Tag: Devilled Eggs

Food For Lovers Redux

Zakusi

Hello friends, and welcome to a special series I will be running over the next 12 months. A while ago, I realised I had totally missed the 10th birthday of this blog. In fact, I was thinking about how to celebrate this and wanted to check the exact date of the first post which I thought was in 2013.  Nope.  It was 17 May 2012!  There didn’t seem much point in celebrating eleven years but twelve sounds impressive.  So in the 12 months leading up to my 12th birthday I will be featuring one of the old books I blogged about in the early years.  Those old posts are mostly dire but the books are quirky and fun or just plain good. Sometimes all three.  To get this party started I am revisiting one of the most bonkers books I own – Kelly Brodsky’s Food for Lovers from 1971.

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Food For Lovers – The Book

Food for Lovers is broken into 15 chapters, each of which is devoted to a particular type of man and the food that their beloved should cook to keep them interested.  As the old adage goes, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach!   This may make it sound like this is a very conservative, conventional cookbook – the type of book you might have seen in the 1950’s on how to please your husband.   But this my friends was not the conservative 50s, this was the 1970s and the birth of women’s liberation so the tone is definitely tongue in cheek.  At least I hope it is because each of the men mentioned sounds awful (although also somewhat recognisable).  To introduce you to the book and its characters I thought it might be fun to do a little speed dating with the gents of Food for Lovers!

Bachelor #1 Come on down!

Freddy Finikin

Freddy

“Freddys who dislike food are an asexual lot who seem to get a perverse kick from driving the women in their lives to a frenzy in search of something to tempt their appetite…the woman who falls for such a man is either unaware of his finickiness, or trapped, or mad, or maybe she prefers to read in bed”

Kelly Brodsky – Food for Lovers

Should you find either the picture of Freddy or his blurb attractive, or you are mad, trapped, or prefer to read in bed here is a recipe to keep your Freddy happy!

Zakusi

Zakusi

Zakusi

You’ll notice I have changed the recipe so that rather than filling the egg whites “liberally” with caviar, I have made a more traditional and certainly more economically viable devilled egg. These were AMAZING.  So tasty!!!!  

Let’s move on to Bachelor #2

If fussy eaters aren’t your style, maybe this likely lad is more your speed!

Joe De Go

Joe De Go

A man with the Midas touch, Joe usually has his fingers in many pies.  Often in the guise of pop star, P.R, ad-man, disc jockey, TV star or such, he wizzes from one assignment, luncheon or deal to another with a slick show of competence that belies his lingering adolescence.  Bright and on the ball he mostly shoes away from anything that smacks of more than superficial know-how, for he hates to be caught out of his depth

Kelly Brodsky – Food for Lovers

Intrigued by the sound of Joe?  Why not tempt his palate with some

Creamed Leek and Potato Soup

 

Leek and Potato Soup

Creamed Leek and Potato Soup

This soup was delicious!

Still not found your ideal man?  Let’s take a look at Bachelor #3

Champers Chas

Champers Chas

With the carefully cultivated air of an educated debauchee and a fascinating, if largely fabricated family history to back it, Champers provides an inexhaustible supply of gossip.  Whether on or off the boards, he delights in titillating his ever present audience with spicy, often malicious anecdotes and ribaldry

Kelly Brodsky – Food for Lovers

Fancy chatting with Chas?  Tempt his tastebuds with some 

Pistachio Nut Pilau

This was really nice, the rice was light and fluffy and went perfectly with last week’s Chilli Crab!

Pistachio Nut Pilaf

Pistachio Nut Pilaf

Still not found the love of your life? Maybe you like your men a little more sleazy and possibly criminal? Bachelor #4 may be more your style!

Professor Repressor

Professor Repressor

If the name doesn’t say it all, here’s Kelly’s description

Repressor exudes the coldness of a tree frog, his sang-froid masking some Lucifer-like leanings.  One kinky chink in his armour is his obsession with the Lolita-type nubiles on his campus – who usually run for their sweet lives when they see the kind of red-hot light they inspire in his eyes.  Inevitably, he is forced to turn his attentions to any neglected wives of his colleagues

Kelly Brodsky – Food for Lovers

Ok.  We might need a palate cleanser after that so how about some

Watercress and Orange Salad

Watercress and Orange Salad

Watercress and Orange Salad

This was great and just the refreshing hit I  needed after writing about the pervy professor!  Let’s swiftly move to Bachelor #5!

Gad About Guy

Gad About Guy

Gad about Guys come in all shapes and sizes with ages and egos to match.  They usually hover round fellow Gads with a few of the uninitiated thrown in as audience.  “Remember that night in Singapore when we strolled along Bugis Street – and those fantastic little roadside stalls with the delicious Satay? ….”Lord, yes! And will you ever forget that Lamb Solanka in Moscow last winter.”…And on and on it goes, the name dropping, the reminiscences and regurgitations of past splendours”

Kelly Brodsky – Food For Lovers

If the well-travelled man is your bag, why not whip up a lovely breakfast for him with some

Wine and Song Prunes

I LOVED these.  I feel so bad that prunes have such a bad rap!  This was so delicious. And what a fabulous name!  I served mine with a little bit of labneh, some orange zest and some pistachios left over from the pilaf and it made a heavenly breakfast!

Wine and Song Prunes

Wine and Song Prunes

And because all good things must come to an end, we come to our lucky last Bachelor…who out there fancies

Jack Snack

Jack Snack

He’s strictly a non-event up to his neck in dreary day to day existence, blissfully unaware of anything outside his tight little domain…his every move as predictable as the plainness of his sitting-room with it’s enormous brick veneered fireplace above which some gypsy flamencoes wildy within a heavy gilt frame

Kelly Brodsky – Food For Lovers

I laughed out loud when I read this because growing up, we had possibly that very same flamenco dancer painting on our wall at home! I thought it was incredibly beautiful and have always wanted to learn to flamenco as a result of it!

Now, I have also not made Jack’s Snack, mostly because I quite like my life and don’t fancy being taken down by a premature heart attack any time soon.  But should you wish to share your life with this homebody and are not afraid of death by overindulgence, here is the recipe for a Veal Scallopine Sandwich that will melt Jack’s heart whilst simultaneously clogging his arteries!

Veal Scallopine Sandwich

 

Okay, food lovers, I hope you have enjoyed my second journey into Food For Lovers…I LOVED revisiting this book!!! And there are so many more delicious-sounding recipes and terrible men in it that we may have to take a third look somewhere down the track!

I have searched online for other books by Kelly Brodsky and Kelly Brodsky herself and have drawn a big flat blank!  At the moment there also appear to be no other copies of Food for Lovers for sale so, sadly you cannot share my delight in this book. Kelly, if you are out there, and I hope you are, I hope you read this and know that fifty-two years after the publishing of your book, you have a number one fan in me! 

Have a wonderful week friends and please let me know if you make that Veal Scallopini Sandwich! Or any of the other recipes!  

 

 

Devilled Egg Pie

I had a little moment recently of coincidence or prescience depending on what you believe.  I was thinking “Better start looking for recipes for Pieathalon – that will be coming up soon”.  I found a copy of Mollie Katzen’s recipe for Devilled Egg Pie from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest.  Could there be a more perfect Pieathalon pie?  Devilled eggs are such a stalwart of retro cooking and I’m pretty sure that no one has yet cooked from this classic of vegetarian cooking!   Then I realised that the recipe calls for a mashed potato pie crust.  Which I had not copied.  Without a recipe for the crust, I could not send it to someone else to cook.  But I could cook it myself and invent my own mashed potato crust!

Devilled Egg Pie 1

And it’s only proper after all.  Do you think any of those athletes you just watched in the Olympics came in cold?  No way!  They practiced!  So, consider this one of my warm-up heats to get myself rmatch ready for Pieathalon!

The Mashed Potato Crust

Let’s start with that mashed potato pie crust  I needed to invent.  I had some leftover mashed potato.  Which I pressed into the bottom and sides of some little pie dishes. Oh yes, I decided to make individual devilled egg pies.

I then brushed these with a little bit of melted butter and popped them into the oven at 180C until the edges started to go brown and crispy, around 15 minutes.

Crust done!

Next up was the sauce that drew me to this recipe in the first place.  It is a white sauce with horseradish, mustard and dill.  I know there is no Scandinavian blood in my veins but these flavours absolutely sing to me.  I used the very last of the horseradish I had harvested from our garden.  The mustard and dill came from the supermarket and greengrocer respectively. I spooned the sauce into the bottom of the pie dishes:

Devilled Egg Pie4

I added some halved hard-boiled eggs.

Devilled Egg Pie 5

And I spooned some more of the sauce over the top and popped the pies into the oven until the sauce was golden brown on top!

Devilled Egg Pie – The Recipe

Mollie Katzen gives two versions of this dish.  I made the hard-boiled egg version but I am also keen to try the fresh egg version.  I also think she missed a bit of a trick here – why not make a devilled egg, devilled egg pie?  I am going to make MY version very soon – stay tuned!

Devilled Egg Pie Recipe

 

Devilled Egg Pie 6

Devilled Egg Pie – The Verdict

These weren’t devilled eggs as we know them but the flavours were certainly devilled egg adjacent.  The mix of the mashed potatoes, the sauce and the eggs was delicious and just about the most comforting thing I have eaten all year!   The hardest thing about making them was actually having leftover mashed potatoes!  I’ll certainly be making these again!

Oh, and the exact same night I made these, I got an email from Yinzerella about Pieathalon 2021.  It’s coming…

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