1970's recipes - Retro Food For Modern Times

Category: 1970’s recipes

15
May
2020

Not Quite Seeni Sambol

categories: 1970's recipes, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, Onions, Sri Lanka, Vegetables

Seeni Sambol is a Sri Lankan side dish, served as an accompaniment to rice, curries and hoppers as per the photo below. It is an integral component of lampries, which despite Covid-19, mum and I made this year at Easter, as per our normal habit. I made the seeni sambol this year, something we never really do as it takes so many onions! I used 8 onions to make mine and in the end, there was not enough for all our lampries and we ended up having to use a shop-bought version as well!

Please don’t judge my hoppers, I am playing with a recipe which I will post on here as soon as I have it right! The main ingredient of Seeni Sambol is onions. Put very simply you caramelise them down add some spices and voila – there you have it.

Our 2020 lampries. This is a SriLankan meal consisting of ghee rice, lampries curry, eggplant pickle,seeni sambol, prawn blachan and frikadeller which mum and I cook annually. We make enough to last the year, packing individual servings into foil packets and putting them into the freezer to reheat and eat whenever the mood takes us!

What I am trying to say is, that I know a bit about Seeni Sambol. So, when I saw that there was a recipe for it in the Good Housekeeping World Cookery Book, 1972 I was intrigued. My gut feel is that books this old do not do justice to “ethnic” recipes. But for the sake of the blog, I was willing to give this one a go.

But, because WordPress loves a subheading, let’s break it down a little.

The Title

The actual title is fine. In that, all words are spelt correctly.

It’s the subtitle that made me pause.

And call my mum.

“Are you meant to just eat Seeni Sambol with prawns?”

“No. Why?”

“No reason”.

So fail on the title. Seeni Sambol actually means sugar sambol and relates to the sweetness of the caramelised onions and the sugar you add towards the end of cooking to balance out the flavours. No prawns at all. Whatsoever.

The Ingredients

There are two very non-traditional additions in these ingredients. Tomatoes play no part in seeni sambol and neither does milk.

You probably could not have got fresh milk in Sri Lanka in 1972 – it would have either been evaporated or coconut milk. Either way, I inadvertently left the milk out of my version. I added the tomatoes though.

There is also an ingredient that is used in a traditional Seeni sambol called a Maldive Fish which is a cured dried fish which adds protein and umami flavours to the Seeni Sambol If you want to make this, and you cannot find Maldive fish, you can substitute Asian fish sauce. Or you can leave it out altogether which is what they do in vegetarian versions.

Overall though, the ingredients are pretty close to home. Just forget the tomatoes and the milk if you want to keep it real!

Oh, and btw? No prawns.

The Method

So, it all seems legit until…WTF why are they talking about Prawns? There were no prawns in the ingredients so why are there prawns in the GD recipe???

There are no prawns in Seeni Sambol. And that’s not just me saying that. That comes direct from my mum. And I may be an idiot who knows nothing but she knows Sri Lankan cooking!

So, this is kind of a shambolic recipe. However, if you ignore the magical prawns that do a disappearing act in the ingredients and reappear in the method and the milk which has no place here what so ever. this is not a bad recipe. I didn’t even mind the tomatoes in the final dish!

Here is the full recipe:

And here is a better one from chef Manu Fieldel. This is a vegetarian version so does not contain the possibly hard to find Maldive Fish.

Hope you are having a good week! Stay safe friends…the light at the end of this tunnel seems to be appearing!

06
Feb
2020

Prawn and Potato Curry

categories: 1970's food, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, India, Prawns, World Cooking

Greetings people of the internet. This week we are returning to our sojourn around the world via Good Housekeepings World Cookery. Last time we visited this book we were in Pakistan for a subcontinental take on Scotch Eggs. Today we are moving south and east into India for a super easy, super delicious Prawn and Potato Curry.

I threw some baby corn in as well because this is my year of not wasting food and we happened to have some in the fridge that was not going to last the week. To be honest, the baby corn should never have been bought. It was on sale and the fussiest eater in the world said he wanted it.

“For what?” I asked.

“I’ll think of something”

Something was not thought of. Hence the fact that the baby corn went into the curry.

There seems to be something in the air this year around reducing waste/saving money. I set a goal for 2020 to be my year of reducing kitchen waste. Halfway across the world, the lovely Jenny from Silver Screen Suppers is also cutting down on waste this year. My boss is radically cutting down on her kitchen waste this year by living off pantry supplies every fourth week and donating the money she would have spent on food to charity. I LOVE this idea!!!! Such a bold and generous move!

But back to the curry. This curry is very easy to make and for a curry, few ingredients. It is also very tasty! Here’s the recipe, direct from the pages of Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery. But please feel free to add in any veggies you may have that would otherwise go to waste!

Have a great week! And please tell me any tips you have for reducing kitchen waste!

22
Jul
2019

Pakistani Scotch Eggs

categories: 1970's recipes, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, Pakistan, World Cooking

Hello, people of the internet!

Arrrgghh, it’s been such a long time between posts due to a long period of lethargy following the flu and a dying, then dead, laptop. But, at long last, we can continue our journey around the world 1972 style as we enter the Indian subcontinent and taste test these delights straight out of Pakistan. During this leg of the trip, we will visit, Pakistan, India and the country of my birth, Sri Lanka. I am very excited about what lies ahead. But first, let’s talk about these Pakistani Scotch eggs I made…or, more correctly, let’s talk about the Nargasi Koftay I made.

I love Scotch eggs. Not those horrible store-bought things you buy on holiday in England and spend the next few weeks regretting…but proper homemade Scotch eggs. My mum used to make them regularly when I was a child and like most things, in my mind, mum’s Scotch eggs are the BEST! But surprisingly, given our Sri Lankan heritage, we never had them with a spicy mince coating the egg.

Let me tell you….mind blown!!!! Such a good innovation.

That is…until I started to do a little bit o’ digging into the history of the Scotch egg and realised that maybe it is not an innovation at all…

Fortnum and Mason claim to have invented the Scotch egg in 1738 as a luxury travelling snack for wealthy Londoners departing the fog and funk of the city for the fresh and crisp air of their country manors. The idea being that plain old hard-boiled eggs were far too stinky for these posh folk to have to deal with.

Wow…imagine that world!

I had never thought of Scotch Eggs being posh people’s food. I would have put money on it originating in a working-class scenario, much like a pastie. The crumb coating protecting the meat from the dirt and dust of a coal mine while the egg was added as a cheap and quick protein boost and to eke out the meat.

Let’s throw another scenario out there

Way back in 1592, the Moghul Empire was founded…and those dudes had a long history with Persia. How about those Moghuls found a recipe for an egg wrapped kofta from the Persians and, in turn, and over centuries, that was given to the British in the days of the Raj…

And turned into a lux travelling snack due to its popularity with the returning sahibs and memsahibs?

Not totally out of the realms of all probability I think.

Here’s the recipe!

Pakistani Scotch Eggs

Print Recipe

A spicy take on a British Scotch Egg.

Author: Taryn Fryer

Ingredients

Scale

6 eggs, boiled and shelled, aim for soft boiled
1 tbsp coconut oil
1 medium sized onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1cm piece of ginger, grated
1/2 tsp chilli powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp Garam Masala
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp cumin powder
1/2 tsp ground coriander
4 sprigs of coriander or mint, finely chopped
500g beef mince
1 cup flour
1 egg, beaten
1 1/2 cups dried breadcrumbs
Sunflower oil to deep fry
Kasundi, coriander leaves to serve (optional)

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

Carefully shell the eggs and place aside.
Heat the coconut oil in a pan over a medium heat
Add the onions and cook until translucent.
Add the garlic, ginger, salt, chilli powder, Garam masala, turmeric, cumin and coriander. Cook for 2 minutes until the spices become aromatic.
Put aside to cool.
Once the spice mix is cool add the minced beef and the coriander and mix well.
Wet your hands with water and divide the mince mixture into 6 equal parts.
Wrap one of these around an egg, ensuring that there are no cracks or uncovered spaces.
Repeat with the remaining eggs.
Season the flour with salt and pepper and spread on a plate.
Put the beaten egg in a bowl
Add the breadcrumbs to another plate.
Roll the covered eggs in the flour, dip in the egg and roll in the crumbs.
Repeat for all the eggs.
Place in the fridge for 15 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 170C.
Half-fill a deep-fryer or a large pan with oil and heat to 190°C (a cube of bread will turn golden in 30 seconds when the oil’s hot enough). Fry the eggs, in batches, for 2 minutes or until golden. Place the eggs on a baking tray and bake for 10 minutes until the meat is cooked through.
Serve warm or cold with tomato kasundi and coriander leaves.

Nargasi Kofta is traditionally served in a curry sauce. I decided to crumb and fry mine simply because I wanted them to be portable. Sadly no country manor just a commuter train to work!

I served my Pakistani Scotch Eggs with a tomato kasundi from Kylee Newtons’ The Modern Preserver, which is a book I can heartily recommend. You can also find the recipe for the kasundi here.

This spicy relish complements the taste of the Scotch Eggs. If, however, you did not want to go to the bother of making it, you could serve with mayo, or Greek yoghurt – ideally with a swirl of Sriracha through it but plain would also be fine!

Enjoy and have a great week!

22
Mar
2019

Shish Kebabs

categories: 1970's recipes, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, Turkey, World Cooking

So as luck would have it, the week I wanted to write about the Turkish meal of Shish kebabs, there has been a diplomatic incident between Australia and Turkey. But this blog is not afraid to tackle contentious issues. Actually, no, scratch that, this blog doesn’t want to have anything to do with this debacle. To be frank, both sides of this spat are terrifying and we here at RFFMT are ~~cowards~~ peace lovers who just want to eat some meat on a stick.

Or, to be etymologically exact roasted meat (kebap) on a sword (sis).

Or to be even more precise, delicious roasted meat on a sword.

The recipe for these Shish Kebabs came to you direct from 1972 via Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery. As usual, the introduction to each chapter comes with a gorgeous drawing of representing the food of the region:

Each chapter also has an overview of the food of the region. Some “facts” I learned about the food of Turkey:

The Turks have more than forty ways of cooking eggplant

People in Istanbul, choose their drinking water with as much care as people in France choose wine.

Peaches and apples are ordered by name for those from different areas have a different flavour and fragrance

A formal dinner can start with as many as thirty or forty appetisers

The shish kebabs are simple to make, look really pretty with all the colours of the vegetables and taste delicious!

A little drizzle of pomegranate molasses over the top sets these off to perfection.

These shish kebabs are also a tasty lunch treat!

Have a great week. And be kind to each other!

13
Jan
2019

This could get meze: Hummus and Tabbouleh

categories: 1970's food, 1970's recipes, Dip, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, Lebanon, Middle Eastern, Salad, Vegan, World Cooking

I LOVE Middle Eastern food. One of my favourite cookbooks is Persiana by Sabrina Ghayour and I also love all the Ottolenghi books. Maha in Melbourne is one of my favourite restaurants – their 12-hour slow cooked lamb is to die for! I also used to live in an area of Melbourne that is full of middle eastern restaurants and ate at one of them at least once a week. So I was very excited to see that the next chapter in Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery (1972) was for food from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran. I was even more excited to see that there were recipes for two absolute classics of the region – hummus and tabbouleh. Both of which were in the Lebanese section.

Apart from the deliciousness, one of the other reasons I love Middle Eastern food is the amazing names for example, The Imam Fainted, and The Dervish’s Rosary. No other culture that I can think of has such poetic names for their food. My original plan had been to feature both of these recipes however, I recently discovered that I have an allergy to eggplant (aubergine), an ingredient that features heavily in both of these dishes.

Have you ever wondered if what you see and call “green” is the same as what other people see when they see green? Yes, it’s the colour of grass and leaves and apples but is the green I see the same as the green you see?

I wonder about things like that all the time.

I’m super fun at parties…

Well, my experience with eggplant was a little like finding out that what I call green is what everyone else calls pink. I was talking to a friend of mine about eggplants (as you do) and happened to mention “I like the way they make your mouth go all tingly”.

My friend was like “No…no it doesn’t….” with this face:

Long story short, it turns out that not everyone’s mouth tingles when they eat eggplant and that tingle is actually an allergic reaction. Turns out I am mildly allergic to nightshades, particularly eggplant and capsicums.

So an eggplant heavy menu was off the menu. So, no great names today, just some damn nice food. Starting with…

Hummus

Luckily I have no allergy problems with hummus which is wonderful because I eat it by the truckload. And yet, I have never made it before. And I may never make it again. I’d read that for really smooth hummus you need to peel the chickpeas. This is not only utterly boring (even using the hacks that abound on the interwebs) but also oddly repulsive. The chickpea peels kept sticking to my fingers and pulling them off felt weirdly like removing my own skin. It even looked a bit like it too…

The hummus was lovely though. This was a very classic recipe but, you could jazz it up by adding herbs or other flavourings to it.

Here are twenty or so variations from my Appetizers spreadsheet:

You say Tabbouleh, I say Tabouli

For the love of Mike can we settle on one spelling and stick to it? I’ve seen this spelt so many different ways – Tabbouleh, Tabouleh, Tabouli, Tabbouli…..in the end, even Good Housekeeping gave up. They list this in the index as Mint and Parsley Salad!

Unlike hummus, which I buy pretty much every week, I never buy tabbouleh. Because store-bought tabbouleh is generally disgusting – soggy and bland.

Homemade? Delish!

Like the hummus, the tabbouleh recipe in World Cookery is fairly plain. But this will allow you to jazz it up as you wish. Next time, I will add a little sumac into the dressing to ramp up the zing factor. I am also very taken with the Ottolenghi idea of topping tabbouleh with pomegranate arils.

That variation and a number of others can be found here.

The Recipes

I used tinned chickpeas for my recipe. I also assumed that when they said sesame oil in the recipe for hummus that they meant tahini (given it is in the recipe title) and not the sesame oil you use in Asian dishes.

Also, I did not garnish with parsley as per the suggestion because I needed all my parsley for the tabbouleh. I used a sprinkle of paprika.

The tabbouleh recipe suggests that you eat your tabbouleh using lettuce, vine or cabbage leaves as scoops. I prefer pita as the scoop, and if that piece of pita happens to have a smear of hummus on it, so much the better!

You could add some other delicious Middle Eastern titbits (for inspiration see here) and make up a lovely meze platter with these. Or, you could do what I did and just have them, along with the pita bread for lunch.

For those who care about such things, this meal is vegan.

Have a wonderful week! But before we go, tell me, what is your favourite cuisine?