Salad Archives - Retro Food For Modern Times

Tag: Salad

27
Dec
2023

Dec 03 – Make Mine A Double

categories: 20 Years Ago Today, Champagne, Delicious, Desserts, Drinks, Icecream, Potato, Rice, Salad, Salmon, Sorbet

Hello, retro food lovers and Season’s Greetings from 2003! This month I am using Delicious Magazine from December 2003 to prepare a menu where…well let’s see if you can guess…Hint..there’s a big clue in the title.

The whole time I was cooking this month I also kept thinking back to my early twenties when we used to play a drinking game called “I’m going to the moon”. The person who starts says “I’m going to the moon and I’m taking (for example) an apple”. Then the next person says “I’m going to the moon and I’m taking a pear”. The first person who is the game controller tells them if they can come to the moon or not. If they can’t go, they need to stay on earth and have a drink. There are many variations on this game but my personal favourite was based on the same theme as this month. Let’s move away from my sozzled past to see what was happening in December 2003. Although come to think about it, that was probably the same time as I was playing the game!

The Lord of The Rings: Return of the King was the big movie of December 2003. The Last Samurai was the next biggest. And, quelle surprise, The Da Vinci Code was still the best-selling book. Which all kind of explains why I was playing drinking games instead of partaking in pop culture. Although the soundtrack to those drinking games would have been good with Here Without You and Hey Ya! being the number one songs that month!

The Menu – December 2003

Moorish Champagne Cocktail

I am always very happy to be able to start these menus with a cocktail. The Moorish Champagne Cocktail was both easy to make and also very more-ish!

Moorish Champagne Tart Recipe

Salad of Dried Pears, Proscuitto, Blue Cheese and Walnuts

AKA a salad of a few of my favourite things! If this hadn’t fit the theme, it would have surely been my Nigella item for this month! And it was divine!

Salad of Dried Pears, Proscuitto, Blue Cheese and Walnuts Recipe

Grilled Salmon with Thai Green Risotto

I apologise for the photo of this which is not great. Having said this, the photo from the mag (which follows the recipe) is also not great. Neither photo does this dish, which was amazing any justice! But, trust me, it is worth taking a punt on as it was delicious!

Grilled Salmon with Thai Green Risotto Recipe

Mulled Wine Sorbet With Clove Biscuits

This was so nice and refreshing. It is summer in Australia so this is a nice nod to wintry flavours but adapted for summer. The sorbet mixture was very soft, for me it was more like a slushie than a sorbet so my recommendation is either not to serve it on a very hot day or to eat it quickly as it melts in moments. Speaking of melting, the clove biscuits just melt in your mouth! I am usually a bit wary of cloves – I’ve bit into them accidentally when eating things like curries and find the flavour a bit too much! So, for the first few biscuits, I ate, I picked the cloves off. Since then, I have eaten them with the clove in and the flavour of them seems to be less powerful in the biscuits than in say a curry. So, even if you don’t love cloves, give these a try with them!

Mulled Wine Sorbet with Clove Biscuits Recipe

My Nigella Moment – Crispy Herbed Potatoes

You had me at crispy potatoes! And then when I saw how pretty these were, I knew they would be my Nigella item for this month. If I hadn’t already bought what I needed to make Katrina Meynink’s Roasted Taters with Horseradish and Tapenade for Christmas Day, the Crispy Herbed Potatoes would have been on the menu. (As an aside, I have just bought the aforementioned book From Salt to Jam and am absolutely loving it).

Crispy Seared Potatoes Recipe

Overall a great month from Delicious December 2003. If you have not yet guessed the theme, no going to the moon for you! But in the interest of your liver, it was to find recipes with double letters. Until I did this, I had never really thought about how many food items had these. I was absolutely spoiled for choice with options:

(Update 6/1/24 – I had originally included links to items below that are still on the Delicious.com.au website. Those links have been blocked but anything I have asterisked is available should you want to check them out.)

Starters

Baked eggs
Bruschetta with grilled artichokes and roasted garlic
B’stilla*
Cheese Crock
Chilled pea soup with lobster and risoni salad*
Goat’s curd in grappa*
Prawn and fattoush salad
Schiacciata*
Spanner crab chowder
Peppered Beef Salad
Smoked Salmon with clementines and cress
Terrine with microwave cranberry chutney

Mains and Sides

Beef fillet with spicy potatoes and horseradish
Butternut pumpkin with tasty stuffing
Cheeky Christmas turkey with braised leeks and the best wine gravy
Chicken noodle salad
Chicken with pepperoncini
Cinnamon and sultana couscous
Cold turkey salad with mango and honey dressing
Country chicken and mushroom pies
Chicken coconut curry pie
Crispy skin coral trout with roasted pineapple, coconut salad and rosti potato
Fillets of John Dory with olives, capers and rosemary
Flame grilled tuna with wasbi cake, bok choy and lime ponzu
Fricassee of chicken with mustard and grapes
Grilled coral trout with asparagus, red capsicum and sugar snap peas
Rice paper rolls with turkey
Seared barramundi with garlic skordalia, asparagus and creole salsa
Traditional Barossa ham in verjuice jelly
Turkey with saffron butter and preserved lemon and olive stuffing
Baked zucchini tarts with stuffed vegetables
Frisee, watercress and witlof salad
Goat’s cheese tarts with roast peaches and vincotto
Moroccan carrot salad
Open lasagne of asparagus with rocket tortellini
Roasted eggplant and tomato salad
Savoury Summer puddings
Sweet potato briks
Truffled potato mash

Sweets

Baked lime cheesecake
Boozy puddings with cheat’s custard*
Cherry clafoutis*
Choc-mint raspberry sundae
Chocolate and strawberry tartines*
Chocolate and brandied prune terrine*
Christmas morning muffins*
Christmas pudding ice cream with sweet cranberry sauce
Cinnamon ice cream with red wine poached figs*
Chocolate cake with plum pudding vodka*
Coconut and passionfruit slice
Eggnog custards*
Flourless Hazelnut roulade
Free-form berry trifles
Middle Eastern fruit cake*
Pannettone with berries and brandy sauce
Passionfruit panna cotta*
Raspberry ice cream sundae
Snowballs*
Starry night tarts*
Star-topped mince pies
Strawberry sundae*
Tutti Frutti ice cream*
Vanilla sponge with raspberries
White Chocolate and chilli ice cream with tropical fruit

Other

Hettie Potter’s suet-free mince meat
Easy cranberry sauce
Peanut Butter sauce
Raspberry sauce
Strawberry sauce
Irish coffee with orange rind and vanilla

Sorry for the massive laundry list but I really wanted to show how many items had double letters! I was honestly astounded!

So, my question to you lovely readers is – if you were making your own double-letter dinner, what would you choose? Either from the extensive list above or things that have not been mentioned – baguettes, beetroot, jelly, waffles, green beans, toffee, frittata, dill, mayonnaise, cabbage, spaghetti, mozzarella…the list goes on!

Couscous which is in the list above is the only thing I could think of with the same series of letters twice. Can you think of any others?

And one last thing. Thank you all for reading and commenting through the year! Best wishes for an amazing 2024!

25
Sep
2023

Beauty Bean Salad and a Herb S(w)izzle

categories: 1970's recipes, Beans, Drinks, Eat Your Way To Love and Beauty, Non - Alcoholic, Salad, Vegetables

Hello Yogis and retro food lovers. Today we are revisiting “Eat Your Way To Love and Beauty” by Swami Saravati. Today we are focussing on the beauty side with a Beauty Bean Salad. There is no indication as to what the Herb S(w)izzle is good for. Let’s say hydration and move on. As with last time, before we get to the recipes, let’s take a moment to marvel at the cover of this book.

This is probably one of my all favourite covers of any book I own. The swami looks young and gorgeous, she has perfect skin, is lithe and limber and is rocking an itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow flowered bikini. Seeing that cover and how great she looks, who wouldn’t want to get her recipes? I will add that nowadays doing the camel pose over over glass containers probably breaks all sorts of OHS laws but back in the freewheeling days of 1971…you could do what you wanted! Just on that, and how good she looks? There was no photoshop back in 1971. She actually looked like that!

Hmm…maybe I need to cook a few more recipes from this book

Beauty Bean Salad

This was really tasty! And it also looked very pretty with the different shades of green and then pops of purple from the red onion. I ate this for dinner one night and made enough to have for lunch the following day. One of the great things about this salad is that the ingredients are all fairly robust so will not wilt overnight. Good thing really because after I had taken the photos from the night, I realised I had left out a key ingredient.

I used green beans, edamame and sugar snap beans for my fresh ingredients. However, the recipe also calls for some dried beans. I had a can of chickpeas in the cupboard so when I had these for lunch, I threw in some chickpeas.

The chickpeas changed this from a side salad to a more filling meal. I’m not sure if the Swami would entirely agree with this but if you wanted to bulk this out even more, some feta or goat’s cheese or a can of tuna or some grilled salmon would be great with this!

Beauty Bean Salad – The Recipe

I used lemon juice and olive oil as my dressing and dill as my herb.

I find it really interesting to see the differences between night light and daylight and the passage of time on the color of this salad.

The Herb S(w)izzle

This drink is actually called a Herb Sizzle. There is nothing sizzled in it so in my head it is the Herb Swizzle as you have to stir the ingredients together! Whatever you call it, it is a fancy and very tasty apple juice! I used Rosemary as my herb but you could use your favourite herb instead.

The Herb S(w)izzle Recipe

This was really refreshing and went very nicely with the salad!

It was really fun revisiting Eat Your Way To Love and Beauty. I also still want to go to the Swami’s Yoga Retreat! Sadly Swami herself passed away in 2009. I have a candleholder very much like the one by her left knee on the book cover. So let’s light a candle and raise a Herb Swizzle toast to the Swami and her legacy of eating our way to love and beauty!

Candle Have a great week!

14
Jan
2023

Summer Vegetarian – January 2003

categories: 20 Years Ago Today, Cocktail, Summer, Vegetarian

Hello Friends and welcome to Twenty Years Ago Today for January 2003. It’s summertime here in Australia and living is easy. We want some no-muss, no-fuss food – and if we can slap it on the BBQ – so much the better! The magazine I am using for this month is Super Food Ideas from December 2002. The theme is summer vegetarian…will the magazine meet the challenge?

Here’s the menu I devised from the recipes in the magazine. I was able to meet my challenge of relaxed summer vegetarian food quite easily – there were a few options for the opening drink, the starter, side and dessert. There were not so many vegetarian mains but I really liked the sound of the sweetcorn and zucchini burgers! And the fussiest eater in the world loves peanut brittle so we appeared to be onto a winner, winner vegetarian dinner!

Pineapple and Rum Crush

This was summer in a glass! Rum and pineapple is a classic tropical flavour combination. I also liked the refreshing scent of the mint. This is a perfect hot-weather drink!

ChunkyAvocado Dip

I did not make this as I could not find a ripe avocado for love or money the day I wanted to make it! Here’s the recipe. This came from an advertisement for Tupperware, hence the mention of the serving vessel.

Sweetcorn and Zucchini Burgers

I was excited to make these because I love a zucchini fritter and I love a corn fritter. Also, I picked the zucchini and the parsley from my garden! What could be better than combining the two? Unfortunately, these were not good. Usually, when I make zucchini fritters, I squeeze the water out of the zucchini after grating them. This recipe did not say to do so and, when I am cooking a recipe for the blog or for Tasty Reads, I follow the recipe exactly. Maybe because I did not squeeze my zucchini (which sounds like a euphemism if ever I heard one) the mixture was a mess! I had to add almost double the amount of flour suggested to get something that would even hold together. The burgers tasted too much like flour and not enough like sweetcorn or zucchini. I would not make these again. If you want to try them, I would try squeezing the moisture out of the grated zucchini. Or for a really good recipe for zucchini fritters, use this one from Epicurious which is one of my faves!

Tomato Salad with Creamy Dressing

This was good, nothing special but a tasty tomato salad. We are about to have a bumper crop of tomatoes from the backyard so I might be making it again very soon!

Peanut Brittle

This was a semi-fail but entirely due to user error! The recipe says to microwave for 6-8 minutes. I do not cook with my microwave very often and got a bit panicky when at the six-minute mark the dish I was using to cook the brittle in felt very hot. The mixture inside it looked like something normally seen in the crater of a volcano about to explode. I lost my nerve and stopped the cooking process! As a result, the candy creation was not brittle but had the consistency of fudge. It was delicious though! Next time I will hold my nerve and cook it for the full eight minutes!

My Nigella Moment

For first-time readers, this refers to the moment at the end of Nigella Lawson’s cooking shows when she sneaks back to the fridge to have another bite of something delicious. In the context of these Twenty Years Ago posts, it is something contained in the magazine that does not fit with the overall menu theme but I’m sneaking in because it was really good! This month, my Nigella moment came from an article on Asian food which included one of my restaurant favourites, Thai Fish Cakes. This is my go-to starter when eating Thai but I have never even contemplated making these at home! I loved these! They were deliciously tasty and were very close to the ones you eat in restaurants. I will definitely make these again! Also, happy Lunar New Year Everyone!

I hope you have enjoyed my trip back to the vegetarian food of 2003. It certainly had some mixed results. The absolute highlight for me were the fishcakes, they were sensational! The cocktail was pretty good too!

Future Twenty Years Ago Today Posts

I have been thinking about these 20 Years Ago Today posts and I decided that, whilst I love doing them, the risk is that the menu themes will get a bit predictable and will be limited to the food that I like. To give me a challenge and to hopefully really highlight what is featured in my 20-year-old magazines, I have come up with a list of menu themes and each month I will randomly select a theme and see if I can build a menu from that theme out of the magazine in question. Some of the themes are serious, some are based on actual food preferences of people I know (for example, the Fussiest Eater In The World once told me he did not eat white food. Except for potatoes, bread, rice, cauliflower, fish, milk, yoghurt….the list goes on!) and some I made up to challenge myself! You can find the list of themes here:

If you would like to contribute a theme, please let me know, I’m up for any challenge you can throw at me!

Have a great week.

23
Dec
2022

Christmas Cocktail Party – 2002

categories: 20 Years Ago Today, Canapes, Christmas, Cocktail, Drinks, Events, Holidays, Martini

.Hello Friends and welcome to Twenty Years Ago Today! Today I am planning a Christmas Cocktail Party based on recipes from the December 2002 Edition of Australian Table. The Christmas Martini featured in the magazine felt like a perfect way to kick off the festivities!

The Christmas Martini

I had to check my dates to see if the Christmas Martini was created at the height of Sex And The City and thus was leaning into the Cosmo craze that show generated. It was a little late for that so now think that the use of cranberry juice in a martini was more due to its festive colour than a call back to the show.

I admit to being a bit worried about this – I thought it might be too sweet. I used a no-added-sugar cranberry juice to try to counter this and to my mind, this recipe really worked. The Christmas Martini is definitely sweeter than a regular martini but the tannins in the cranberry helped to keep it from being sickly. I also liked the combination of the slightly sweet drink and the salty olives. So this was a winner for me!

Christmas Martini Recipe

The Other Recipes (and My Variations)

Parmesan Chilli Biscuits with Roasted Cherry Tomatoes

If I were making these, I might be tempted to swap out the baby spinach leaves for basil leaves and pipe a little splodge of goat’s cheese onto each biscuit not only to add some more flavour but also to anchor the tomato to the biscuit a bit better! No one wants a stray balsamic-covered cherry tomato rolling off their biscuit and staining their cocktail dress!

Here’s The Recipe:

Cured Salmon with Fresh Herbs

I made this and the salmon was amazing! So good and so easy! To fit in with my cocktail party theme, instead of serving it in long strips with potato salad, per the recipe, I cut the salmon into chunks and served it on crackers with some cream cheese, thinly sliced shallots and the capers and herbs suggested by the recipe. These would work perfectly with the Chrirtmas Martini too!

Here’s The Recipe:

Fillet of Beef with Salsa Verde

For cocktail party serving, I would make cut the beef into nice bite-size chunks, place it on a grilled bit of crusty bread and drizzle with the salsa verde.

Mixed Berry Tarts

A great alternative, if, like me, you are not a fan of the traditional mince pie! These would be a lovely ending to your Christmas cocktail party!

My Nigella Moment

For first-time readers, this refers to the moment at the end of Nigella Lawson’s cooking shows when she sneaks back to the fridge to have another bite of something delicious. In the context of these Twenty Years Ago posts, it is something contained in the magazine that does not fit with the overall menu theme but I’m sneaking in because it was really good! This month’s item of irresistibility was a Peach, Watercress and Blue Cheese Salad. This was sensational! (If it looks a little bit familiar, we ate this as a side dish to last week’s Stilton and Leek Souffle.

Here’s the recipe:

I hope this has given you some inspo for your own Christmas Cocktail Party. Have a wonderful, safe and festive holiday period!

18
Dec
2022

Rose Petal and Nasturtium Leaf Salad

categories: 1990's recipes, Edible Flowers, Magazines, Roses, Salad, Vogue Entertaining & Travel

Hello friends and welcome to the latest edition of Things Posh People Ate in the 90s. This week’s fancy dish comes from the pages of Vogue Entertaining from March 1990. And what could be posher than a salad made of flowers? Or more pretty? This Rose Petal and Nasturtium Leaf Salad would make a lovely addition to a spring or summer lunch.

This would also be a delightful addition to your Christmas dinner table, ideal for a girl’s night or a romantic dinner à deux! The rose petals don’t add a heap of flavour (that comes from the rosewater in the dressing) but the nasturtium leaves are nice and peppery. The pea shoots bring some freshness, the olives some briny bitterness, and some depth to what is otherwise pretty much all sweetness and light. The orange dressing is refreshing and not too sweet.

Also, if like me you do not grow your own roses or nasturtiums, please make sure they come from a reputable source and have not been sprayed with any pesticides or other things you do not want to eat! My petals and leaves came direct from my mum’s garden.

Rose Petal and Nasturtium Leaf Salad – The Recipe

Additions

You could add any (or all) of these to this salad depending on your preference or how big you want your salad to be:

Toasted flaked almonds for some crunch
Goat’s cheese for some creaminess
Wafer thin slices of fennel for crunch and a little hit of aniseed

Serving Suggestions

Vogue Entertaining serves this with a seafood salad with a creamy pesto dressing. Far be it for me to contradict them but pesto can pack a punch of flavours (which s what makes it so delicious) but may overpower the delicate nature of this salad.

I would go with

Chicken – either poached or roasted
A grilled salmon fillet or
Some grilled prawns or scallops

Fun Facts

The article containing the Rose Petal and Nasturtium Leaf Salad was called Culinary Canvas and featured the artist Mary Pinnock.

“I dig cooking with them because they are so available,” she says, reaching through the kitchen window and plucking a handful from a hanging pot.

Mary Pinnock on nasturtium leaves.

I had a quick look online for Mary and you can still buy her artwork for a very reasonable price. This one, featuring nasturtium leaves has a price guide of only $150-250 which is an absolute bargain! If it was actually for sale I might be tempted to buy it myself!

Have a great week!