eggs Archives - Page 2 of 8 - Retro Food For Modern Times

Tag: eggs

13
Aug
2023

Mock Crab

categories: Eggs

Hello, retro food lovers and…war buffs? Today I am sharing a recipe for Mock Crab which was inspired by my reading of N or M by Agatha Christie. The real Dining with the Dame post will come next week but during my reading of this book, I became mildly obsessed with the food of wartime Britain. I found a fabulous blog called The 1940’s Experiment and decided to give one of the wartime recipes a whirl! I am also mildly obsessed with “mock” foods so I chose mock crab.

Umm…what? I hear you say. Mock crab looks like this! However, it looks to all the world that you have posted a photo of some scrambled eggs on toast. Did you mix your photos up? Might we finally be getting a post on the bacon and eggs that is mentioned in EVERY Agatha Christie novel but has yet to make an appearance in Dining with the Dame?

Well…no and no. This my friends is mock crab.

But also yes. Because this is scrambled eggs on toast. Albeit some mildly vinegary scrambled eggs on toast. This recipe perplexed me and I’ll tell you why as soon as I share the link. Here it is: Wartime Mock Crab.

Mock Me Not

So here is what I don’t understand about the mock crab. Cheesy scrambled eggs are delicious. And not just for breakfast. I would eat them at any time of day! Cheesy scrambled eggs with salad dressing and additional vinegar? Not so much. This, for me, was, unfortunately, something that was less than the sum of its parts. I’m also not quite sure why, particularly when you are on rations, you would add anything to cheesy scrambled eggs. My preference would have been to save the dressing and vinegar for something else (maybe a salad?) and to eat the eggs as scrambled eggs.

I can only surmise that the addition of the salad dressing and vinegar was to make it taste more crabby. If so, it didn’t work. No one in their right mind would mistake the taste of this for crab. And yet….there was something. Maybe the texture? Or possibly the power of suggestion…that made this somewhat reminiscent of crab.

Whilst I didn’t love the mock crab, it was nice to take a peek into war time cooking and imagine the gang at the Sans Souci (from N and M) tucking into a plate of of it for lunch.

Next weeks post will be on N or M, an Agatha Christie wartime thriller featuring Tommy and Tuppence. At least I hope it will be. I will be on holiday, soaking up some sun in the north of Australia so I will schedule it to run on Sunday. Fingers crossed it works!

Have a great week!

02
Apr
2023

Eggsclusive

categories: 1980's recipes, Eggs, Posh Food

Hello friends and welcome to a pre-Easter edition of “What Posh People Ate in the 80’s”. This time they are not even pretending to be slumming it as even the name of this dish “Eggsclusive” speaks to its ritziness! The recipe for this eggcelllent (hey, if they can make egg puns, so can i! 😜) comes from the Vogue Entertaining Guide from Autumn 1986.

The Eggsclusive recipe comes from an article about the Lamrock Cafe in Bondi Beach in Sydney. A quick Google search showed that The Lamrock is still going strong. And OMG…look at that view. I know EXACTLY where I am heading for brunch next time I go to Sydney! (The Eggsclusive is sadly no longer on the menu though).

The Eggsclusive Recipe and Variations

You will notice that I have altered the recipe a little bit. I did not cook the smoked salmon or the caviare in the eggs, just served them on top. I also only used one type of caviar and I sprinkled some parsley and chives over the top.

This was really easy to make and has a lovely luxe appeal to it It would make the perfect breakfast in bed for someone you love (or yourself) over the Easter break. Why not complete the feel with a glass of champagne? And maybe some of these vintage Easter Pinups could influence your choice of attire!

How cute is this?

Or if little cottontails aren’t your bag, you could try a tutu like Debbie Reynolds.

Maybe an Easter bonnet might be more your style?

I would, however, suggest you avoid bursting out of an egg. This looks uncomfortable!

Have a safe and happy Easter, however you decide to spend it!

Other Recipes from the Vogue Entertaining Guide Autumn 1986:

09
Oct
2022

Ceviche & Eggs A La Mexicana

categories: 1970's recipes, Eggs, Fish, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, Mexico

Hola amigas y amantes de la comida! Did I ever mention that during that very first lockdown of 2020, I tried learning Spanish on Duolingo? That first sentence pretty much reflects the highest level of proficiency I attained. Despite my very limited ability to speak the language, we are leaving the snowbound land of Canada to head south to the sun and sea of Mexico via Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery. And our first meal is going to be an absolute favourite of mine – Ceviche!

Ceviche contains so many things I love – raw fish, avocado, lemon, tomato, chill and coriander! And it is also so vibrant! I used tuna in my ceviche so there was the gorgeous pink of the tuna, some red tomatoes, the bright green of the coriander, the more more mellow yellow green of the avocado some bright yellow pear tomatoes so it really was very colourful.

I then also made Eggs A La Mexicana from the same chapter and the colour palette was quite similar!

Of course I am not the first person to realise that a lot of Mexican food is yellow, red and green…there are several colour palettes to this effect on Pinterest and elsewhere:

Having said that, the part of my brain that probably spends too much time at work, or thinking about work, thought the colour palette of both dishes was very similar to that of an Excel conditional formatting colour scale! So I may well be the first person to link Mexican food and a spreadsheeting tool!

The Recipes – Ceviche and Eggs a La Mexicana

Both of these were delicious and easy to cook! Which as long-time readers will know was definitely not the case the last time I ventured into the realm of Mexican cooking! Mind you, I’m not saying that these recipes are absolutely authentico but they had me doing a little dance like this all the same!I hope your week has you also doing a little dance and not staring at too many spreadsheets!

29
Aug
2021

Devilled Egg Pie

categories: Devilled Eggs, Eggs

I had a little moment recently of coincidence or prescience depending on what you believe. I was thinking “Better start looking for recipes for Pieathalon – that will be coming up soon”. I found a copy of Mollie Katzen’s recipe for Devilled Egg Pie from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. Could there be a more perfect Pieathalon pie? Devilled eggs are such a stalwart of retro cooking and I’m pretty sure that no one has yet cooked from this classic of vegetarian cooking! Then I realised that the recipe calls for a mashed potato pie crust. Which I had not copied. Without a recipe for the crust, I could not send it to someone else to cook. But I could cook it myself and invent my own mashed potato crust!

And it’s only proper after all. Do you think any of those athletes you just watched in the Olympics came in cold? No way! They practiced! So, consider this one of my warm-up heats to get myself rmatch ready for Pieathalon!

The Mashed Potato Crust

Let’s start with that mashed potato pie crust I needed to invent. I had some leftover mashed potato. Which I pressed into the bottom and sides of some little pie dishes. Oh yes, I decided to make individual devilled egg pies.

I then brushed these with a little bit of melted butter and popped them into the oven at 180C until the edges started to go brown and crispy, around 15 minutes.

Crust done!

Next up was the sauce that drew me to this recipe in the first place. It is a white sauce with horseradish, mustard and dill. I know there is no Scandinavian blood in my veins but these flavours absolutely sing to me. I used the very last of the horseradish I had harvested from our garden. The mustard and dill came from the supermarket and greengrocer respectively. I spooned the sauce into the bottom of the pie dishes:

I added some halved hard-boiled eggs.

And I spooned some more of the sauce over the top and popped the pies into the oven until the sauce was golden brown on top!

Devilled Egg Pie – The Recipe

Mollie Katzen gives two versions of this dish. I made the hard-boiled egg version but I am also keen to try the fresh egg version. I also think she missed a bit of a trick here – why not make a devilled egg, devilled egg pie? I am going to make MY version very soon – stay tuned!

Devilled Egg Pie – The Verdict

These weren’t devilled eggs as we know them but the flavours were certainly devilled egg adjacent. The mix of the mashed potatoes, the sauce and the eggs was delicious and just about the most comforting thing I have eaten all year! The hardest thing about making them was actually having leftover mashed potatoes! I’ll certainly be making these again!

Oh, and the exact same night I made these, I got an email from Yinzerella about Pieathalon 2021. It’s coming…

04
Apr
2021

Eggs Hamine

categories: 1970's recipes, Africa, Easter, Eggs, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, World Cooking

Happy Easter to those who celebrate it! At Maison de la retro foods, we are supplementing our chocolate eggs with some North African Hamine Eggs. These came to us via Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery. The book offers two versions of this recipe. There is the traditional way:

In Egypt there are special shops selling them; there, after the eggs have been cooked for 3 or 4 hours, they are put under the ashes of a fire and left for as long as 8 hours – this makes them as creamy as butter”

– Good Housekeeping World Cookery

Never mind the pyramids and the Sphinx. Get me over to Egypt pronto for some of those buttery eggs!!!

Eggs Hamine – The Recipe

The non-traditional version of these eggs is so easy!

Put the brown outside skins of some onions into a saucepan of ocld water with the eggs and boil for 2 hours or as long as possible. The onion skins turn the shells of the eggs and the whites brown. Shell and halve the eggs and serve hot or cold with lemon wedges, salt, pepper and mixed spices”

I cooked my eggs in the slow cooker for a full 8 hours.

Pre – Water

4 hours – One of the eggs cracked during the cooking but did not ooze out like they do when they crack during normal boiling.

Eight hours!

Note, if you decide to make these in your slow cooker, the onion skins will stain your slow cooker brown along with the eggs. Get ready to soak and scrub to remove it!

Eight hours and fifteen minutes!

I sprinkled my egg with some salt and some dukkah and dug in! It was delicious. There was a faint taste of something – not exactly onion but slightly savoury to the egg which was different to a normal boiled egg. I would not say that it was buttery but the white seemed more delicate than a normal boiled egg.

I was also very surprised to see that the onion skin dye had penetrated not only into the white which became a gorgeous soft caramel colour but also the yolk! This was startling because it is so strange to have a monochrome egg!

These were nice and an interesting experiment but for me, it was a long time to wait for a fancy boiled egg so I will probably not make them again. If I ever do get to Egypt though, I will be making a breakfast beeline for the Hamine Eggs shops!

Making these eggs might be a fun thing to do with kids for Easter or for a science project on osmosis.

Happy Easter everyone!