1970's recipes Archives - Page 3 of 14 - Retro Food For Modern Times

Tag: 1970’s recipes

17
May
2022

Chicken Chanteclair

categories: 1970's food, Chicken, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, United States of America, World Cooking

I am not doing a Best of April post as the very sad and sudden passing of our beloved boy Oscar at the end of the month has muted pretty much everything that was good. We are still working through our grief which for me personally has meant a great lethargy. I have barely been motivated to cook and not at all motivated to write until today. Baby steps are enough at the moment. But one of the things I made just before Oscar passed away was the recipe for Chicken Chanteclair from the Creole section of Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery which was so tasty and comforting that I had to share it.

What on Earth is Chicken Chanteclair?

The name Chanteclair comes from the French words chanter meaning to sing and clair meaning clearly. So, to my mind this is a dish that will inspire you to sing its praises loud and strong.

Chicken Chanteclair is a Coq Au Vin by another name. I can’t see any particular Creole influences in this dish – to me this is purely French. Indeed one of my notes from when I made this was that it made the house “smell like France”. And, just to be clear, I didn’t mean that in the way I mean it when I talk about our trip to Toulouse. There, it smelt like every male in the town was using the streets as his own personal urinal. Chicken Chanteclair made the house smell of herbs and wine and meat cooking low and slow. It smelled like family and comfort. One of my other notes on this recipe was “this is the kind of dish you cook for people you love”

Here’s The Recipe: Chicken Chanteclair

The actual recipe wasn’t much so here are my notes:

1 kilo of chicken thighs on the bone.
I added 3 sprigs of thyme and 2 bay leaves to the marinade
For the marinade I used 3/4 bottle of wine (Just enough left over for a glass with the meal)
I threw in 12 fresh mushrooms as well as the dried mushrooms
I wasn’t sure about the tarragon at the end but it really worked
I served mine with mashed potatoes to soak up that luxurious sauce. Crusty bread would also be a great option!

Apart from those changes, the rest was easy. Marinade the ingredients overnight, pop them in the oven and voila – Chicken Chanteclair!

The leftovers were also delicious in some cheddar and jalapeno biscuits I made!

This is so easy to make but it feels like a much more complex dish. It is delicious, reheats well and is comfort food at its best. This will go on high rotation at my house!

I really hope you cook this for someone or someones you love very soon!

I am away a training course all of next week so will not be posting anything. The following week I will be back with a Dining with the Dame. It is a Poirot and our very first Ariadne Oliver novel!

Have a wonderful week!

04
Jan
2022

How To Eat Spaghetti

categories: 1970's food, Margaret Fulton Cookbook, Pasta

Happy International Spaghetti Day! We must have been pretty gauche back in the 1970s because in her eponymous cookbook, Margaret Fulton had to show us how to eat spaghetti. Lord only knows what we’d been doing before this. Launching face-first into the plate? Lady and the Tramping it? Employing scissors a la Buster Keaon?

Thank goodness we had Margaret to tell us how to do it with a modicum of grace and class.

Three Steps to Spaghetti Eating Heaven

I very clearly remember my parents teaching me this exact method of twirling spaghetti in our favourite Italian restaurant (Leo’s Spaghetti Bar) when I was around 5. I’m not sure if they had been taking lessons from Margaret or were just trying to prevent the tabletop from looking like Armageddon. Apparently, though this is not the proper way of eating spaghetti at all.

It would be remiss if I left this post without commenting on the model in the spoon twirling shots. That woman has quite hairy arms. Nowadays she would be epilated, waxed and / or photoshopped into hairless conformity. The 1970s were content to let it all hang out. Except for their spaghetti which was tightly coiled around a fork, thanks to Margaret Fulton!

If you would like to celebrate today by eating some spaghetti, you can find a recipe here!

Have a great week!

12
Dec
2021

A Man’s Barbecued Chicken?

categories: 1970's recipes, Chicken, Chicken & Poultry, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, United States of America

When I first saw the recipe for A Man’s Barbecued Chicken, I assumed it was so called because it had a hefty slug of booze, most likely Bourbon, in the barbecue sauce. Because God forbid that the women of 1973 were getting sozzled on Maker’s Mark while cooking chicken. Then I read the recipe and there is no alcohol at all in it. So that theory went down the gurgler. I am actually baffled as to why this would specifically be a man’s barbecued chicken.

This was really delicious. I particularly liked the sauce. I find a lot of barbecue sauces far too sweet for my palate but this had a lovely balance of sweet and sour. The recipe does contain that mysterious ingredient “piquant table sauce” which a couple of readers have suggested will likely be A1 steak sauce. I still don’t have any of that so I used Worchestershire Sauce.

I used skin-on thigh cutlets instead of quarter chickens and tomato passata instead of the tomato juice in the recipe.

The sauce really did become finger-licking good! Hmmm…Is that why it’s A Man’s Barbecued Chicken? Maybe the women of the 1970’s didn’t lick their fingers?

The method of cooking the chicken was weird, you put it in the dish skin side down for the first half an hour then turned it over. The chicken stayed very moist – I am not sure if that was this method of cooking or the frequent basting with the sauce that did that but either way, it worked!!!

I served this with a very simple potato and watercress salad and some of the additional sauce on the side. Corn would also be a great accompaniment as would a green salad.

A Man’s Barbecued Chicken – The Recipe

We here at Retro Food for Modern Times believe that one of the joys of food is the sharing of it with our friends and fam. So, today we are changing the game on A Man’s Barbecue Chicken by changing the name.

Cook it, eat it with people you love, or share it with strangers. Either way, you and everyone else who eats it will be happier, even just for a few sticky-fingered moments.

Have a great week!

And if you have any insight into the original name, drop me a note in the comments!

05
Dec
2021

Cabin Casserole

categories: 1970's food, 1970's recipes, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, Meat, United States of America

The very name Cabin Casserole conjures up something hearty and comforting. Something the Ingalls family might have eaten on Little House on The Prairie. And the recipe for Cabin Casserole from the American Chapter of Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery did not disappoint. For my readers in the Northern Hemisphere who are heading into winter and who are looking for an easy tasty meal, this one needs to go onto your rotation list ASAP.

What is Cabin Casserole?

Cabin Casserole is layered tomato and onions with bacon and chops that have been sprinkled with curry powder and salt. I used lamb chops for my casserole but pork chops would also work. Also, don’t stint on the salt. I only used a little salt because I thought the bacon would bring enough but I had to add salt at the end. Having said that, for a recipe with so few ingredients, this is really tasty!

I also did not use dripping to fry my chops, I fried the bacon first then used the bacon fat to fry the chops.

I served my cabin casserole with little potatoes wrapped in Proscuitto and a sage leaf and some grilled zucchini with feta cheese. The Cabin Casserole would be super with mashed potatoes!

Little House on The Prairie – The Lost Cabin Casserole Episode

Further to my mention of Little House on the Prairie, I can almost imagine the episode which would be called “Give them curry, Laura”. The Olesen’s start selling the very exotic ingredient of curry powder in the Mercantile. Nellie teases Laura that her family is too poor to ever even taste it. A fight ensues a little like this one. Just substitute “Your pa’s too poor to buy curry powder” instead of smelling like a horse.

Laura is required to go to the Mercantile and apologise to Nellie. She also has to help out in the store for a week. We see in a store work montage that she works very hard and is so polite to the customers that through the week she makes a little tip here and there.

At the end of the week, she has enough money to buy herself some candy or maybe a toy. Instead, she asks for some curry powder which she takes home and gives to Ma.

That night the Ingalls family feast on Cabin Casserole.

The moral of the story is that hard work and not giving someone curry is the key to getting curry.

Here’s the recipe

Have a wonderful week!

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!