Retro Food For Modern Times - Yesterdays Recipes, Cooked Today

03
Jul
2020

John Hillerman’s Paella

categories: Celebrity Recipes, Rice, Spain

Does anyone know / remember The Libertines song “Music When The Lights Go Out”? The hook line in this piece of indie-pop boy love runs “All the highs and the lows and the to’s and fro’s, they left me dizzy”. That is exactly how I felt when making John Hillerman’s Paella. No doubt about it, this was a tough cook. But oh boy did it pay off!

The Lows

Converted rice? Not available for love or money.
Clams in clam juice ? Nada.
Bottled clam juice? No, nay, never.
Polish Sausage…probably could have bought some but I had chorizo in the freezer which seemed more paella-ish anyway

I made this during the height of the ‘rona lockdown. But I honestly feel that my inability to get hold of these ingredients were not limited to that insane time of food shortages.

So, had this been one of my recipes? I would have ripped it up and we would have never more heard of it. But this was was not my recipe, this was John Hillerman’s Paella recipe that I was testing for Jenny for her Murder She Wrote Cookbook so onward and upward it was.

The To’s and And The Fro’s

I didn’t have converted rice. I didn’t have clam juice. Which meant I could not follow the first step of the recipe.

I had:

Bomba paella rice.
Fresh clams.
Frozen fish stock.

This meant that if I found another recipe that got me through that first step of cooking the rice, then the rest should fall into place like one of those Rube Goldberg machines I have become obsessed with during lockdown.

The recipe I used was the one below. I followed all the directions for cooking the rice per that recipe. But then switched back to John Hillerman’s Paella recipe from the step where he says to “saute the chicken in olive oil”.

Sorry, they won’t let me link it directly so here is the URL: https://www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk/recipes/chicken-paella-with-squid-and-beans/

Here is John’s recipe:

I was literally toing and froing between the two recipes and the pan and the ingredients, making sure everything cooked properly!

The Highs

Have you seen the photos? This dish was lush!!! It was so pretty, so colourful, so full of joy!

It looked gorgeous, smelled like heaven and tasted even better.

John Hillerman’s Paella brought the smell and taste of Spain into a very grey wintery Melbourne day. It was seriously like a ray of sunshine!

I LOVED this!!!! So, so, so good!!!!! The end result made it all worthwhile!!!

Thank you Jenny for the recipe! This is the best paella I have ever made and I will be sure to make it again! When travel opens up and we can spend time together again, this definitely needs to be on our menu! In my imagination, we are sitting in your garden with Mr R and Battenberg Belle and having a lovely long lunch of paella, great conversation, lots of vino, and some great tunes courtesy of Mr Rathbone. Some ’60’s bossa nova maybe?

Oh, also for those of you like me who do not know who John Hillerman was? His best-known role was as the incredibly suave Higgins In Magnum PI but he also appeared in Blazing Saddles, Chinatown (high on my must-see list), Murder She Wrote (obvs), and A Very Brady Sequal among many, many other films and tv shows!

Have a fabulous week friends!

Stay safe, eat paella, watch John Hillerman on the tv and listen to The Libertines!

Sounds like a pretty good way to spend the weekend to me!

28
Jun
2020

Cheese-Stuffed Chillies

categories: 1970's recipes, Cheese, Chilli, Good Housekeeping World Cookery

These cheese-stuffed chillies are based on a recipe from the Ceylon section of Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery Book. So…I know a little bit about Sri Lankan cooking and never have I ever heard of a cheese-stuffed chilli. Never. Not once. Just in case I am not being entirely clear – no one in my family, not my grandmothers, not my mother, not my aunts, cousins, no other writers of Sri Lankan cookbooks have ever made or even mentioned cheese stuffed chillies in the context of Sri Lankan cooking.

Until now.

I became a little obsessed with this recipe because I started wondering if this was the original Jalapeno popper. Turns out the term jalapeno popper came to prominence in Texas in around 1972 so the recipes are definitely contemporaneous in time if a continent or two apart in space.

The recipe was vague about the type of cheese to use. Mum said that in Sri Lanka when she was growing up the only types of cheese available were Kraft cheese in a tin and Edam. Neither of which I happened to have on hand.

I did have some goat’s cheese and I remembered that my friend Leesa once brought an amazing dish to cookbook club that was feta baked with thyme, honey and walnut. Which also accounted for the other thing that was bothering me which was the inclusion of sugar in the recipe.

Hmm…so goat’s cheese to sub for the cheese in a tin, honey to sub in for the sugar. Looks like a recipe is coming together!

These cheese-stuffed chillies were delicious!!!!

There was some heat from the chillis, creaminess and a little bit of salty tanginess from the cheeseand the mustard, sweetness from the honey, crunchy toastiness from the nuts and a hit of herbiness from the thyme.

Perfect drinking snack!!!

I could have eaten a dozen of these with an ice-cold beer on a sunny afternoon. And I would have been in total bliss! They were also nice with a glass of red wine on a cold winter’s night too!

A Digression in the World of Major League Eating

Which reminds me. I found this amazing factoid on Wikipedia when doing some research on the origin of the jalapeno popper.

“Joey “Jaws” Chestnut holds the Major League Eating record for jalapeño poppers, eating 118 in 10 minutes at the University of Arizona on 8 April 2006.”

This of course took me down a path of Major League Eating. Turns out our boy Jaws (known on the MLE site as “the greatest eater in history” and “the apex predator” does not restrict himself to the jalapeno. He also holds records for downing Chicken Wings (both long form and 12 minute), pulled pork sandwiches, hot dogs, meat pies, donuts, eggs, asparagus, corned beef sandwiches, pork ribs, Philly Cheesesteaks, funnel cakes, fish tacos, mutton sandwichs, traditional tacos, shrimp wontons, pulled pork, horseshoe sandwiches (???), pulled pork sliders, long form burritos, short form ramen, gyros, Twinkies, boysenberry pie, tamales, gyoza, gumbo, ice cream sandwiches, grilled cheese sandwiches, poutine, shrimp cocktail..there are more but I lost the will to live whilst typing that lot out.

Sadly, the prize for French cut green beans (2.71 pounds in six minutes) went to Joey Jaws arch-rival Crazy Legs Conti. Shine on you Crazy Legged Diamond!

Cheese Stuffed Chillies – The Recipe

I also put my stuffed chillies under the grill to melt the cheese, toast the nuts and get some nice roastiness on the chillies. But you could serve them as is per the recipe if you wanted.

The ultimate verdict on these cheese-stuffed chillies is that they are not at all Sri Lankan but are totally delish! Just don’t invite Joey Jaws Chestnut over if you plan on making them. Or make a LOT!

Next stop on the good Housekeeping World Cookery Tour is China! Let’s see what inauthentic food we can find from the land of dragons and emperors! I’m hoping for some dumplings!

Have a great week!

16
Jun
2020

Coffee Ice Cream Sodas – The ManBrown Suit

categories: Coffee, Dining With The Dame, Drinks

Hello crime readers and food lovers! Today on Dining with the Dame I am looking at the food found in the fourth novel by Dame Agatha Christie, The Man in The Brown Suit, published in 1924. Like The Murder on the Links there was not much mention of food – at one point I seriously thought that this post might have to be on “dry toast and ginger-ale” which is mentioned as a meal taken by the very seasick heroine. Happily for me, later in the book she buys not one, but two, coffee ice cream sodas to soothe her jagged nerves following one of her adventures.

The Man in the Brown Suit – The Plot

Our heroine, Anne Beddingfield leads a quiet life but is ever so ready for adventures. After the death of her father she decides she wants to live in London and heads there for a job interview. On the way home, Anne sees a man fall onto the live rail at the station and die. Anne picks up a note dropped by the doctor who pronounced the man dead which reads “17.1 22 Kilmorden Castle”.

The man is identified as LB Carton and in his pocket was a viewing document for The Mill House, owned by Sir Eustace Peddler MD. The very next day a strangled woman is found dead in the same house. The eponymous “man in the brown suit” who was seen entering the property shortly after the dead woman is named a suspect.

Anne realises that Killmorden Castle is the name of a ship, sailing to South Africa. She uses the last of her money to buy a ticket.

Hijinks ensue!

The Man in The Brown Suit contains:

Travel to South Africa
Shifty secretaries
Suspicious clergymen
Stolen diamonds
Romance
Kidnapping
Murder attempts
And of course, the mysterious man in the brown suit

The Man in the Brown Suit is also funnier than any of the previous novels. There are quite a few witty lines, mostly to do with Guy Pagett, the shifty secretary mentioned above.

“Guy Pagett is my secretary, a zealous, painstaking, hardworking fellow, admirable in every respect. I know no one who annoys me more” says Sir Eustace. He also describes Pagett as having “the face of a fourteenth-century poisoner”.

The Covers

A lot of the covers for The Man in The Brown Suit either depict the scene on the train platform or else the ship, The Killmorden Castle.

I have chosen my two favourites here.

The one on the left has a Frank Abignale, Catch Me if You Can vibe which very much enjoyed. The one on the right takes the prize for bonkers with a depiction of a long blonde wig and a bloodied razor.

The Recipe – Coffee Ice Cream Sodas

“I walked into Cartwright’s and ordered two coffee ice-cream sodas – to steady my nerves. A man, I suppose would have had a stiff peg but girls derive a lot of comfort from ice cream sodas”

The Man in the Brown Suit, Agatha Christie

Coffee Ice Cream Soda – Dining with The Dame 4

Print Recipe

So good you might want two! And for the daring, it also has a “stiff peg” in it’

Author: Taryn Nicole
Yield: 1 1x

Ingredients

Scale

¼ cup hot coffee
1 tbsp sugar
1–2 tablespoons coffee liqueur or rum (optional)
Club Soda to fill your glass
2–3 scoops coffee ice cream
Finely grated chocolate (optional)
Maraschino cherry (optional)

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

Stir the sugar into the hot coffee.
Chill until ready to serve.
When ready to serve, add the coffee liqueur / rum.
Pour into your serving glass.
Add the ice cream.
Top with club soda.
Garnish with grated chocolate and a maraschino cherry.

Notes

Alternate or additional garnishes might include chocolate sauce or whipped cream.

Other Food Mentioned in The Man in The Brown Suit

Dry toast and Ginger ale
Chicken Broth
Curry

A Personal Note

I identified with Anne Beddingfield quite a bit, particularly at the start of the book where she is girl from the ‘burbs, longing for both adventure and romance. Cue me at 14…15…16…17….

The plot about the stolen diamonds also made me remember a story I wrote when I was…maybe 10? I had just learned that the nickname for diamonds is “ice” and immediately wrote a story about a band of diamond thieves who hid their stolen wares in a large pitcher when the police came calling.

They would have got away with their nefarious ways except for an eagle-eyed girl detective (Trixie Belden? Nancy Drew? No, ME!) who noticed that on this very hot day, the “ice” in the pitcher was not melting as it should be.

Thieves caught, diamonds restored to their rightful owner. All well with the world!

I hope all is well with your world! Have a great week.

14
Jun
2020

Tackling Food Waste

categories: Curry, Pastry, Rice

One of my goals this year was to reduce food waste. One of the downfalls of blogging, and being in cookbook club, is that I often buy ingredients of which I only need a small amount. Add to this my penchants for stocking up when things are on sale and buying things well…just because. As a result, my freezer and pantry are jam-packed and I sometimes forget about fresh produce in the fridge until it is too far gone to use.

Last year, I stole an idea off Jenny from Silver Screen Suppers and implemented a dairy shelf in my fridge. All dairy items go onto it which means I can keep track of those items a bit better. To twist the old phrase around “In sight, in mind”.

Recently I have also (maybe also inspired by Jenny???) implemented a “Use By Shelf” that contains the items that need to be used in the near future. Again, I have found that keeping these items front of mind has helped me to ensure that they are used in a timely manner.

Fridge Freezer Pantry Week

My latest endeavour is Fridge, Freezer, Pantry week where one week a month I minimise my shopping and cook as much as possible from items in….wait for it…my fridge, freezer and pantry.

Bet you never saw that one coming given the ambiguous name of the challenge!

My aim for this week is to only buy fresh fruit and vegetables. Everything else has to come from you know where!

Here is how the first attempt at this went

Sunday Night – Baked Lobster!

Cos, you know, if you’re going to start something, start it with a bang!

I bought lobster tails at Christmas when they were on sale. They came from the freezer. Everything else came from the pantry.
The recipe called for fennel. I didn’t have any. Normally I would have bought some but this week? I had some dill leftover from the potato bake so I used that instead.
I also subbed in Worchestershire sauce for the anchovy essence the recipe demanded.

This was an okay dish. I think the white sauce dulled the flavour of the lobster a bit which prevented it from being a great dish. I would not make it again which is why I have not included the recipe. If you want it, let me know. I don’t know why you would but hey, you do you!

Monday Night – South American Chicken and Rice

This was amazing! Diana Henry’s from Oven to Table is our current Tasty Reads selection and so far every dish has been a winner.

This recipe used chicken from the freezer and rice and black beans from the pantry. The only things I bought specially to make this was a punnet of cherry tomatoes and some chicken stock.

I did not use fresh peppers, I had some in a jar which I used instead. There were also chillies and garlic in that jar so I added them in too.

There was a lot of this leftover and given I had the potato bake and some soup to eat for lunches I made little one-serving packages of this and popped in the freezer for future use.

Recipe: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/recipes/everyday/chicken/south-american-spiced-chicken-beans-rice-avocado-pickled-chillies/

Tuesday night – Pizza

Earlier in the week Mum dropped off a heat and eat pizza. Someone had given her two and we benefitted from her surplus. I had film club that night so this was a perfect night for the Fussiest eater in the World to pop something in the oven whilst I chatted about the pros and cons of Revolutionary Road with my friends.

It was ok. Not as good as pizza shop pizza but better than frozen / supermarket pizza.

Wednesday – Bacon, Halloumi and Vegetable Pasties

A little while back I made the veggie pasties from Jamie Oliver’s Veg. I had a LOT of the leftover vegetable mix so I popped it in the freezer. The halloumi and pastry also came from the freezer.

The bacon came from the use-by shelf. 😇

I bought nothing for this meal and it was delicious!!!! Believe me, the picture does this no justice!

Thursday and Friday – Lamb and Cashew Curry

Oh. Wow. This was AMAZING!!!!

I used Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s Lamb and Cashew Curry for this.

I had to buy cashew nuts and coriander for this but it was worth every cent! This was divine! The lamb was melt in the mouth tender and the cashew gravy was lick your plate clean good!

Oh! I intended to make some flatbreads for the curry but ended up just serving it with rice. I bought some oat bran for the flatbreads which I did not end up using. Grrrr. 😡

Saturday – Squid, Chorizo and Chickpea Salad

Yay! I got to use those chickpeas on the Use By shelf!

I bought some oregano for this. It was marked way down. TBH though, I would have been happy with the leftover coriander from the curry.

Oh lord, I dropped my recipe for this into the frying pan that had all the chorizo oil in it! Luckily I was able to find it here!

My favorite dishes…I tried so hard to come up with just one but it really was a tie between the curry, the pasties and the South American Chicken Rice!

The Positives

Eating out of the fridge, freezer, and pantry created some amazing meals. Having said that, I had a lot of things in those places that made it easy!
Pretty much everything on the use by shelf got eaten.
I spent WAY less money than in a ” normal” week of shopping
I also feel I threw out fewer items than usual.
It was really fun to build my menus around the items that needed using!
Being conscious of not wasting anything also made me more proactive about ensuring that the leftover South American Chicken and the soup I was having for lunch were also frozen up for future use.

The Negatives

On Saturday morning I had to throw out an untouched bunch of broccolini which I could have used in the pasties.
We also threw out a whole cucumber, some ratty-looking chives and some bean sprouts
I now have pretty much a whole punnet of oregano to use, which even though it was bought highly reduced I have no further use for and which I don’t think really worked in the salad for which it was bought.
I bought that oat bran I never ended up using. One more thing in the pantry….

The Learnings

Keep a much closer eye on the produce drawers
Don’t buy things for which you have only one use (even if they are on sale)
Keep using what I have
Try to shop more than once a week for fresh produce so that things do not languish in that produce drawer
Take tips from the experts.

Whilst a few things went into the freezer and a few things went into the bin, on the whole I was really happy with my first attempt at fridge, freezer pantry week. It made me conscious of things that I need to be doing all the time and of how I can make the best use of what I already have. More than that though, it inspired me to keep going and to really get my act together when it comes reducing the food I waste.

This is what the useby shelf looked like by the end of the week. The four containers at the back are three serves of a cottage pie the Fussiest Eater in the World made for his work dinners and the last of the pasties.

I didn’t quite get through all that hummus but resisted the urge to buy another tub when I went shopping this week.

The three new containers hold some of the leftover chorizo and chickpea salad, and half an onion and half a lemon that I used to make it. That oregano is also there…😣

My favorite dishes…I tried so hard to come up with just one but it really was a tie between the curry, the pasties and the South American Chcken Rice!

If anyone has any tips on what to do with it, please let me know!

Indeed if you have any tips on reducing food waste, food management, etc please send them through, I would love to hear how you meal plan and your ideas on how to reduce waste. I have only just started this journey and know I have a LONG way to go before I get this mastered, so any advice I can benefit from will be greatly appreciated!

Have a great week! Stay safe and reduce waste!

09
Jun
2020

Meredith Baxter’s Tarragon Chicken

categories: Celebrity Recipes, Chicken

I had the shock of my life while doing research for this post. Seriously. More about that later! This was DELICIOUS!!!! The recipe for Tarragon Chicken recipe was sent to me by the lovely Jenny over at Silver Screen Suppers. It will form part of her Murder She Wrote Cookbook and, on taste alone, should be one of the standout recipes of the book!

This is the most delicious comfort food!!! So warm and hearty and tasty and…OMG….I would make this dish every week if I could. Unfortunately, I used the last of our fresh tarragon to make it so, until I can either find some fresh tarragon in the greengrocer or plant some more I will not have it again. It almost makes me want to cry.

I have some dried tarragon in the cupboard but it is really no substitute for fresh!

This is what my tarragon plant looked like before I took all of the good leaves to make this! Poor little thing!

I served my tarragon chicken with garlic bread instead of the suggested rice and it was so good. The combination of the lovely juices from the chicken with mopped up with the crusty, garlicky, buttery bread was perfection!!! I heartily recommend this as an alternative!!!

But now let me tell you what happened when I went to research David Birney!!!!!

Spelling is important!

My main reference for Meredith Baxter is as Elyse Keaton from the very popular tv sitcom Family Ties. The show featured two hippie parents, Baxter and Steven Gross, trying to deal with their ultra-conservative Regan-supporting son Alex, played brilliantly by Michael J. Fox. The show was pitch-perfect. Funny, poignant, clever, sharp…just look at these reviews!!!!!

I also knew that Meredith Baxter came out at some time in the 2000’s. I remember thinking at the time both “You go girl, finally you get to be your true self in public and let the homophobes go fuck themselves” and also “I’m so sad that you didn’t feel that you could do this earlier in your life”.

So, whilst I was aware of Meredith Baxter, David Birney, I knew not at all. So much so that when I first googled him I incorrectly spelled his name as David Birnie and spent a while there thinking that MB had been married to an Australian serial killer!

Turns out he is allegedly a wife-beater so you know, maybe my initial thoughts that he was a dick were not totally unfounded. Let’s not waste any more time on him.

The Recipe

It’s so good.

I did not have to remove my chicken and thicken the sauce, it was thick enough just from cooking. Apart from that, I followed the recipe to the letter and it was fabulous!

Leftovers are also amazing in a jaffle the following day! Sorry for the terrible photo but if you don’t eat that jaffle piping hot, it’s not really a jaffle! I would also LOVE to see that tarragon chicken in a pie.

Look at me…I’m already getting ideas for the next time I make it!

Thanks, Jenny for the recipe! It was truly a winner winner chicken dinner!

Have a great week everyone. Take care and stay safe!