Dishiest Dish – Apricot and Rhubarb Frangipane Tarts

categories: Apricots, Books, Dish of The Week, Dishiest Dish, Pastry, Rhubarb, Tarts, TV

It’s been a while since we have had a dishiest dish – I thought it was timely that we had look at some I had cooked successfully! I made these Apricot and Rhubarb Frangipane Tarts over the break. They were pretty easy to make and tasted delicious!

And who says you can’t play with your food? These are perfect for a little game of tic-tac-toe!

Or you can give them to people you like as little kisses and hugs. Valentine’s day’s a-coming. Why give someone flowers when you can give them some delicious almondy fruity deliciousness?

Who doesn’t love

Crisp buttery pastry – no soggy bottoms here!
A lovely sweet almond filling
The apricots and rhubarb, both of which have a natural tanginess help to make the tarts not too cloying or heavy.
An amaretto and apricot glaze

Never mind saying it with flowers. Proclaim your love with pastry!

My Six Week Challenges

This year, instead of setting a series of resolutions, I was inspired by my friend Ali to try a series of smaller challenges over the course of the year. I started mid-January with 6 weeks of no alcohol. The start of February sees me trying to build a meditation practice! I am aiming for 42 days straight of meditation. I haven’t figured out what I will pick up in mid-Feb but that’s half the fun – deciding what to do next! Hopefully some things I will stick with and some things I may do another six weeks later in the year!

Reading

I have been on a reading binge – I have had a real spurt of books I have enjoyed.

Disclaimer by Renée Knight

Imagine if you started reading a book that had mysteriously appeared in your house only to find out the book was about you. Specifically about you and an incident from your past which you have kept hidden from everyone – and the only other person who knew about it is a long time dead….

I would give this one a 7/10. The plot required a hefty suspension of belief on a couple of major points but all up, a fast paced enjoyable read.

All These Perfect Strangers – Aiofe Clifford

I loved this. But I am a big fan of the mystery set in academia. The Secret History is one of my favorite books and there are some similar themes here. This is not released until March – I was given a free copy for review but it is certainly one I can heartily recommend.

Funnily enough, the book in Disclaimer was called The Perfect Stranger. It was a really weird but totally cool coincidence!

9/10

The Grown Up – Gillian Flynn

This short story (it’s just over 6O pages on my Kindle) has more twists and turns than a spiral staircase. I loved it. And you can read it from start to finish in about an hour!

9/10

Luckiest Girl Alive – Jessica Knoll

Another outsider goes to posh school – mayhem ensues book. I did tell you I had a thing for them. Do not read this if you are one of those (annoying) people who has to like the main character in a book. Tifani/Ani in Luckiest Girl Alive is awful! She’s shallow and self obsessed, snarky and mean. I am about three quarters of the way through this and I am thoroughly enjoying it. I hope the end is not a let down.

I just noticed three out of the four of them mention Gone Girl. And have black, white and yellow covers. I’m sensing a zeitgeist.

Watching

Come Dine With Me

I started watching old episodes of the British Come Dine with Me on the telly over the break and am now utterly obsessed with it. I soon exhausted all the episodes available and am now mainlining episodes on You Tube.

The best part is the narrator. He is hilarious.

Oh and there was a series of episodes with my girl-crush Sabrina Ghayour of Persiana fame.

Pointless

Another British show. This is like a reverse Family Feud where people try to guess the least popular answers to a question, the goal being trying to get an answer that whilst correct, no one in the studio audience chose. It would be a fairly run of the mill quiz show if not for the hosts – host and co host who are just delightful. Charming, witty. Smart. I could watch the two of them banter all day!

The XFiles

So excited about this. We were a week behind the States so are only two episodes in. And it’s been great. Even though I have been watching the classic episodes, when I heard that theme music and saw that they had kept the old intro I got almost a little teary….

Other Stuff

Nigella

And speaking of getting a little teary, I went to see Nigella Lawson in conversation. She was brilliant. There a not many people for whom I would stand in line for and hour and a half just to get a book signed by she was worth every minute.

Now, how about a recipe for these babies?

This week I am looking forward to cooking:

Chicken, Feta and Zucchini Meatballs from my latest Tasty Reads Choice, Life in Balance by Donna Hay. We have our meeting in a few weeks and I feel I have not done this book justice. Time to get cracking!
A Biscotten Torte from the A-Z of Cooking
Tomato, Peach, Proscuitto and Mozzarella Salad. I am the only person in my family who likes fruit mixed in with salads that are not fruit salads. Does that make me weird? Or them?

Time to share. What are you enjoying reading / watching / doing?

What was the best thing you cooked this week?

Whats top of your list to cook next?

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31
Jan
2016

REPOST FROM 2016 – Two Turtledoves

categories: Caramel, Chocolate, Cocktail, Nuts, Sweets

Sometime last year I became obsessed on Pinterest with an American candy called a turtle. I went from never having heard of them in my life to seeing them all over the internet. And holy moly did they sound good! For those of you, like me, who have spent our lives in ignorance of this delight, just listen to this:

A chocolate base.
Toppped with pecan nuts
Topped with caramel
Topped with more chocolate

There is no way on God’s green earth that they could be bad. Supposably. As Joey Tribbiani would say. And depending on your definition, they were really good. Well, they tasted delicious.

Before we get into them, just a word of explanation. The recipe I used called them turtledoves because they used Dove Chocolate. We used to have Dove Chocolate here – apparently not anymore. I wonder when that happened?

My turtledoves started really well.

It all started to fall apart with the caramel. I could not get it to sit on the pecans the way I wanted it too. I wanted it to be a perfect dome, surrounding my pecans but leaving a little bit of chocolate on the base visible. Not ONE of them looked like that.

And the more I tried to meddle with it, the worse it got. In the end, I thought. “Nevermind. It will all be covered with the rest of the chocolate. It will be fine”.

Not so. I was already on a slippery slope and the only way was down. The final chocolate layer was a disaster! I could not get it smooth, it was a hot day and the second I touched it, it would either melt or crack.

Before I show you the wreck of the Hersperus that was my effort, let me show how these babies should look (The Spruce Eats)

And, oh Lord, here are mine….

I know. I’m sorry. Two fails in a row. Although these tasted delish, my turtles may not have been teenage or ninjas but they were mutant. Technically they weren’t even turtledoves because I could not find Dove chocolate.

They did taste good. Really good. Even the fussiest eater in the world was a fan.

But you know food blogging can be very much style over substance so that sometimes I think it doesn’t matter how things taste as long as they look good. In retrospect, I should have not tried to cover them entirely but just done a little splodge of caramel and one of chocolate over the top. Next time….

But I wanted to have something that was a success, of only to soothe my wounded self-esteem. Two fails in a row is no way to write a food blog. So I needed a turtledove. Fast. Guaranteed success.

Hmmmm….

Chocolate
Caramel
Nuts

How about something like this?

Baileys
Frangelico
Butterscotch Schnapps

Now that’s my kind of Turtledove!

And it brought F.Scott out of the funk caused by the Bobby Dazzler.

Normality has resumed in Chez Retro Food. Well, as close as we can get ’round here anyway!

Print

Turtledove

Print Recipe

A cocktail shooter that mirrors the flavours of the classic American turtle candy – chocolate, caramel and nuts

Author: Taryn Fryer

Ingredients

Scale

30ml Butterscotch Schnapps
30ml Frangelico
30ml Bailey’s Irish Cream

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

Pour the Butterscotch Schnapps and the Frangelico into a shooter glass.
Measure out the Bailey’s and pour very slowly over the back of a spoon into the glass.
Enjoy!

Have a wonderful week!

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26
Jan
2016

REPOST – The Bobby Dazzler – History Happy Hour – 1788

categories: Australasia, History Happy Hour, Mocktail, Recipe Fail

G’day mates, Happy Australia Day!

Today we are celebrating with a dubious mocktail with a fabulous name – The Bobby Dazzler.

Australia Day celebrates the 1788 landing of the First Fleet into Port Jackson, New South Wales and the raising of the British flag on Australian soil.

The day is marked by celebrations both formal and informal across Australia, with many people enjoying the day off work with barbecues, at the beach and otherwise enjoying the lovely summer weather.

Over at chez Retro Food, we are celebrating with this:

If you had asked me as a six-year-old to design my perfect drink it would have been something very like the Bobby Dazzler. “I want coca cola with something pink in it and whipped cream and a strawberry and sprinkles….” Seriously, if the Bobby Dazzler came with some glitter and a unicorn, it would have been my six-year-old idea of heaven.

However, according to International Mixed Drinks by Ken Fin (1995) the Bobby Dazzler was created by Maxine Nash at the Bubbles – Wodonga Hotel where it was the runner-up in the Best Border Beverage Competition of 1991. International Mixed Drinks is silent on whether or not Maxine Nash was a six-year-old.

F.Scott who normally taste tests all the cocktails I make wasn’t having a bar of this. But like his namesake F.Scott is partial to a sip o’ the hard stuff.

So another tester had to be found. And how more appropriate than our friend the Tasmanian Devil?

He loved it. But then again, we found him later on gnawing on one of the popper bottles.

The Bobby Dazzler is not so much bad tasting as unremittingly, unrelentingly sweet. And just when you think you can have no more sweet, you get a mouthful of cream.

Unless you are a six-year-old girl or a Tasmanian Devil you probably will not want to celebrate Australia Day with a Bobby Dazzler! I still feel a bit ill after drinking it. I feel like I need to have a little lie down. Simultaneously, I am so wired on caffeine and sugar I feel like I may never sleep again.

For those who want it, here is the recipe:

Print

Bobby Dazzler

Print Recipe

A very sweet and creamy mocktail.

Author: Maxine Nash / Ken Fin

Ingredients

Scale

60ml Grenadine
200ml cola
whipped cream
100‘s and 1000’s or other sprinkles
Strawberry and 2 blueberries to garnish

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Instructions

Blend the Grenadine and cola and pour into a glass.
Top with the whipped cream.
Sprinkle with 100’s and 1000’s and garnish with a strawberry and the blueberries.

I am calling this a recipe fail not because there was anything wrong with the recipe, I think it worked out exactly as it should have. To me the recipe fails because there is no counterbalance to that cloying sweetness. I also did not like that big chunk of whipped cream which pretty much just made your mouth feel greasy. I think ice-cream may have been a better choice. What do I know though? It’s not like I ever came runner-up in the Best Border Beverage competition.

I hope your Australia Day is dazzling, even if this drink is not.

Have a wonderful week.

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18
Jan
2016

REPOST – A Peacock Cake & The Gala At Yala Part 1

categories: Birthday Cake, Cake, Children's Cakes, Sri Lanka, Travel

It was recently the fussiest eater in the world’s birthday and I made him a peacock cake!

Isn’t it adorable? Even if I do say so myself! And for the non-bakers out there it is all assembly, no baking involved. I mean, you can bake a sponge if you want but, for this recipe, it is absolutely not necessary!

Yala National Park – Sri Lanka

But more about our little peacock friend later. The peacock was a special symbol for us as it reminded us of the time we spent at The Yala National Park when we were in Sri Lanka ~~earlier this year.~~..OMG…last year! (2021 Note – This was originally posted in January 2016)

The National Park at Yala is a huge tract of land at the Southern tip of Sri Lanka.. It is home to a myriad of wildlife.
Yala is situated in leopard country and whilst we did two Safaris hoping to see one of these magnificent creatures, we were unlucky both times….or were we? Whilst we did not spot a leopard (pun intended) we saw so many other wild animals, living in their natural habitat that I felt utterly privileged to have been there.

Here was Mr Peacock:

There were monkeys galore:

Sloth Bears:

Some jackals playing:

A crocodile, most definitely not playing:

And a huge amount of elephants – my favourite part was when we saw two older female elephants and a cub walk down to a pond to have a bath and a drink:

Then the baby decided to have a little roll in the water:

Afterwards, they came right up to us, crossing just behind the jeep we were in.

Then there was this little one who decided to head off on his own:

The closest we got to the elusive leopard was these tracks:

On a more sombre note, there is also a monument to the people who lost their life at Yala in the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004.

I could go on about Yala all day and have thousands more photos of all the animals and all the birds but we have a Peacock Cake to talk about!

The Peacock Cake

The recipe comes direct from the Women’s Weekly Cheat’s Cakes 2. The idea behind these books is that you can buy a cake and then just decorate it instead of having to factor in baking as well.

I made the cake for the peacock’s body because there was a random box of cake mix in my pantry. But you could totally use a bought cake. The Women’s Weekly provides a template for the body. I copied it onto a sheet of paper, enlarging it a bit as it was really quite small and I wanted to use up as much of my cake as possible.

One of advantage of cutting around a template is that if a bit of cake “falls” off as you are cutting around it doesn’t really matter and you can have a little taste test as you work. You can call it being greedy if you must. I prefer Quality Assurance.

I used the tip of an ice cream cone for my peacock’s beak. A black jube, topped by a piece of white jelly bean topped by the end piece of a black jelly bean made his eye, with a swoop of licorice creating his cat’s eye.

And you will need something to fortify you because threading all those lollies onto the skewers takes a long time.

If making the Peacock Cake for a children’s party you can place more tail feathers in a glass by the side of the cake if you need too. Just be sure to remove the lollies from the skewers before handing them out.

Here’s the recipe for the Peacock Cake, straight from the book. I had to deviate from some of the sweets suggested because I could not find them – use what you have and let your creative juices flow!!!

This is so fun and colourful and would be a great party cake for a child of any age. If you want to make it and would like a copy of the template, let me know.

Have a wonderful week. I hope it’s full of pomp and pageantry. For me, today is the return to work after the Christmas break which is going to be tough! Back to the dreaded alarm and early mornings. On the upside, tonight I am seeing one of my food heroes, Nigella Lawson, live in conversation at the Melbourne Town Hall – it should be A-MAZING!

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09
Jan
2016

Frikkadels – The Danish Girl Goes To Sri Lanka

categories: Books, Dill, Minced Beef, Movies, Sri Lanka

I am reading The Danish Girl for book club. I am not that far into the book – so there are no spoilers here for anyone who may be concerned but there was a part very early in the book that blew my teeny mind and most likely not at all for the any of the reasons you might be thinking!

Here is the passage:

Even with his eyes closed, standing shirtless in front of his wife felt obscene. It felt as if she’s caught him doing something he had promised he would avoid – not like adultery, but more like resuming a bad habit he’d given his word he would quit, like drinking aquavit in the canal bars of Christianshavn or eating frikadeller in bed”

– David Ebershoff, The Danish Girl

In Sri Lankan Burgher cooking, we have a delicious meatball called a Frikkadel. The name was too similar to the frickadeller found in The Danish Girl for me not to undertake some extensive research. (Otherwise known as googling the word Frikadeller.) And yes, they are pretty much one and the same.

Knowing this also helped to fill a gap in my knowledge about these meatballs. I have long wondered why they are flavoured with dill which is not used that much in Sri Lankan cooking. But it is used a lot in Scandinavian Cooking. Mystery solved!

I cooked some ages ago and never got around to posting them so here are my Friikkadels.

Sri Lankans would not normally eat frikkadels in bed but they would be quite commonly handed around at a drinks party as a “short eat” which is what we call finger food.

Here is the “official” description from the delightful ( but totally demented) Daily News Cookbook, a bastian of Sri Lankan Cooking.

“The term “short eats” was originally used to describe the dainty sandwiches, dry cheese or other savoury biscuits, potato chips and miniature sausages accompanying the drinks at sherry or cocktail parties which usually began at six o’clock in the evening and lasted for a couple of hours at the most….

The chief requisite of short eats is that should appeal to the eye as well as the palate; but they must also be easy to eat – that is, small enough to be conveyed to the mouth with the fingers or, at the most, a small wooden pick”

My frikkadels were eaten as short eats with a dollop of date and tamarind chutney and a garnish of coriander. However, the best, best, best way to eat your frikkadels – better than a short eat or even in bed is as part of a lampries.

Part of a what you ask? One day, when I have an infinite amount of time on my hands I will make one for you. And your minds will be blown by the awesome deliciousness of them. It’s unlikely to happen in the foreseeable purely because of the seven billion things that need to be included. For the lampries is a little pack of many items of Sri Lankan delciousness. Traditionally this would be cooked and served in banana leaves but nowadays alfoil is also used. The lampries contains:

Ghee rice
Lampries Curry – made with chicken, lamb beef and pork. I know it sounds mental but it’s so good!
Frikkadels
Brinjal Pahi – which is an eggplant pickle
Coconut Sambal
Prawn Blachang – which is a dried prawn pickle type thing. Ish.

Now do you see why I will most likely never make this myself? Not only do you need to have all of those things. But they all have about twenty ingredients each. To make lampries tis a labour of love. Which is why we buy them frozen. The best are straight from the kitchen of a little old Sri Lankan lady. Next best is from your local Sri Lankan cafe or restaurant.

And here is one that I ate at The Dutch Burgher Union when we were in Sri Lanka last year:

My favourite way of eating a lampries is to eat one of the frikkadels first. Then the rest. Then the second frikkadel as the very last thing. Kind of like the cherry on the top!

Frikkadels came to Sri Lanka from the Dutch who borrowed them from the Danes. There is also a South African version also via the Dutch. Frikkadels can also be found in many other countries of Northern Europe. This is certainly the little meatball that could!

Print

Frikkadels

Print Recipe

Delicious Sri Lankan /Dutch / Danish meatballs

Author: Taryn Fryer

Ingredients

Scale

500g minced beef – do not use the leanest type, you need a higher fat content to keep the frikkadels moist
1 large red onion, finely chopped
1 large garlic clove, finely chopped
a piece of ginger about the same size as the clove of garlic, grated
1 tsp black pepper
juice of 1 lime
a large pinch of ground cloves
a pinch of cinnamon
a pinch of grated nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
2 sprigs of dill, finely chopped
2 eggs
1 cup of bread crumbs for coating
Oil for frying, ideally coconut but peanut will do

Optional Ingredients

Lime wedges to serve.
Coriander leaves to serve
Chutney or sweet chilli sauce to serve

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Instructions

Separate the eggs.
Mix the minced (ground) beef, onions, ginger, garlic, pepper, lime juice, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg dill and salt thoroughly with the egg yolks.
Form into balls the size of large marbles.
Beat the whites of the eggs with a fork just enough to break them up but without frothing.
Dip the balls into the eggs whites then roll in the crumbs so they are well coated.
Heat the oil in a deep pan until boiling then fry the frikkadels a few at a time.
When cooked through they should be crisp on the outside and juicy on the inside.
Keep hot, draining on kitchen paper.
Serve with a wedge of lime, chutney or as part of a lampries.

Why not try some at your next party? Or in a lampries? Or even in bed?

The Danish Girl does not open here until the end of the month. Have any of you seen it? What did you think?

Have a fabulous week!

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