1970's food - Retro Food For Modern Times

Category: 1970’s food

28
Jan
2023

Croquetas de Carne with Peruvian Salsa

categories: 1970's food, 1970's recipes, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, Meat, North and South America, Starters

Hola Amigos! Today we are taking a trip to South America via Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery (1972) for some croquetas de carne from Argentina. And to accompany them we are staying on the same continent but jumping forward in time to 1990 for some Peruvian Salsa. OMG, these were good! I mean not good for you – these are a treat for once-in-a-while. But…for those times when you get a craving for meaty cheesy fried balls with a spicy salsa…these will become your go-to. And once you have tried these croquetas de carne, believe me, those cravings will come far more regularly than before!

Croquetas de Carne

I have made croquettes once before with a ham and egg filling and the method was quite different. In that recipe, you made a fairly thick bechamel and then combined the ham and hard-boiled eggs and some herbs into the bechamel. With this one, you make your meat filling and then the roux/bechamel-type sauce in the same pan as the meat. It was kind of nifty as it meant you only used one pan. And less washing up is something that always makes me happy! 🤗

The croquetas de carne reminded me of our Sri Lankan short eat of Frikkadels which are also crumbed fried meatballs.

Croquetas de Carne – The Recipe

As good as these croquetas are, they did lack a little something-something. The croquetas are very rich; there is meat and cheese and a fried crumb! I felt something was needed to cut through the heaviness of the croquetas. Now, it just so happened that I made the croquetas on the same day that I wrote the post on my Moscow Potatoes. It was incredibly serendipitous that as I was begining to think about what I might serve with the croquetas that I happened to have the magazine page that contained the recipe for the Moscow Potatoes and Peruvian Salsa open right in front of me! Even better, I had all the ingredients for Peruvian Salsa in the house!

The chilli and lime in the salsa cut through the richness of the croqueta’s perfectly!

A match made in heaven! Or South America as the case may be.

Peruvian Salsa – The Recipe

A Return to The Compton-Batts

It wasn’t until just now that I had probably a tenth look at the menu put forward by the Compton-Batts that I realised how…well the magazine article calls their menu eclectic. I would probably go with batshit (erm Battshit anyone???) crazy. Here it is:

Moscow Potatoes
Pickled Fish
Blackened Tuna Sashimi
Chilli Stir Fried Lamb
Peruvian Salsa
Vegetables Cooked in Virgin Olive Oil
Asparagus with Parmesan
Berry Pudding with Armagnac Chantilly

First that is a LOT of food.

Second, it is a lot of food that does not really go together.

The Moscow Potatoes are, if not exactly Russian, inspired by Russia.

We then move across to…I don’t know where for the pickled fish. I initially would have thought this might be an escabeche so Spain, but there is ginger in the recipe which I don’t think is traditional in an escabeche. There is coriander in the garnish and coriander and ginger to me says Asia. I will say though that the recipe sounds delicious and I may well end up making it! Also, the recipe says to use white fish but the picture of the pickled fish looks like salmon to me. So the pickled fish is an enigma all round. Here’s a picture of it

The sashimi is obvs Japanese. But why would you have pickled fish and sashimi?

Then we have Chilli Stir Fried Lamb which uses a Chinese cooking method combined with Indian-style spices such as cumin and cardamom.

And the Chinese / Indian main is accompanied by a salsa from Peru. Which it doesn’t really need given it already has chlllies and lemon in it.

Also accompanying our stir fry we have some vegetables roasted in olive oil and some asparagus with Parmesan which for simplicity I am going to say is Italian-influenced. Here’s a pic of the asparagus which is drowning in olive oil. So again, two sides both drenched in olive oil and neither works particularly cohesive with the main dish!

Then for dessert there is a berry pudding (not a pudding but some berries soaked in port and Cabernet Sauvignon) served with an Armagnac Chantilly. So French inspired.

That is one wild menu I thought as I reached for another croqueta de carne dipped in some Peruvian Salsa. I’m glad I’m keeping it simple!

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!

28
Sep
2022

Lime Pie with Creme De Menthe – Pieathalon 9!

categories: 1970's food, 1970's recipes, Cook A Long, Desserts, Pastry Desserts, Pieathalon

Greetings Pie lovers! Welcome to a special midweek edition of Retro Food For Modern Foods. Today we are celebrating that best of best days of the year – Pieathalon Day. This is the day, where lead by the lovely Yinzerella, bloggers worldwide swap and cook vintage pie recipes.

This year I got a recipe for Lime Pie with Creme de Menthe sent to me by Dr Bobb. Now, call me biased but how pretty are these? I made lots of little pies because I could not find a large already baked pie crust and at the time I made these I was suffering from double ear infections and a bad back so I was not really up for shopping about. The one shop I went to had no large pie crusts so I bought two packs of medium. I’m kind of glad. I think the little pies look adorable.

Lime Pie with Creme de Menthe?

To be honest, though, I was not initially enamoured with the recipe. Lime yes! It was the Creme de Menthe I was struggling with. I have never really tasted Creme de Menthe, all I knew about it was that it was a mint-flavoured liqueur that Poirot sometimes sips. Hmm…I wonder if that is why Yinzerella sent it to me! I have a love/hate relationship with mint-flavoured things. I hate mint tea and mint choc chip ice cream but I love a mint slice biscuit and I love the combo of mint and lime in a mojito.

Looking at the bottle of Creme de Menthe though I couldn’t help feeling I was going to be flavouring my pies with something that looked suspiciously like the mouthwash I use!

I had to keep reminding myself Mojito, not Listerine!

Mojito! Mojito…And given that I always like to have a song to celebrate Pieathalon, I was singing that “Mojito, mojito” to the tune of the bit in Despacito that goes “Pasito a pasito, suave suavecito”.

(How many of you are not humming despacito now?

However the real sticking point was not the Creme de Menthe but came when I was half way through making the recipe. At the exact point when I realised that the original recipe contained egg yolks that were not going to be cooked.

Hard no for me on the raw yolks.

Not the least of which was that I now had 12 little pies. These were going to last us for days. And if the idea of fresh raw yolks was bad, the idea of 4 day old raw yolks was putrid. Plus the mixture was quite runny. I was sure if I left it uncooked, we would have soggy bottoms in no time. And as anyone who watches the Great British Bake Off will know, no one likes a soggy bottom!

So, I popped my little pies into the oven for about 15 minutes.

Despite my misgivings, these pies were delicious!

Lime Pie with Creme De Menthe – The Recipe

Doctor Bobb, I raise my glass to you and your recipe!

Why not check out what Dr Bobb and all the other pieathletes made per the links below:

(please note some of the links may not be live at the time of posting. I will update as they become live).

Yinzerella	Candy Apple Cheese Pie	www.dinnerisserved1972.com
Dr. Bobb	praline pumpkin pie	http://dbkitschen.blogspot.com/2022/09/pieathalon-9-praline-pumpkin-pie.html
Battenburgbelle	Zucchini Pie	https://www.kitchenconfidence.co.uk/all-recipes/pieathalon-2022/
S S	Yul Brenner’s Pie	http://abookofcookrye.blogspot.com/2022/09/pieathlon-ninth-walnut-pie-from-stars.html
Jenny	Sagittarius Hamburger Pie	www.silverscreensuppers.com
Surly	poohs summer pie	www.vintagerecipecards.com
Kari	Ham Tongue Pie	www.thenostalgiccook.com
Poppy Crocker	apricot mallow pie	https://granniepantries.blogspot.com/
Camilla	Chocolate Angel Pie	http://culinary-adventures-with-cam.blogspot.com/

If you are wondering who got the pie I submitted, it was Jenny from Silver Screen Suppers! Good luck Jenny, I hope you enjoyed your hamburger pie!

Thanks as always to Yinzerella for organising this brilliant event!

14
Aug
2022

Rum and Butter Tartlets

categories: 1970's food, 1970's recipes, Baking, Canada, World Cooking

This recipe for Rum and Butter Tartlets is inspired by the recipe in the Canada chapter of Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery (1972).

To Rum or Not To Rum?

The original recipe calls for Rum essence which I suppose makes these child-friendly. I remember hating rum balls, or anything else rum flavoured, as a child so I am not sure how friendly the essence version would be. We did not have any rum essence in the house so I soaked my currants in actual rum. I then added the currant soaking liquid into the pies. Did I say how delicious these were?

Rum and butter is a classic combination – seen in hot buttered rum and steak with rum butter.

But please make up your own mind on using real rum or rum essence. Just not red rum!

We are watching The Shining for my film club. I think it is a genius movie and one of Kubrick’s best ( Stephen King hated it with a passion) and I am keen to see what the other club members think of it.

Rum and Butter Tartlets – The Recipes

I changed the original recipe a LOT both because some things such as the amount of sugar were insane. Also…it’s Canada…why are they even using sugar when they could have had maple syrup which is a far superior sweetener IMHO!

Here is the original recipe from Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery

And here is my version:

Rum and Butter Tartlets

Print Recipe

A delicious modern take on a vintage recipe.

Author: Taryn Nicole

Ingredients

Scale

70g currants
50g butter
60g cream
100g maple syrup
1 tbsp rum / rum essence
1 egg
12 sweet tart shells

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

Soak the currants in the rum for at least 1 hour.
Melt the butter. Add the cream, maple syrup, rum and currants.
Whisk in the egg.
Fill the tart shells and bake in a moderate oven (180C) until the filling was set and the pastry is golden. This was 40 minutes for me.

I have also found a very similar recipe from Adam Liaw

There may be a short hiatus in my posting schedule, we are about to go on a little holiday to the beautiful beach resort of Noosa on the Sunshine Coast. I am hoping for six days of sunshine, sand and great food!

Have a great week!

17
May
2022

Chicken Chanteclair

categories: 1970's food, Chicken, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, United States of America, World Cooking

I am not doing a Best of April post as the very sad and sudden passing of our beloved boy Oscar at the end of the month has muted pretty much everything that was good. We are still working through our grief which for me personally has meant a great lethargy. I have barely been motivated to cook and not at all motivated to write until today. Baby steps are enough at the moment. But one of the things I made just before Oscar passed away was the recipe for Chicken Chanteclair from the Creole section of Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery which was so tasty and comforting that I had to share it.

What on Earth is Chicken Chanteclair?

The name Chanteclair comes from the French words chanter meaning to sing and clair meaning clearly. So, to my mind this is a dish that will inspire you to sing its praises loud and strong.

Chicken Chanteclair is a Coq Au Vin by another name. I can’t see any particular Creole influences in this dish – to me this is purely French. Indeed one of my notes from when I made this was that it made the house “smell like France”. And, just to be clear, I didn’t mean that in the way I mean it when I talk about our trip to Toulouse. There, it smelt like every male in the town was using the streets as his own personal urinal. Chicken Chanteclair made the house smell of herbs and wine and meat cooking low and slow. It smelled like family and comfort. One of my other notes on this recipe was “this is the kind of dish you cook for people you love”

Here’s The Recipe: Chicken Chanteclair

The actual recipe wasn’t much so here are my notes:

1 kilo of chicken thighs on the bone.
I added 3 sprigs of thyme and 2 bay leaves to the marinade
For the marinade I used 3/4 bottle of wine (Just enough left over for a glass with the meal)
I threw in 12 fresh mushrooms as well as the dried mushrooms
I wasn’t sure about the tarragon at the end but it really worked
I served mine with mashed potatoes to soak up that luxurious sauce. Crusty bread would also be a great option!

Apart from those changes, the rest was easy. Marinade the ingredients overnight, pop them in the oven and voila – Chicken Chanteclair!

The leftovers were also delicious in some cheddar and jalapeno biscuits I made!

This is so easy to make but it feels like a much more complex dish. It is delicious, reheats well and is comfort food at its best. This will go on high rotation at my house!

I really hope you cook this for someone or someones you love very soon!

I am away a training course all of next week so will not be posting anything. The following week I will be back with a Dining with the Dame. It is a Poirot and our very first Ariadne Oliver novel!

Have a wonderful week!