Tag: Books

17
Aug
2015

Home Cooking – Laurie Colwin

categories: Books

You know how sometimes you meet someone and you just click? And you want to spend the rest of your life sitting on a sun drenched balcony with a glass of crisp rosé and maybe a some lovely fresh seafood just listening to that person talk? Because right from the get go you recognise that this person is charming, delightful, witty and that you will be friends forever?

These are the people who one of my childhood reading friends, Anne of Green Gables would have called “kindred spirits”. And that is EXACTLY how I felt whilst reading Laurie Colwin‘s Home Cooking.

Oh, yeah, I’m back! I hope you all enjoyed the Margaret Fulton holiday special. Particularly as I only got about a third of the way through the book…so plenty more where that came from, even if it is about a year away. Holiday deets will be forthcoming but first Home Cooking because like rust, I never sleep and I pretty much wrote this whilst on holiday almost immediately after closing the last page….or whatever the Kindle equivalent of that is.

I LOVED this book. And I really want to be BFF’s with Laurie Colwin.

Wanna know why?

Laurie Colwin is a little bit like me

As frightening as that may be, reading parts of this book was a little like talking to myself. I could just imagine us chatting and having so many of those “Me too” moments vis a vis….

“I love to stay home…I love to eat out, but even more, I love to eat in”
“In foreign countries I am drawn into grocery shops, supermarkets and kitchen supply houses”
“Dinner alone is one of life’s pleasures”
“There is no such thing as really bad potato salad”
“At night some people count sheep and others read mysteries. I lie in bed and think about food. Often I make up menus. Sometimes I invent recipes”
“My favourite party is a tea-party”

She also shares some characteristics with some of my best friends both in real life and my favourite food bloggers!

She is opinionated

“As everyone knows, there is one way to fry chicken correctly. Unfortunately, most people think their method is best , but most people are wrong. Mine is the only right way,”
Grilling is like sunbathing. Everyone knows it is bad for you but no one ever stops doing it”
“I do not like to eat al fresco. No sane person does, I feel”
There is nothing to be said about (gingerbread) mixes. They are uniformly disgusting”

She has a sparkling wit

I was once romantically aligned with a young man who I now realise was crazy, but at the time, he seemed…romantic”
For eight years I lived in a one room apartment a little larger than the Columbia Encyclopedia”
“It is possible to get nasty food everywhere, but with the exception of a few eccentric meals fed me by my peers, the only awful thing I ate in England was a packaged pork pie; but then a person who eats a packaged pork pie gets what she deserves”
I am a great champion of English food, but what I was given at these dinners was neither English not food as far as I could tell.”

She writes about food like a dream

“The smell of chocolate bubbling over and slightly burning is one of the most beautiful smells in the world. It is subtle and comforting and it is rich. One tiny drop perfumes a room like nothing else”
“Soup embraces variety. There are silken cream soups that glisten on the spoon and spicy bisques with tiny flecks of lobster”

I was so sad at the end of the book to discover that Laurie Colwin passed away in 1992 aged only 48 that I cried a little. After loving every word of this wonderful book, I truly felt like I had lost a friend. And whilst I will never be able to a share cucumber sandwiches with anchovy butter with her in a teeny apartment in Greenwich village I feel like I have found a “kindred spirit” whose wit and wisdom will stay with me long after I have closed the last page of “Home Cooking”.

As I read this on holiday, I have not yet cooked anything from Home Cooking, but as soon as I do I will tell you all about it. I have however ordered the sequel to this book, called More Home Cooking and, based on Laurie Colwin’s recommendation, I have also moved Elizabeth David’s book English Bread and Yeast Cookery to the very top of my wishlist. In the meantime, the folks over at Food52 recently had their own Laurie Colwin celebration. You can read about that over in their site.

And I will leave you with some more lovely words from this wonderful writer.

No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.

Please note that whilst I received my copy of this book for review for free via Net Galley, my opinions are, as always, entirely my own.

Have a great week!

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16
May
2015

My 3rd Birthday, Your Present!

categories: 1970's food, 1970's recipes, Australian Cooking For Today, Books

Remember last year when I forgot to celebrate my blog-irthday? Not so for Year 3 my friends. This year, not only are we starting early but I bought you a present. Well one of you…but more about that later. I have quite the celebration planned, cakes, a cocktail, these lovely cucumber candlestick canapés and maybe even a Spanish take on the Potato Salad Roll…

But first up, my mum and and I had a lovely Mother’s Day bonding experience last weekend by hitting up some of the local op shops and I got a huge swag of goodies, some of which will be jumping right to the top of the queue in the retro food stakes.

Here are some of the best of the best:

The Complete Avocado Cookbook by Christine Heaslip

I was utterly obsessed with this book as a child. But until I saw this book in the oppy on the weekend, I had completely forgotten a very strange thing I used to do. I must have had an idea that avocados were very sophisticated and I remember borrowing this book from the library about a billion times because I would get it home, then I would dress up all my dolls in their best clothes and put them in a circle and put the book in the middle and I would make up menus and they would have avocado based dinner parties where i would flick to a page in the book and tell them what we were eating, and they would each comment on the food.

Sometimes they didn’t like what they were given in which case they either got put into the corner and missed the next dinner party or I’d twist their heads around 180° and say something like “Maybe you’ll like it better out of the back of head”

(WEIRD. ONLY. CHILD).

I was particularly obsessed by this – The Crusty Stuffed Avocado. Which is an avocado stuffed with camembert, crumbed, deep fried and served with an almond butter sauce.

Maybe I should have used that as a threat for the dolls that didn’t like their meals. “One more peep out of you Missy and you get the Crusty Stuffed Avocado. And then we get to play Barbie gets a triple bypass”.

The Egg Cookbook By Peter Russell Clarke.

Back in the day, he was a celebrity chef in the 80’s whose catchcry (is that a word? it looks weird) was “Where’s the cheese?” To which the answer presumably was “In the hardened arteries of the people who ate the Crusty Stuffed Avocado”.

Eggs are one of the favourite ingredients here at maison de la retro food so this one was a certainty, despite it contains such dubious delights as a banana and chicken omelette and eggs in oranges. That one is so dodgy that even Peter Russell Clarke admits his friends don’t like the sound of it.

If you you tube PRC you will see that, instead of his good natured tv personal is he actually a bit of a foul mouthed curmudgeon. As one myself, it only made me like him more!

The Beautiful Breakfast Book by Judy Willing

Proof that you can judge a book by it’s cover. And Judy looks more than willing on the cover! This is going to be GOLD!

International Mixed Drinks

This isn’t strictly vintage but who could resist a book that offers over 300 cocktails by country? Not me that’s for sure. Mind you, I think they might be drawing a long bow in some of their allocations. Yeah, we all totally get that the Long Island Ice Tea and the Louisiana Lullaby are from the U.S.A. However, I searched for cocktails containing Parfait Amour, because I still have a buttload of it left and I found the Purple People Eater and the Love Bite. These apparently hail from The Seychelles and Mauritius respectively. Which smacks of allocating sucky cocktails to countries who are too small to declare war on you.

Still, this got me all sorts of excited. I was thinking we might do a round the world in a cocktail glass feature over the next year…52 countries in 52 weeks? Or at least until either incipient bankruptcy or alcoholism make their presence felt…..

And finally, this is it folks, over the top

Australian Cooking For Today by Anne Marshall

If today was 1977.

This is a MONSTER of a book, 900 recipes, 450 colour photos. If you were hit over the head with this book, you would wind up in hospital faster than someone who had eaten a Crusty Stuffed Avocado.

And this can be yours!

(Basically because when I got it home, I realised I already had a copy.)

And just in case the cover is not enough to convince you, opening Australian Cooking For Today at a random page reveals this – Giant Gingerbreadmen apparently reenacting the Great Train Robbery and a big ball of sausage and cheese:

You know you want it…

How You Can Win Australian Cooking For Today

There are three ways to win:

If you already follow the blog, follow me on twitter or facebook or viceversa, drop me a note and I will pop your name into a hat.
If you know of someone who you think would enjoy reading this, send them my way – all new followers will get a chance to win and if they leave me a message giving me your name, you get 5 chances.
Finally, if you already follow me on all media as do all of your friends, neighbours, co-workers, etc or you have none of the above, leave a comment below, answering the very simple question “Where’s the cheese?” and you will get a number of entries commensurate with how funny I think your entry is.

The T’s, The C’s, The Boring Bits

The actual birthday of the blog is 25 May, however it’s going to take me a bit longer than that to post all the posts on the celebrations so let’s say you have 4 weeks from now to enter. Entries will close midnight 14 June 2015.
You can enter as many times as you like.
If you are outside of Australia, I will have to send the book by cheapest mail possible as postage from here is terribly expensive. So you might get it by Christmas.

Maybe once you get it we can do a combined cook or something. Then again, it’s your present, you can do what you want with it!

Good luck!!!

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25
Apr
2015

Bringing It. Lunch That Is.

categories: Books, Lunch

One of my new year’s resolutions this year was to take my lunch to work a lot more. I had lots of reasons for this – it’s a LOT cheaper, it meant I could control ingredients and portion sizes, it can often be healthier and there’s much less wastage both in food and packaging. There’s no real downside.

Except. The monotony. By about mid February I felt like I was cornering the market in tins of tuna – tuna green salad, tuna pasta salad, tuna potato salad, tuna and couscous had become my go to and frankly it was becoming a bit of a bore. I was maxxed out on the tuna and feeling my motivation starting to wane.

Enter “Bring Your Lunch” by Califia Suntree.

And can I just say…awesome name, Califia Suntree.

And awesome book.

In the interests of full disclosure and all the blah blah, I did not pay for this book, I got it free off net galley but I would hope that you all know me well enough by now to know that if I truly dislike something, I’ll let you know.

The Book

The first few chapters of the book are the facts, man. Why you should take your lunch, what you need, planning tips etc. This section is very thorough. Or so I assume from the number of pages devoted to it.

To be honest, I didn’t actually read all of them because I wanted to get my hands on the recipes. Plus, I felt I was already motivated to bring my own lunch didn’t need to be pitched on the reasons why. However, it is very nicely illustrated and if you need to be convinced, or feel your motivation flagging at any time, take the time to read these pages.

My favourite picture in this section was the lunch horoscope. It really helped to refine what recipes would best fit your lifestyle,not just your tastebuds! Which is so important, I’m not the person who is going to be spending any time in the morning making lunch so it’s important for me to know which are the good “night owl” recipes.

This could have been carried even further by attaching the relevant symbols to the recipe. That would have been amazing!!!

The Food

The food sections of the book are broken down into various sections, starting with

Last Minute Lunches – Salads

The Kale Agrodolce is not only just a good idea for lunches but it has pretty much become my go-to salad at the moment. I’m loving the sweet-sour of the agrodolce. Having said that, that name made me giggle though. Anyone of a certain age in Australia would like me probably associate an Agrodolce as the mutant lovechild between a foul-mouthed puppet host of a children’s cartoon show from the ’80’s….

And Joe Dolce, a singer who made his fortune by playing to the casual racism of the average Australian;

Thankfully, it’s actually a lovely sweet-sour blend of sultanas soaked in balsamic vinegar. Add some toasted pine nuts, some kale et voila. Here it is with some of the Potato and Mushroom Tarts from Valli Little’s Slow. This was one of the best lunches I have had in ages!!!

Another super salad from this section was the Fennel and Spinach Salad with Figs and Blue Cheese. I don’t have a photo of this . Largely because every time I made it I was far too busy shoving all that tasty goodness into my mouth to take photos. Just believe me when I say it is one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten. But don’t take my word for it. I feel bad I didn’t have a photo for you, so here is the recipe:

Fennel and Spinach Salad with Figs and Blue Cheese

Make this today, you will not be disappointed!

Last Minute Lunches – Sandwiches

I made the Prawn and Tarragon Egg Salad.

Who knew egg and prawns would go together do well? And tarragon pretty much makes everything taste good. I had this both as a traditional sandwich and wrapped in a lettuce leaf and it was delicious both ways.

Leftover Leitmotifs

Waste not, want not. Make all your food count by creatively using leftovers to make delicious bring your own lunch meals. I made:

Nasi Goreng

Great way to use random veg – I had cabbage, mushrooms, onion, carrot, corn, spring onions, snow peas, broccoli….I think that was all and some chicken breast. I also threw in some prawns. So tasty!!!

And who doesn’t love Chicken Noodle Soup? The Parmesan Cheese and Lemon in this Lemony Chicken Noodle Soup makes it particularly tasty.

Other delicious sounding recipes in this section include:

Chinese Chicken Salad
Pork Tacos with Pinepapple Salsa
Beef Stroganoff
Ceviche with Mango and Basil

The Freezer Is Your Friend

Mini Lasagnas are my friend. Bake these vegetarian delights in muffin trays and pop in the freezer for future use.

And how gorgeous do these look, particularly when topped with a lovely cherry tomato compote?

Hardy Green Mini Lasagnas With Cherry Tomato Compote

Ditch The Vending Machine

Chickpea Nuts

Delicious to snack on. So simple to make.

You can indulge your sweet tooth with

Chilli & Cherry Brownie Bites
Gingery Pecan Cranberry Granola Bars

Califia even provides advice on how to Tart Up Your Tuna, so there is absolutely never any reason to get stuck in a rut even with this staple lunch ingredient.

Tart Up Your Tuna - Califia Suntree — Tart Up Your Tuna – Califia Suntree

I really liked this book and can see it becoming a go to for lunch (and more).

My only criticism, is that whilst I love the drawings as featured above, I would have liked some photos of the food, sometimes it is just nice to see if you have “got it right”. But that is probably more about my insecurities than any fault of the book.

At the time of writing Bring Your Lunch is selling at around $4 which is absolute bargain. I would pay that just for the salad recipes let alone all the rest. Why don’t you buy it and start bringing it too?

And tell me, what’s your go to work lunch?

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26
Aug
2014

RFFMT – Welcome to Book Club

categories: Books, Finger Food, Soup

I joined a book club!

I think it’s kind of weird that it’s taken me this long – I love to read and I love to talk about books I have read. However, this is a rather special club catering to those of fairly specific tastes. Don’t worry, I am not about to get all 50 shades of weird on you; it is a food lovers book club where, instead of novels, we discuss cookbooks.

I am a cook book junkie. Here is part of my collection. .

There is also another shelf in a different room that has most of the retro food books. Then there are the hundreds of magazines…..and regular trips to the local library.

So, given this ~~problem~~ predilection when I read in their weekly newsletter that my local book store was starting a food lovers book group, I did a little dance of joy. No, not quite like this…well…maybe a little.

The First Rule of Book Club

Each meeting will have a theme. The first theme was Winter warmers. Members have a choice of three books that they could purchase related to that theme. The books were really well chosen by the owners in terms of both variety, audience and price point.

Whoo, hoo….new cookbook fix guaranteed. And to those annoying people who ask “Don’t you have enough cookbooks?” (you know who you are) you can genuinely say. “I had to buy it, it was for book club”.

I chose Slow by Valli Little which was actually the cheapest option but I love her work in Delicious Magazine and I knew there would be plenty in here I could, and would, make outside of the group. I was not disappointed on this count – it jam packed with great ideas for everyday cooking. And, incidentally, this book was rated the best on value and practicality as well as being visually alluring.

Second Rule of Book Club

You must cook from the book you have chosen.

This is utter genius. So, not only do you get your cookbook fix but you also have none of that guilt of buying a book and never actually making anything from it.

I made the Autumn Rosti from Valli’s book, my slightly adapted version of the recipe below.

Third Rule of Book Club

You must have evidence of cooking from the book.

This could be in photographic form or, as I and some of the others chose to do, you could bring evidence of your cooking to the meeting for the group to sample.

Best. Idea. Ever.

I took along my rosti. We also had an amazing Chicken Liver and Porcini Pate, a killer Carrot and Lentil Soup, a super tasty Lamb and Apricot Tagine with couscous and we ended the evening with a delicious Carrot Cake. The following pictures of the soup and the tagine are from Valli’s book. I did not take pictures of the food on the night because “Hey, I’ve just met you and this seems crazy but I’m going to take photos of your food and put them on the internet” is no song I want to be singing. However, in both instances, as with my rosti, the actual product looked a lot like the picture.

Valli Little's Lamb & Apricot Tagine — Valli Little’s Lamb & Apricot Tagine

Working within the theme allows you to step out of your normal comfort zone and try something new and or different. And tasting other people’s goodies can also expand your horizons. I generally do not like cooked carrots and one of the worst soups I have ever eaten was full of bits of grated carrot. So I did not look twice at the Carrot and Lentil Soup recipe in Valli”s book. Not interested. Not even remotely. In fact, I could not turn the page fast enough.

Luckily for me, someone else did give it a second look.

Valli Little's Spiced Carrot and Lentil Soup from Slow — Valli Little’s Spiced Carrot and Lentil Soup from Slow

DISH OF THE NIGHT. Who knew carrot soup could taste so good. How good? I’m making it as we speak. Damn it was good! Make it. Make it now! (Recipe below). You will not be disappointed. And even if you are? Firstly what is wrong with you? And second, get over it. By my reckoning this costs about $2.50 to make. At around 40 cents a serve even if you hate it, which I’m pretty sure you won’t, you’ve lost less than the cost of a cup of coffee.

Fourth Rule of Book Club

You must talk about your book.

This has to be the fourth pleasure of cooking – the buying, the preparing, the eating and finally, the talking. You got to speak about what you did and didn’t like about the book and learned about the good and bad of the books you didn’t buy as well. It’s really interesting to see what people do and don’t like. For instance, this was one of the other books we could choose from:

Salt Grill.

Let me tell you, this cover was controversial. People had opinions. I had opinions. I didn’t know I had opinions but it turned out I did. I quite like it but other people thought the dirty spoon was kind of gross.

The other great thing was that you got to share war stories. You know how sometimes you make something and despite following the recipe to the minutest degree it just doesn’t work? And you automatically assume it was something you did wrong? Well two people from the club made the exact same recipe and had the exact same problem with it. Coincidence? I think not.

It was awesome. I can’t wait for the next one, where the theme is Middle Eastern. I have chosen Persiana as my book and it looks amazing!!!!

Persiana

Stay tuned!

Have a great week!

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