I am perfectly aware that these sandwiches do not resemble Easter Lilies and would, based on their look, be far more appropriately called Calla Lily Sandwiches. But it’s Easter ok?
And take a look at them. How pretty are they? Perfect for an afternoon tea with the girls….
Easter Lily sandwiches
And they taste pretty damn good too!!!
There are a few recipes for these lily sandwiches floating about the interwebs. However, most of them use green onions for the stem. I actually made it that way the first time but was disappointed in the taste.
Chomping on that big stalk made the sandwich way too oniony – I’m pretty sure no one else wants to bite into a huge chunk of onion like that either. Or suffer the onion breath afterwards. But to use them as decoration only and take them out when it came to eating the sandwich seemed like a waste. My first thought was to replace the onions with beans but when I went to buy the beans, I was waylaid by some gorgeous baby asparagus spears.
Easter Lily Sandwiches Ingredients
And my version of the Lily Sandwich was born.
If you can only get thicker asparagus you could cut the spears in half down their length. If asparagus is not available, use beans or celery matchsticks – all of which I think would be preferable to the onion!
Oh and a tip for the frugal. When you cut the circles out of the bread, don’t throw the rest of the bread out. Save them to use for what my family call Ox-Eye eggs but is, I believe more commonly called, Egg in A Hole the next morning! Any asparagus left over can also be dipped into a runny yolk for a breakfast made in heaven!!!
Oh and if you don’t happen to have a rolling-pin handy, a bottle of your favourite sauv blanc works equally as well.
And would also be the perfect accompaniment to these sandwiches at your Easter afternoon tea!
Easter Lily Sandwiches3.
[yumprint-recipe id=’2′]One more Easter Treat to go…stay tuned!
One of the reasons I love old cookbooks is sometimes you get a little insight in to the lives of the people who owned them previously. My latest favourite vintage find, Salads For All Seasons is no exception.
There is an inscription on the front inner cover that reads “To Ann, Happy Christmas 1985. Love Aunty Ev & Uncle Bill.
Thing is…the book was published in 1971. I don’t want to judge but I dunno….unless it’s an absolute classic, giving someone a 14 year old cookbook makes me think that some regifting may have been at play here.
I suspect Ann may not have been the favourite niece.
Avocado and Aguacate Dressing
In the foreward Elizabeth Durack Clancy O.B.E. says:
“I commend this book because it is so useful and practical. “The wilful extravagant maid” can learn some fresh devilment from these pages but the “housewife that’s thrifty” is equally catered for.”
Hmmm…I’m thinking Aunty Ev may have been one of those “thrifty housewives”. And good old Ann, a maid of will and extravagance. It’s all starting to come together….it certainly explains the parsimony of the Christmas present. And the lack of a term of endearment in the greeting.
Next up, the introduction where author Rosemary Mayne-Wilson tells us:
“Salad used to something served on Sunday evenings. It consisted of neatly shredded lettuce, tomato wedges, hard boiled eggs and a slice of cheese. It was served with the sliced leftovers of the Sunday roast. Generally it was put straight on the plate, but when there were visitors it was served in a crystal salad bowl. To make it daring, a blob of mayonnaise was added, but this ‘extra’ was confined to adults”
Personally, I’d be quite happy eating that salad. But more importantly, who knew mayo was a rite of passage?
Wasabi Leaves
Then again, have you heard of those Menarche Parties that people are throwing their daughters these days? I swear, if my parents had ever done anything like that to me, I would still be locked in the bathroom, listening to The Smiths on repeat and sobbing “You hate me don’t you? You really fucking hate me.”
You can view the full horror by clicking on the link below but just to whet your appetite, included in the party pack provided by…
wait for it…
Menarche Parties R Us.com ((2021 Update – sadly this site no longer exists))
(I swear you couldn’t make this shit up if you tried)
…are 2 games. One of these is called “Pin the Ovaries” and the other is called the “Puberty Marshmallow Game”.
(2021 Update – sadly this site no longer exists)
Pinning ovaries sounds like something a serial killer would do. And I never want to know what a puberty marshmallow game entails.
For the love of God, bring back the dob of mayo on the Sunday Night Salad. “You’re a woman now Ann, have some Hellman’s”.
“Gee thanks Aunty Ev. Any chance of some tips on frugality?”
Wow,that was a spectacular digression. Where we we? Salad. Yes. Right. Ok. Sorry, I’m still being gobsmacked by the puberty marshmallow game.
Salad. We’re here to talk about salad.
Cuban Aguacate Salad 2
Back to the Introduction of Salads For All Seasons – after dropping in the comment about the mayo, in a lovely piece of randomness, Rosemary Mayne-Wilson tells us:
“Of course this has all changed and now nearly everyone owns a wooden salad bowl”
Bear with me while I nip across to Ebay because I am one of the few who own nothing of the sort. And now I desperately want one. I really want one that looks like this:
But I’m guessing I might have to make do with something a little more mundane.
And it will come in handy because I’m thinking that this could be a long haul. There is so much that is both amazing and godawful in Salads for All Seasons, that I think it’s worth spending some time here.
I was going to work through it from start to finish…until I read some of the recipes and paused for a moment of sanity. So we’ll be kind of working our way through in a fairly random order but skipping some of the truly awful and the just plain boring.
But just to get us off to a to an extravagant and devilish start, put your hot pink dancin’ shoes on, because your tastebuds are going to be doing the Rhumba with this awesome Cuban inspired salad.
[amd-zlrecipe-recipe:2]
Cuban Aguacate Salad
Who knew you could put rum into salad dressing? It’s certainly efficient – you can toxify and detoxify at the same time!!! And it tastes great!
I”m going to be spending my week, trying not to think about marshmallows! Hopefully Salad dressing liberally dosed with Bacardi will help that act of forgetting.
You spend 2 days in Sydney and would rather spend your small amount of free time buying the most amazing truffled pecorino instead of snapping up pics of Opera Houses, Harbour Bridges etc….
Meet my new best friend….
Truffled Pecorino
But in the spirit of all good cooking media…Here’s some pics of our lovely Harbour city I prepared earlier….
Sydney Harbour BridgeSydney Opera HouseBondi Beach
My cheese and I are about to enjoy a fantabby long weekend. I’ll keep you posted as to what we get up to!
Have a great week!
I say that, but given that most of you don’t have a long weekend or truffled pecorino…what I really mean is sucks you be you do the best you can.
God Bless the Greeks. They invented democracy, philosophy and some damn fine food. Including fried cheese. How good is that stuff? You take cheese…which is one of my all time best ever foods to begin with…and fry it. That;’s not even eleven. That’s twelve! Possibly thirteen. But, I digress, yeah, I know opening paragraph…and we’re already off track, because today we’re talking about the second wonder of the Greek cuisine pantheon…(or should that be Parthenon?) the cheese and spinach pie, also more formally known as the Spanakopita.
Spanakopita 1
I live in Melbourne, which as anyone in Melbourne will tell you has the largest population of Greek people outside of Athens. I have no idea if this is actually true or just one of those urban myths about the city you live in. Regardless of numbers, there are a lot of Greek people and hence a lot of super delicious Greek food. In fact, just as much as some families have the local Chinese or Indian restaurant, my family would go Greek.
No, not like that you bunch of perverts….I meant we would celebrate family occasions at the local Greek restaurant.
Spanakopita Ingredients
Mind you, this did come after a debacle at the local Chinese. You know the classic tale of the gauche family who drink the fingerbowls? Not that old chestnut for my family. No way. Uh huh.
We’re a much classier lot.
So when, towards the end of our meal, the waiter delivered some small bowls of water to our table we dutifully dipped and dunked and positively soaked our fingers revelling in our (sub) urban/e sophistication. He then reappeared with a plate of…I can best describe them as caramel coated sweet dumplings. The idea being that you dipped your caramel dumpling into the icy cold water thereby changing the caramel from a hot liquid to a crispy shell. We all looked to our now slightly grubby bowls of warmish water and the thought of dessert suddenly didn’t seem so good.
Now, I can’t speak a word of Mandarin, but believe me, that wasn’t a prerequisite to understand what our waiter was muttering as he swished away the original bowls. There is a certain tone people adopt when they say “You people are morons” that is pretty much universal.
We celebrated with Greek food from then on.
Spanakopita Ingredients – pre massage
The February Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Audax of Audax Artifex. The challenge brought us to Greece with a delicious, flaky spanakopita – a spinach pie in a phyllo pastry shell. I had thought I was au fait with the cooking of this particular dish as it is something I make fairly regularly. However Audax’s version had a few curve balls.
First there was massaging the ingredients. It made me think about those Wagyu cows…
Spanakopita 2
Then post the massage there was the squeeze….this was both kind of disgusting and a shit ton of fun.
Squeezing…kind of gross.Squeezed Spinach (and my abnormally large man hands)
Post the squeeze, you end up with two bowls. Once containing a dry mixture, one containing a milky green liquid.
Post Squeeze Spanakopita
It is at this point that I would diverge from the recipe as given by Audax and add some more cheese into the dry mixture. I don’t know what happened to the cheese but somewhere during the massage or the squeeze it kind of disappeared, leaving a less cheesy spanakopita than I would normally have. For me, it’s all about the cheese.
Anyhow, then you add some couscous to the liquid and let it soak it all up. This is utter brilliance. The couscous bulks up the mixture so you can have a higher pie and it stops the bottom pastry getting soggy.
Spinach Juice and Couscous
Another brilliant idea? Cutting the squares before baking. Stroke of genius!
Pre-Baked Spanakopita
Spanakopita – hot from the oven
Huh, I just realised I’ve mentioned fried Greek cheese in at least two out of the last three posts. I think my subconscious is trying to tell me something.
I’m going to be spending my week having at least one trip to the Paradise of Lindos to partake of some plate smashing, some haloumi and maybe even a little bit of this…
So, we had our first bbq in the new house on the weekend. And to celebrate, I made the Prune Kebabs from Nancy Spain’s All Colour Cookbook. Before we sail this ship we call the Titanic into that particular iceberg, let’s talk about kebabs.
Prune Kebabs
There seems to have been no standard spelling for food before about 1980. I’ve seen these things spelled Kebabs, Kebobs, Kabobs and even Kaboobs….
I’m actually a little disappointed we didn’t go with Kabobs. It sounds likes something out of Batman. KA-BOB!
Whereas kaboobs? Another thing altogether.
But I digress. Where were we? Oh yeah, Nancy’s kebabs…Nancy’s Prune Kebabs. Jeez, Even I’m distracted by Dolly’s boobage….I can only imagine what it’s like for all you boys….
Actually, one more. On a slightly more disturbing note, did you know if you Google image “kaboobs” this ranks quite high in the list of hits:
WTF? I don’t want to know. Seriously I don’t. Please no one ever explain the link to me. Ever.
Ok back to biz. Which was Nancy Spain’s Prune Kebabs. Nancy recommends these as being popular with teenagers. I find that hard to believe. It’s not like McDonalds didn’t exist then. Believe me, none of the cool kids were chomping on Nancy’s Prune Kebabs. Not when there was even the remotest possibility of two all beef patties, special sauce etc.
Also, given their renowned laxative properties, I would have thought Prune Kebabs more suited to the older gen.
But what do I know?
Sweet FA apparently because this recipe just lurched from one disaster to the next.
Issue 1.
Doing my mise-en-place I realised I had no apples. It must be the only time in the history off the world that we have not had an apple, any apple in the house.
Solution 1
Checked all the other ingredients just to be sure and went down to the shops. Bought apples. Did not realise until a week later when I came to scan the recipe to post that it also needed tomatoes. I swear I must have originally read this recipe in the dark. I didn’t miss them. Use them if you got ’em, if not never mind.
Prune Kebabs Mise En Place
Issue 2
Nancy suggests soaking the prunes over night which I forgot to do. I also do not care for Mango Chutney so subbed in some caramelised onion relish. Maybe because I hadn’t soaked them, stuffing the prunes with the relish was nigh on impossible.
Creative Innovation #1
I smeared the bacon with the relish then wrapped the prunes up in the bacon.
Prunes and Bacon
Issue 3
There was a problem with the cheese. A few problems actually. First , Nancy suggests processed cheese. I would rather eat my own snot. I had some nice cheddar.
Issue 3.1
At the risk of sounding like Captain Obvious, cheese melts. So, how do you cook a sausage and bacon on a bbq without having the cheese melt away to nothing? Also it kept breaking off the skewer. In retrospect, I should have bought some of that super delicious Greek frying cheese.
Creative Innovation #2
I took the sausage out of its skin and made it into a little meatball and popped the cheese inside. It still leaked a little bit but if it hadn’t been wrapped in the meat, you may as well not bother with it.
Prune Kebabs Cheese Meatball
Issue 4
I made two kebabs on my metal skewers then went the drawer to get the bamboo skewers. Only we had no bamboo skewers in the drawer. . .Or the pantry. Or any other place in the house. I can only think we left them at the old house .
So now we’re officially shit out of luck.
And skewers.
There’ no way I was getting in the car and driving to Safeway again. It was as hot as hell out there. In fact I’m blaming the heat on my utter scattiness – we had at least 6 days in a row over 40º. (That”s over 100º for my American friends). My brain is melting.
Creative Innovation #2
Brain melt or no, I may not have had skewers but I had rosemary. And you know what? Those rosemary mini kebabs were not only as cute as hell, but they smelled crazy stupid good when being bbq’ed and gave an extra flavour boost to the kebabs.
Rosemary Mini Kebabs
Finally, they were ready to go on the bbq. Good thing I was also making the cocktail that will feature in my Valetines Day post at the same time because I needed a drink after all that!
Prune Kebabs on bbq
Prunes and bacon are always good. The onion relish was a nice addition as was the smoky flavour of the bbq. The recipe called for chippoloatas, I couldn’t find any so I used a spicy Italian fennel sausage from my local butcher. This was really nice with the cheese that didn’t leak out all over the bbq.
Prune Kebabs 3
The two revelations were the apple…who knew bbq’ed apple was so good? It got a little bit charred and slightly soft but still crunchy, it soaked up the flavours of the bacon and the sausage, apples go fabulously with cheese…it was a real winner. And the other thing I loved was the rosemary. This was the opposite of the apple in that whilst the apple was busy soaking up all the flavours around it, the rosemary was just putting it all out there…the aroma as this cooked was awesome and the skewered items really did pick up some of the lovely rosemary flavour and aroma.
I have included both Nancy’s original and my adaptations below.
If you want more cheesy meaty goodness on a stick, you can look at:
And would also be the perfect accompaniment to these sandwiches at your Easter afternoon tea!
Zorba
