November, 2022 - Retro Food For Modern Times

26
Nov
2022

Orange and Poppyseed Cupcakes – November 2002

Hello Friends!!! For today’s twenty years ago post, I am cooking from the November 2002 issue of Super Food Ideas. Let’s see if the mag lives up to it’s name! Today’s theme is picnic food. These orange and poppyseed cupcakes would be perfect for a spring picnic and were delicious to boot! Sadly our weather has not been kind. It has been very cold and rainy so my picnic ended being on my dining room table!

My Picnic Menu

Chicken Club Sandwich

I love a club sandwich but for some reason, I only ever eat them when ordering from a hotel room service menu. This one was ok. No bacon which was disappointing but the addition of avocado was nice. There was a weird instruction to add tomato sauce (ketchup) into the avocado mix. I ignored it. because….ewww. You can do beter November 2002!

Here’s the recipe.

I am not going to talk about the Mac and Cheese bites here because, I ended up changing the recipe so much that I am going to do them as a separate post! But we came here for Orange and Poppyseed Cupcakes so here they are!

I don’t think I have tasted orange and poppyseed anything before. There was a time when I was absolutely addicted to the lemon and poppyseed muffins at Muffin Break. It got so all the people I worked with knew how much I loved them so even if I had not gone past the Muffin Break that morning, my colleagues would let me know if the lemon and poppysed muffins were on the menu. These cupcakes were very reminiscent of those muffins. In fact though, I did not have enough orange zest to top all the cupcakes (possibly because I spilt so much of it all over the recipe) so there is a mix of lemon and orange zest on all of them making them even more nostalgic for me.

Orange and Poppyseed Cupcakes – The Recipe

The original recipe was for one large cake. For cupcakes, just drop the cooking time, Mine were ready in 25 minutes.

My Nigella Moment

What is a Nigella moment? You know how at the end of each episode of a Nigella tv show, you see her popping back to the fridge for just one more bite of something? My Nigella moment this month is a recipe I cooked from the mag that did not fit with the picnic theme. It was a salmon fillet with wasabi mayo. I served mine with some edamame sprinkled with furikake, pickled ginger and some not very Japanese but very delicious oven fries! In the interest of brevity, I have not included the recipe but, if you like the sound of it and want to do your own trip back in time, hit me up in the comments!

I hope you’ve enjoyed time travelling back to November 2002 with me.

Have a great week!

22
Nov
2022

Rhubarb and Rosé Syllabub

categories: Desserts, England, Rhubarb

I was doing some reading the other day and, no, not an Agatha Christie, even though I am about half way through Hercule Poirot’s Christmas for the next Dining with The Dame. I was reading some poetry (because in my head I am the cool intellectual girl who reads untranslated French poetry whilst drinking black coffee at a cool café in the hippest arrondissement in Paris).

In reality I was likely lying on my couch in dirty sweatpants, shoving salt and vinegar chips into my face. Regardless of the setting though, whilst I was reading came I across a poem by Edith Sitwell called “When Sir Beelzebub” The opening lines of which are

When
Sir
Beelzebub called for his syllabub
in the hotel in Hell
Where Proserpine first fell,
Blue as the gendarmerie were the
waves of the sea,

Which got me thinking…why aren’t there more poems about dessert? And why have I never made a syllabub? I’m still waiting for an answer on the first question. But as for the second?

No trip to hell required!

What is Syllabub?

Syllabub is a gorgeous British dessert which originated in the 16th century. It is a whipped cream dessert, originally flavoured with sweet wine or cider. My version uses rosé as the wine and pairs the rosé flavoured cream with a rhubarb and rosewater compote.

I really like the word syllabub. It sounds so slinky and smooth. But with a hint of bite with that last b. Which pretty much describes the syllabub. The silky smooth cream has a little kick of rosé and the rhubarb compote is tangy with hints of orange and rose. Layer it into your prettiest vintage glasses so you can see the contrast of the cream against deep crimson rhubarb.

It also looks very pretty when you put your spoon in and the layers get all mixed up and marbled. Maybe I have been reading too many Agatha Christie’s but my first thought was a rather macabre “like blood in the snow”! 😂 I could totally imagine Miss Marple eatiing syllabub too!

Print

Rhubarb and Rosé Syllabub

Print Recipe

A delightful English dessert of poached rhubarb with a rosé flavoured cream.

Author: Taryn Nicole

Ingredients

Scale

For the Rhubarb Compote:

500g of rhubarb, cut into bit sized pieces
100g caster sugar
Juice and Zest of 1 orange
1/2–1 tsp rosewater

For The Cream:

175g rosé wine
80g caster sugar
200ml whipping cream

Garmish:

Strawberries (optional)
Flaked Almonds (optional)

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

For the Compote:

Place rhubarb, sugar, orange juice and zest into a saucepan.
Add rosewater to taste (please see note below).
Cook over medium heat until the rhubarb is soft but is keeping it’s shape. If the mixture starts to stick you can add a tablespoon or so of water but you don’t want the rhubarb mixture to be too wet.
Allow to cool

For the Cream

Add the rosé and sugar to a small saucepan and bring to the boil, over a high heat stirring occasionally. Reduce the heat and allow the mix to reduce by a third.
Allow to cool.
Whip the cream to stiff peaks.
Fold in the rose mixture.
Layer the rhubarb and cream mixtures into a glass.
Top with a strawberry and some flaked almonds for crunch!

Notes

Rosewater can be overpowering. Start with half a teaspoon before cooking the rhubarb and add more after cooking if you want to boost the flavour.

A Very Brief Side Note on Edith Sitwell

Edith Sitwell, the writer of “When Sir Beelzebub” was a fascinating woman. Six foot tall, she had a distinctive dress style – turbans and the most amazing jewellery. She was also an innovative poet. One of her poems, Gold Coast Customs was written in jazz rhythms and she wrote a wrote poems to music in a show called Facade which was performed behind a curtain pained with a face. The words were read through a megaphone via a hole in the mouth. (This to me sounds very Mighty Booshy…I wonder if they might have been inspired by her.

She was also not one to mince words and had some scathing things to say about people including the critic F.R Leavis (For those fans of Bridget Jones out there Yes, “the F.R. Leavis who died in 1978.”) whom she called a “a tiresome, whining, pettyfogging little pipsqueak”. She also called D.H. Lawrence a “a plaster gnome on a stone toadstool in some suburban garden”. So in 1953, some bright spark had the idea for Dame Sitwell to interview Marilyn Monroe, assuming, oif course that they would hate each other and the Sitwell’s scathing critique of Monroe would create a commotion and of course increase circulation!

I’m sure, much to the chagrin of a features editor, the two liked each other!

The meeting between the two occurred in the Sunset Tower in Hollywood which is certainly not a hotel in hell! I wonder if they might have eaten some syllabub!

Have a great week!

13
Nov
2022

The One with The Flan

categories: 1970's food, Custard, Desserts, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, Mexico, North and South America

For most people of my age the word flan conjures up the episode of Friends where Monica makes a birthday flan.

Monica Geller : We’re not having cake. We’re having flan.

Chandler Bing : Excuse me?

Monica Geller : It’s a festive custard Mexican dessert.

Well, today we having Flan de Café which is a coffee flavoured Mexican custard dessert direct from the South American chapter of Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery. Now, I know Mexico is not in South America, and I know you know that Mexico is not in South America. Good Housekeeping? Maybe not so much!

To amp up the coffee-ness of my flan, I baked them some vintage tea cups.

What did not need to amped up was the coffee flavour. I used the lower level of coffee suggested by the recipe which was 6 tablespoons and thought my heart was going to pop out of my chest for about an hour after eating it! I was WIRED! Talk about a major flan high!

I would probably halve the amount of coffee for future makes. Outside of a power punch of caffeine, the flavour was lovely, the light touch of orange added a refreshing note and the custard was silky and smooth. The Brazil nuts added a nice crunch as well as some garnish. I added some extra orange zest to the top of the flans to brighten them up. I chose not to use the recipe’s serving suggestion because I have a bit of a yecchh factor with raw eggs and I could not find guava jelly anywhere.

Flan De Café – The Recipe

Festive Flan Fun

As I was making the flans, I remembered something I heard wayback one of those science shows for kids. They said that there was enough oil in a brazil nut to act as a candle. For some weird reason, that piece of trivia has stuck in my head! Well, I had Brazil nuts and I had a flan which, after all is a festive dessert!

I really didn’t expect this to work particularly as the nuts kept breaking when I tried to chop them into anything resembling a taper. However….

Success!!!! Now that’s a really festive custard dessert!

Have a great week!

05
Nov
2022

Petits Pois à la Française- Murder in The Mews

categories: Dining With The Dame, France, Poirot

Greetings crime readers and food lovers! Today we are reading and eating our way through the titular novella in the Murder in the Mews collection. Murder in The Mews begins on Guy Fawkes Night, which is today (if you are reading on the day I posted it)! To go with this most English of nights, we are eating a very French dish of petits pois à la française. Now, I’ll be absolutely honest here. I am not a great lover of peas. But, there is not a lot of food mentioned in Murder in The Mews. Indeed, I was thinking this might be the day I share the recipe for Golf Pie, when, in the very last paragraph, a meal is mentioned containing the aforementioned little peas!

Murder in The Mews- The Plot

Remember, remember, the Fifth of November,
Gunpowder treason and plot
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot

We open with a street urchin (think Oliver – please sir, can I have some more?) asking Japp and Poirot if they will give him a penny for the guy. Japp sends him off and the two resume their walk. In an act of foreshadowing, Japp muses that it would be a good night for a murder. The fireworks would mask sound of a gun shot. In an even greater act of foreshadowing, they then move on to the topic of Poirot committing a murder. We’ll get to that one in time!

More immediately though, the following morning Poirot learns that woman has been found dead in the very same mews they walked through the previous evening. Poirot wonders why Japp, a high ranking police officer, would be called to a suicide but agrees to meet him at the home of the deceased.

We have

The gun found in Barbara Allen’s hand held in such a way that she could not have possibly shot herself with it
No suicide note
Jane Plenderleith, Mrs Allen’s flatmate behaving suspiciously
Poirot fascinated by a series of seemingly disparate objects – a watch, a writing set, a fireplace and the contents of a locked cupboard and the smell of a room
A shady Major

Poirot and Japp (but mostly Poirot) need to figure out – was it suicide? Or murder?

My favorite part of the story has nothing to do with the plot. It is the moment when Poirot answers the call from Japp with “Allo, Allo“. Now if, only Poirot had been in a certain café in Nouvion during the war, he might have been able to help Rene in solving the mystery of the painting of the Fallen Madonna. I would pay money to see that mash up!

Murder in The Mews- The Covers

Yesssss!!!! After a slew of short stories, we can finally get back to looking at the cover art on books. And Murder In The Mews does not disappoint.

I love the cover with the green mirror image woman looking alarmed. It is so brilliantly menacing! If like me, you are a little bit confused Anubis on one of the covers, I believe it is because he was the God who took care of the dead. Bottom left is a Portuguese edition which translates literally to Murder in the Alley.

The Recipe – Petit Pois À La Française

I used the recipe for Petit Pois À La Française from Manu Feildel’s book Manu’s French Kitchen.

Japp looked at his friend for some moments in silence. Then he rose, clapped him on the shoulder, and burst out laughing.

“Not so bad for an old dog. Upon my word, you take the cake! Come out and have a spot of lunch?”

“With pleasure my friend, but we will not have the cake. Indeed, an omelette aux champignons, blanquette de veau, petits pois à la française, and to follow a baba au rhum.”

– Agatha Christie, Murder in The Mews

Other Food Mentioned in Murder In The Mews

December’s read will be Hercule Poirot’s Christmas. Because who hasn’t wanted to murder an annoying family member at Christmas?

Happy reading!

Month: November 2022

My Picnic Menu

Chicken Club Sandwich

Orange and Poppyseed Cupcakes – The Recipe

My Nigella Moment

What is Syllabub?

Rhubarb and Rosé Syllabub

Ingredients

Instructions

Notes

A Very Brief Side Note on Edith Sitwell

Flan De Café – The Recipe

Festive Flan Fun

Murder in The Mews- The Plot

Murder in The Mews- The Covers

The Recipe – Petit Pois À La Française

Other Food Mentioned in Murder In The Mews