Category: Sangria

Let’s Get Lit – March 2003

Hello friends and welcome to March 2003! Avril Lavigne was topping the charts with I’m With You, Bringing Down the House was #1 at the box office and U.S. troops invaded Iraq looking to seek and destroy Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. No wonder, when reflecting on the events of twenty years ago, we here at Retro Foods for Modern Times felt we might need to get a little boozy!  This was the theme for our menu which came from the March 2003 issue of Delicious Magazine!

March 2003 – The Menu

rffmt gets boozy menu

Sangria

As if we could have a boozy menu without a starting drink!  I love Sangria which despite being Spanish in origin always reminds me of our 2017 trip to Portugal where we would have a pre-dinner sangria most days!

Sangria in Portugal

Happy times!  Here’s the one from Delicious!

Sangria1

Sangria Recipe:

Beer Bread with Pastrami and Relish

Due to time constraints, I didn’t make this but doesn’t it look amazing?

Beer Bread Recipe

Spaghettini Alle Vongole

OMG, this was so good.  And also when I really wished I had made the beer bread so I could mop up all the delicious sauce left in the bowl.  I had never eaten Spaghettini Alle Vongole before and although this took a bit of effort to cook, it was worth it!

Spaghettini Alle Vongole Recipe:

Spaghetti Alle Vongole RECIPE

Citrus Salad with Cointreau Cream

To finish out the meal, we have a Citrus Salad with Cointreau Cream.  For an alternative dessert, but one that still uses Cointreau, you could sub in last week’s White Lady which also came from this magazine!

Citrus Salad with Cointreau Cream recipe1

My Nigella Moment – Salmorejo

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 it in either because I made it and it was really good, or I just didn’t have time to make it but it was the most appetising thing in the mag!

This was a difficult one.  I was torn between two recipes that really appealed to me.  One was a pink grapefruit tart.  However, as we already had a dessert containing grapefruit I decided to go with the other recipe from March 2003 which caught my eye – salmorejo.

Salmorejo is a cousin of gazpacho.  Gazpacho is one of those things that I thought I would hate.  Cold tomato soup?  Yeccchhh!!! That is until I tried it.  And from then on it was love!  I will note that even though I am a garlic lover, 4 cloves of garlic was too much for this!  Two would, I think have been plenty! 

It looked exactly as it did in the picture too!

Salmorejo

 

Salmorejo Recipe

Salmorejo recipe

Delicious Magazine certainly delivered on our ask for a boozy menu.  We had red wine and brandy in the sangria, beer in the bread, white wine in the spaghetti and Cointreau in the dessert!

Let me know if you would like to contribute a theme to my list.  I’m happy to take on any challenge!

 

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Cheery Cherry Sangria

This post’s name came from the fact that I totally read the name of this recipe incorrectly.  More than once.  I swear, the first four times looked at it I  thought it was called Cheery Sangria.  I even wrote it that way on my “meal” planner.  Cheery Sangria.  It was only when I was writing the ingredients on my shopping list that I paused.  “Oh.  It has cherries in it.  That’s cute, they made a pun.”  Well, it turns out, they didn’t.  But I did.  And we all know how much I love that!  So, technically what we’re drinking today is CHERRY sangria.  But you know what?  It brought a touch of the sun and warmth of Portugal into a totally cold, wet and grey Melbourne winter day so I think Cheery Sangria works just as well!!

Yes, I’m back from holiday.  And determined to make Sangria my drink of choice for this summer. It’s just so good!!! Wine and fruit and a little bit o the hard stuff….it really doesn’t get much better.  Mind you, summer has to come first.  And at the moment, it seems a long time away. 

The best Sangria I had overseas was in Portugal – a teeny cafe in Faro.  Here I am drinking one….

SangriaThe Portuguese,they are a people after my own heart. They have a cherry liqueur called Ginja which is commonly drunk for breakfast.  Speaking of which…when the breakfast buffet contains both Portuguese egg tarts and sparkling wine, I know I have found my people!

Sangria 5

Cheery times!  And cheersy times!!!  But now onto some cherry times.

The cherry sangria I made is pretty hearty.  It has loads of strong, spicy flavours which made it suitable for a cold winter’s day.  I also totally forgot to add the cinnamon stick but that would have only made it even better!  The gorgeous deep red colour is also so pretty and warming.  I also used cherries and sparkling wine to remind me of the Portuguese breakfast drinks of Ginja and cava!

But let’s start with some fruit.  Limes, blood oranges and, of course cherries make for a tasty and colourful combination!

Cherry Sangria2Then add some tequila for a kick, grenadine for sweetness and a teeny taste of Tabasco for spice and muddle the fruit to get some juicy, fruity flavours.  (Pre-muddle is also when the cinnamon should have been added).

Sangria3Top with orange juice and some sparkling red wine…and voila…cherry sangria!

Sangria4Salud!

 

[yumprint-recipe id=’97’]Sangria6

 

Have a great week! 

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