Celebrity Recipes - Retro Food For Modern Times

Tag: Celebrity Recipes

18
Dec
2023

Christmas Adelaide Pecan Pie

categories: 1960's recipes, Baking, Celebrity Cookbooks, Celebrity Recipes, Pie

Hello friends and greetings of the season! Today’s Christmas Adelaide Pecan Pie comes from Singers and Swingers in the Kitchen. I last visited that book in 2013! The recipe comes from Eva Marie Saint, star of On The Waterfront, North by Northwest and many other films. The Christmas Adelaide Pecan Pie is so called because it was a pecan pie, made every Christmas by Eva Marie’s sister Adelaide.

You’ll see from the above that a made little pies rather than one big pie. I had some mini pie crusts in the freezer from another cooking project so I decided to use them up instead of buying a big pastry shell. Cooking time on the small tarts was 30 minutes. I also could not find dark corn syrup in my local supermarket. I subbed in a mix of 2/3 golden syrup and 1/3 maple syrup.

Is pecan pie served traditionally at Christmas? I would love for one of my American readers to tell me? It feels like it should be – it certainly makes sense when Christmas falls in winter and fresh fruit is in shorter supply than in the summer months.

Chrismas Adelaide Pecan Pie Recipe

If you wanted to double down on recipes from this book, the Christmas Adelaide Pecan Pie would be divine with a scoop of Barbra Streisand’s Coffee Ice Cream. This might also come in handy if you need a snack while reading Barbra’s nearly 1000-page memoir!

Singers and Swingers in The Kitchen The Book

This little book is so much fun! As well as Eva and Barbra, it also includes recipes from The Rolling Stones, Jane Fonda, Don Adams and Barbara Feldman from Get Smart, The Mamas and The Papas, The Monkees and a host more “scene makers”and “groovy gourmets”. My records…well Amazon’s records show I bought this back in 2012 for a measly $15. It now regularly sells for over a hundred!!! If you don’t want to be spending that kind of money, please feel free to browse the archives here for the recipes I’ve already shared. I’m also sure this won’t be the last time I dip into this book.

Have a great week!

13
Dec
2020

Arrivederci Made In Italy

categories: Italy, Made In Italy, Tasty Reads

It seems like only the other day that I was writing that I had finished cooking through Cantina and now here I am also having finished Made in Italy by Silvia Colloca! Admittedly I only had eleven recipes left to cook when I started but I am still pretty proud of myself! The cover claims “more than 80 authentic recipes from the heart of Italy”. Of the…I’m not going to count them, so let’s just call it 80 recipes, I made 34 so I’ve cooked 42.5% of the recipes contained therein.

Made in Italy – The Summary

Made in Italy contains fairly standard Italian fare, which is probably the reason why a) I cooked so many recipes from it and b) why I was able to do the last few quite quickly – the ingredients and the techniques are familiar to most home cooks. The dishes include pastas, pizza, breads, cakes, salads, and seafood. Not to mention delicious little snacks/appetisers like these Olives All ‘Ascolana!

It also contains gorgeous photos of the areas in Italy that the book covers (Marche, Abruzzo and Molise so would also make a lovely gift for armchair travellers!

I also liked that many of the recipes were really quick and easy to prepare. This was particularly refreshing coming on the tails of Cantina where pretty much every recipe was either incredibly elaborate to cook or had had to come by ingredients.

My Favourite Recipes

These were the recipes that got over 4.7 (out of 5) in my personal rating scale. The ones marked with an asterisk are my absolute favourites.

Sides, Salads and Appetisers

Broccolini cooked with chilli and garlic
Crostini with lemon, ricotta and spinach
Grilled primo sale and vegetable salad (The primo sale is homemade cheese and was delicious)*
Olives All’ascolana*

Main Meals

Calamari with tomatoes and wine
Fresh pasta strips with slow-cooked goat sauce
Lasagna, Marche style*
Chard Tart*
Herb frittata with Goat’s curd

Desserts

Celebration sponge cake
Apricot and olive oil cake*
Bear’s cake

Made in Italy – My least Favourite things

The St Martin Rolls were not good at all – I suspect this was due to the use of self-raising flour rather than plain flour. I didn’t rate any of Silvia’s slices of bread but these were by far the worst.

And, whilst the landscape and food photography was beautiful there were a few too many pictures of Silvia looking impossibly thin. Then again, if I looked that good, I would want to be showing my perfect figure off in many photos too!

Overall, I would rate this book 4.5 stars out of 5. It is a very nice addition to the genre of Italian cookbooks and one that I know I will cook from over and over!

If you are looking for a last-minute gift idea for a friend who has been to Italy I can recommend Made in Italy as both a lovely souvenir of a trip and a great cookbook. Be prepared to pay though. Even used copies on Amazon are selling for upwards of $50! Let me know if you want any of the recipes listed above, I can scan them through for you.

Next Tasty Reads book I will be cooking through is Hugh Fearnley Whitingstall’s River Cottage Light and Easy – this will be a welcome counterbalance to the rich food after Christmas so I am looking forward to it! I have 33 recipes left to cook so it is likely to be a full year effort!

And tell me…what is your favourite Italian cookbook?

Have a wonderful week!

01
Oct
2020

Vincent Price’s House Bread

categories: Bread, Celebrity Cookbooks, Vincent Price

I have been waiting to cook the Vincent Price’s House Bread for months! Jenny (from Silver Screen Suppers) sent me the recipe AGES go, possibly even pre-pandemic. Then, there was no yeast for months on end. And so, last weekend, I finally made it. Worth the wait? You bet! This is literally straight out of the oven. It was burn your fingers hot but damn it was good!!!!

I am not a very confident bread baker at all so whenever a loaf turns out well, I am absolutely delighted! And this one had me turning cartwheels!

I’m not surprised Vincent Price made this his house bread. It may well become mine! It has everything I love in a bread – a crusty outside, a nice soft middle, the crumb is fine, it’s great for sandwiches, it toasts well…it is a really good all-purpose bread!

I love this photo because it looks like I have photobombed myself with a plate of toast! It gives a whole new twist on the term breadhead!

At first, I wasn’t sure about the ground ginger in the recipe. I was worried that it may have made the bread taste a bit more like a sweet loaf than an everyday bread. Not to worry though, you can’t even hardly taste the ginger. You might not be able to taste it at all. I thought I could detect it but I knew it was there and so might have imagined it.

“It tastes like proper shop-bought bread “said the fussiest eater in the world when I asked for his opinion. High praise!

You can click through here to find the recipe on Silver Screen Suppers.

And here’s a special Spooktober message from the man himself!

Happy October and have a great week!

03
Jul
2020

John Hillerman’s Paella

categories: Celebrity Recipes, Rice, Spain

Does anyone know / remember The Libertines song “Music When The Lights Go Out”? The hook line in this piece of indie-pop boy love runs “All the highs and the lows and the to’s and fro’s, they left me dizzy”. That is exactly how I felt when making John Hillerman’s Paella. No doubt about it, this was a tough cook. But oh boy did it pay off!

The Lows

Converted rice? Not available for love or money.
Clams in clam juice ? Nada.
Bottled clam juice? No, nay, never.
Polish Sausage…probably could have bought some but I had chorizo in the freezer which seemed more paella-ish anyway

I made this during the height of the ‘rona lockdown. But I honestly feel that my inability to get hold of these ingredients were not limited to that insane time of food shortages.

So, had this been one of my recipes? I would have ripped it up and we would have never more heard of it. But this was was not my recipe, this was John Hillerman’s Paella recipe that I was testing for Jenny for her Murder She Wrote Cookbook so onward and upward it was.

The To’s and And The Fro’s

I didn’t have converted rice. I didn’t have clam juice. Which meant I could not follow the first step of the recipe.

I had:

Bomba paella rice.
Fresh clams.
Frozen fish stock.

This meant that if I found another recipe that got me through that first step of cooking the rice, then the rest should fall into place like one of those Rube Goldberg machines I have become obsessed with during lockdown.

The recipe I used was this one. I followed all the directions for cooking the rice per that recipe. But then switched back to John Hillerman’s Paella recipe from the step where he says to “saute the chicken in olive oil”.

Here is John’s recipe:

I was literally toing and froing between the two recipes and the pan and the ingredients, making sure everything cooked properly!

The Highs

Have you seen the photos? This dish was lush!!! It was so pretty, so colourful, so full of joy!

It looked gorgeous, smelled like heaven and tasted even better.

John Hillerman’s Paella brought the smell and taste of Spain into a very grey wintery Melbourne day. It was seriously like a ray of sunshine!

I LOVED this!!!! So, so, so good!!!!! The end result made it all worthwhile!!!

Thank you Jenny for the recipe! This is the best paella I have ever made and I will be sure to make it again! When travel opens up and we can spend time together again, this definitely needs to be on our menu! In my imagination, we are sitting in your garden with Mr R and Battenberg Belle and having a lovely long lunch of paella, great conversation, lots of vino, and some great tunes courtesy of Mr Rathbone. Some ’60’s bossa nova maybe?

Oh, also for those of you like me who do not know who John Hillerman was? His best-known role was as the incredibly suave Higgins In Magnum PI but he also appeared in Blazing Saddles, Chinatown (high on my must-see list), Murder She Wrote (obvs), and A Very Brady Sequal among many, many other films and tv shows!

Have a fabulous week friends!

Stay safe, eat paella, watch John Hillerman on the tv and listen to The Libertines!

Sounds like a pretty good way to spend the weekend to me!

09
Jun
2020

Meredith Baxter’s Tarragon Chicken

categories: Celebrity Recipes, Chicken

I had the shock of my life while doing research for this post. Seriously. More about that later! This was DELICIOUS!!!! The recipe for Tarragon Chicken recipe was sent to me by the lovely Jenny over at Silver Screen Suppers. It will form part of her Murder She Wrote Cookbook and, on taste alone, should be one of the standout recipes of the book!

This is the most delicious comfort food!!! So warm and hearty and tasty and…OMG….I would make this dish every week if I could. Unfortunately, I used the last of our fresh tarragon to make it so, until I can either find some fresh tarragon in the greengrocer or plant some more I will not have it again. It almost makes me want to cry.

I have some dried tarragon in the cupboard but it is really no substitute for fresh!

This is what my tarragon plant looked like before I took all of the good leaves to make this! Poor little thing!

I served my tarragon chicken with garlic bread instead of the suggested rice and it was so good. The combination of the lovely juices from the chicken with mopped up with the crusty, garlicky, buttery bread was perfection!!! I heartily recommend this as an alternative!!!

But now let me tell you what happened when I went to research David Birney!!!!!

Spelling is important!

My main reference for Meredith Baxter is as Elyse Keaton from the very popular tv sitcom Family Ties. The show featured two hippie parents, Baxter and Steven Gross, trying to deal with their ultra-conservative Regan-supporting son Alex, played brilliantly by Michael J. Fox. The show was pitch-perfect. Funny, poignant, clever, sharp…just look at these reviews!!!!!

I also knew that Meredith Baxter came out at some time in the 2000’s. I remember thinking at the time both “You go girl, finally you get to be your true self in public and let the homophobes go fuck themselves” and also “I’m so sad that you didn’t feel that you could do this earlier in your life”.

So, whilst I was aware of Meredith Baxter, David Birney, I knew not at all. So much so that when I first googled him I incorrectly spelled his name as David Birnie and spent a while there thinking that MB had been married to an Australian serial killer!

Turns out he is allegedly a wife-beater so you know, maybe my initial thoughts that he was a dick were not totally unfounded. Let’s not waste any more time on him.

The Recipe

It’s so good.

I did not have to remove my chicken and thicken the sauce, it was thick enough just from cooking. Apart from that, I followed the recipe to the letter and it was fabulous!

Leftovers are also amazing in a jaffle the following day! Sorry for the terrible photo but if you don’t eat that jaffle piping hot, it’s not really a jaffle! I would also LOVE to see that tarragon chicken in a pie.

Look at me…I’m already getting ideas for the next time I make it!

Thanks, Jenny for the recipe! It was truly a winner winner chicken dinner!

Have a great week everyone. Take care and stay safe!