Dining With The Dame - Retro Food For Modern Times

Category: Dining With The Dame

19
Oct
2021

A Murder on The Orient Express Collab

categories: Celebrity Recipes, Desserts, Dried Fruit, Film, Fish, Poirot

All aboard! Welcome friends to a cooking and murder collab between Silver Screen Suppers and Retro Food For Modern Times. Jenny and I have been tallking about doing this literally for months! I am breaking my usual Dining with the Dame Format to cook recipes by the stars of the 1974 version of Murder on The Orient Express and half a world away in London Jenny is doing the same. Jenny provided the recipes and we agreed to watch the film on the same day!

Murder on The Orient Express 1974 – The Film

As with the Kenneth Brannagh 2017 film, the 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express is a star-studded affair! The rather schlocky trailer describes it as the “Who’s who in the whodunnit”.

Albert Finney stars as Poirot Agatha Christie herself gave Albert the thumbs up in his portrayal of Poirot. (He was excellent, and his denouement at the end is amazing – he had to learn 8 pages of script off by heart to do it – but for me, David Suchet is, and will only ever be, the true Poirot).

Others in the cast include Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Jacqueline Bisset, Sean Connery, Sir John Gielgud, Anthony Perkins, Vanessa Redgrave and Michael York to name but a few! Ingrid Bergman won an Oscar as best supporting actress for her role in this. Albert Finney was nominated but missed out to Art Carney from Harry and Tonto.

The film follows the story of the Agatha Christie novel with the luxurious Orient Express train stuck in a snow bank with no one being able to get on or off the train. One of the guests is stabbed to death in the night. It is up to Hercule Poirot to discover whodunnit!. He soon learns that the victim is connected to the kidnapping of Daisy Armstrong 5 years before. And the group of seemingly disparate strangers on the train may not be all they seem!

The stroy is based on two true events, the first being the very famous kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby i n 1932, the second was an incident when the Orient Express was trapped for 6 days in a blizzard in Turkey in 1929.

But now, we would like you to head over to the buffet car to sample today’s menu,

The Menu

Trout in Cream Saice

For your dining pleasure on today’s journey from Istanbul to Caiais, we are delighted to be serving Trout with Cream Sauce, a recipe by Ms Ingrid Bergman.

This was delicious! Trout is such a delicate fish and the lemony cream sauce was a perfect accompaniment to it. I served mine with chips (very un Orient Express), beans, broccolini and some cherry tomatoes. It was also incredibly easy to make!!! Without the chips, it is an elegant and light dish which would be worthy of the Orient Express!

The whole time I was making the trout I was singing the Billy Bragg / Wilco song :

Ingrid Bergman, Ingrid Bergman
Let’s go make a picture
On the island of Stromboli
Ingrid Bergman

And I deft anyone who knows this song to do otherwise!

Ingrid Bergman plays Greta Ohlsson in the film and she won the Academy Award for best-supporting actress for her role. I would give her an Oscar for that trout recipe because it was chef’s kiss mwah!!!

Prune Fool Syllabub

To end your meal, we are serving Prune Fool by Ms. Wendy Hiller. Wendy plays Princess Dragomiroff in Murder. I feel that the Prune Fool, despite its name has the hint of gravitas equal to such a grand dame!

I LOVED the Prune Fool! The prunes and currants (I didn’t have sultanas in the red wine combined beautifully with the cream and shortbread. Eating this made me feel like a grownup. for something that is so simple to make, the end result is sophisticated.

I feel both of these dishes would meet Poirot’s approval!

Just as an aside, it appears as if, whilst on the Orient Express, Poirot has eschewed his normal tisanes and sirops for a little glass of…creme de menthe? Drunk via a straw no less.

But, I digress, back to the Prune Fool.
I know I am biased but how pretty is it?

Here’s the recipe:

Cooking for this was so fun! I loved the film as well! And it is always fun to have a shared project. Thank you Jenny for the recipes and for joining in particularly on one of the big hitters like Murder on The Orient Express. (Let’s not wait 6 months before we do another!!!) And if anyone else would like to Dine with the Dame and me, please let me know!!!

If you would like to see what Jenny cooked and how she celebrated Murder Sunday, head over to Silver Screen Suppers for a look!

I’ll be back next week with a more traditional version of Dining with the Dame – Murder on the Orient Express 2 (Electric Boogaloo).

Have a great week and happy watching!

10
Oct
2021

Sole au Vermouth – Lord Edgware Dies

categories: Dining With The Dame, Fish, Poirot

Hello crime readers and food lovers! Today we are Dining not only with Dame Agatha but also with Vincent Price. What a combo!! And it’s not the first time these two have met either. But more about that later. On the menu is Sole au Vermouth from Vincent Price’s A Treasury of Great Recipes. And top of our reading list is Lord Edgware Dies. This is another absolute cracker of a novel. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Lord Edgware Dies is a novel, where if you pay close attention and you know some Christie tropes you can, I think, quite easily figure out whodunnit it. I won’t mention the specific trope here because spoilers but let’s just say that people of a certain profession are quite often the villains in the novels so far!

Lord Edgware Dies – The Plot

Jane Wilkinson aka Lady Edgware wants a divorce. She asks Poirot to speak to her husband about granting her one. Although reluctant to do so, Poirot speaks to Lord Edgware, only to find that he says he has already agreed to a divorce. Then…wait for it….Lord Edgware dies (quelle surprise!). He is murdered in his home. His butler and housekeeper claim that Lady Edgware was the last person to see him alive as she visited the house that evening. However, 12 people swear to her having been at a dinner party with them at the time of the murder.

It is up to my beloved trinity of Hastings, Japp but mostly Poirot to figure out who did him in!

On top of a dead Lord we also have :

An actress who died from an overdose of veronal
A mysterious gold case
A dead actor
Altered letters
A mysterious American widow
An impoverished nephew who stands to inherit the Lord’s considerable wealth

Lord Edgware Dies – The Covers

Finding non-English Christie covers has become quite an obsession of mine. Here we have a Farsi version, a Russian edition, two French versions, and another possibly Eastern European edition. Dead centre is the Tom Adams version which eschews the normal symbolism for a pretty graphic knife in the head. It is not a corn knife, which was the murder weapon in Lord Edgware Dies but in “Tom Adams Uncovered” Tom Adam says that it was “nice little paper-knife of mine”. He also says he thinks Agatha Christie was not happy with the cover.

It is also definitely of a piece with Adams’ illustration for The Murder of Roger Ackroyd:

The Recipe – Sole au Vermouth

‘We will dine first Hastings. And until we drink our coffee, we will not discuss the case further. When engaged in eating, the brain should be the servant of the stomach.”

Poirot was as good as his word. We went to a litlte restaurant in Soho where he was well known, and there we had a delicious omelette, a sole, a chicken and a Baba au Rhum of which Poirot was inordinaltey fond”

Agatha Christie, Lord Edgware Dies

Disclaimer, we do not have sole in Australia so I cooked flathead. It tasted lovely and I very much liked VP’s idea of browning the sauce.

Other Food Mentioned in Lord Edgware Dies

Champagne, cocktails and old brandy in an immense goblet

Coffee (twice)

The ever present Whisky Soda (twice)

An omeltte (three times)

A chicken

A Baba au Rhum – I was tempted to make one of these but given I have already made a Savarin of Rum which is very similar I felt I would hold off. Given Poirot is said to be fond of them, I’m sure I will have another opportunity.

Next chronologically in the Christie canon is 1934’s Three Act Tragedy. But we may be skipping that one for the moment as we have a very special Christie collab coming up…stay tuned!

Have a great week, and for another great collab, here is something else combining Vincent Price and Agatha Christie.

23
Aug
2021

Dry Martini – Peril at End House

categories: Cocktail, Dining With The Dame, Gin, Poirot

Greetings crime readers and food, well drink lovers! Today we are celebrating the delights of the Agatha Christie novel Peril at End House with a fabulous dry martini. And there are many delights to this book. First, it is a Poirot, second, the adaptation is filmed in the most gorgeous location and third, we get to drink a martini!

Also, for those of you who may think that Christie novels are all knitting and cups of tea at the Vicarage, this book has a Scarface-esque amount of cocaine in it. Those bright young things of the 1930’s were not shy when it came to a bit of blow!

Peril at End House – The Plot

Poirot and Hastings are taking a little vacay to the Cornish town of St Loo. While sitting on the terrace of the Majestic Hotel, they make the acquaintance of Nick Buckley, a young female who is the owner of End House, a ramshackle mansion next door to the hotel.

Nick tells them that she has escaped death a number of times recently – a heavy painting fell of the wall cliff and onto her bed. Luckily she had been making tea at the time and missed having her head bashed in by it. The brakes on her car failed and she is nearly crushed by a boulder on the cliff path. Indeed, even as she is talking to Poirot and Hastings she is bothered by what she thinks is a bee flying too close to her face. Poirot later discovers that this was in fact a bullet, not a bee.

Someone is apparently trying to kill Nick Buckley!

Poirot convinces Nick to send for her cousin Magdalena to help keep her safe. Magdalena is then killed whilst wearing Nick’s shawl, presumably in a case of mistaken identity.

On top of a dead cousin, rafts of cocaine and multiple life attempts we have

The wonderfully named Commander Challenger
Some shonky Australian housekeepers
Chocolates poisoned with cocaine
Some wonderful repartee between Hastings and Miss Lemon in the adaptation
Missing pilots
Love letters and secret marriages
Lost wills
Fake deaths and mad ex-husbands

Peril At End House – The Covers

There are quite a few foreign covers in this lot – some French, an Italian and even an Arabic (?) one. Also two FABULOUS pulp fiction covers from the 1950’s or 60’s!

The Recipe – Dry Martini

‘What about a cocktail?’ I suggested. ‘It’s just about the time.’

‘Well—’ She hesitated. ‘Thanks very much.’

‘Martini?’

‘Yes, please—dry Martini.’

I went off. On my return, after having ordered the drinks, I found Poirot and the girl engaged in animated conversation.

‘Imagine, Hastings,’ he said, ‘that house there—the one on the point—that we have admired so much, it belongs to Mademoiselle here.’

‘Indeed?’ I said, though I was unable to recall having expressed any admiration. In fact I had hardly noticed the house. ‘It looks rather eerie and imposing standing there by itself far from anything.’

‘It’s called End House,’ said the girl. ‘I love it—but it’s a tumble-down old place. Going to rack and ruin.’

Agatha Christie, Peril at End House

Dry Martini

Print Recipe

A classic dry martini

Author: Taryn Nicole

Ingredients

Scale

2 1/2 ounces Gin, I used Four Pillars Cousin Vera Gin
1/2 ounce dry vermouth. I used Noilly Prat
Green olive or a lemon twist to garnish
Ice cubes
Ice

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

Combine the gin and vermouth in a mixing glass full of ice cubes

Stir them to combine.

Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Garnish with an olive (or two) on a cocktail stick.

Notes

If you are not a fan of olives you can also garnish with a lemon twist

Other Food Mentioned in Peril at End House

Cup of Chocolate

Bacon and eggs (as per every other Poirot)

Marmalade, coffee and rolls.

Good champagne (of couse darling!)

Tisane

Chocolates

Brioches

Chocolate eclairs

I LOVED this book! It was probably my favourite so far and the adaptation is also mwah chef’s kiss perfect!

If you are reading along, next up is Lord Edgware Dies.

Have a great week and happy reading!

12
Jul
2021

Damn The Weather – The Sittaford Mystery

categories: Cocktail, Dining With The Dame, Gin

Hello crime readers and food lovers! Today we are drinking with the Dame because the Sittaford Mystery, as wonderful a story as it is, (and it is an absolute cracker) did not have the most inspiring food within its pages. So, I am playing with the atmospherics of the book and sharing a cocktail called Damn The Weather with Dame Agatha.

The Sit-tea -ford Mystery?

Despite having hardly any food and passing references to generic cocktails, what the Sittaford Mystery has in abundance is tea:

p73 – A good cry and good cup of tea – there’s nothing to beat them, and a nice cup of tea you shall have at once, my dear
p74 – I’ll send the tea up to you
p75 cup of tea
p 76 Strong tea, bread and butter. Devonshire cream and hard-boiled eggs
p 86 I ought to be able to produce a quiet cup of tea,
p178 Tea was laid ready. Mrs Willett poured out
p179 She must be sipping tea with that determined ladykiller Captain Wyatt
p186 A cup of tea

Despite its prevalence, there was no way I was going to do a post on the perfect cup of tea. Least of all because I don’t like it.

And bread and butter and hard-boiled eggs also seem a little….well…basic.

Next to tea, this is quite a boozy book with more than one reference being made to generic “cocktails” and also to brandy. I found a recipe on Difford’s for a cocktail called Damn The Weather which seemed very fitting to the setting of the book. Let’s see why.

The Sittaford Mystery – The Setting

The scene that met his eyes was typical of the English countryside as depicted on Christmas cards and in old fashioned melodramas. Everywhere was snow, deep drifts of it….up here on the fringe of Dartmoor it had attained a depth of several feet”

– The Sittaford Mystery, Agatha Christie

Sittaford is a tiny village, pretty much cut off from the rest of the world due to the terrible weather. Which makes it the perfect setting for one of Christie’s closed circle mysteries.

The Sittaford Mystery – The Plot

Mrs. Willett, the winter tenant of Captain Trevelyan, and her daughter Violet have invited guests for afternoon tea. After eating, the group decide to do a bit of table-turning (ie summoning the dead). A message comes from beyond telling them that Captain Trevelyan is dead.

A Short Aside on Table Turning

To my mind table-turning has to be the most inefficient way of contacting the spirits ever. From what I can gather the table rocks back and forth for each letter…so even to spell out the first part of the message TREV DEAD that is 20 + 18 +5 +22 rocks of a table. 65 rocks of a table to spell a four-letter word? No thank you. How long did that take? How bored do you have to be for that to become viable entertainment? I mean even trapped in a snow storm Dartmoor in the 1920’s I would be spelling out H-E-L-L -N -O on the table turning.

Anyway, after they have spent HOURS ( my words, not Christie’s) getting that 8 letter message, Major Burnaby, the Captain’s best friend decides to trek the 6 miles on foot to the Captain’s house to make sure he is all right.

He is not.

Trev is indeed dead, having been hit over the head with a sandbag. Estimated time of death? Five twenty-five. The exact same time as the ghostly message from beyond.

(Cue spooky X-files type music).

As if that is not enough, we also have:

An errant nephew being arrested for the murder
An escaped criminal
A reporter keen to get a good story
The mystery of just why the Willetts wanted to rent Sittaford House in the first instance
Retired police inspectors
Newspaper prizes
Boots hidden in the chimney
Aunts in the know and,
Maybe my favourite Christie heroine yet, the adorably plucky Emily Trefusis. (I am going to forgive her madly standing by her man, even though he is an idiot) because I love everything else about her.

The Sittaford Mystery has an average rating of 3.76 on Good Reads and comes in at # 26 at the time of writing on the All About Agatha podcast rankings. I feel Iike it a bit better than that but, I have not read all the books yet!.

The Covers

The covers for The Sittaford Mystery (called The `Murder at Hazelmoor in the United States) are amazing!

I love the nods to the table-turning at the weather and also the dead body on the carpet. I also like that the French version is called 5:25. You might also be wondering why some of the titles are called Murder At Hazelmoor and not the Sittaford Mystery. This was because the American publishers of the book thought their audience would prefer murder to mystery. Tell me, which title do you prefer?

The Recipe – Damn The Weather

You can find the Difford’s guide recipe here.

Other Food Mentioned in The Sittaford Mystery

Whisky and soda
Tea, bread and butter, Devonshire Cream and hard-boiled eggs
Eggs and bacon (i think every book thus far has referenced b&e)
Cold tongue, pickles, stilton, biscuits and soup
Beer
Bullseyes
Pate sandwiches

Oh, so maybe there was more food than I remembered! Still the Damn the Weather was a fabulous cocktail.

Just a quick note on the adaptation of The Sittaford Mystery. It’s kind of terrible. For some reason, they made it a Miss Marple instead of a stand-alone mystery as written. And to be honest Miss Marple does not do a lot. It’s worth a watch but it is not the best Christie adaptation out there.

Next up in the Christie list is Peril at End House for anyone who wants to read along.

Have a great week!

12
Apr
2021

The Red Signal Cocktail

categories: Cocktail, Dining With The Dame, Vodka

The Red Signal Cocktail came about by a bit of an accident. I recently tried to make a cocktail called the Seamist. Except, I could not get some of the ingredients so I had to improvise. The finished version looked beautiful and tasted lovely. It is the exact sweet/sour fruity taste that I love in a cocktail plus a tinge of dryness from the cranberry and a touch of bitterness from the grapefruit.

But there was something about it that was not right. And it bugged me for days on end. It tasted great, it looked beautiful. So what was wrong with it?

She Comes in Colours Everywhere

Let’s digress for a moment. As a child, I was OBSESSED with paint charts. I have already mentioned that I was a weird only child. But I don’t think I have mentioned that my parents would quite often spend their weekends going to display homes and DIY stores and inevitably during these excursions, I would pick up a paint chart (or two). I would then try to memorise all the names and the matching colours. And then get them to test me on the way home. Or during the week. Yes. School wasn’t enough. I wanted to be tested on random things outside of school as well.

For a while there I wanted to be the person who named those colours. Actually, you know what? I still do want that job! So, believe me when I say that I know my Paris Creek (pale slate green grey) from my Camisole Quarter (pale pink) to my Shampoo (mid Blue).

I. Know. My. Colours.

And the colour of this cocktail is not a Seamist. No wonder I felt in my deepest soul that there was something wrong with it!

Seamist is a pale grey green with a tiny touch of blue.

And I think we can all agree that this cocktail is possibly the very opposite colour of a greeny-grey.

So, the name of Seamist had to go. Life is hard enough at the moment without having additional cognitive dissonance caused by the colour of a cocktail! And because I had played around with the ingredients, it wasn’t a true Seamist anyway.

So, then the dilemma became what to call it.

The Red Signal

Luckily, for all of us, I happen to be reading The Hounds of Death. This is a book of short stories by Agatha Christie where each story has a spooky or supernatural twist. I am still undecided on what to do with the volumes of Agatha Christie’s short stories. When I started the Dining With The Dame series, I only ever considered her novels. And believe me, it’s hard enough to find food references to blog in some of the novels, let alone something a tenth of the size!

But, lo and behold, in that collection, there is a story called The Red Signal.

Is a tale of

Premonitions and intuitions
Seances
Falling in love with the wrong person
Madness and murder
And a weird sixth sense called The Red Signal!

Now…you tell me Isn’t The Red Signal a much better name for this cocktail?

The Recipe

The Red Signal Cocktail

Print Recipe

A sweet sour cocktail inspired by the Agatha Christie short story – The Red Signal.

Author: Taryn Nicole
Prep Time: 3 minutes
Total Time: 3 minutes
Yield: 1 1x
Category: Cocktails
Method: Shake

Ingredients

Scale

3 parts cranberry juice

3 parts pink grapefruit juice

2 parts vodka

Lemon and lime quarters

Ice cubes

Mixed berries for garnish

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

Shake the juices and vodka in a cocktail shaker over ice.

Gently muddle the lemon and lime quarters in a highball glass to release some of their citrus oils and some juice. Add ice cubes to the glass.

Strain the cocktail into the glass and give a light stir.

Garnish with mixed berries of your choice.

Other food mentioned in The Red Signal

Welsh Rarebit

Have a great week friends and remember if you feel “the red signal” pay it some heed!

Or make this cocktail!