Category: Holidays

St Niklas Granola

Hello friends! Today we a celebrating the festive season with another lovely homemade gift. Unlike the Sparkling Lavender Mustard or my Christmas Pudding, each of which need to rest for about a month before being ready to gift, the St Niklas Granola can be whipped up in an hour or so and gifted as soon as it cools!

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Annabel Crabb & David Sedaris

The recipe for the St Niklas Granola comes from the Book Special Guest by Australian Journalist, Annabel Crabb.  I adore Annabel Crabb, she is smart and funny and she writes a good recipe!  The St Niklas Granola is inspired by those spicy Dutch Christmas cookies called Peppernoten.  In the introduction, to the granola, she also speaks of the rather suspect story surrounding them. I believe this is the same story as told by David Sedaris in his story “Six To Eight Black Men”.  I linked to his reading of this way back in 2015 and can heartily recommend it.  It is so funny!  (And the Fig, Fennel and Pistachio Roulade that was the featured recipe would also make a wonderful Christmas gift for the Foodie in your life!  

Listening to Six to Eight Black Men has become one of my Christmas traditions.  Making the St Niklas granola may well become one too.  

St Niklas Granola

 

Speaking of Christmas traditions, Fairytale of New York is one of my favourite (Christmas) songs and features on any Christmas playlist I compile.  I was upset to hear of the recent passing of Shane McGowan.  His duet with Sinead O’Connor, Haunted is also one of my favourite songs.  How beautiful is her voice here?  It gives me shivers to hear it.  It is so sad to think that we have lost two such talented musicians this year.  

But back to the granola…

St Niklas Granola Recipe

I am not much of a breakfast person, so I usually eat my Granola as an after-dinner treat instead of dessert.  Sometimes, I also just grab a handful for a little snack on the go.  Some yoghurt and fresh fruit make it as good in the morning as it is in the evening.  The hit of spice and, especially the little hits of ginger when you get them are soooo good!  I love Annabelle’s suggestion of serving it with ice cream as a dessert too! 

St Niklas Granola recipe (1)

And of course, when I suggest you give this as a gift, what I really mean is make an entire batch and keep half for yourself!

 

St Niklas Granola3

Have a wonderful week! 

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Christmas Cocktail Party – 2002

.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!

Christmas Martini 2 (1)

 

Dec 2002 Menu

 

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 1

Christmas Martini Recipe

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:

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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!

Cured Salmon2

 

Cured Salmon 3

 

Here’s The Recipe:

Cured Salmon 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.

Salsa Verde Beef

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!

Mixed Berry Tarts

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.

Peach, Watercress and Blue Cheese Salad2

 

Peach, Watercress and Blue Cheese Salad

Here’s the recipe:

Peach, Watercress and Blue Cheese Salad recipe

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

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Chocolate Mousse Hearts

Happy Valentine’s Day friends!  Love is in the air are we are celebrating with some Chocolate Mousse Hearts largely inspired by a recipe in the Autumn 1986 issue of the Vogue Entertaining Guide.  Before we continue though, I need to be totally honest with you.  The recipe requires several instances of piping using an icing bag and this is not one of my strong suits.   Hopefully, you will find my less than perfect hearts endearingly wonky rather than downright comical.  And as we all know…love means never having to say you’re sorry so let’s get to it!

Okay, deep breath, here we go…

Chocolate Moussse Hearts1

Now, these babies might not look perfect but, I gave one to The Fussiest Eater in the World earlier.

He took his first bite. “Wow”. 

Second bite “Oh my God!”

The overall vote was “Delicious”.

So, they might not be the prettiest things in the world.  But they are definitely a sweet treat!

Just a little shout out before I continue though, that beautiful plate my heart is on comes from Yael Gronner Ceramics on Etsy.I bought some of her wares late last year and have been dying to feature them!

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Chocolate Mousse Hearts – The Breakdown

We start off with a meringue base – the first lot of piping.  And it really sets the tone for the rest of the dish.  If you can do this bit perfectly, the rest of the dish will be a doddle.  When you are doing the piping try to build up the outside of the hearts as much as possible.

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Then those little depressions in the middle of the hearts are filled with jam.  The recipe said berry jam but I used cherry.  I LOVE the combination of cherry and chocolate plus I don’t like how the seeds in strawberry and raspberry jam can get stuck in your teeth.

Those little hearts?  I had some of the meringue mixture left over and I thought they might be cute as garnishes or as taste testers.

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So, right about now, you might be thinking where’s that chocolate mousse I was promised?  Well, it’s coming right up.  Along with our second bit of piping:

I topped my mousse with some crumbled up Flake and a little gold lustre powder.

Chocolate Moussse Hearts 5

And a cherry on the top!

Chocolate Mousse Hearts – The Recipe

So, I was halfway through making this when I came to the sentence that said the chocolate mousse needed to set overnight.  I needed to get them made and take my pictures on Sunday 13th to have any hope of being able to ost this today.  Normally I am a bit more organised but life has got in the way this month!

It’s also the reason I garnished with a flake and not chocolate leaves and curls.

So, I found this mousse recipe online that did not have to chill overnight and used that instead.  I chilled it for 2 hours then piped it onto my hearts.

Whether you celebrate Valentine’s Day, Galentine’s Day or nothing at all, these decadent chocolate hearts are a good addition to your dessert repertoire.  They are very sweet though so for future making I would make them a little smaller (The widest part of my hearts was probably about 10cm across).  Or keep them big and share with someone you love!

Have a great week!

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It’s the Year of the Tiger

Hello and welcome to the second instalment of my Year of The Tiger special. Today we having a Tiger Skin Chicken from Adam Liaw and some little  French almond cakes called Les Tigres (the tigers) from Dorie Greenspan.  But first let’s have a little look-see at what may lie ahead for us in the Year of the Tiger!

Les Tigres 1

Predictions for the year of the Tiger suggest that this could be a year of political and social upheaval.  It is also a year of extremes, some people will boom and some will bust.  Fortune will tend to favour the brave.  The water element in this year of the Water Tigre will bring emotions to the forefront.

Strap in folks, this could be a wild ride!

Tiger Skin Chicken

Let me first show you Adam Liaw’s beautifully striped Tiger Skin Chicken.

Mine was not nearly as precise.

BUT, this was so delicious! I basted the chicken every 15 minutes in those buttery juices and it stayed delightfully moist.  It had  a slight spicy curry flavour which I thought was lovely eaten warm and also cold in sandwiches the following day.

I just need to get my squeeze bottle technique so the lines are a little thinner and maybe control the heat during the grilling of the skin a little better.  I also think I should have heated my honey before mixing it in with the yoghurt as it didn’t mix in well which is why I think some of my stripes were white, they were primarily yoghurt.

Tiger Skin Chicken 1

Here is the recipe from Adam’s Big Pot:

Tiger Skin Chicken Recipe

Les Tigres

To end our Year of the Tiger special we are having some little French cakes called Les Tigres.  I am assuming this is because they are dipped in a ganache which gives them a dark stripe against the dark gold of the almond cake.  They could also be called the leopards because the inside is dotted with choc chips!

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Les Tigres Recipe

Les Tigres recipe2
via Dorie Greenspan and Food Network

 

 

Les Tigres 3

The Tigres were a lovely way to finish this celebratory meal!

Best of luck to you all in the coming 12 months – let’s hope you don’t catch too many tigers by the tail but that you wake every morning with a tiger in your tank!

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The Eye of The Tiger

Hello friends!  This weekend people all over the world are celebrating Lunar New Year and the start of the year of the Tiger. Traditional foods for Lunar New Year include long noodles (symbolising long life and happiness) dumplings and spring rolls to bring wealth and fish to increase prosperity. Well, here at Chez Retro Food, we’re also celebrating the Year of the Tiger, but in our own special way!

Tiger Collage

Let’s get to it!

I always think that any occasion should be celebrated with a cocktail.  And Lunar New Year is no exception.  The Norwegian Tiger’s Milk Cocktail comes from a book called The Australian Hostess Cookbook (1969) and  a chapter called “A Party on the Nullabor Plain”.  Now for those of you unfamiliar with the Nullabor Plain, it is an area of some 200,000km  (that would be 76, 000 sq miles for those of you who are not used to the metric system) that is both flat and largely treeless.  Plain is putting it mildly.

I mean, does it not just scream party central?  But I digress.  If the location seems bonkers let’s further examine the cocktail.

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Norwegian.  Tiger’s  Milk.

Nope.

The World wildlife fund reliably informs me that tigers are very versatile creatures and can live in a variety of habitats – rainforests, savannahs, grasslands and mangrove swamps.  Tigers.org.za further specifies that they are most commonly found in China, Korea, Russia and Southeast Asia with Sumatra being the only island inhabited by tigers today.  Not even a whisper of Norway.  And, I’m no geography expert but I’m pretty sure the landscape of Norway is not rampant with savannahs.  Fjords yes.  Mangrove swamps?  No.

(Also note the natural habitat of the tiger is not an “exotic” animal part in Oklahoma.  But don’t even get me started on that one!)

Maybe if you are partying on the Nullabor Plain in 1969 a Norwegian Tiger makes sense.  They took a lot of drugs back then.

Norwegian Tiger’s Milk Cocktail

Copious amounts of drugs may also explain  the ingredients.  Equal parts gin, vanilla ice cream and creme de cacao. It really sounds like something someone with the munchies would pull together.

It also means that whatever measurement you use, (I used 30ml of each) you get a lot of booze and not much ice cream. Norwegian Tiger's Milk recipe

I used a cherry-infused gin which came in a Gin Advent Calendar I bought at Christmas.

Norwegian Tiger's Milk 3

The Norwegian Tiger’s Milk was a LOT nicer than I thought it would be! It tasted like a slightly weird in a good way Bailey’s Irish Cream.  Mine had that hint of cherry but I think without that the similarity to Baileys would be even more marked.  It was also much more of an after-dinner drink than an aperitif but I’ll forgive myself that.  And maybe have another after dinner!  I’m not driving and there is a little bit of gin left in that tiny Advent bottle!

We are continuing the theme of Tiger’s Milk with our starter.

Tiger’s Milk Ceviche

We are heading to Mexico for our starter.  Also not a natural habitat of the tiger.  However, Tiger’s Milk is the name of the liquid used to “cook” the seafood in a ceviche.

Tiger's Milk Ceviche 1

This was soooo good!  I love raw fish and this was zingy with citrus and fiery with chilli and crunchy with tortilla chips and loaded with fresh veg and herbs!  This is the kind of dish I could eat every day.

And it’s so pretty too!  Look at all those colours!

Tiger's Milk Ceviche 2

I used salmon for my fish because I could not get the kingfish specified in the recipe.  I also threw in some tiny tom berry tomatoes for extra colour and as mentioned subbed in some crunchy tortilla chips for the tortillas.  

The recipe for the Tiger’s Milk Ceviche comes from the Matt Preston Cookbook – Yummy Easy Quick Around The World.

Tiger’s Milk  – Hangover Cure?

Tiger’s milk is supposedly a hangover cure par excellence. Maybe for the morning after a few too many Norwegian Tiger’s Milks?   However,  I’ve been hungover once (maybe twice) in my life 😂 and I’m going, to be honest with you.  When I am in that very precarious and fragile state, given the choice of Uber Eatsing a Big Mac and a very large coke and downing some salmon soaking citrus liquid?  I’ll take those two all-beef patties etc any day of the week!

Would you drink the tiger’s milk?

Tiger's Milk

Later this week I’ll share the rest of our tiger-themed celebrations!

 

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