Category: 1970’s recipes

Spinach Pancakes

Hello friends and welcome to a return to the wonderful vintage cookbook, The A-Z of Cooking. The last time I visited this book was back in 2016/17 when I cooked a LOT of recipes from it. There were only a few recipes left that I wanted to cook and this one for spinach pancakes with tomato sauce was top of the list! I love the combination of spinach and cheese – in spanakopita, in cannelloni and these pancakes did nothing to change my mind!

Spinach Pancakes 1

 

The finished pancakes looked very much like cannelloni!  And to be honest, while the taste was great, this was a lot of work.  The sauce needed to simmer for a few hours, the pancakes took some time to cook, the wrapping and rolling was fiddly.  Alas, no two of my rolled pancakes were the same size!  By the time these came out of the oven I was almost too tired to eat.  It was only the day after that realised this recipe was in the “Night Before” chapter of the A-Z.  It would have been far less tiring to make the sauce and pancakes the day before!  

Spinach Pancakes 2

Maybe because I was thinking of cannelloni, the method of cooking seemed a bit odd to me.  The recipe says to fill the pancakes, place them in the baking dish and then sprinkle cheese over the top. You were then meant to serve the sauce on the side.  

Spinach Pancakes 3

I did this but about half way through the cook, I gave into to the urge to pour the sauce over the top!  I then added more cheese.

 

Spinach Pancakes 4

Deeelicious!

Spinach Pancakes with Tomato Sauce – The Recipe

Spinach Pancakes Recipe

My notes on the recipe

  • I used frozen spinach
  • I subbed ricotta cheese for the cottage cheese
  • Leave yourself plenty of time – this took me around 3 and a half hours all up.  

 

And, if l like me you can’t get enough spinach and cheese, here are some other ways you can spin these flavours!

Have a great week!

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Classic Pavlova

G’Day Mates! Today we are heading back to our old friend Goodhousekeeping’s World Cookery for a sweet treat from the Antipodes! People hotly debate whether the Pavolva was invented in Australia or New Zealand.  We will not be entering into that discussion here.  Neither does Good Housekeeping.  They, rather wisely have a recipe for Pavlova in both the Australia and the New Zealand chapters! Nice diplomacy there GH!

Pavlova

I am using the recipe from the Australian chapter just because most of the other recipes in that chapter were awful! The recipes included things like Brain and Walnut Sandwiches, Sheep’s Tongues in Aspic, and a leg of lamb stuffed with kidneys, identified as Colonial Goose.  I’m sure that 1970’s Australian cuisine was better than what is represented here. So Pavlova or Pavlova Cake as they call it, it was! Not that I minded because I adore a pav! It is one of my favourite desserts and reminds me of summer, Christmas and good times whenever I eat it!

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Why Pavlova?

Anna Pavlova, the Russian Ballet dancer was the inspiration for the dessert.  She toured Australia and New Zealand in 1926.  

The lightness of the meringue represents not only the lightness of her steps but also her beautiful tutus. The Good Housekeeping Pavlova was wonderfully light. The meringue was crisp but it also had that lovely marshmallow inside which is the hallmark of a good pavlova.  

Pavlova – The Recipe

Pavlova recipe

I followed the recipe for the meringue as per Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery.  However, when it came to the topping I went my own way.  Pavlova can be very sweet so to add some tang, I add a dollop of lemon curd into my cream.  My favourite toppings are the classic strawberry and passionfruit but you can add whatever fruit you like.  

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Have a great week! Signature2

 

Sunday Night Ham Slaw Supper

Hello retro food lovers! Today we are taking a step back into one of my favourite vintage cookbooks, Salads for All Seasons by Rosemary Mayne Wilson.  I last cooked from this book way back in 2014.  I chose a Sunday Night Ham Slaw Supper as I will be posting this on a Sunday. Also, because I love the word supper.  It seems much cozier than the word dinner.  

Sunday Night Ham Slaw1

The Sunday night ham slaw is such a good idea!  You know that feeling after a big Sunday roast when you feel you might never need to eat again?  Except a good few hours later you start to think that maybe a little something-something might be nice?  Well this is that something. A little salad, some cold meat, a bread roll and butter.  Enough to stave off the pangs, not enough to fill you up too much.  

Sunday Night Ham Slaw3

I used ham as my meat of choice but this would be equally nice with leftover roast chicken or beef.  It would also be perfect with leftover grilled salmon, or for the vegetarians amongst us, some slices of avocado or as a filling for a baked potato.  I also did not mix my ham into the slaw as per the recipe but had it on the side. I thought the ham mixed in with the slaw might not look great.  It tasted great though and, with the bread on the plate was just crying out to be made into a sandwich!  

Sunday Night Ham Slaw4

 

Sunday Night Ham Slaw Supper – The Recipe

Sunday Night Ham Slaw recipe

This is a quick, easy and very tasty meal and a nice way to round off the weekend!

Have a great week!

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Beauty Bean Salad and a Herb S(w)izzle

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.  

 

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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

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.

Beauty Bean Salad3

 

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

Beauty Bean Salad

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

Beauty Bean Salad4

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.


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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.  

Herb Swizzle 2 (1)

The Herb S(w)izzle Recipe


Herb Sizzle Recipe

 

Herb Swizzle 3

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!

CandleHave a great week!

Busy Bird Chicken

Memories, Iike the corners of my mind…misty water-coloured memories…Greetings Friends and welcome to a very nostalgic instance of Retro Food for Modern Times. Many of the vintage dishes I make here are not from my own childhood but from old cookbooks I own. This one is different. Apricot or Busy Bird Chicken was something we would eat on the reg when I was growing up.

Busy Bird Chicken

Why Busy Bird Chicken? That’s what the recipe my mum used was called. However, it is almost exactly the same as the recipe I found in The Busy Woman’s Cookbook by The Australian Women’s Weekly (1972). The only difference is that our version had almonds sprinkled over the top. The busy woman of the 1970s had no time for such frivolities. Her Apricot Chicken is unadorned.  I really liked then in this thought, so I would urge you to also include them. 

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The Busy Woman’s Cookbook

We last met the busy woman way back in 2016. Then, as now, we lusted after her floral serving dishes and her perfectly coiffed hair, admired her skill in floristry / fruit wrangling and worried about her proximity to a naked flame whilst wearing a gorgeous but most likely highly flammable 1970s caftan.

The Busy Woman's Cookbook

They say you can’t step in the same river twice and so revisiting this beloved dish from my childhood came with a fair amount of anxiety. What if it wasn’t the charming dish of my memories? It’s very simple – four ingredients (with the almonds). Would the sweet / salty / oniony flavour be as I remembered it? Or would it be sickly sweet and awful?

I served my chicken with Sabrina Ghayour’s Coriander, Garlic and Lime Rice.  I thought the savouriness of this would act as a counter if the Busy Bird Chicken was overly sweet.  Back in the day, we would have had plain boiled rice with it. And to be honest, that would have been fine! 

Busy Bird Chicken 4

I’m happy to say that the Busy Bird Chicken was EXACTLY as I remembered it. It was a delicious blast from the retro past and I will certainly not be waiting such a long time to make it again!  

If you would like to have your own blast from the past here’s the recipe!

Busy Bird Chicken Recipe

Have a great week!  I will be popping into your inboxes mid-week this week too as it is PIEATHALON time.  I made my pie today (Sunday) and I am so looking forward to sharing it with you!  

 

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