a girl to drink!

I was thinking about that day recently. One of the ways I have been idling away my time is to do a heap of Buzzfeed quizzes…you know the sort…”Tell us which pizza toppings you like and we’ll describe your perfect vacation”. Mostly these are terrible and I would be a little embarrassed to admit doing 1-5 per day but occasionally you find one that gets you right in the sweet spot.

Such was the case with the quiz “We know exactly what cocktail you are craving tonight”.

Turns out, I was craving a Clover Club. Now I had, up to that point, never tasted a Clover Club. But, I looked at the ingredients – Gin, raspberries and lemon – these are a few of my favourite things! And suddenly, yes, I was craving one!

I decided to break out the Babycham glasses I bought when I was in Rye last year. How cute are they? I have been saving them for a “special occasion” but you know what? If not now, when? I was inspired by this post on Foodie Crush to seize the day a bit more!

A Brief History of The Clover Club

The Clover Club is an American cocktail from the Pre-Prohibition era, dating all the way back to 1896. A group of men, who called themselves The Clover Club used to meet at the Bellevue – Stratton Hotel in Philadelphia. The Clover Club was invented for them to drink. I find the idea of those olden day men sitting around drinking foamy pink cocktails adorable!

We totally LOVED The Clover Club! The Fussiest Eater in the World said it was the best cocktail he had drunk since 1997! Who knew he was keeping a list….

I used the recipe for The Clover Club via Liquor.com which you can find here.

If you like sweet / sour fruity cocktails then the Clover Club is for you! It may not bring you good luck but it will brighten up your day!

Have a great week friends, stay safe! Let me know what cocktail you get if you do the quiz!

22
May
2020

Quince Salami

categories: Autumn, England, Quince

I bought a fresh quince to make the quince blancmange and then realised I did not need it. So, what on earth was I to do with a quince? I got out my recipe spreadsheet and searched for quince. In the end, I narrowed my search down to three things – Quince Salami, a Chocolate, Quince and Almond Tart, and a Chicken Liver Pate with Pickled Quince. Turns out I had everything I needed for the quince salami already in the house. Even with restrictions here easing a bit, we are still being told to stay at home as much as possible. So why go out to shop if you don’t have to?

The Quince Salami is a version of the membrillo or quince paste that you would serve on a cheeseboard. What makes it a little more interesting is that you can add the same fruit and nuts that you would serve on your cheeseboard into the “salami”. The idea of it is that when you cut through your quince roll, the chunks of fruit and nuts resemble the flecks of fat and flavourings that you see in a regular salami. The resemblance would be even closer had my quince turned the dark red that some quinces do when they are cooked.

The reason quince turn red when they cook is due to tannins in their flesh. Mine did not have enough tannin so only turned an apricotty colour which was quite beautiful but not that red I was looking for. It tasted so good though! And is a really cute and different addition to a cheeseboard.

I LOVED this with some blue cheese. The sweet fruitiness of the salami with a hint of crunch coming from the almonds was perfect against the salty blueness of the gorgonzola. I cannot wait to try this with some brie or Camembert when I venture out to the shops again! The fruit I used were dried sour cherries and some dried apricots.

However, if you are not a cheese lover and / or have a sweet tooth, another way you can serve a quince salami is to roll it in some sugar, then slice finely and serve as a petit-four with coffee. This is the serving suggestion in the recipe I used. I thought it was already sweet enough so took it in a more savoury direction.

The Recipe

The recipe for Quince Salami comes from the book Classic British Cooking by Sarah Edington. She traces the history of quince marmalade, upon which this is based to way back to Tudor times! Here it is:

Would you prefer this as a sweet dish or as a cheeseboard accompaniment?

Have a great weekend everyone. Stay safe!

20
May
2020

Going Brazilian

categories: Brazil, World Cooking

So, I did something a bit different last week. Cooking wise I assure you! One of our Melbourne restaurants, Atlas Dining is surviving lockdown by sending out food boxes based on a theme. Included in the price of the ingredients are a series of masterclasses with the chef, done via Youtube showing you how to cook each meal. There are also written instructions for those who prefer to read rather than watch. I chose the Brazilian Food box because I have never eaten Brazilian food and thought it would be a great way to introduce myself to that cuisine, learn something new and eat some delicious food along the way. Win, win, win!

I was so excited when the box was delivered! It was like food Christmas! The food was all of the highest quality and there was a LOT of it. I ordered the singles box because the Fussiest Eater in the World was working on most of the nights I intended to cook. However, there was enough left over each night for me to have for lunch the following day.

And, to be honest, I am still eating some of the veggies!

Sausage Feijoada

Meal one was a Sausage Feijoada (pronounced Fey-zwah-dah) for those like me who have no knowledge of Brazilian food! This is apparently one of the most common dishes in Brazil. It is a stew usually made from mixed meats and black beans. Our version was made from sausages and it was 👌. It was served with a little salsa made with the most delicious guava dressing!!! This was my favourite meal of the week. It was so tasty and only took about 20 minutes to cook.

I am sure that a traditional Feijoada would take hours to cook and so this was a “dumbed down” of it but TBH, I don’t care. I was looking for an entry into the food of Brazil and this provided the perfect way to dip my toe in without getting too overwhelmed! Atlas had also done a lot of the work by pre-preparing the black bean mix which was delicious!

Pumpkin Vatapa

This was meant to be the meal for the third night but I decided to move things around because the Fussiest Eater in the World was going to be home on night 3. He is not really one for vegetarian food in gen and pumpkin in particular! He does like a steak however so the switcheroo occurred.

Again, this was quick and easy and so delicious. It’s kind of a Brazilian curry. It is late autumn here and these meals were perfect comfort food for cold nights! The vapata was served with a little salsa and two mixes sprinkled over the top. The salsa brought some freshness, the mixes brought some crunch. All in all this was delicious!

Because I made these out of order, I did not realise that one of these mixes on the top was also meant to be used with the beef dish and I used it all on the Vatapa. My suggestion here would be that if you are doing something different, to watch all the videos before cooking anything just so you know exactly what to use and when!

Carne Churrasco

Night three was a gorgeous marinated steak with parmesan polenta and a corn salsa and more of that brilliant guava dressing! It was a bright, colourful and luxurious way to finish off a superb three nights of food!

I loved cooking out of the Brazilian box, so much so that I have already signed up for the American box which is coming out in a couple of weeks! As soon as lockdown is over I definitely want to try some more Brazilian food. And who knows, one day when all of this is over maybe even travel there to sample it in situ!

Tell me, have you eaten Brazilian food? If so what can you recommend? Are there any must-haves I need to try? What about the desserts? I might try to find some delivery options!

Also, for any Americans reading this what would you include in an American food box? Two meat meals and one vegetarian? I would like to see how close your ideas line up with what’s in the box!

All props to Atlas Dining for such an innovative solution to life in lockdown! The meal box could not have been more welcome! At a time when all the days seem the same it brought a bit of vibrance that made me feel a little like this!

Have a great week everyone! Stay safe!

19
May
2020

Omelette Berrichonne – Murder on The Links

categories: Dining With The Dame, Eggs, Omelette

Welcome to the third chapter of Dining with the Dame. If you haven’t read chapters one and two, this is a series about the food found in the novels of Agatha Christie. Murder on the Links is the third Christie novel, published in 1923. This one, let me tell you had me worried. There are plenty of mentions of dejeuners (it is set mostly in France) but no actual food until towards the very end when finally, Poirot and Hastings sit down to “an excellent omelette”. Thank goodness! My back up, given the proximity of a golf course, was going to be a Golf Pie. I would totally eat it but I think it may be a little too basic B for Poirot! Luckily I was able to choose an Omelette Berrichonne as a more classy alternative!

Murder on the Links – The Plot

After meeting a charming girl on a train from Paris to Calais, Hastings returns to London eager to tell Poirot about the love of his life but Poirot is having none of it. He is bored and irritated by his current cases. He then reads a letter from Paul Renauld imploring him to come to France as soon as poss. They arrive at Merlinville to find Renauld has been murdered on the golf course next to his home by masked men who took him from his home leaving his wife tied up in the house.

There is:

a sexy neighbour and her mother, possibly the mistress of the dead man
a disinherited son
shonky South American business dealings
rivalry between Poirot and the French Inspector Giraud
a crime from the past
another dead body found in the shed and
Hastings’ romance with Dulcie Duveen who will go on to become his wife

There is no shortage of action in this one! I whizzed through it in a couple of days. I am really enjoying these reads!

The Covers

This has become one of my favourite parts of this series. I love seeing how the covers have changed over time. Here is a selection of them and there is not a dud in the bunch. Well, maybe the one in the bottom left corner but all the rest are crackers!

I love the top row second from the left and second from the right which features a Magritte style man with a goofball head. And of course the second from the right on the bottom row with its pulp fiction cover!

Do you have a favourite?

The Recipe

“Finally…we set out for the town. It was past our usual hour of dining, and we were both famished. The first restaurant we came to assuaged the pangs of hunger with an excellent omelette, and an equally excellent entrecote to follow”

Murder on the Links, Agatha Christie

The book did not give much away in terms of what kind of omelette the excellent omelette was so I had to improvise. I turned to the expert, Elizabeth David. And also followed her example by pairing my omelette with a glass of wine!

I used David’s recipe for an Omelette Berrichonne because I had a leek in the fridge and mint in the garden!

Here are some suggestions on how to make the perfect omelette. And here are Elizabeth David’s additions for the Omelette Berrichonne.

I was a little bit unsure about the mint here but it worked really well! Delicious!

Other Food Mentioned in Murder on The Links

Entrecote

The next read is The Man in the Brown Suit. I am already about half way through as it is another page turner…or whatever the ebook version of a page turner is!

Hope you are having a wonderful week.

Stay safe friends!

15
May
2020

Not Quite Seeni Sambol

categories: 1970's recipes, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, Onions, Sri Lanka, Vegetables

Seeni Sambol is a Sri Lankan side dish, served as an accompaniment to rice, curries and hoppers as per the photo below. It is an integral component of lampries, which despite Covid-19, mum and I made this year at Easter, as per our normal habit. I made the seeni sambol this year, something we never really do as it takes so many onions! I used 8 onions to make mine and in the end, there was not enough for all our lampries and we ended up having to use a shop-bought version as well!

Please don’t judge my hoppers, I am playing with a recipe which I will post on here as soon as I have it right! The main ingredient of Seeni Sambol is onions. Put very simply you caramelise them down add some spices and voila – there you have it.

Our 2020 lampries. This is a SriLankan meal consisting of ghee rice, lampries curry, eggplant pickle,seeni sambol, prawn blachan and frikadeller which mum and I cook annually. We make enough to last the year, packing individual servings into foil packets and putting them into the freezer to reheat and eat whenever the mood takes us!

What I am trying to say is, that I know a bit about Seeni Sambol. So, when I saw that there was a recipe for it in the Good Housekeeping World Cookery Book, 1972 I was intrigued. My gut feel is that books this old do not do justice to “ethnic” recipes. But for the sake of the blog, I was willing to give this one a go.

But, because WordPress loves a subheading, let’s break it down a little.

The Title

The actual title is fine. In that, all words are spelt correctly.

It’s the subtitle that made me pause.

And call my mum.

“Are you meant to just eat Seeni Sambol with prawns?”

“No. Why?”

“No reason”.

So fail on the title. Seeni Sambol actually means sugar sambol and relates to the sweetness of the caramelised onions and the sugar you add towards the end of cooking to balance out the flavours. No prawns at all. Whatsoever.

The Ingredients

There are two very non-traditional additions in these ingredients. Tomatoes play no part in seeni sambol and neither does milk.

You probably could not have got fresh milk in Sri Lanka in 1972 – it would have either been evaporated or coconut milk. Either way, I inadvertently left the milk out of my version. I added the tomatoes though.

There is also an ingredient that is used in a traditional Seeni sambol called a Maldive Fish which is a cured dried fish which adds protein and umami flavours to the Seeni Sambol If you want to make this, and you cannot find Maldive fish, you can substitute Asian fish sauce. Or you can leave it out altogether which is what they do in vegetarian versions.

Overall though, the ingredients are pretty close to home. Just forget the tomatoes and the milk if you want to keep it real!

Oh, and btw? No prawns.

The Method

So, it all seems legit until…WTF why are they talking about Prawns? There were no prawns in the ingredients so why are there prawns in the GD recipe???

There are no prawns in Seeni Sambol. And that’s not just me saying that. That comes direct from my mum. And I may be an idiot who knows nothing but she knows Sri Lankan cooking!

So, this is kind of a shambolic recipe. However, if you ignore the magical prawns that do a disappearing act in the ingredients and reappear in the method and the milk which has no place here what so ever. this is not a bad recipe. I didn’t even mind the tomatoes in the final dish!

Here is the full recipe:

And here is a better one from chef Manu Fieldel. This is a vegetarian version so does not contain the possibly hard to find Maldive Fish.

Hope you are having a good week! Stay safe friends…the light at the end of this tunnel seems to be appearing!