Retro Food For Modern Times

24
Dec
2016

Choc Ripple Christmas Wreath – Repost from 2016

categories: Holidays

Still looking for a quick and easy dessert to make for Christmas Day? Look no further than my Chocolate Ripple Christmas Wreath! It’s also as pretty as a picture and delicious to boot!

Making this could not be easier. Get a pack of plain chocolate biscuits, whip up some cream. Add a hefty splash of booze – I chose amaretto but you could use limoncello or Baileys or Kirsch, whatever you have or like. Add a large spoonful of icing sugar into the cream and stir through.

Then sandwich your biscuits together with the cream mixture and shape into a wreath.

Don’t worry too much about getting the shape perfect at first. Once you have the general shape you can push the biscuits together to make a neater circle. Then cover the top and sides with the remaining cream mixture.

Pop this into the fridge for a few hours to set. Then decorate – I used cherries, blueberries, strawberries and mint leaves.

Wow! Has anyone else felt that 2016 was a tumultuous year? I am so glad to be coming to the end of it. I am exhausted and looking forward to the break. No work for me until 6 January so I have a lot of time for some much required r&r.

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Choc Ripple Christmas Wreath

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A quick, easy and delicious festive dessert.

Author: Taryn Fryer

Ingredients

Scale

1 pack plain chocolate biscuits
500ml thickened cream
1 tbsp icing sugar
1 tbsp Amaretto or liqueur of your choice
Cherries, berries and mint leaves to decorate

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Instructions

Pour the cream into a large bowl and beat until firm peaks form. Add the Amaretto and icing sugar and fold through.
Spread each biscuit with approximately 2 teaspoons of the cream and sandwich together. Form into a wreath shape.
Cover with the remaining cream and place in the fridge to set for four hours or overnight.
When ready to serve, garnish with cherries, berries and mint leaves.

Wishing you all the very best for the Festive Season! I hope it’s wonderful however you choose to celebrate.

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04
Dec
2016

French Pink Lady

categories: Cocktail, Gin

How can I have been doing this so long and never have spoken about my unabiding love for the movie Grease? I cannot even begin to tell you how many times I have watched it. And I always wanted to be in a cool girl gang like The Pink Ladies. However , today we are not going to talk about my want to be this type of pink lady:

But about a classic cocktail of the same name – possibly the inspiration for the name of the aforementioned girl gang as I believe the Pink Lady was popular drink in the 1950’s. My “French” take on the classic Pink Lady is that, traditionally applejack is an ingredient in a Pink Lady. However, Applejack was not available in my little suburban bottle shop so I subbed in Calvados. Using French Apple brandy is also a teeny homage to one of the Pink Ladies, Frenchie!

So, in the infamous words of Rizzo, “Okay girls, let’s go get ’em”

The Pink Lady has been around for decades, according to the fount of all knowledge Wikipedia, it was already well known in the Prohibition era. It was also the drink of choice of choice of Hollywood star Jayne Mansfield. I’m not sure if she is holding a Pink Lady in the picture below but it’s pink so let’s put two and two together and raise a glass with Jayne! OMG…how glamourous is she! If just ONE day of my life I could have that sort of va-va-voom I would die happy!

Don’t let the sweet and innocent look of the Pink Lady lull you into a false sense of security. This is not girly drink made from sugar and spice and all things nice. The Pink Lady packs a punch! It almost straight gin, topped up with Applejack / Calvados, with a dash of grenadine, a splash of lemon juice and an egg white being the non-alcoholic components.

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French Pink Lady

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Author: Taryn Fryer

Ingredients

Scale

45ml gin
22.5 ml calvados
7.5 ml lemon juice
1–2 dashes grenadine
1 egg white
Maraschino cherry for garnish

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Instructions

Pour the gin, calvados, lemon juice and grenadine into a cocktail shaker with ice cubes.
Shake vigorously.
Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
Garnish with a maraschino cherry.

I am on a work trip to Canberra for the next few days. There will be precious little time for sight-seeing in our Capital city but I’ll try to fit in a run and see if I can get some photos to share with you all. And right now I need to go pack my bag for the flight tomorrow morning!

Have a fabulous week and remember – think pink!

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29
Nov
2016

REPOST – Potato Almond Balls

categories: 1970's food, 1970's recipes, A-Zof Cooking, Potato, Recipe Fail, Starters

When a chapter called Nuts about Nourishment contains a recipe for Deep Fried Mashed Potato Balls, you know it has to be 1977. And that we are about to delve into The A-Z of Cooking. Potato Almond Balls. I was so excited about these, I ate salad for a week to pre-compensate for the delicious calorific overload.

And then they didn’t work.

The problem was that the egg and almond crust split in many places…and when it did, the mashed potato kind of disintegrated. So in a lot of instances I ended up with the almond crust and not much else. Where they remained whole, they were totally delicious sprinkled with a bit of smoked paprika and dipped in some of my favorite green sauce.

I’m putting the failure of the balls down to the wrong temperatures. Either the balls were too cold or too warm or the oil was. Is it significant that The A-Z of Cooking has no pictures of this dish? It is possible that their Potato Almond Balls also broke into bits?

Here’s the recipe for anyone who wants it, I hope you have better luck than me!

To counteract the effect of deep fried potato balls (and because I had no other photos) I thought I would give you all an update on my attempts at the C25K running program. Today I started week 7 of the program and ran for 25 minutes which was not only the longest time but also the furthest distance I have done so yay me!

Mind you, this is probably a very apt description of both my pace and my style:

Personally, given my new obsession with the ‘My Favorite Murder Podcast,, this might well become my mantra:

And this is probably closer to the truth:;

Next time in The A-Z we are moving onto O for some “Old Fashioned Favourites”. I was hoping to be done with it by the end of the year but given it is nearly December (how the hell did that happen?) it seems unlikely. I’m now aiming for end of summer.

Have a fabulous week everyone!

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02
Nov
2016

Turning Japanese – 1989 Japanese Snack Plate

categories: Chicken & Poultry, Japan, Prawns, Radish, Snacks

Konichiwa dear people o’ the Internet.

Today we are exploring the first part of a two-part series taken from the pages of Vogue Entertaining October / November 1989 with a gorgeous Japanese snack plate.

On the plate today we have Japanese Fried Chicken, Prawn Canapé’s, Radish Canapés, edamame beans, wasabi and mayo! This is so pretty, perfect for a Spring brunch!

The magazine comes from a time when ingenious recipes and inventive ideas may have involved giving your guests a bowl of roses to munch on. Yummy!

Roses aside, we are putting some Spring flavours in full bloom on today’s Japanese snack plate. Just as an aside though, guess which day the J key on my laptop decided to break, meaning it had to be hit about four times harder than all the other keys. The sound track for the writing of this post was tap, tap, tap THUMP tap, tap, tap THUMP.

Minor typing difficulties aside, lets turn our attention to some hors d’œuvres for our Japanese snack plate.

Japanese Stuffed Radishes

Could not be simpler and the crunchy peppery radish is delicious with the salty punch of the caviar. Simply slice your radish down the middle of the stem, then scoop out a small hollow in your radish and fill with caviar. I think nowadays if you were making this you would use tobiko instead of normal caviar but maybe that was readily available in 1989. Come to think of it, I have no idea if it is readily available now!

Stuffed Prawns

Pardon me for having two things stuffed with caviar in this post but seeing as I had to buy it specially, I wanted to get some bang for my buck. Also, if it was good enough for Vogue Entertaining in 1989 its good enough for me!

This is also very tasty with this time a contrast between the sweet prawn meat and the salty caviar. Add a dob of pungent wasabi and some creamy mayo and you have perfection! The original recipe had the prawn heads left on. I took mine off. I just think it is easier to eat with head and shells gone.

It is important to skewer the prawns so they stay straight.

To make these you will need:

12 medium green king prawns
2 tsp salt
25g black caviar

Place a satay stick through the body of each prawn to keep it straight. Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil. Drop the prawns in and cook for 3-5 minutes. Remove from the water and leave to cool.

Remove the satay sticks and remove the heads and shells, leaving the tail. Split the prawns down the back with a sharp knife and remove the digestive tracts. Fill the tract cavity with a little caviar. Repeat.

Soy and Ginger Edamame (loosely adapted from A Moveable Feast by Katy Holder)

These are not from Vogue Entertaining Oct /November 1989 but make a tasty and colourful addition to the snack plate.

200g edamame in pods
1/2 tbsp Japanese rice vinegar
1/2 tbsp light olive oil
1/2 tbsp mirin
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp grated ginger
pinch of sugar

Cook the edamame in boiling water for 2 minutes. Drain and refresh under cold water. Pop the beans from their pods. Combine all the other ingredients in a bowl, stirring well to dissolve the sugar. Pour over the edamame and sit for at least an hour to let the flavours absorb. Strain and add to the plate.

Japanese Fried Chicken

I did not make this for the snack plate. We had it for dinner the night before but I made extra so we could have it on the plate. This is so good. Huh…it’s fried chicken, like it was ever going to be bad! This was great hot from the fryer in the evening and also super eaten cold the next day – it was not too greasy like a lot of fried chicken as leftovers and still quite crispy, although it is not a thick southern style coating.

Here’s the recipe!

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Japanese Fried Chicken

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A delicious Japanese take on fried chicken

Author: Taryn Fryer

Ingredients

Scale

500g chicken breast meat, skin on
3 tsp freshly grated ginger
1 clove garlic, chopped finely
1 spring onion chopped finely
2 tsp sesame oil
2 tsp Japanese soy sauce
1 tbsp mirin
1 tsp wasabi paste
1 small dried chilli, chopped
pinch of black pepper
1 egg white, lightly beaten
2/3 cup cornflour
vegetable oil for deep frying
Mayonnaise, wasabi to serve

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Instructions

Cut the chicken into bite sized pieces.
Make a marinade of the ginger, garlic, spring onion, sesame oil, soy sauce, mirin, pepper and chilli.
Marinate the chicken for at least 1 1/2 hours.
Mix eggwhite and cornflour well.
Add the chicken and marinate.
Heat the oil.
Deep-fry spoonfuls of the chicken mixture until golden brown.
Drain onto crushed kitchen paper and keep hot whilst the rest of the mixture is cooked.
To serve, spread on platter with dobs of mayo and wasabi

That’s it from me, have a great week!

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30
Oct
2016

The Dishiest Halloween Dish – Black and Blue Salsa

categories: Books, Podcasts, Side Dishes, Tasty Reads, TV

Wow! It’s been sooooo very long since I have done one of these posts. I think this is worth the wait though. Ever since I found the recipe in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Light & Easy, the Black and Blue Salsa, as I have come to call it, has been on high rotation in my kitchen! And it’s a perfect meal for a Halloween dinner, given it’s dark and spooky colour!

You can see it top of the photo here as part of the salmon burrito bowl (except it was on a plate) that i had for dinner the other night. The main ingredients of the salsa are black beans and blueberries hence the black and blue name.

If this combination appears strange to you, don’t worry it did to me as well. But trust me, it works! It also looks quite lovely on a plate because the dark colours contrast nicely with against greens, chicken, fish etc. Hugh describes it as “dark and devillishly well flavoured, ,this is hot sharp, sweet and smoky all at the same time” He’s right, it is also totally delicious and highly addictive as well as being jam-packed with healthful ingredients!

I like this with some coriander added. The original recipe does not have it.

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Black and Blue Salsa

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A delicious and healthy salsa, perfect with chicken, fish or any grilled meat

Author: Taryn Fryer

Ingredients

Scale

For The Salsa
400g can of black beans, rinsed and drained
200g blueberries
1 small red onion, chopped
2 medium hot red chillies, deseeded and finely chopped
Handful of coriander leaves, chopped

For The Dressing

1 garlic clove, smashed
juice of 1 lime
1 tsp sweet smoked paprika
1 tsp sugar
2 tsp cider vinegar
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Salt and Pepper

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Instructions

For The Dressing

Combine the garlic, lime juice, paprika, sugar, cider vinegar and oil in a jar. Shake well to combine. Add salt and pepper to taste. Let sit for around half an hour to let the flavours develop.

For the Salsa

Combine the blackbeans, blue berries, onion an chilli in a bowl
Strain the dressing to remove the garlic and pour over.
Mix well.
If possible, let stand for half an hour before serving.
Just before serving sprinkle the chopped coriander over the top.
Enoy!

Notes

You can also add diced avocado into this. I left it out this time because I already had avocado on my plate.

Elsewhere in life….

Watching

I am mid way through S2 of Narcos and thoroughly enjoying it. Ditto Stranger Things

Narcos

Reading

My current read is Truly, Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty. I loved one of her previous books, Big Little Lies but I am struggling with this one.

Tasty Reads

The October Choice was Preserving. I chose The Modern Preserver by Kylee Newton. I loved this book and it is likely to be my Tasty Reads book of the year. I have made so many things from it and every one of them has been great!

The only book likely to beat it from top position at the end of the year is the November / December choice – Free Choice. On the back of some very high review praise, I have chosen Stirring Slowly by Georgina Hayden.

Described as a “new modern classic” by none other than Jamie Oliver, I am looking forward to picking this up and getting stuck in!

Podcasts

Seeing as my favorites Tanis and The Black Tapes are both on between season hiatus, I have started listening to My Favorite Murder. It’s a comedy true crime podcast and I love it. I think the two hosts are brilliant and I am so glad I still have 30+ episodes to go before I am caught up!

http://www.feralaudio.com/show/my-favorite-murder/

Other

OMG. I have started running. Well, I have started staggering around the back streets and local track in a facsimile of running. But it’s a start. I am doing the Couch to 5k program and am midway through week 4.

My aim is to be able to do a full 5k by Christmas. We’ll see. It really starts to ramp up after this week, I am a little nervous. And the thing is, I totally hate doing it when I am doing it. My chest aches, my legs ache, I am slow and ungainly and huff and puff like a pack a day smoker. But everytime I do it, I get a little bit better. And that feels marvellous!

This week I am looking forward to cooking the Cherry Flapjack Granola from Stirring Slowly and a Tom Yum soup from another Tasty Reads favourite, Adam Liaw’s Big Pot.

What are you reading / watching / listening to?

What are you looking forward to cooking?

Have a Happy Hallloween, a fab week and to borrow a catch phrase from my new favorite podcast, “Stay sexy; don’t get murdered”

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