Category: Salad

Death Comes As The End – Spelt Salad with Duck

Hello crime readers and food lovers! I will admit that I was not looking forward to reading Death Comes As The End.  Whilst I have read a few historical mysteries, it is not my preferred genre of mystery reading.  The 150 years from the late 19th century (Sherlock Holmes) to now a pretty much my reading wheelhouse, mysteries included.  So, the prospect of a story set in Ancient Egypt didn’t fill me with joy.   And, who on earth knows what people in ancient Egypt ate?  And would I be able to replicate something even remotely similar?  

Luckily for me, Death Comes as The End is littered with references to items of food and so I was able to form an idea of what ingredients may have been available to someone in that time.  Esa, references her favourite dish of reedbirds with leek and celery a few times so that formed the basis of the meal I wanted to make.  Cooked celery makes me gag so that was out.  But leek and duck…that sounded like something good!

I’m going to shake things up this time and list the foods mentioned first instead of last because I think that will help explain how “I” came to devise this dish.  

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Food & Drink Mentioned in Death Comes As The End

  • Roast Duck
  • Spelt
  • Barley
  • Dates
  • Syrian Wine
  • Honey
  • Triangular loaves of bread
  • Grapes
  • Quail
  • Cakes with Honey
  • Reed birds with leeks and celery
  • Olives
  • Pomegranate juice
  • Wine

From that  list of ingredients, I chose duck, spelt or barley and leeks as the things I wanted in my recipe.  I then searched through my cookbooks.  I couldn’t find exactly what I wanted so I turned to technology to help.  “Find me a recipe with duck, leek and spelt”  I typed into an AI Chatbot.  It delivered two recipes, one a barley risotto type thing and one a Spelt Salad with Duck, Leeks and Pomegranates.  Bingo!  A bonus is that the recipe also contains honey which is in the above list!  

I also love the combination of using modern tech helping me to solve a problem of food from 4000 years ago! 

I wasn’t sure if cheese was a thing in Ancient Egypt.   Turns out, that Egyptians were making cheese 5000 years ago!  How cool is that?  I mean, they were also making the pyramids and the Sphinx which for most people probably trumps the fact that they were also making a bit of feta on the side.  But for me, that is the funnest fact I have learned all year (13th January at the time of writing).  

And, after all that,  I forgot to add the cheese to my salad anyway!  🤦🏽‍♀️

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Some Fun Facts About Death Comes As The End

  • This was the FIRST EVER historical whodunnit novel.  Even if you dislike the book (I really liked it but I may be in the minority here) that is something!  
  • It is the only Agatha Christie novel not set in the 20th Century
  • The novel is based on real letters written in Ancient Egypt from a man complaining about how badly his family treated his concubine
  • The book came about when Christie’s and Egyptologist Stephen Glanville suggested Agatha write a book set in ancient Egypt
  • It  is one of the few Christie novels not (yet) adapted for the screen

Death Comes As The End – The Plot

Because you are truly Egyptian – because you love life, because, sometimes – you feel the shadow of death very near…

Agatha Christie – Death Comes as The End

Renisenb has returned to her father’s home with her young daughter after the death of her husband.  Also living in Imhotep’s house are other members of his family including:

  • His eldest son Yamose, his wife Satipy and their family. Yahmose is diligent but also diffident.  His wife constantly henpecks and belittles him.  
  • Middle son Sobek and his wife Kait.  Sobek is as hot-headed and rash as Yahmose is careful.  Kait is the typical tiger mother, absorbed by and protective of her children
  • The youngest son, Ipy is arrogant and boastful.  He is eager to be seen as an intelligent adult and no longer a child.
  • Semi blind, Imhotep’s mother Esa rounds out the members of the family however there are two others also living with the family. 
  • Henet is a poor relative of Imhotep’s deceased wife who remains in the family to take care of them.  She is obsequious gossip and a thoroughly nasty piece of work. 
  • Finally there is Hori who is Imhotep’s scribe. Later, Kameni, another scribe joins the household.  

There is some tension between the brothers and the wives bicker with each other but these troubles are nothing compared to what happens when, after a trip to the North, Imhotep brings Nofret, his new concubine, to live with them.  The family is not happy about this. and are even less happy when Nofret begins to drive wedges between Imhotep and family members.

Nofret then falls to her death from a cliff.  Accident?  Or did someone in the family take matters into their own hands?

And then, there were nearly none!

Several more deaths follow leaving the remaining members of the family terrified.  (A lot of people die in Death Comes As The End.  The death count in this novel is second only to And Then There Were None! )

Are they being cursed by Nofret’s vengeful spirit or is the murderer far more corporeal?

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Death Comes As The End- The Covers

Death Comes As The End Collage

I was able to find French, German, Czech and Portuguese covers along with some English ones for this novel.  They are all pretty much as you would expect for a novel set in Ancient Egypt.  

The Recipe – Spelt Salad with Duck

Print

Spelt Salad with Duck

A delicious spelt salad with duck leeks and pomegranate inspired by Agatha Christie’s Death Comes As the End. 

Ingredients

Scale
  • 100g spelt
  • 2 duck breasts
  • 1 tsp vegetable oil
  • 1/2 tbs duck seasoning (I didn’t know what this was so used 1/2  tbs ras el hanout for its Middle Eastern Flavours.  )
  • 2 leeks thinly sliced
  • 1 tbs olive oil
  • 1 orange, segmented
  • Handful of walnuts, toasted and chopped
  • 1/2 cup crumbled goat cheese (I forgot to add this and the salad was fine without it so consider it optional)
  • Pomegranate Molasses

For The Dressing

  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 tbsp lemon juice
  • 1 tsp honey
  • Salt and pepper

Instructions

The AI recipe had no method of cooking the leeks so I assume they had them raw.  I do not like the idea of raw leeks so I began by sauteeing the leeks in olive oil for around 20 minutes until they were soft and just starting to caramelise. 

Preheat the oven to 180C.  

Put the spelt in a large saucepan, cover with cold water and bring to the boil.  Reduce to a simmer for 20 minutes.  Drain and cool for 5 minutes.

Score the duck breasts in a crisscross pattern.  Season with salt and pepper.  Then brush with oil and sprinkle with duck seasoning  / ras el hanout.

Heat a frying pan over medium heat and fry the duck, skin side down for 5 minutes.  Then turn and cook on the flesh side for 2 minutes.  Transfer, skin side up to a small roasting tin and put in the oven for 15 minutes.  (I found this was too long, my duck was overcooked.  I would check for doneness after about 8 minutes in the over and then every 2 minutes from there.)

While the duck cooks, toss the cooked spelt with the leeks, orange segments, pomegranate seeds and walnuts.

For the dressing, whisk together the olive oil, lemon juice, honey, salt and pepper.

Slice the duck and arrange on top of the salad.  Drizzle with the dressing and crumble the goat cheese over the top. / Mix the dressing with the spelt mixture.  Slice the duck and arrange on top of the salad.  Drizzle some pomegranate molasses over the duck. 

Serve Immediately.

Enjoy!

Notes

Items in italics are those added by me, the rest is the recipe generated by AI

 

Fear is everywhere

Death Comes As The End – Agatha Christie

spelt salad4

 

Links To The Christieverse

None that I could find.

February’s read will be Towards Zero.

 

Dec 03 – Make Mine A Double

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!  

Moorish Champagne Cocktail1

The Menu – December 2003

Moorish Champagne Cocktail

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 Cocktail2

 

Moorish Champagne Tart Recipe

Dec 2003 - Moorish Champagne Cocktail 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

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

Salad of Dried Pears recipe2

 

Salad of Dried Pears 2

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

 

Grilled Salmon with Thai Green Risotto Recipe

Grilled Salmon with Thai Green Risotto recipe (1)

 

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

Mulled Wine Sorbet with Clove Biscuits Recipe

Mulled Wine Sorbet with Clove Biscuits recipe (1)

My Nigella Moment  – Crispy Herbed Potatoes

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 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 because it is too good not to share.  

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).  

Dec 2003 - Crispy Seared Potatoes3Crispy Seared Potatoes Recipe

Crispy Herbed Potatoes (1)

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!

 

 

 

Ham Slaw Baked Potato

Hello friends and welcome to a midweek quickie. Today we are talking leftovers, specifically what to do with leftover Ham Slaw.   I recently, please don’t laugh at this, but I only very recently learned that you could “bake” potatoes in the microwave! Combine the two and you get a super yummy ham slaw baked potato.  AKA Work from home heaven!

 

Since then though, I have been making up for lost time and about once a week when I am on a working-from-home day and have suitable leftovers, I have been baking up a potato and having it with my leftovers for lunch.  The Ham Slaw was AMAZING!

Ham Slaw Potato

And how does it taste?

 

Ham Slaw Potato2

There is something I find so comforting about a baked potato. And at 6 minutes cooking time, you can bake your potato, walk your dogs and eat all in your lunch hour!  The ham slaw is a pretty robust salad so will last in the fridge for a day or two so if you make a bit more than you need, you can have lunches for a few days.  I had this as a work from home lunch but there’s nothing to stop you re-heating your potato in the office microwave either!

Ham slaw, a baked potato hack and two Taylor Swift gifs?  What more could you want in a mid-week quickie!  Hope your week is going well.

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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.  

 

eat-for-love-and-beauty-001.jpg

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.


Beauty Bean Salad5

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!