Tag: 1970’s food

Raising the (Salad) Bar Part 1: Cuban Aguacate Salad and Dressing

One of the reasons I love old cookbooks is sometimes you get a little insight in to the lives of the people who owned them previously.  My latest favourite vintage find, Salads For All Seasons is no exception.

S4AS CoverThere is an inscription on the front inner cover that reads “To Ann, Happy Christmas 1985. Love Aunty Ev & Uncle Bill.

S4AS Inscription

Thing is…the book was published in 1971.  I don’t want to judge but I dunno….unless it’s an absolute classic, giving someone a 14 year old cookbook makes me think that some regifting may have been at play here.

I suspect Ann may not have been the favourite niece.

Avocado and Aguacate Dressing
Avocado and Aguacate Dressing

In the foreward Elizabeth Durack Clancy O.B.E. says:

“I commend this book because it is so useful and practical.  “The wilful extravagant maid” can learn some fresh devilment from these pages but the “housewife that’s thrifty” is equally catered for.”

Hmmm…I’m thinking Aunty Ev may have been one of those “thrifty housewives”. And good old Ann, a maid of will and extravagance.  It’s all starting to come together….it certainly explains the parsimony of the Christmas present. And the lack of a term of endearment in the greeting.

Next up, the introduction where author Rosemary Mayne-Wilson tells us:

“Salad used to something served on Sunday evenings.  It consisted of neatly shredded lettuce, tomato wedges, hard boiled eggs and a slice of cheese.  It was served with the sliced leftovers of the Sunday roast.  Generally it was put straight on the plate, but when there were visitors it was served in a crystal salad bowl.  To make it daring, a blob of mayonnaise was added, but this ‘extra’ was confined to adults”

Personally, I’d be quite happy eating that salad.  But more importantly, who knew mayo was a rite of passage?

Wasabi Leaves
Wasabi Leaves

Then again, have you heard of those Menarche Parties that people are throwing their daughters these days?  I swear, if my parents had ever done anything like that to me, I would still be locked in the bathroom, listening to The Smiths on repeat and  sobbing “You hate me don’t you? You really fucking hate me.”

You can view the full horror by clicking on the link below but just to whet your appetite, included in the party pack provided by…

wait for it…

Menarche Parties R Us.com ((2021 Update – sadly this site no longer exists))

(I swear you couldn’t make this shit up if you tried)

…are 2 games.  One of these is called “Pin the Ovaries”  and the other is called the   “Puberty Marshmallow Game”.

(2021 Update – sadly this site no longer exists)

Pinning ovaries sounds like something a serial killer would do.  And I never want to know what a puberty marshmallow game entails.

For the love of God, bring back the dob of mayo on the Sunday Night Salad. “You’re a woman now Ann, have some Hellman’s”.

“Gee thanks Aunty Ev.  Any chance of some tips on frugality?”

Wow,that was a spectacular digression.  Where we we?  Salad.  Yes.  Right. Ok. Sorry, I’m still  being gobsmacked by the puberty marshmallow game.

Salad.  We’re here to talk about salad.

Cuban Aguacate Salad 2
Cuban Aguacate Salad 2

Back to the Introduction of Salads For All Seasons – after dropping in the comment about the mayo, in a lovely piece of randomness, Rosemary Mayne-Wilson tells us:

“Of course this has all changed and now nearly everyone owns a wooden salad bowl”

Bear with me while I nip across to Ebay because I am one of the few who own nothing of the sort.  And now I desperately want one.  I really want one that looks like this:

Super 1970's Salad Bowl

But I’m guessing I might have to make do with something a little more mundane.

And it will come in handy because I’m thinking that this could be a long haul.  There is so much that is both amazing and godawful in Salads for All Seasons, that  I think it’s worth spending some time here.

I was going to work through it from start to finish…until I read some of the recipes and paused for a moment of sanity.  So we’ll be kind of working our way through in a fairly random order but skipping some of the truly awful and the just plain boring.

But just to get us off to a to an extravagant and devilish start, put your hot pink dancin’ shoes on, because your tastebuds are going to be doing the Rhumba with this awesome Cuban inspired salad.

Rhumbas

[amd-zlrecipe-recipe:2]

Cuban Aguacate Salad
Cuban Aguacate Salad

Who knew you could put rum into salad dressing? It’s certainly efficient – you can toxify and detoxify at the same time!!! And it tastes great!

I”m going to be spending my week, trying not to think about marshmallows! Hopefully Salad dressing liberally dosed with Bacardi will help that  act of forgetting.

Have a fabulous one whatever you do!

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Holy Prune Kebabs Batman…It’s Cheesy Meaty Goodness on a Stick Part 3

So, we had our first bbq in the new house on the weekend.  And to celebrate, I made the Prune Kebabs from Nancy Spain’s All Colour Cookbook. Before we sail this ship we call the Titanic into that particular iceberg, let’s talk about kebabs.

Prune Kebabs
Prune Kebabs

There seems to have been no standard spelling for food before about 1980.  I’ve seen these things spelled Kebabs, Kebobs, Kabobs and even Kaboobs….

I’m actually a little disappointed we didn’t go with Kabobs.  It sounds likes something out of Batman.  KA-BOB!

Whereas kaboobs?  Another thing altogether.

But I digress.  Where were we?  Oh yeah,  Nancy’s kebabs…Nancy’s Prune Kebabs.  Jeez, Even I’m distracted by Dolly’s boobage….I can only  imagine what it’s like for all you boys….

Actually, one more. On a slightly more disturbing note, did you know if you Google image “kaboobs”  this ranks quite high in the list of hits:

google Images

WTF?  I don’t want to know.  Seriously I don’t. Please no one ever explain the link to me.  Ever.

Ok back to biz.  Which was Nancy Spain’s Prune Kebabs.  Nancy recommends these as being popular with  teenagers.  I find that hard to believe.  It’s not like McDonalds didn’t exist then.  Believe me, none of the cool kids were chomping on Nancy’s Prune Kebabs.  Not when there was even the remotest possibility of two all beef patties, special sauce etc.

Also, given their renowned laxative properties, I would have thought Prune Kebabs more suited to the older gen.

But what do I know?

Sweet FA apparently because this recipe just lurched from one disaster to the next.

Issue 1.

Doing my mise-en-place  I realised I had no apples. It must be the only time in the history off the world that we have not had an apple, any apple in the house.

Solution 1

Checked all the other ingredients just to be sure and went down to the shops. Bought apples.  Did not realise until a week later when I came to scan the recipe to post that it also needed tomatoes.  I swear I must have originally read this recipe in the dark. I didn’t miss them.  Use them if you got ’em, if not never mind.

Prune Kebabs Mise En Place
Prune Kebabs Mise En Place

Issue 2

Nancy suggests soaking the prunes over night which I forgot to do.  I also do not care for Mango Chutney so subbed in some caramelised onion relish. Maybe because I hadn’t soaked them, stuffing the prunes with the relish was nigh on impossible.

Creative Innovation #1

I smeared the bacon with the relish then wrapped the prunes up in the bacon.

Prunes and Bacon
Prunes and Bacon

Issue 3

There was a problem with the cheese.  A few problems actually.   First , Nancy suggests processed cheese.  I would rather eat my own snot.  I had some nice cheddar.

Issue 3.1

At the risk of sounding like Captain Obvious, cheese melts. So, how do you cook a sausage and bacon on a bbq without having the cheese melt away to nothing? Also it kept breaking off the skewer. In retrospect, I should have bought some of that super delicious Greek frying cheese.

 Creative Innovation #2

I took the sausage out of its skin and made it into a little meatball and popped the cheese inside.  It still leaked a little bit but if it hadn’t been wrapped in the meat, you may as well not bother with it.

Prune Kebabs Cheese Meatball
Prune Kebabs Cheese Meatball

 Issue 4

I made two kebabs on my metal skewers then went the drawer to get the bamboo skewers. Only we had no bamboo skewers in the drawer. . .Or the pantry.  Or any other place in the house.  I can only think we left them at the old house .

So now we’re officially shit out of luck.

And skewers.

There’ no way I was getting in the car and driving to Safeway again.  It was as hot as hell out there.  In fact I’m blaming the heat on my utter scattiness – we had at least 6 days in a row over 40º.  (That”s over 100º for my American friends). My brain is melting.

 Creative Innovation #2

Brain melt or no, I may not have had skewers but I had rosemary. And you know what?  Those rosemary mini kebabs were not only as cute as hell, but they smelled crazy stupid good when being bbq’ed and gave an extra flavour boost to the kebabs.

Rosemary Mini Kebabs
Rosemary Mini Kebabs

Finally, they were ready to go on the bbq.  Good thing I was also making the cocktail that will feature in my Valetines Day post at the same time because I needed a drink after all that!

Prune Kebabs
Prune Kebabs on bbq

Prunes and bacon are always good.  The onion relish was a nice addition as was the smoky flavour of the bbq.  The recipe called for chippoloatas, I couldn’t find any so I used a  spicy Italian fennel sausage from my local butcher.  This was really nice with the cheese that didn’t leak out all over the bbq.

Prune Kebabs 3
Prune Kebabs 3

The two revelations were the apple…who knew bbq’ed apple was so good?  It got a little bit charred and slightly soft but still crunchy, it soaked up the flavours of the bacon and the sausage, apples go fabulously with cheese…it was a real winner.  And the other thing I loved was the rosemary.  This was the opposite of the apple in that whilst the apple was busy soaking up all the flavours around it, the rosemary was just putting it all out there…the aroma as this cooked was awesome and the skewered items really did pick up some of the lovely rosemary flavour and aroma.

I have included both Nancy’s original and my adaptations below.

If you want more cheesy meaty goodness on a stick, you can look at:

Part 1 Here

Part 2 Here  – this one also features prunes and bacon.

Here is the orginal Nancy Spain recipe:

Nancy Spain Recipe

Have a great week. We’ll talk cocktails soon.

 

 

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Retro Food For Modern Times – My Super Power…and a Tomato Consomme

I had a bit of a shock last week when I published the Pimms Post and a little message came up saying “You have published 50 Posts”  Wow!  Really?  I completely forgot!  Good thing it was a cocktail post, we can take as a celebration had. BTW, just between us, I discovered later in the week that if instead of ginger ale or lemonade, you happen to mix  Pimms with some elderflower cordial and soda water the result is like heaven in a glass!  So, so good.

Oh and less than a week after I posted about all things British and tennis, Andy Murray finally won Wimbledon….coincidence?  I like to think not.

Tomato Consomme
Tomato Consomme

My ability to influence major sporting events is not actually my super power.   No, mine is a lot spookier.  I’m telling you this just so, when things happen over the next few weeks, you won’t be surprised.  And here it is…whenever I go on holiday…famous people die.  Seriously.  Here are just some people who have shuffled off this mortal coil when I have been elsewhere:

Princess Diana (long weekend in Warnambool)

Kurt Cobain (Sydney)

Michael Jackson/ Farah Fawcett (Surfer’s Paradise)

Amy Winehouse (Malaysia)

There have been others, I just can’t remember them off the top of my head but really…that’s 4 of the big ones right there. Weird right?

I was also in Barcelona the day Lehman Brothers went down, signalling the start of the GFC….

Tomato Consomme 2
Tomato Consomme 2

I’m just about to go on holiday so I thought I would love and leave you with a classic retro recipe, the tomato consommé.

I was an unadventurous eater as a child.  I took a vegemite sandwich to school every day for 4 years running.  Mum still laughs that I was the only vegetarian who didn’t actually eat vegetables.  So, last week when I not only whipped up a concoction made of tomato juice, chicken stock and gelatine but ate it without a second thought, it was a bit of a victory for me over my old habits.

So…if my life was a Hollywood movie this would be the bit where I bring  a spoonful of the consommé  to my lips…maybe I hesitate just to build some dramatic tension….then I would slurp that sucker down, give a sexy little wink to the camera and mouth the word “Delicious.” Next up there would be a montage of me finding new appreciation of all the other food I don’t like – boiled peas, boiled carrots, beetroot, pork chops, any mix of chocolate and orange, the list goes on.  And on.  And on.

Tomato Consomme 3
Tomato Consomme 3

To be honest though.  It wasn’t that good.

It tasted like slightly chickeny tomato juice.  It wasn’t disgusting.  Just not awesome.  It LOOKED gorgeous.  Which I guess is like saying that someone you’ve been on date with had a great personality.  No, I’ll tell you exactly what it was like.  I once read somewhere (let’s face this, this next…ahem…”fact” more than likely came from Cosmo or the Huff Post or another source of dubious reliability) that men fall in love with women because of who they are. And women fall in love with men for who they could be.  That’s how I felt about this consommé.  It was kind of a loser in its current state but given a little time and patience it could probably become something awesome.

As I ate my way through the massive amount of consommé the recipe produced, I found myself thinking…huh..what if I also made a basil jelly and made little cubes of the consommé and little cubes of basil jelly and made a really cute caprese?  Or what if instead of the bitters (which added nothing) I subbed in some Worchestershire and Tabasco and made a Bloody Mary Consomme?  What if I piped that jelly onto celery sticks?  Or teeny cubes on oysters?  What if I added more gelatine and spices and made it into something akin to a quince paste to have with cheese?

Tomato Consomme Recipe  taken from Woman's Day All Colour Book of Cooking for Slimmers (1978)
Taken from Woman’s Day All Colour Book of Cooking for Slimmers (1978)
Tomato Consomme. Taken from Woman's Day All Colour Book of Cooking for Slimmers (1978)
Tomato Consomme.
Taken from Woman’s Day All Colour Book of Cooking for Slimmers (1978)

For the right girl (or boy) there is some real potential here to take this and turn it into something truly awesome. Not me though.  I’ve been eating consommé for about a week.  I’m consomméed out….and…I’m going on holiday!

I’m going to be spending the next 4 weeks in Vietnam and Thailand, two fab food hangouts.  I  booked a Street Food tour in Hanoi today and I am so excited about it! And there was a little Banh Xeo place I didn’t around to visiting last time we were in Saigon that I’m dying to try. I can’t wait to revisit the wonderful Morning Glory in Hoi An…and I’ll going to try to do a cooking class in Phuket…in between lounging by the pool sipping cocktails! So food will be high on my agenda and, when I get back, I’m sure I’ll have some stories to tell!

Enjoy your month whatever you get up to!  I’ll be back mid August.  And stay safe, even if you’re not a celebrity or an investment bank.

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