Category: Fruit

Nothing But Blue Skies…Happy 2015

Now it’s not often I get all immersive and Heston on you but I really think your experience of this post and the Blue Skies Cocktail would be best achieved if, before you kept on reading, you clicked on the link below and cranked up the volume….

Ok…are we there yet?

You know, it wouldn’t be Retro Foods for Modern Times if we didn’t have a luridly coloured cocktail to end the year so, here ’tis…The Blue Skies…and I defy anyone not to start humming along with The Chairman of The Board….

Blue skies
Smiling at me
Nothing but blue skies
Do I see….

Blue Skies 1
Blue Skies 1

 It sure is blue.  And…dontcha think the ice cubes look a little bit like clouds?

If you said no to that.  Have one.   And look at the picture again.  Still no?  Have another.  REALLY crank the Frank up. And have another look.  Repeat. 

It will happen.

I can’t remember if I ever introduced you all to the third canine in our house.  F. Scott Fitzgerald, or Scotty as we like to call him, may be quiet, but much like his namesake, he knows how to sniff out a good cocktail.

Blue Skies 2
Blue Skies 2

 And when he sees one he likes? Oh boy, does he light up!

Bluebirds
Singing a song
Nothing but bluebirds
All day long

BlueSkies 3
BlueSkies 3

 From all of us at La Maison de la Retro Foods to you and all of yours, all the very best for a fantastic 2015…

Blue days
All of them gone
Nothing but blue skies
From now on…

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Cranberry Party Salad

If Christmas has an official fruit, to my mind it would have to be the cranberry.  We smother our turkey in it, serve it up with some brie for an oh so yummy canapé and knock it back by the bucketful in Christmas inspired cocktails. 

If retro cooking had an official dish, it would have to be the jellied salad.

And if these two met at a party and got a little tipsy on a few too many festive sherries and had their very own love child?  It would look  a little like this:

Cranberry Party Salad
Cranberry Party Salad

 And you know what?  If there’s any rationale for hiding your love children in the attic?  The Cranberry Party Salad from Salads For All Seasons could well be it. 

I wasn’t the worst thing I made this year.  Oh, no, that is a dead heat tie between the Paleo Muesli and the Paleo bread…

Sprouted Seed Bread
Sprouted Seed Bread

 It wasn’t awful like these, it was just way too sweet for my taste to have as a savoury dish.  It’s a problem I have in general with Cranberry sauce.  Sometimes it feels as if someone snuck up whilst I wasn’t looking and smeared my turkey with jam. To me, the thing, the whole raison d’etre of the cran is the tang.

Cranberry Party Salad2
Cranberry Party Salad2

 I was also a little disappointed that the fruit and nuts and…yep ok…spoilers ahead…celery…floated to the top which became the bottom once I turned it out.  Then I looked at the picture in the book and it looks like her fruit is all chunked at the bottom too.

Original Cranberry Party Salad
Original Cranberry Party Salad

 Also, look at her terracotta water cooler in the background.  And look at my Kris Kringle present this year…we do the one where you can steal gifts and believe me, there was nothing coming between me and this baby.  Sadly, I stole it off one of the nicest people in the world.  And she really wanted it because she had stolen it from one of the boys.  Caitlin, if you read this, I’m sorrynotsorry. 

Kris Kringle 2014
Kris Kringle 2014

 I am seriously a couple of oddly placed copper moulds away from having that retro kitchen!!!  That woman also has weirdly large man hands like me too.  And that blue salad?  Will be made. I promise.  I have to see how that particular combination of ingredients becomes blue…we will find out together in 2015.   I may even wear a badly fitting blue dress and have my water cooler in the background for some happysnaps.

Cranberry Party Salad Crackers
Cranberry Party Salad Crackers

Rosemary says this is to be served with light meats and poultry.  But how?  You have to remember that this type of dish is most definitely not in any kind of ancestral memory I have.  Well, having said that, I did ask my mother WEEKS ago to give me the recipe for a salmon and jello type thing she used to make.  Which, I have STILL not got.  Someone’s game needs to be lifted….

Given the spread between chunky at the bottom and clear at the top, it seemed sensible to slice it.  To my mind that just looked way too weird on the plate.  In the end, I treated it like a cranberry sauce and ate it on crackers with ham and cheese.

Cranberry Party Salad and Cheese
Cranberry Party Salad and Cheese

 

Cranberry Party Salad and Ham
Cranberry Party Salad and Ham

 Huh…it doesn’t look too bad in the photos and, in all honesty, this wasn’t awful….just waaaaaayyyy to sweet for my taste.  And I tarted it up by adding fresh cranberries into the mix….

Leave this one with me.  I’m going to ponder it over the next 12 months and next year, I’m going to bring you the best cranberry party salad ever!!!

Cranberry Party Salad Recipe
Cranberry Party Salad Recipe

Any suggestions, you know where to send ’em.

Merry Christmas everyone!!!

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Festive Duck Salad & Oscar’s Story

 A few of the recipes in Salads For All Seasons have odd names that have little bearing on the contents.  Take the Sportsman’s Saturday Salad I made a few weeks ago.  This one however is exactly what it says on the box.  With it’s gorgeous shades of green and red, it’s very festive.   It’s duck.  And it’s salad.

And it’s deeeelicious!!!

Festive Duck Salad2
Festive Duck Salad2

 I have a weird issue with duck.  I love to eat it.  Really love to eat it.  But I find it very hard to cook correctly.  I also have an issue in that we live very close to a lake.  The ducks there are so tame; when they see you coming they come racing all the way across the lake because you might have food for them.  Which we never do.  Because we already have two walking, barking dustbins that are more than ready to consume any scraps. But seeing them and particularly the ever so cute ducklings in Spring does make me feel a bit guilty about eating them.  Also I’m sure I heard somewhere that ducks mate for life and it always makes me sad that somewhere out there is a lonely duck who has lost the love of it’s life and will spend the rest of his or her life alone.

Ok, so now that I’ve put you off eating my yummy salad, let’s talk about something else for a while so we forget the lonely ducks.  

Oscar also has a complicated relationship with the birds on the lake.  The swans more than the ducks though. A swan at Williamstown beach had a go at Lulu when she was younger.  She keeps her distance.  He is just fascinated….
Oscar & The Swans 2 And now feels like a good time to tell you the Oscar  story because it is our personal Christmas miracle.

December 2012, I was working at a place that I hated and was day by day destroying my will to live.  Seriously.  One of the few days of joy in those last 6 months was that, as a team, we worked with the RSPCA on Santa Paws.  Santa Paws is a fabulous initiative where people bring in their pets for a photo with Santa that then gets printed onto Christmas cards, keyrings etc.  It’s pretty cool.  And not just dogs, people were bringing in goats and kittens and goldfish.  It was awesome. 

After our shift finished I asked if I could go have a look in the kennels. There was a very cute beagle but it was going to Beagle rescue the next day.  In the next cage was a big lolloping gangly boy who came running over and as soon as I patted him fell over for a belly rub.  And he was lovely and an incredibly weird combination of a Greyhound and a Staffordshire Bull Terrier.

Which seems like a combination that doesn’t work however you play it.  

But there he was.

Oscar Sleeping
Oscar Sleeping

And then I read the sign on his cage.  It said something like “I have been here for nearly 100 days and lots of people have looked at me; then they leave with their new puppy.  I just want a home with a family who loves me as much as I will love them.” 

OMG, it makes me cry even now. 

The poor little fucker was two years old and it was his third time at the RSPCA.  He had been born there; the last owners had brought him back because they could no longer afford to feed him.  We also strongly suspect he has been massively ill-treated because even now, he will cringe at any loud noise, like a door slamming for the wind, he is pretty much scared of his own shadow.

So I went home and Mark was “So how was it,  did you have a great time?”

And I started to tell him.  And I got as far as  “There was a dog and he had a sign…” and then I cried.  For hours.  And when he could finally get the story out of me, he cried.  And then he sighed and said  “So, when do we go get him?” Bear in mind at this time, we were living in a one bedroom apartment, and we already had one dog.  A second dog was also going to be a stretch and a real life changer, and not in a good way,  for us. But we reasoned, it would only be a couple of months until we moved into the house we were building so we all had a bit more room to breathe.  That couple of months turned out  to be nearly a year….

OscarBut who could resist that face? 

The next morning we took Lulu and we went to get him.  Our get-out card was that if Lulu hated him he couldn’t  come.  She is so bossy that we couldn’t have another dog that challenged her authority and fought with her all the time. 

So we drove for an hour in a huge rainstorm where you couldn’t even see ten metres in front of the car and I was really scared driving in such bad weather but I did it because I was so happy that we could take him home.  When we got there he came running up but then he turned away.  He was really disinterested in us – as if he was sick of investing in people who weren’t going to take him.

Mark liked him and Lulu didn’t kill him.  So it was pretty much a done deal that we were taking him. 

Until they told us that we couldn’t. 

Lulu and Oscar Front Door
Lulu and Oscar Front Door

Their  dog psychologist had deemed he was food possessive and could not be in a house with another dog. 

We argued and argued the point.  We said Lulu is such a dominant dog she would NEVER let anyone come between her and her food but they stood firm.  We could not take him. 

I cried all the way home. 

Oscar Lulu 2
Oscar Lulu 2

 About four days later, I got a call from the RSPCA.  “Are you the girl who wanted to buy Thor?” Oh, yeh, his former name was Thor….we didn’t want a dog called Thor so we renamed him.    Anyway, yes that was me.  “Well the psychologist has reevaluated him.  He’s  all yours.”

Two years on,  I can’t imagine life without him.  He is the sweetest, most gentle, most affectionate boy in the world.  With an increasing cheekiness as his confidence grows. He knows this is his home and I hope he knows we will never abandon him.  I am confident we have given him the best life he has ever had.  We love him to death and, yes, the sign was true, he absolutely loves us in return. 

If you’re wondering why so many of the photos show Osky sleeping or in some type of bed, it’s because greyhounds are surprisingly, incredibly lazy.  He and Lulu get walked for about an hour every day and we are lucky enough to have an off leash park close by where, ideally, he can run with another dog. Ten minutes of flat out running during the walk and that’s him done for the day.  He’ll snooze for most of the rest of the day, waking up only to eat.  And there’s always time for a cuddle…

Oscar Cuddles

And then, it’s time for a bit more snoozing….

Oscar in his PJ's
Oscar in his PJ’s

We might be good to get back to the salad now.  The original recipe is here if you want it. I wasn’t taken by the idea of orange and egg so I omitted the egg and added some cranberries to my version.  Also, I used homemade mayo, also from Salads from All Seasons but you can use store bought if you wish.  Having said that, this one is super easy and tasty! 

I cooked my duck according to the Gordon Ramsay recipe here and it worked pretty well.  It was certainly the most successful I have been with duck. 

 

Festive Duck Salad RecipeMayonnaise

Festive Duck Salad
Festive Duck Salad

You could also make this with some leftover turkey post-Christmas.  It will lack some of the richness of the duck but will still be pretty good!  

I”m going to try to get one more post in before the big day but just in case life gets in the way, Merry Christmas to you all from me and a special Christmas Angel. 

We both hope it’s fabulous.

Oscar Christmas
Oscar Christmas

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Giddy-Up, It’s a Melbourne Cup Pineapple Double

Those of you who don’t live in Australia may be unaware that the Melbourne Cup is run on the first Tuesday in November.  The Melbourne Cup is our version of the Kentucky Derby  or Ascot or  the <<insert the biggest horse race from your country here>>.

Melbourne Cup Crab and Pineapple Appetizer
Melbourne Cup Crab and Pineapple Appetizer

They call it the race that stops a nation because, come tomorrow  at around 3:00pm, just about everyone in the country will stop what they are doing to watch, or listen to, the running of the Cup.  If you happen to live in Melbourne, you get to stop for a hell of a lot more than that.  We get the WHOLE day off work.  Seriously.  We don’t go to work all day because for about 5 minutes in the afternoon some horses run around a track.  It’s awesome, the most mad and random holiday ever!!!

And because we’re not working, if people aren’t actually going to the races, they have parties and bbq’s or set up parties in the car park at the track, kind of like tail gating but classier.  Every one dresses up and the weather is generally good – it’s party time here!!!    Apart from the hay fever.  That’s still sucking.

Melbourne Cup Crab and Pineapple Appetizer
Melbourne Cup Crab and Pineapple Appetizer

And what better way to celebrate your Cup Day holiday, than this adorable vintage salad from Rosemary Mayne-Wilson’s Salads for All Seasons and the accompanying MC Cocktail which I made up to go along with it?

The unifying element between the two is pineapple.  And can I just say.  Forget Chanel #5.

Pineapple has got to be the best smell in the world.  When I opened that can?  I  just wanted to take a big swim in that glorious scent.  Soooo good. And yes, I used pineapple from a can.  Fresh pineapple is great.  If you happen to live in Cambodia…OMG, the best, sweetest most heaven scented pineapple ever…or you have a couple of spare hours to pfaff about with peeling and coring and taking the eyes out and blah blah blah.  As far as I am concerned, canned pineapple is the way to go.

Melbourne Cup Appetiser 3
Melbourne Cup Appetiser 3

What was not so good was the tinned crab.  It was….fairly bland is a nice way of putting it.  Completely tasteless would be another.  Despite that, the pineapple was sweet and the dressing was surprisingly good.  I think that if you used fresh crab meat this would become super good.

RMW recommends decorating this with crab legs.  Even if I had made this using fresh crab I would find that a bit creepy.  I used some chopped up chives and mint (both can I add, fresh from my garden)!

Alternatively you could forgo piling the crab into and onto the pineapple rings and mix them together and serve in these amazing bits of crabby kitsch!

Crab Salad Bowls
Crab Salad Bowls

I would still use the watercress to line the crab bowls.  That peppery goodness added a real bit of zing to this dish.

But I will tell you something totally weird.  As I was making it, I believed I had spotted a huge flaw in the logic of this salad.  Cos that’s the kind of thing I think about,  The logic of food.  As I may have said a couple of times before, it’s nice to see that Philosophy major isn’t going to waste!

So, here was my concern.  You pile your crab meat onto and into the hole of your pineapple ring.  However, the law of gravity would suggest that when you picked up your pineapple ring that the crab meat in the hole would not, should not lift with the ring….

Weird thing is?  It totally does.  Well nearly totally does.  A smidgeon of crab may remain on the plate but it will lift.  You need to pack it in fairly tight though.

I would definitely make this again.  But I would definitely use fresh crab meat.

MC - Midori and Chartreuse Cocktail
MC – Midori and Chartreuse Cocktail

So, what do you do with the leftover juice from the can of pineapple?  Well, if life gives you pineapple juice, I say make a super refreshing and tasty as hell cocktail.  I also happened to have a bottle of Midori hanging about.  It was given to me as a housewarming present when I moved into my old apartment.  How on earth it managed to survive 13 years I have no idea.  Anyway on that bottle was a tag and on that tag was a recipe for a cocktail called a 24/7 which was Midori, Chartreuse, lime cordial and pineapple juice.  I made this and it was ok.  Then I made a second one where I subbed in some fresh lemon juice for the lime cordial and it was much better.  Then I made a third…(see what I mean about being surprised that bottle hadn’t been drained long ago?)  where I added a splash of ginger beer.  And ladies and gentlemen, we had a winner!

The MC Cocktail
The MC Cocktail

I’m calling my version the MC – Midori and Chartreuse, Melbourne Cup…

Oh, and the left over salad dressing?  Was really good on some oysters the following day! It had that Bloody Mary Shot vibe about it.  Kind of retro in it’s own way!

Oysters with Tomato - Horseradish Dressing
Oysters with Tomato – Horseradish Dressing

I will be spending Cup Day cooking up a Joan Crawford inspired Romantic dinner for two courtesy of Jenny at Silver Screen Suppers…stay tuned, I think it’s going to be awesome!  Whatever you do, I hope it’s fabulous!

Print

Melbourne Cup Crab & Pineapple Appetizer and MC Cocktail

Ingredients

Scale

For the Appetizer

  • 6 pineapple rings
  • 400grams (14oz) crab meat (preferably fresh)
  • 1 bunch watercress
  • Mint and Chopped Chives to serve (optional)

For The Tomato Horseradish Dressing

  • 1 tsp prepared horseradish
  • 1/2 cup tomato juice
  • 1 tsp lemon juice
  • 1/2 tsp worchestershire sauce
  • salt & pepper to taste

For the MC Cocktail

  • 30ml (1 oz) Midori
  • 15 ml (1/2 oz) green chartreuse
  • 15 ml (1/2 oz) lemon juice
  • Pineapple juice
  • Ginger Beer
  • Ice

Instructions

For the Tomato – Horseradish dressing (can be made in advance)

  1. Mix all the ingredients together and chill

For the Melbourne Cup Crab and Pineapple Appetizer

  1. Arrange the watercress on a large plate or six small plates.
  2. Place the pineapple on top of the watercress.
  3. Mix 1-2 tsp of the dressing through the crab -just enough to help it stick together. Pile the crab onto the pineapple rings
  4. Spoon a little bit of the sauce over the crab (a little goes a long way, so go easy) or serve the dressing on the side. Sprinkle with the chives and mint.

For the MC Cocktail

  1. Fill a long glass with ice. Add the Midori, Green Chartreuse and Lemon Juice. Add pineapple juice to about 2 cm below the rim of the glass.
  2. Top with ginger beer.

 

The Flower Power Cocktail

No, I’m not getting out my love beads and turning all peace, love and mung beans on you but I have been inspired by all things floral this week and I made you an amazing cocktail which is a veritable flowerbomb of flavour! (And not even the slightest hint of Parfait Amour).

Flower Power CocktailSpring has sprung in Melbourne which means it’s constantly windy,  all the better to spread pollen all over the place, so I’m sneezing constantly.  We’re also having bizarre weather changes….Seriously WTF Melbourne?  From 27 to 13 in one day?  We’re living in crazy times!

IMG_20141013_212105

 On a happier note, the sun has been shining more frequently, we’ve had a couple of gorgeous warm days, I did twilight yoga in the park the other night and the garden is growing like crazy.  Back at Easter we planted the front garden – I was going for a Mediteranean look so we have an olive tree, rosemary, thyme and lots of lovely lavender.  We have a couple of dark pink ones:

Pink Lavender
Pink Lavender

 As well as the more traditional purple ones:

Purple Lavender
Purple Lavender

Then my mum brought over these gorgeous roses from her garden:

2014-10-13_09-23-39

 So in between the sneezes, it really has been all about the flowers. And they have inspired a fabulous cocktail, called the Flower Power.  It’s really a trashed up Lavender Lemonade, and you know what?  I can get pretty damn trashy!!!!  I was almost tempted to call this one the snowball, because once it got started it took on a life of it’s own. 

So here is the entire evolution of the Flower Power Cocktail.

The Spark – Flower Power Coctail v1

 The lavender in the garden got me thinking about a recipe I read ages ago on Thug Kitchen (which is an awesome blog) for Lavender Lemonade.  Which you can find here:

Lavender Lemonade

And it’s a great recipe.

You could just make this and live happily ever after.  It’s nice, it’s refreshing and they are very, very funny people. But you know, with all due respect to Thug Kitchen…it’s not nearly trashy enough for this girl!

Lavender Lemonade Ingredients
Lavender Lemonade Ingredients

 

Enter the Flower Power Cocktail v2.

Flower Power Cocktail v2 – A Kiss From A Rose

I had some gorgeous dried rosebuds bought to make my Persian recipes for book club (coming soon) and thought that they would be a nice addition. 

They were.

The mixture will start to turn colour after about 15-20 minutes.  For the best flavour, let the petals steep for at least an hour, I left mine overnight. An added bonus is that during the steeping your kitchen will smell like a garden

The Lavender and Rose Lemonade was really good.  And a gorgeous pink!  Very girly and perfect for sipping on a sunny afternoon. 

Kissed By A Rose - Lavender and Rose Lemonade
Kissed By A Rose – Lavender and Rose Lemonade

 

But you know what?  Sometimes this  girl needs a little bit o’ booze mixed in with her flowers and citrus…so enter version 3…

Flower Power Cocktail v3 – The Crackling Rosie

So if you take your Lavender and Rose Lemonade and add a little hit of a florally gin like Hendricks you have a very pleasant cocktail.  Still very girly and whilst you could sip it all afternoon it does have a little ginny kick to it. 

Flower Power v3 - The Crackling Rosie
Flower Power v3 – The Crackling Rosie

But you want more.  I know you do.

So, without further ado…..

The Flower Power Cocktail

So far, we have been topping our lemonade or our cocktails up with a little sparkling water.

For the true Flower Power Cocktail, use the lemonade mix straight. 

Add your half nip, or hell, a whole nip of Hendricks.  Top with St Germain Elderflower Liqueur.

Oh baby, oh yeah! 

A couple of these and you’ll feel like you’re in San Francisco with flowers in your hair!

The Flower Power Cocktail
The Flower Power Cocktail

 Gilding The Lily – The Flower Power Cocktail Bling

 If you really want to trash up your Flower Power Cocktail you can add some flower petal ice cubes and make some lavender sugar to rim your cocktail glass. If you make the ice cubes use big trays to make them.  My ice cubes were kind of small and it was a hot day so I ended up with a couple of mouthfuls of petals.  Which is not great tastewise and even worse if you’re trying to look all classy and have to keep spitting out lavender buds!

Flower Power Bling
Flower Power Bling

Have a great week.  And live wild, flower child!

 

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