Drinks - Retro Food For Modern Times

Category: Drinks

28
May
2013

Retro Food For Modern Times – Oh, Calcutta, Odessa, Oh Look, It’s Cocktail Hour!

categories: Cocktail, Curry, Feijoa, Grapefruit, Lime, Pineapple, Vodka

I fully intended this week to be devoted to Eat your Way To Love and Beauty, but somehow I ended up drinking my way to oblivion and incoherence!

But you know what? I can now honestly say that I didn’t spend the weekend getting tanked on cocktails. I spent the weekend doing research and development. For you dear readers, I did it for you! I’m selfless like that.

O Calcutta Cocktail — Oh Calcutta Cocktail

I found a version of the first cocktail I made, the Oh Calcutta, in Eat Your Way To Love and Beauty. This combines pineapple, grapefruit, lime and…. curry powder! Yep, a curry flavoured cocktail!

The Swami’s version of the Oh Calcutta suggests you mix the ingredients with spa water. I assumed that was a euphemism for vodka when making my version.

Now, I normally like my cocktails pink and sweet so this was a bit of a shock to my system! Initially I wasn’t too keen on it. Gradually though, the Oh Calcutta won me over. It’s actually has quite a complex flavour profile (whoo hoo, look at me using the foodie words!). There was a slight bitterness from the grapefruit, sweetness of the pineapple, heat from the curry, sour from the lime…the more I drank it the more I liked it!

I was still thinking about it the next day and I decided that, interesting as it was, it needed something more and that something was a little salty kick. So, I made it again but this time I edged the glass (badly) with some ginger salt. I made the ginger salt by bashing some ginger to death in the mortar and pestle and then adding some salt to the mix. I twirled the glass in this. It doesn’t look great but it tasted amazing!

Oh Calcutta Cocktail recipe

In my first version I toppped the entire drink with grapefruit juice instead of using a mixer, in the second version I mixed grapefruit juice and sparkling water. The result was slightly less bitter which I preferred. I also used ruby grapefruit juice so there was a pink tinge to my cocktail!

I’m now thinking ginger beer would be good in this too….version three may well happen next weekend!

But the weekend of cocktails was not over because it’s feijoa season and thanks to a tree that is fully laden over at my mother’s house we are swimming with them…

For those of you unfamiliar with a feijoa (aka the pineapple guava), it is a fruit much beloved by New Zealanders, and apparently Russians and Californians. It is:

“green, ellipsoid, and about the size of a chicken egg. It has a sweet, aromatic flavor. The flesh is juicy and is divided into a clear gelatinous seed pulp and a firmer, slightly granular, opaque flesh nearer the skin”

Boo, Wikipedia boo! That does nothing to convey the joy of the feijoa – huh…come to think of it from now on, I’m going to be calling them fe-joy-as. I once read in an aromatherapy book that you need to be careful when burning Clary Sage oil because the smell of it can make you feel as if you are drunk! I feel a little bit the same about the scent of a feijoa, it is a kind of fruity, floral, heady smell that…it’s what I imagine heaven smells like. Not that I’m likely to find out. There is no doubt in my mind which way I’m heading.

Feijoa Marketing Board…don’t even think about it stealing this, I’m slapping a ™ on “Fei-joy-as…what heaven smells like” ASAP. Happy to negotiate with you on the licensing of my intellectual property for your commercial gain though. Call me. I’m easily bought.

Mind you, someone at the FMB is doing their job. These babies are currently selling in the supermarket for $2 each!

When I told mum I was going to do some feijoa cooking for this she wanted to know if I was going to make jam. It’s that kind of comment that makes me wonder if I’m actually adopted….Jam. Pffft…why make jam when you can make cocktails?

I found a wonderful blog called Feijoa, Feijoa which is bursting with recipes for feijoas and has an whole section devoted to cocktail recipes.

I made the Odessa Cocktail purely because I had all the necessary but each one of the cocktails sound delicious. And as for the recipes…this may well become one of my favourite sites! There are also several jam recipes for my mother to make.

The recipe for the Odessa Cocktail can be found here:

Odessa Cocktail

If you’re wondering why my simple syrup looks like Coke or coffee , it’s because I only had brown sugar in the house. I think it worked though, it added a treacly depth to the syrup. (coincidentally, Treacly Depth would be the name of my indie band…)

The Odessa is a lovely cocktail, it’s sweet but with a little tang from the lime and exactly the kind of cocktail I normally love! Coming after the Oh Calcutta, it seemed a little simple but it was still delicious! My advice to anyone making it would be to strain it really well. I put mine through a tea strainer and it was a little gritty. I would use a finer strainer next time.

I’m going to be spending my week sidling up to people outside the supermarket and asking “Psst…want a feijoa? ..One fifty each or three for three…and they smell like heaven”

Have a great week whatever you do!

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22
May
2013

Retro Food For Modern Times – Happy Healthy, Sparkly Birthday to Me!

categories: Cocktail, Cucumber, Desserts, Drinks, Jelly, Lime, Salad, Salad Dressing, Soup, Tomatoes

We had a little birthday celebration at Retro food For Modern Times last week. I also spent the week reading a bit more of Swami Sarasvati’s Eat Your Way to Love and Beauty. Whilst none of the recipes here are from that book there is certainly more than a hint of nourishing my inner goddess about the recipes I made as part of the celebrations. And yes, I did just write the words “nourishing my inner goddess”. Feel free to vomit.

I kicked off the celebrations with a hefty dose of booze. No lame Swami Sarasvati mocktails here. When this blog celebrates we turn straight to the Goddess of entertaining Martha Stewart for inspiration (and alcohol content). And her cucumber and lime gimlet got the festivities off to a fine start.

Now, you may be wondering how I can justify the whole nourishing the inner goddess thing (Ok, I’ll stop saying that now) whilst guzzling gin? Well, it turns out my inner Goddess is a bit of a booze hound. Who knew?

Secondly, I figure the health affirming properties of the cucumber must go some way to counteracting the negative effects of the alcohol. Yin and yang right?

The recipe is here:

Martha Stewart’s Cucumber and Lime Gimlet

There is a bit of pfaffing around with this recipe in that you need to make up a mint simple syrup and steep some cucumbers in gin beforehand but it is worth the effort. It is delicious and an amazing colour! And we had sparklers!

Next up…was my Green Gazpacho. Now, I don’t think I have banged on about my love of this Spanish delight yet but believe me, summer without gazpacho is, in my opinion, not summer at all. It is no longer summer here but luckily all the ingredients were still readily available. I also really wanted to try this with some of the super tasty Black Russian tomatoes I love so much!

If you are planning on making a gazpacho, green or otherwise, please do not go all Atkins and leave out the bread – it really is integral to the texture of the dish. Gazpacho without bread is glorified tomato juice. And no one wants that.

The basic gazpacho recipe follows but you can play with the quantities of ingredients as much as you want. It’s pretty forgiving. And sometimes you need to play around with it. Strangely enough, I wanted my green gazpacho to be green. So, imagine my utter dismay when I blitzed the above and the result was a horrible looking baby pooh brown. It tasted good but looked atrocious!

Classic Gazpacho

I had some watercress in the fridge and I kept adding sprigs of it into the mix until it became greener. The watercress also added to the flavour!

That, along with my dessert was going to be it. Three dishes and done. However, my greengrocer was selling tarragon this week which is a rarity in itself. I love tarragon but it seems to be fairly scarce so I buy it whenever I see it, then figure out what to do with it.

And what better use for tarragon on a week when we are nourish…(I can’t bring myself to repeat it but you know what I mean) than making a Green Goddess Dressing. This is an awesome dressing zingy with tarragon, lemon, chives, yoghurt…lots of my favourite flavours….

And it looks like this:

It’s a gorgeous pale green and it looked super cute in the jug my friend Ali gave me for a birthday present last year.

May 060

To go with the dressing I made a salad of steamed asparagus, broccoli and beans with some raw zucchini, mixed sprouts, avocado and some toasted pine nuts and pumpkin seed kernels and I also made a rice and quinoa mix.

Healthy lunches here I come!

Veggies, Seeds and Sprouts with mixed rices and quinoa — Veggies, Seeds and Sprouts with mixed rice and quinoa

May 065

This salad is amazing, you can almost feel the health bursting out of you as you eat it. And again, just use whatever vegetables you have. The Green Goddess recipe is here:

Green Goddess Dressing

Finally, I wanted a retro style dessert. I recently bought Wobble by Rachael Lane which is filled with delicious sounding recipes for lovely jellies. I love the old-fashioned look of these jellies so they seemed a perfect finale to the celebrations.

I made a version of Rachael’s Persian Delight (below) but with a straight jelly, not a blancmange for the rose layer and a third layer of pomegranate. I would have liked to top mine with the candy floss as per the picture in Wobble but the only place I could find it was a high-end department store who wanted an arm and a leg for it.

Seriously, where is a fun fair when you need one? Although I always find those places a little creepy. I’ve read way too many books where bad things happen in places like that to be entirely comfortable. And don’t even get me started on clowns…. Thanks Stephen King et al, for another innocent pleasure ruined…

The rose layer got a little lost but all in all this was a very pretty dessert and it tasted amazing!

In lieu of candy floss we had more sparklers…

The recipe for the Persian Delight is found here.

Persian Delight Jelly from Wobble

Finally, I thought we might have a little look at what we might expect over the next 12 months. This is what PBS has to say on the subject of one year olds:

“One-year-olds are just discovering their creative abilities”

And

“They experience a wide range of emotions and have tantrums when they are tired or frustrated.”

And

(They) have no understanding of true “writing,” but many enjoy experimenting with marks and scribbles on a surface.

Hmm…sounds suspiciously like the next 12 months may be quite similar to the first 12!

Thanks to everyone who reads this for a fabulous year! It has been heaps of fun at this end and incredibly satisfying to watch this grow from an idea into actuality.

I’ll be spending the week marking and scribbling on surfaces and some of it might even end up in here.

Thanks again, I hope you continue to enjoy this for the next 12 months and beyond!

Have a great week!

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13
May
2013

Retro Food For Modern Times – Not Eating My Way To Love and Beauty

categories: Carrot, Celery, Desserts, Dip, Eggplant, Mocktails, Soup

Can you believe I’ve been doing this for nearly a year?

And as the anniversary approaches, I’ve been thinking about how to celebrate. Somehow my normal process of pulling one of the many vintage cookbooks from the pile under my bed at random doesn’t seem quite joyful enough. Primarily because this invariably involves me knocking the pile over, uttering some sustained invective as I pile it all back up then muttering “I really should Hoover under there one day”. That is not the stuff of celebration!

I had planned to sift through the pile to find something special. However, when I found “Eat your Way To Love and Beauty” by Swami Sarasvati in my local charity shop I thought I had found my birthday book! Who doesn’t want to be loved and beautiful? Especially on their birthday? And, why not eat my way there? It beats getting there by the other “e” word. You know, the one we try very hard not to mention here. Hint: it rhymes with…mexercising. Yes, I know that’s not a word. If you’re so smart, you try coming up with a word that rhymes with exercising. Anyway, it’s obviously working for The Swami. She’s cute. And limber!

Eat For Love and Beauty 001

The caption to this photo says

“Swami Sarasvati, her youth and vitality living proof of her cooking, exercises among her health dishes”

Please note: Retro Food For Modern Times in no way condones its readers exercising among their health dishes. Nor will I bear any responsibility for damages incurred if you decide to do so. To put it bluntly, if you end up with a pineapple up your clacker by engaging in this you’re on your own. And be aware that hospital staff will mock you behind your back. “Of course you slipped over whilst exercising among your health dishes… that’s what all the deviants say.” You have been warned.

Swami Sarasvati was a tv icon on Australia in the 1970’s, where she taught a generation of early morning tv watchers the art of yoga and the delights of a vegetarian lifestyle. I wish she was on the telly now. I would totally watch her. Well, I probably wouldn’t get up that early but I would record her shows, meaning to get around to doing some sun salutations one day…right after I vacuum under that bed! She also still runs a yoga retreat in New South Wales. It is currently ranked the number one hotel in Kenthurst on Trip Advisor. That it is the only hotel in town is by the by.

Speaking as someone who has been on a yoga retreat, the Swami’s looks pretty good. I had a miserable time the last one I was on. It was freezing and in lieu of heating, my room came equipped with a massive spider. I thought it would be not in keeping with the yoga/vegan/hippie vibe of the place to beat the ugly fucker to death with my shoe. This meant I was too scared to sleep for the entire time I was there in case, during my slumber, the spider decided to break our unspoken entente cordiale to crawl into my hair or lay eggs in my face.

You will be disappointed, though if you click through the link. Eat Your Way To Love and Beauty is no longer on the list of the Swami’s books available for purchase. We’re about to find out why.

Some of the sensibilities of the book feel very modern. Take for instance the Swami’s response to the question:

“What is healthy food?”

“It is food as fresh as possible and eaten as soon as possible. Refining, preserving, canning or colouring food should be avoided wherever possible”

That doesn’t last long…we descend into the land of the loony almost immediately.

Q – “How can food make me more loving?”

“A well nourished woman will have the strength to be patient and understanding and loving even when life seems impossible. Your children won’t turn to drugs”.

Q – “My Husband won’t eat health foods”

“Girls, to keep your marriage fresh and exciting, you must keep yourself and your husband youthful and vital….there are enough tangy gourmet health dishes in this book to tempt your husband. Before long he will be better at business and sport.

You know what Swami? You had me at love and beauty…let’s not bring my husband and non-existent children into it.

But despite all this…despite dooming Mark to bankruptcy and failure on the sporting field (by which I mean his PS3 breaking) and the poor dogs to having to sell themselves to strangers for Schmackos…I will not be celebrating this birthday by eating my way to love and beauty. Eating for hatred and ugliness has got me thus far, I guess I can continue for another week or so!

I have made a few recipes from “Eat Your Way To Love And Beauty” being a celery soup, an eggplant bhurta and a carrot halva.

Here they are:

Celery Soup

Celery Soup 001

Eggplant Bhurta

eggplant bhurta 001

Carrot Halva

Carrot Halva recipe 001

These all tasted ok. Actually, the carrot halva was really good once I added a bucketload of brown sugar – kind of like carrot cake without the cake. And the eggplant was also pretty good. The celery soup was average. There was nothing wrong with any of them. They were just a bit drab. Look at them. They’re not screaming party are they? They look, earnest, well-meaning, brown. The food version of Coldplay. Worthy but kind of boring…

Which brings me to the second reason, we will not be celebrating Retro Food For Modern Times first birthday by eating our way to love and beauty.

Here is a the Swami’s recipe for a Gimlet:

Lime Gimlet

Now, for those of you who are not au fait with the gimlet, it is defined by the fount of all knowledge, Wikipedia, as:

“A cocktail made of gin and lime juice”

Two ingredients. One of which is missing from the Swami’s recipe.

Never mind, I thought, the next recipe is called Singapore Gin. Maybe I’ll make that as my birthday cocktail.

Singapore Gin

Or maybe I wont…we like our booze here at Retro Food For Modern Times, celebrating anything without booze is anathema.

No wonder this book isn’t for sale anymore, it was probably banned for false advertising. I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to call a cocktail Singapore “Gin” when it contains not the slightest whiff of a juniper berry!

Next week we’ll party like it’s 1969. I won’t give too much away but there will be gin and there will be gelatine; if I can get sufficiently organised there maybe something else starting with a “g” to make up a full three course meal…cocktail and dessert count as 2 courses don’t they?

I’ll be spending my week frantically trying to think of that third course…

Grapes?

Grapefruit?

Gorgonzola?

Have a fabulous week whatever you do!

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29
Apr
2013

Retro Food For Modern Times: A Retro Rosy Rosé Punch

categories: Drinks, Fruit, Punch, Rosé, Roses, Wine

I had a strange week this week which was topped off by an amazing punch inspired by Mary Meredith’s Good Cooking For Everyone.

Her Rosé Wine Cup is by far the prettiest picture in Good Cooking For Everyone. Here is my version:

Retro Rose Punch — Retro Rosy Rose Punch

This was lovely – light, refreshing and delicious.

It was a gorgeous pale blush colour and looked and tasted like summer in a glass! And, it had the most amazing rose scent!

But first, here is a brief summary of my week.

#1 Surprise!

The surprise in Mary Meredith’s Apricot Meringue Surprise is macaroni. Yecchhh!

Apricot Meringue Surprise 001

I like to think she got confused. I think she meant to make mac and cheese and apricot meringue pie but had a few too many swigs of the cooking sherry. And you know when you’re a bit tipsy and feeling no pain? “Leave it in, it’ll be alright…”

#2 World Gone Mad

Dear Beauty Parlour

No, I do not want to tweet or post on Facebook the appointment I just made with you.

No one else is remotely interested in my beauty treatments. I’m only barely interested myself. Please find some other way of advertising your services…I suggest you try advertising.

#3 Pity The Apricot

Mary Meredith continues to use apricots in bizarre ways. If the macaroni meringue surprise wasn’t enough, look at her salad platter.

You may think, given her fondness for them (as previously discussed here) that the items on the platter between the apricots are grilled bananas. It would possibly be an improvement if they were. Those babies? Kippers

Yes, kippers. As in smoked herrings that will make your house reek for a week if you ever cook them. And if that combination wasn’t had enough on its own, you could smear your kipper and apricot delight with some apricot jam mayo.

Apricots, what did you do to Mary Meredith to make her hate you so?

#4 The Place Beyond The Bus Stop

Dear State Government

If you truly want to reduce the road toll, you might want to reconsider allowing people to put posters like this on bus stops without warning local residents. It’s nigh on impossible to keep your eyes focussed on the road ahead with this looming up on your left. (Believe me, I have tested this many, many times over the last few days and I’m pretty sure it can’t be done.)

P.S. I am by no means suggesting you remove the poster. A strategically placed traffic light would suffice. One that stays red for a while.

#5 I’m on a mission

A search of my cupboards revealed I don’t own a punch bowl. Look out Ebay, I’m coming for you!

Here is Mary Meredith’s version of the Rosé Wine Cup. So pretty!

#6 Bubbles

We celebrated my new job with some lovely bubbles.

Good thing really, to fill my time I’d started writing crackpot letters to local businesses.

#7 Rose Petal Ice Cubes: Trickier Than You Would Think

One of the things that made the Rosé Wine Cup recipe so appealing to me was the rose petal ice cubes. However, there were no instructions on how to make them.

I tried to make these three times.

The first time I used rose petals from my garden but they were too big to fit into my teeny ice-cube trays.

I then stole commandeered some smaller roses from my neighbour…I don’t think he’ll miss them….

Neighbour's roses

The problem, even with the smaller petals, is that rose petals float.

You may think these photos look lovely and serene. The reality was me poking petals back into the water shrieking “Sink, you utter bastards, damn you sink” at them.

Rose Petals For Icecubes

: Rose Petals for ice-cubes

The only way I found to do it was to put the rose petals into the ice-cube trays and fill half way with water. Once that was frozen and the floaty little fuckers were anchored in a block of ice, I could then fill to completely cover them.

Who knew ice-cubes could be so tricky?

I used boiling water to fill my ice-cube trays and some of the colour leached from the already pale petals. I would probably use a darker coloured petal next time to have more contrast. Or just not use boiling water! Bu then again, maybe the hot water released the oils that gave this the glorious scent….

#8 The Devil Was Missing Some Details

I was very much looking forward to sipping my punch whilst nibbling on some Devilled Chestnuts, recipe courtesy of Mary Meredith’s Good Cooking For Everyone.

I was totally disappointed with these. Even though they looked super cute both in the teeny cases and stabbed onto brightly coloured cocktail sticks the recipe didn’t work. I might experiment a bit and redo them but in the meantime here is a picture of how fun they looked! The big petalled rose is from my garden.

#9 The Retro Rosy Rosé Punch

I did not follow the recipe for the Rosé Wine Cup as per the recipe exactly. I was a sickly child and Cherry Brandy reminds me of the vile cough medicine I was constantly given. Proust had Madeleines. My overwhelming scent memory from childhood is Brondecon.

We’d also recently bought a bargain case of some French Passionfruit Lemonade and given that we have bottles of it lying around, I used that instead of plain lemonade.

I used a cheap and cheerful cleanskin rosé and cassis to replace the Cherry Brandy.

Rose Wine cup recipe 001

This was really lovely and something I will definitely make again, it was also light on alcohol so something you could drink all afternoon without getting too messy.

I’m going to spend the week hanging out at the bus stop, have a great one, wherever you spend yours!

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08
Jan
2013

Retro Food for Modern Times – Strawberry Fields Forever, Part 1

categories: Mango, Strawberries, Tarragon, Vodka

Let me take you down ‘cos I’m going to...

…my local green grocer where they are currently selling trays of strawberries for $6. My sincere apologies to John Lennon for that absolute travesty but just in case you are not utterly awestruck by this, let me reiterate. A tray of strawberries for $6. That’s 16 punnets. For $6 dollars. The world may have not ended on December 21^st but it has surely gone mad!

How do farmers make any money when the (literal) fruit of their labour is being sold off at about 40 cents a punnet?

Maybe because the week before Christmas punnets of strawberries were selling for $4 each!

I know, it’s not the farmers, it’s the wholesalers and the grocery shop owners and all the people in between who add their mark up. The farmers probably got paid the same for the $4 strawberries as they did for the 40 cent strawberries.

My joy at my bargain buy lasted until I had to carry, not only all of my regular fruit and veggies, but an additional four kilos of strawberries, from the shop to my car. By the time I reached the car (it was a hot day and I had parked some distance away from the shop to get a spot in the shade), I’d stopped thinking “I’m the best shopper in the world! ” and “I’m in berry heaven” to “What on earth am I going to do with four kilos of strawberries?” and “How can four kilos of strawberries actually weigh a ton?”.

My first task, on getting home, was to sort the strawberries – a few in each punnet were overripe and were starting to get a bit manky. The perfect ones went into a colander and the fridge for eating. We have been feasting on these all week.

The almost perfect berries went into a bag and into the freezer whole. I puréed the somewhat bruised berries and placed them in 6 containers in the freezer where they will be great for smoothies, muffins, etc later in the year. Finally, my kitchen helpers, Oscar and Lulu, were on hand to dispose of the fourth group being the few badly bruised berries that were left.

We have been eating strawberries all week – by the handful whenever we feel a bit peckish; for dessert with cream (Mark) and ice cream (me) and for breakfast with mango and vanilla yogurt:

Strawberry, Mango and Vanilla Yogurt Breakfast

I have started making a strawberry liqueur based on the link below with some tweaks inspired by other recipes, most notably, I am putting the sugar in from the start.

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/06/homemade-strawberry-liqueur-recipe.html

I searched high and low for tarragon yesterday; I went to three greengrocers and I could not find it for love or money. I decided to use basil instead.

I was so excited about making the liqueur and trying to track down the tarragon, that I completely forgot to check the other ingredients. I knew I had strawberries, I had vodka. I was searching for tarragon. And who particularly someone who bakes regularly, doesn’t have caster sugar? Me apparently. Grrr… Such a newbie mistake!!!

So today, I ducked into the supermarket to pick up the caster sugar and found piles of tarragon. As I had another recipe for tarragon and strawberries I was aching to try, I bought a bunch and pulled the basil out of my would be liqueur and popped in the tarragon and sugar. All the sugar sank to the bottom and when I tipped it upside down to mix it in, it made these drippy pale pink stalactite type things that looked awesome! The mixture is also already a fabulous pink colour. And it’s only Day 2. Imagine Day 30.

It’s Mark’s birthday tomorrow and the temperature is set to soar. Baking in my tiny kitchen when it’s anything above 30 degrees outside is not something I relish. So, I’ve decided that he will get a White Chocolate Strawberry Cheesecake Semifreddo in lieu of a traditional birthday cake. I’m aiming for quirky but cool. We’ll see how that works out. I also need to get busy making it. Which means that my strawberry and tarragon salad recipe will have to wait until the next post.

On a more sombre note, and speaking of temperatures soaring, many parts of Australia are currently experiencing devastating bushfires and my heart goes out to all those who have lost loved ones, homes and belongings in this tragedy and to the brave people, many of whom are volunteers, who are so valiantly fighting the fires. You are in my thoughts and prayers.

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