Tag: prunes

09
Aug
2023

Wine and Song Prune Canapés

Hello retro food lovers and welcome to a surprise mid-week edition of Retro Food for Modern Times. Today we are taking a teeny little step back into the amazing book that is Kelly Brodsky’s Food For Lovers and making some canapes from her wine and song prunes. When we last spoke about them, it was in the context of breakfast but these little beauties are nothing if not versatile. My favourite food is finger food so I decided that I would turn these into a canapé based on the vintage hors d’oeuvre Devils on Horseback.

I have taken the key ingredients from Devils on Horseback and popped them on a round of grilled bread.

As a reminder, here is the recipe for the Wine and Song Prunes. These are the starting point for our canape’s.

Here’s the recipe…if you can even call something so simple that!

Wine and Song Prune Canapés

Print Recipe

A delicious canapé for your next retro party. Or for eating all by yourself!

Author: Taryn Nicole

Ingredients

Wine and Song Prunes (as many prunes as canapés you are planning to make)
Rounds of chargrilled bread or bought crostini (as many rounds as canapés you are planning to make)
Proscuitto – (1/ 3 the number of slices as the number of canapes you are planning to make)
Goat’s cheese
Watercress – 1 bunch

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

Top your rounds of bread with a sprig or two of watercress, then 1/3 of a slice of proscuitto.
Top this with a piece of goat’s cheese and one of the prunes.
Enjoy!

I’ll get my timing back on track with an N and M adjacent post. The actual post for the Agatha Christie thriller will be posted the following week. It’s a quick read so there’s still plenty of time if you wish to read it. Have a great rest of the week!

31
May
2023

Food For Lovers Redux

categories: Devilled Eggs, Food For Lovers, Prunes, Rice, Salad, Soup

Hello friends, and welcome to a special series I will be running over the next 12 months. A while ago, I realised I had totally missed the 10th birthday of this blog. In fact, I was thinking about how to celebrate this and wanted to check the exact date of the first post which I thought was in 2013. Nope. It was 17 May 2012! There didn’t seem much point in celebrating eleven years but twelve sounds impressive. So in the 12 months leading up to my 12th birthday I will be featuring one of the old books I blogged about in the early years. Those old posts are mostly dire but the books are quirky and fun or just plain good. Sometimes all three. To get this party started I am revisiting one of the most bonkers books I own – Kelly Brodsky’s Food for Lovers from 1971.

Food For Lovers – The Book

Food for Lovers is broken into 15 chapters, each of which is devoted to a particular type of man and the food that their beloved should cook to keep them interested. As the old adage goes, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach! This may make it sound like this is a very conservative, conventional cookbook – the type of book you might have seen in the 1950’s on how to please your husband. But this my friends was not the conservative 50s, this was the 1970s and the birth of women’s liberation so the tone is definitely tongue in cheek. At least I hope it is because each of the men mentioned sounds awful (although also somewhat recognisable). To introduce you to the book and its characters I thought it might be fun to do a little speed dating with the gents of Food for Lovers!

Bachelor #1 Come on down!

Freddy Finikin

“Freddys who dislike food are an asexual lot who seem to get a perverse kick from driving the women in their lives to a frenzy in search of something to tempt their appetite…the woman who falls for such a man is either unaware of his finickiness, or trapped, or mad, or maybe she prefers to read in bed”

Kelly Brodsky – Food for Lovers

Should you find either the picture of Freddy or his blurb attractive, or you are mad, trapped, or prefer to read in bed here is a recipe to keep your Freddy happy!

Zakusi

You’ll notice I have changed the recipe so that rather than filling the egg whites “liberally” with caviar, I have made a more traditional and certainly more economically viable devilled egg. These were AMAZING. So tasty!!!!

Let’s move on to Bachelor #2

If fussy eaters aren’t your style, maybe this likely lad is more your speed!

Joe De Go

A man with the Midas touch, Joe usually has his fingers in many pies. Often in the guise of pop star, P.R, ad-man, disc jockey, TV star or such, he wizzes from one assignment, luncheon or deal to another with a slick show of competence that belies his lingering adolescence. Bright and on the ball he mostly shoes away from anything that smacks of more than superficial know-how, for he hates to be caught out of his depth

Kelly Brodsky – Food for Lovers

Intrigued by the sound of Joe? Why not tempt his palate with some

Creamed Leek and Potato Soup

This soup was delicious!

Still not found your ideal man? Let’s take a look at Bachelor #3

Champers Chas

With the carefully cultivated air of an educated debauchee and a fascinating, if largely fabricated family history to back it, Champers provides an inexhaustible supply of gossip. Whether on or off the boards, he delights in titillating his ever present audience with spicy, often malicious anecdotes and ribaldry

Kelly Brodsky – Food for Lovers

Fancy chatting with Chas? Tempt his tastebuds with some

Pistachio Nut Pilau

This was really nice, the rice was light and fluffy and went perfectly with last week’s Chilli Crab!

Still not found the love of your life? Maybe you like your men a little more sleazy and possibly criminal? Bachelor #4 may be more your style!

Professor Repressor

If the name doesn’t say it all, here’s Kelly’s description

Repressor exudes the coldness of a tree frog, his sang-froid masking some Lucifer-like leanings. One kinky chink in his armour is his obsession with the Lolita-type nubiles on his campus – who usually run for their sweet lives when they see the kind of red-hot light they inspire in his eyes. Inevitably, he is forced to turn his attentions to any neglected wives of his colleagues

Kelly Brodsky – Food for Lovers

Ok. We might need a palate cleanser after that so how about some

Watercress and Orange Salad

This was great and just the refreshing hit I needed after writing about the pervy professor! Let’s swiftly move to Bachelor #5!

Gad About Guy

Gad about Guys come in all shapes and sizes with ages and egos to match. They usually hover round fellow Gads with a few of the uninitiated thrown in as audience. “Remember that night in Singapore when we strolled along Bugis Street – and those fantastic little roadside stalls with the delicious Satay? ….”Lord, yes! And will you ever forget that Lamb Solanka in Moscow last winter.”…And on and on it goes, the name dropping, the reminiscences and regurgitations of past splendours”

Kelly Brodsky – Food For Lovers

If the well-travelled man is your bag, why not whip up a lovely breakfast for him with some

Wine and Song Prunes

I LOVED these. I feel so bad that prunes have such a bad rap! This was so delicious. And what a fabulous name! I served mine with a little bit of labneh, some orange zest and some pistachios left over from the pilaf and it made a heavenly breakfast!

And because all good things must come to an end, we come to our lucky last Bachelor…who out there fancies

Jack Snack

He’s strictly a non-event up to his neck in dreary day to day existence, blissfully unaware of anything outside his tight little domain…his every move as predictable as the plainness of his sitting-room with it’s enormous brick veneered fireplace above which some gypsy flamencoes wildy within a heavy gilt frame

Kelly Brodsky – Food For Lovers

I laughed out loud when I read this because growing up, we had possibly that very same flamenco dancer painting on our wall at home! I thought it was incredibly beautiful and have always wanted to learn to flamenco as a result of it!

Now, I have also not made Jack’s Snack, mostly because I quite like my life and don’t fancy being taken down by a premature heart attack any time soon. But should you wish to share your life with this homebody and are not afraid of death by overindulgence, here is the recipe for a Veal Scallopine Sandwich that will melt Jack’s heart whilst simultaneously clogging his arteries!

Okay, food lovers, I hope you have enjoyed my second journey into Food For Lovers…I LOVED revisiting this book!!! And there are so many more delicious-sounding recipes and terrible men in it that we may have to take a third look somewhere down the track!

I have searched online for other books by Kelly Brodsky and Kelly Brodsky herself and have drawn a big flat blank! At the moment there also appear to be no other copies of Food for Lovers for sale so, sadly you cannot share my delight in this book. Kelly, if you are out there, and I hope you are, I hope you read this and know that fifty-two years after the publishing of your book, you have a number one fan in me!

Have a wonderful week friends and please let me know if you make that Veal Scallopini Sandwich! Or any of the other recipes!

19
Oct
2021

A Murder on The Orient Express Collab

categories: Celebrity Recipes, Desserts, Dried Fruit, Film, Fish, Poirot

All aboard! Welcome friends to a cooking and murder collab between Silver Screen Suppers and Retro Food For Modern Times. Jenny and I have been tallking about doing this literally for months! I am breaking my usual Dining with the Dame Format to cook recipes by the stars of the 1974 version of Murder on The Orient Express and half a world away in London Jenny is doing the same. Jenny provided the recipes and we agreed to watch the film on the same day!

Murder on The Orient Express 1974 – The Film

As with the Kenneth Brannagh 2017 film, the 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express is a star-studded affair! The rather schlocky trailer describes it as the “Who’s who in the whodunnit”.

Albert Finney stars as Poirot Agatha Christie herself gave Albert the thumbs up in his portrayal of Poirot. (He was excellent, and his denouement at the end is amazing – he had to learn 8 pages of script off by heart to do it – but for me, David Suchet is, and will only ever be, the true Poirot).

Others in the cast include Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Jacqueline Bisset, Sean Connery, Sir John Gielgud, Anthony Perkins, Vanessa Redgrave and Michael York to name but a few! Ingrid Bergman won an Oscar as best supporting actress for her role in this. Albert Finney was nominated but missed out to Art Carney from Harry and Tonto.

The film follows the story of the Agatha Christie novel with the luxurious Orient Express train stuck in a snow bank with no one being able to get on or off the train. One of the guests is stabbed to death in the night. It is up to Hercule Poirot to discover whodunnit!. He soon learns that the victim is connected to the kidnapping of Daisy Armstrong 5 years before. And the group of seemingly disparate strangers on the train may not be all they seem!

The stroy is based on two true events, the first being the very famous kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby i n 1932, the second was an incident when the Orient Express was trapped for 6 days in a blizzard in Turkey in 1929.

But now, we would like you to head over to the buffet car to sample today’s menu,

The Menu

Trout in Cream Saice

For your dining pleasure on today’s journey from Istanbul to Caiais, we are delighted to be serving Trout with Cream Sauce, a recipe by Ms Ingrid Bergman.

This was delicious! Trout is such a delicate fish and the lemony cream sauce was a perfect accompaniment to it. I served mine with chips (very un Orient Express), beans, broccolini and some cherry tomatoes. It was also incredibly easy to make!!! Without the chips, it is an elegant and light dish which would be worthy of the Orient Express!

The whole time I was making the trout I was singing the Billy Bragg / Wilco song :

Ingrid Bergman, Ingrid Bergman
Let’s go make a picture
On the island of Stromboli
Ingrid Bergman

And I deft anyone who knows this song to do otherwise!

Ingrid Bergman plays Greta Ohlsson in the film and she won the Academy Award for best-supporting actress for her role. I would give her an Oscar for that trout recipe because it was chef’s kiss mwah!!!

Prune Fool Syllabub

To end your meal, we are serving Prune Fool by Ms. Wendy Hiller. Wendy plays Princess Dragomiroff in Murder. I feel that the Prune Fool, despite its name has the hint of gravitas equal to such a grand dame!

I LOVED the Prune Fool! The prunes and currants (I didn’t have sultanas in the red wine combined beautifully with the cream and shortbread. Eating this made me feel like a grownup. for something that is so simple to make, the end result is sophisticated.

I feel both of these dishes would meet Poirot’s approval!

Just as an aside, it appears as if, whilst on the Orient Express, Poirot has eschewed his normal tisanes and sirops for a little glass of…creme de menthe? Drunk via a straw no less.

But, I digress, back to the Prune Fool.
I know I am biased but how pretty is it?

Here’s the recipe:

Cooking for this was so fun! I loved the film as well! And it is always fun to have a shared project. Thank you Jenny for the recipes and for joining in particularly on one of the big hitters like Murder on The Orient Express. (Let’s not wait 6 months before we do another!!!) And if anyone else would like to Dine with the Dame and me, please let me know!!!

If you would like to see what Jenny cooked and how she celebrated Murder Sunday, head over to Silver Screen Suppers for a look!

I’ll be back next week with a more traditional version of Dining with the Dame – Murder on the Orient Express 2 (Electric Boogaloo).

Have a great week and happy watching!

13
Jun
2014

B is for Baby Bundt, Bacon & Bay and Blonde Bombshells

categories: Bacon, Cake, Canapes, Chocolate, Cocktail, Habanero, Hors D'oeuvres, Parfait Amour, Prunes, Sparkling, Spice Peddler, St Germain, Strawberries

B is also for Bozo, Blog and Birthday.

As in guess which bozo forgot to celebrate her own blog’s 2nd birthday on May 25th?

So, today we’re having a Belated (don’t worry, I promise I won’t capitalise every word that starts with a B) Birthday, (no really, I won’t) celebrating my second annivesary with food using the second letter of the alphabet. See what I did? Second year, second letter?

You’d think I planned it.

Maybe you should keep thinking that….I”m all for anything that makes me look better!!!

So anyway, it’s my birthday so let’s get this party started. And I’ve said it before, and no doubt I will say it again, (purely because I’ve got a bottle of the stuff that isn’t going to drink itself) a retro party isn’t a retro party without Parfait Amour. And any party is better with a blonde bombshell!

Nope not like this, the blonde bombshell I am referring too is a cocktail made with the aforementioned Parfait Amour. I’m not sure why it’s called a Blonde Bombshell as it comes out a gorgeous dusky pinky purple.

First Course – The Birthday Blonde Bombshell

It’s my party…cocktails count as a course….in my perfect world, we would skip main meals altogether. We would move from cocktails to fingerfood to dessert.

Wow!!! I think I may have found my Parfait Amour drink of choice. This was lovely!!! Sweet and florally and almost kind of musky…it reminded me a little bit of Turkish Delight…maybe it was the roses in the Parfait Amour. Very girly, very pretty. Easy to drink….hmmm….maybe getting rid of that bottle won’t be as hard as I previously thought!

Second Course – Bay Wrapped Bacon and Prunes

This is basically a take on a Devils on Horseback. But wrapped in a bayleaf. And I added a little smear of my Strawberry Habanero Sauce to the bacon before wrapping it around the prunes.

Note for the unwary – grilling bay leaves makes your entire kitchen smell like you’ve been smoking marijuana. For about a week. Which is fine until you have a plumber come to fix your leaking tap and they ask you if you can score them some bud.

I barely even know what that means.

Despite that, you really can’t go wrong with these…salty, sweet, spicy, crispy…The bay leaves added a slight resiny flavour that was quite pleasant but prevented the bacon from getting really crispy which was slightly disappointing.

I served it them with some more of the strawberry habenero sauce. And the saltiness was a great foil to the sweetness of the Blonde Bombshell.

Delicious!

But now to the piece de resistance. The dessert.

So….what’s better than a triple chocolate baby bundt?

A QUADRUPLE chocolate baby bundt.

And what’s better than a quadruple chocolate Baby Bundt?

A Quadruple Chocolate Chilli Baby Bundt!

Third Course – Quadruple Chocolate Chilli Baby Bundt

So, if you’re following me on Instagram you would have already seen me post my first experiment with the Spice Peddler’s Mexican Chilli Chocolate Cake Mix. That was a Chili Chocolate Cupcake with a Chilli Toffee Shard topped with Vanilla Icecream and my Strawberry Habenero Sauce. OMG, I thought this was the best thing ever…so, so good. The cake was fudgy and spicy and delicious, the vanilla icecream and chilli sauce worked together perfectly and the chilli toffee was a cute and quirky touch. Basically, this was me on a plate!!!!

Chocolate Chilli Cupcake with A Chilli Toffee Shard

Gahhh….so how do you top that?

Well, I found a recipe for a cake called a Tyroler in a Delicious Magazine and I had a little play with it. And came up with the Quadruple Chocolate Chilli Baby Bundt. I used the Spice Peddler Mexican Chilli Chocolate Cake Mix as my base and it was super delicious!

This was really good. Then again, how could it not be?

It had quadruple chocolate.

And a touch of chilli.

And walnuts.

And rum soaked sultanas.

And did I mention quadruple chocolate?

So, it may have been belated but worth the wait because these were all awesome!!!!

I’ll try to be on time next year and if not, I can always repost this and rename it Birthday 3 – Cocktails, Canapés and Cake.

Hope you all have a fabulous week!!!!

(Recipes below)

Signature 1

Blonde Bombshell

Print Recipe

A delicious cocktail, perfect for a celebration.

Author: Taryn Nicole Fryer
Prep Time: 10
Cook Time: 5
Total Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients

Scale

1/2 ounce Parfait Amour
1/2 ounce St Germain Elderflower Liqueur
Sparkling Wine, preferably pink, definitely chilled

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

Pour the Parfait Amour into a chilled champagne flute.
Add the Elderflower Liqueur.
Top with the sparkling wine.

Nutrition

Serving Size: 1

08
Feb
2014

Holy Prune Kebabs Batman…It’s Cheesy Meaty Goodness on a Stick Part 3

categories: Bacon, Barbecue / BBQ, Cheese, Prunes, Sausage

So, we had our first bbq in the new house on the weekend. And to celebrate, I made the Prune Kebabs from Nancy Spain’s All Colour Cookbook. Before we sail this ship we call the Titanic into that particular iceberg, let’s talk about kebabs.

There seems to have been no standard spelling for food before about 1980. I’ve seen these things spelled Kebabs, Kebobs, Kabobs and even Kaboobs….

I’m actually a little disappointed we didn’t go with Kabobs. It sounds likes something out of Batman. KA-BOB!

Whereas kaboobs? Another thing altogether.

But I digress. Where were we? Oh yeah, Nancy’s kebabs…Nancy’s Prune Kebabs. Jeez, Even I’m distracted by Dolly’s boobage….I can only imagine what it’s like for all you boys….

Actually, one more. On a slightly more disturbing note, did you know if you Google image “kaboobs” this ranks quite high in the list of hits:

WTF? I don’t want to know. Seriously I don’t. Please no one ever explain the link to me. Ever.

Ok back to biz. Which was Nancy Spain’s Prune Kebabs. Nancy recommends these as being popular with teenagers. I find that hard to believe. It’s not like McDonalds didn’t exist then. Believe me, none of the cool kids were chomping on Nancy’s Prune Kebabs. Not when there was even the remotest possibility of two all beef patties, special sauce etc.

Also, given their renowned laxative properties, I would have thought Prune Kebabs more suited to the older gen.

But what do I know?

Sweet FA apparently because this recipe just lurched from one disaster to the next.

Issue 1.

Doing my mise-en-place I realised I had no apples. It must be the only time in the history off the world that we have not had an apple, any apple in the house.

Solution 1

Checked all the other ingredients just to be sure and went down to the shops. Bought apples. Did not realise until a week later when I came to scan the recipe to post that it also needed tomatoes. I swear I must have originally read this recipe in the dark. I didn’t miss them. Use them if you got ’em, if not never mind.

Issue 2

Nancy suggests soaking the prunes over night which I forgot to do. I also do not care for Mango Chutney so subbed in some caramelised onion relish. Maybe because I hadn’t soaked them, stuffing the prunes with the relish was nigh on impossible.

Creative Innovation #1

I smeared the bacon with the relish then wrapped the prunes up in the bacon.

Issue 3

There was a problem with the cheese. A few problems actually. First , Nancy suggests processed cheese. I would rather eat my own snot. I had some nice cheddar.

Issue 3.1

At the risk of sounding like Captain Obvious, cheese melts. So, how do you cook a sausage and bacon on a bbq without having the cheese melt away to nothing? Also it kept breaking off the skewer. In retrospect, I should have bought some of that super delicious Greek frying cheese.

Creative Innovation #2

I took the sausage out of its skin and made it into a little meatball and popped the cheese inside. It still leaked a little bit but if it hadn’t been wrapped in the meat, you may as well not bother with it.

Issue 4

I made two kebabs on my metal skewers then went the drawer to get the bamboo skewers. Only we had no bamboo skewers in the drawer. . .Or the pantry. Or any other place in the house. I can only think we left them at the old house .

So now we’re officially shit out of luck.

And skewers.

There’ no way I was getting in the car and driving to Safeway again. It was as hot as hell out there. In fact I’m blaming the heat on my utter scattiness – we had at least 6 days in a row over 40º. (That”s over 100º for my American friends). My brain is melting.

Creative Innovation #2

Brain melt or no, I may not have had skewers but I had rosemary. And you know what? Those rosemary mini kebabs were not only as cute as hell, but they smelled crazy stupid good when being bbq’ed and gave an extra flavour boost to the kebabs.

Finally, they were ready to go on the bbq. Good thing I was also making the cocktail that will feature in my Valetines Day post at the same time because I needed a drink after all that!

Prunes and bacon are always good. The onion relish was a nice addition as was the smoky flavour of the bbq. The recipe called for chippoloatas, I couldn’t find any so I used a spicy Italian fennel sausage from my local butcher. This was really nice with the cheese that didn’t leak out all over the bbq.

The two revelations were the apple…who knew bbq’ed apple was so good? It got a little bit charred and slightly soft but still crunchy, it soaked up the flavours of the bacon and the sausage, apples go fabulously with cheese…it was a real winner. And the other thing I loved was the rosemary. This was the opposite of the apple in that whilst the apple was busy soaking up all the flavours around it, the rosemary was just putting it all out there…the aroma as this cooked was awesome and the skewered items really did pick up some of the lovely rosemary flavour and aroma.

I have included both Nancy’s original and my adaptations below.

If you want more cheesy meaty goodness on a stick, you can look at:

Part 1 Here

Part 2 Here – this one also features prunes and bacon.

Here is the orginal Nancy Spain recipe:

Have a great week. We’ll talk cocktails soon.

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