Beef - Retro Food For Modern Times

Tag: Beef

28
Oct
2023

October 2003 – The White Menu

categories: 20 Years Ago Today, Cheese, Cheesecake, Delicious, Desserts, Fish, Meat, Mozzarella

Hello retro food lovers and welcome to October 2003 where today I am using Delicious magazine to create a white menu. White food has the double reputation of being 1) boring and 2) overly processed so my aim with this menu was to try to combat both of those. But first, let’s take a look at what was happening in pop-culture in October 2003.

School of Rock was #1 at the box office and The Five People You Meet In Heaven was the best-selling book. Number 1 on the pop charts was Where Is The Love by The Black Eyed Peas. Two weeks earlier it was White Flag by Dido which would have fit in perfectly with this menu! Let’s hope I won’t have to wave a white flag with my menu!

Now I also realise that this view of my cheesecake is not white, however it just looked so good, I couldn’t resist sharing it!

The Menu – October 2003

I found this menu template on Etsy. Isn’t it gorgeous? We’ll be seeing it a lot more from now on!

Mozzarella and Grilled Chilli Salad

This was AMAZING! So tasty and the perfect way to kick off a meal! I loved the simplicity/minimalism of this Jamie Oliver recipe. It also not only looked beautiful on the plate but tasted divine! Another recipe from this same article, a squid and cannellini bean salad nearly made the cut for the main dish in the menu and is something I am still very keen to try!

Mozzarella and Grilled Chilli Salad Recipe

Fish Stew With Lemongrass and Lime

This is an Ainsley Harriott recipe and was also divine! It was light and refreshing and, as he says in his intro, very different from the usual tomato-based fish stews. Like the mozzarella starter, this would be a perfect summer meal.

Lemongrass and Lime Fish Stew Recipe

Low Fat Cheesecake

I felt bad that I could not deliver a cheesecake for the Birthday Party, Cheesecake, Jelly Bean, Boom! menu. Because I LOVE cheesecake! So I was delighted to find one in this issue of Delicious. And this was a beauty too. It’s a pretty classic baked cheesecake. Even though it is low fat, it feels rich, The rest of this menu is light though so this seemingly decadent dessert won’t weigh you down too much!

Low Fat Cheesecake Recipe

My Nigella Moment – Beef with Lavender Mustard

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 one of the most appetising things in the mag!

OMG, this beef just melted in my mouth! And if you’re thinking you don’t have any Lavender Mustard, come back next week. I’ll have a little treat for you. I added a spoonful of honey to my Lavender Mustard to give the required sweetness to this. Also, I misread the ingredients and I bought a rump roast and not rump steak for my version. I seared the meat as per the recipe and then roasted it until it reached 72C / 165F on my meat thermometer.

Well, Delicious Magazine from October 2003 really came through with a delicious white-themed menu for me! Certainly no Didoesque white flag moments for me!

21
Jul
2017

Cattle Country Salad for Cowboy Day

categories: 1970's food, Cook A Long, Cowboy Day, Meat, Salad, Salads For All Season

Go west they said. I took their advice and not only went west but a whole heap north as well to end up in the UK for this year’s Cowboy Day. I will be spending the actual day in the most haunted town in Britain! Maybe a ghost cowboy just like this one will appear on the day….

Spooky huh?

Something that is not at all spooky is the Cattle Country Beef Salad Salad l made to celebrate Cowboy day. But first, this is the first time I am writing, editing, and posting entirely via phone so let’s put any weirdness in this post, beyond the regular weirdness down to that and I will re-edit, format as required once I get home!

We don’t have cowboys in Australia. We have cattlemen. Who live in cattle country which is where this salad comes from. Actually, it comes from Rosemary Mayne-Wilson’s Salads for All Seasons but you know what I mean.

So what all goes into a Cattle Country Beef Salad?

Beef of course. I suspect originally this would have been leftovers from the Sunday roast but I just bought from slices of roast beef from the supermarket.
Then there’s apples. Because we all know one a day keeps the doctor away and you don’t want to get sick while you’re out riding the range.
There’s celery because…I dunno. What use is celery? I like the taste of it but….oh that’s right. Celery keeps the cattlemen skinny. Because no one likes a tubby cowboy. Specially the horses they ride around on all day.
Spring onions. To put a spring in their step.

That was about it for the original ingredients. I also added some mixed leaves because I had to use them before I left for the UK the following morning. I also added some chunks of a lovely vintage cheddar. Which also had to be used but cheese also makes anything taste better and this was no exception.

RMW suggests using a French dressing for this. Make it really punchy by being HEAVY on the mustard. The flavours in here are strong enough to deal with it.

This was yummy!!!! Quick simple delicious. That’s an all round winner for me!

Here’s the original recipe:

Okay, I’m trying to keep this short and sweet because posting off the phone is doing my head in.

Many thanks to Greg from Recipes for Rebels for inviting me to participate in the cookalong again this year. It is always a so much fun to be a part of something like this. Plus, he”s one of the most awesome people on the internet so should just be thanked in general

I dont have my regular sign off this week but just look what can happen when bloggers get together. For an explanation of why Battenberg Belle, Jenny Hammerton and I are wearing cowboy hats and clutching a meat cleaver, a melon baller and a hammer respectively, you’ll need to head over to Silver Screen Suppers but in the meantime, have a great Cowboy Day everyone!

04
Apr
2016

Safavid Style Beef Pastries

categories: Books, Dish of The Week, Dishiest Dish, Persiana

Hey, lovely people of retro food world. I feel like I have been totally neglecting you recently but believe me, you are not alone. Top o’ the list of neglect as been myself. There was a night last week when my dinner consisted of 1 cronut and 2…ok…3 glasses of red wine. Oh and tears. Which I figure counts for grains, fruit and salt. That’s three of the food groups isn’t it?

I have been working all the hours and even though it has been crazy busy, I have also been loving it.

The tears were because that night I realised I had not only missed a book club meeting but I had missed the emails advising of the book club meeting so I was basically a no show which I hate. Because that’s just rude.

So, there has not been much cooking done at all. One of the few things I have made was the Safavid Style Beef Pastries from Persiana. My plan was to get home by 7, maybe 7:30 and then make a yoghurt sauce and some salad and the pastries – I had already made the beef mixture – and we would eat, drink and be merry and marvel over the elaborate pastry swirls and curlicues I had formed. Except I didn’t get home til closer to 8:30 and those pastries were thrown together with the love and attention that you would normally give a a not very interesting advertisement for something you have no intention of buying. There was no yoghurt sauce. There was no salad. There were some badly formed pastries on a plate with a blob of ketchup mixed with tabasco sauce (me) and HP sauce (him).

BTW, these should have looked like this:

I felt I had done really badly on this meal. So when I asked a very tentative “So what do you think?” I was pretty much bracing myself for critique that contained all the things I was berating myself for, being all the missing parts of the meal I had planned in my head. And that the pastries looked like they had been made with someone with no opposable thumbs.

“These are great. I really like them”

“What?”

“Are there more? Can I have some more?”

Sabrina Ghayour, this is why I love you.

Speakin’ of which

The Persiana Project

Last time we spoke I had 32 recipes left to cook from Persiana. Somehow, and I don’t even know how I managed to do this, we are now down to 26.

I made the Safavid Beef Pastries, the Cod with Relish, the marinated feta, the feta cigars from the marinated feta and….two other things that I have no recollection of making. Such is the fugue state of my brain. On the other hand, this challenge is going really well. And OMG…the marinated feta and the feta cigars? Delightful, delicious, delovely!

Next on the list to cook is the Chicken and Artichoke salad which I am planning to make tomorrow night. Then again, I was also planning to make it tonight and ended up having a jaffle made with some leftover curry instead. This is actually one of the very best ways to eat leftover curry – and a special little trick – instead of just plain butter on the bread, make a little garlic butter. Leftover heaven!

Inbox Zero

Because I have been so busy my personal inbox is out of control. At last count I had about 2700 unread emails. My challenge for April is to get this under control i.e. no more than one page of unread. I have found in the past, the best way to do this is to pick the latest email, search for all from that sender and work through them in a batch. This is particularly good for anyone who is selling anything as you can do a mass delete and voila that’s 30 emails gone in 10 seconds. But if anyone has any tips on how to control a crazy inbox, please let me know!

Watching

I reinstated our Netflix subscription over Easter so I am finally watching Making A Murderer.

I am also binge watching The Librarians…this is almost like someone make a show EXACTLY for me. It’s set in a library and its about really smart people solving supernatural stuff. Who even knew I had that many buttons that could be hit?

Reading

The Midnight Watch

Loved it, loved it, loved it. Best book I have read thus far this year. And I feel like I have read a lot of good stuff already. Stay tuned. There will be more. Soon.

The Method

I loved this too. How is this for a premise?

“Imagine a helpless, pregnant 16-year-old who’s just been yanked from the serenity of her home and shoved into a dirty van. Kidnapped . . . Alone . . . Terrified.

Now forget her . . .

Picture instead a pregnant, 16-year-old, manipulative prodigy. She is shoved into a dirty van and, from the first moment of her kidnapping, feels a calm desire for two things: to save her unborn son and to exact merciless revenge.

She is methodical – calculating – scientific in her plotting. Leaving nothing to chance, she waits . . . for the perfect moment to strike. The Method is what happens when the victim is just as cold as the captors.”

This week I am hoping for a bit more time away from work to get my life back under control. I am planning to cook the salad from Persiana as mentioned but also Anthony Bourdain’s Onion Soup Les Halles, and a mixed mushroom strudel.

Your turn now. What are you cooking, reading, watching doing this week? I love to hear from you so let me know. Also., please send clearing email tips.

Oh and if anyone out there is a jam maker? I have an A-Z of Cooking Project just for you – get your 1970’s jam on! Just let me know.

Have a super week!

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