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.
The good news, is that with this post, we are done with the letter F in the A-Z of Cooking. The chapter heading promises that we will be “Finishing with Flair”. The bad news is that without seeming like Mary, Mary Quite Contrary right from the get go, another F word springs to mind when I consider the contents. Except for these Strawberries in Grand Marnier. They were good! Although how could a combination of fresh sweet strawberries combined with luscious orange liqueur with mint as it’s cheerleader not be delicious?
We’ll get to them later. However, back to Finishing with Flair – we have already mentioned this so called Mango Mousse. The picture of which contains bananas, oranges, passionfruit, eggs and nuts. The recipe below has none of these. The Mango mousse recipe actually sounds really nice. Maybe I am just being a brat for not making it. Then again, if they can’t be arsed putting the right picture with the recipe, what are the chances that recipe will turn out?
That fear of 1977 desserts not being all they were cracked up to be was born out when I made the Continental Chocolate Squares featured on p28. The picture from the A-Z of Cooking is on the left, with the Squares looking rather decadent. Mine are on the right looking a lot more Raggedy Anne. I think I tried to cut them when the chocolate topping was still too hard from being in the fridge and I could not get a nice clean line. Maybe I should have glammed them up by adding some candlelight!
What both of these pictures fail to convey is the overbearing sickly sweetness of the filling. It contained 4 cups of icing sugar which was far too much! I love sweet food but this was way too much for me and prompted the fussiest eater in the world to ask if I was trying to put him into a diabetic coma. It is a shame that the middle layer was awful because the base which was chocolate and walnuts and biscuits was quite nice. It is probably worth someone spending some time on trying to get that filling right because this could have been amazing. I just don’t think that person will be me! Although, now I kind of want to. So maybe it will rear its head in another incarnation down the track.
There was a lovely sounding recipe in this section for French Cherry Fritters. This is the one I would have loved to make but you had to deep fry the fritters and I do not have a deep-fryer. This however is one I am going to:
a) Play around with until I can perfect a baked version
b) borrow a deep-fryer. i think my mum has one.
Until then, it’s Strawberries with Grand Marnier. Adding the mint sugar was an idea I borrowed from Sabrina Ghayour in Persiana. She makes a number of herb sugars to sprinkle over fruit and now it is something I do all the time!
I served this with some white chocolate dipped almond bread which was every bit as delicious as it sounds!
Initially I thought this might be a bit too simple to blog about – soak some strawberries in booze. And done.
And it is very simple. But sometimes that is all you need to finish a meal with flair!
White Chocolate Dipped Almond Bread to serve (optional)
Instructions
Halve the strawberries and place in individual serving dishes.
Sprinkle each dish with 1/2 tbsp of Grand Marnier.
Leave to stand at room temperature for at least an hour.
Meantime, make your herb sugar.
Place your mint and your sugar in the bowl a mortar and grind with your pestle until them mint is finely ground and well combined with the sugar, which will be a lovely green.
Alternatively, place both in your food processor and whiz until you achieve the same effect
Notes
You could use basil instead of mint. Or a mix of basil and black pepper.
Any Orange flavoured liqueur could be used instead of Grand Marnier.
Any left over herb sugar can be used to rim a cocktail glass, or used in place of regular sugar in anything else you are making – I’m thinking lemonade would be amazing.
Nutrition
Serving Size:4
Ok so that’s F done.
Coming up we have G is for Good Health. I have actually already made the Cheese & Date Bread from this section so we may skip it altogether as there is not much else to get excited about. So, possibly our next venture into the A-Z will be The Gourmet’s Touch. Ooh la la. Exciting times ahead! Possibly.
Have a wonderful week lovely people and this week, what ever you do, I hope you finish it with flair!
Margaret’s Mediterranean Chicken from 1977 fits the bill of being big and fat and crisp and brown. Not to mention utterly delicious.
Mediterranean Chicken – Then
And when you’re onto a good thing? Stick to it:
Mediterranean Chicken – Now
if only the modern picture had a glass of wine in it, it would be perfect! But both of these are pretty superb pictures, you can almost taste and smell that lovely roast chicken!
I liked this so much I made one myself:
I think it is such a genius idea of Margaret’s to change the vegetables from the traditional roast – the tomatoes, mushrooms and olives were delicious, although I did throw in a few potatoes too.
A quiche is an open-faced tart with a savoury custard filling. It was originally made with bread dough but short pastry has been substituted in modern recipes.
The pastry should be rolled as thinly as possible…there should be a lot of creamy filling on very little pastry.
– Margaret Fulton
Both of these look pretty good. But I am very fond of a quiche so more is pretty much more for me!!! But I totally understand why most people would prefer the understated elegance of the modern photo
My first reaction was “That’s one of the dumbest things I ever heard of. Who puts spaghetti into an omelette?”
But then, I started thinking…what if you replaced the tomato puree with bacon? Would you get something like a reverse carbonara? What if you added fresh tomato? And mushrooms?
Might the Neapolitan Omelette not become something utterly delicious?
I’m throwing this one over to you in a couple of ways.
You can cook it and let me know.
Or you can comment and let me know if you want me to cook it when I get home.
Or both…
Comment, send photo’s if you decide to make it and we’ll decide if this is a lost classic or if it should have been left in the 1970’s.
