I love bacon even though it was my undoing. I was a very happy vegetarian for two years in high school. If my mother is reading this, right about now, she will be having a little snicker to herself and muttering “Huh…The only vegetarian in the world who didn’t eat vegetables.” And there is a grain of truth in that. I did spend two years eating not much more than tomato and cheese sandwiches and the occasional omelette.
Until I was brought down by bacon.
(Cue dramatic music…wow, this could be turning into a Dan Brown novel).
I used to have tennis lessons, very early, every Sunday morning. The family that lived next door to the tennis courts would, without fail, have a fry up for breakfast every week. The smell of bacon would drift out over the tennis court in a haze of mouth-watering deliciousness. “Eat me, eat me, ” it taunted.
Over weeks of this, bacon came to represent so much more than a tasty breakfast dish, it became a symbol of a better life. The kind of life where, on Sunday mornings, people had leisurely cooked breakfasts and listened to Mozart and spoke French whilst doing the Sunday crossword in less than twenty minutes. It represented a glamour and sophistication utterly removed from my reality of huffing and puffing around a glorified field, still half asleep, wearing a polyester track suit that did not so much keep the cold out as keep the sweat in and having someone repeatedly yelling at me to hit a damn ball over a stupid net. I began to yearn for bacon in the same way I yearned for Paris and champagne and pink Sobranie cigarettes in one of those long cigarette holders like Audrey Hepburn’s in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
I was a weird child.
Angels on Horseback – Ingredients
I have no idea whether the neighbours were the glamorous types I imagined them to be or a bunch of suburban lard-arses who are now appearing on The Biggest Loser so that their fat-clogged arteries can be given a second lease of life. I suspect the latter. If so, can I suggest that the producers of the show make them play tennis. At seven. On a Sunday morning. In winter. I’ll be lurking somewhere near by with a portable grill and a couple of rashers. Let’s see how they like it.
Anyway, I lasted about three months before I caved. One cold wintry morning I came home from said lesson. Mum asked if I would like my tomato and cheese sandwich plain or toasted.
“I want bacon” I snapped in the snotty way only a 16-year-old can. Then I stomped upstairs to my room and listened to The Smiths until mum called me back downstairs for a plate of lovely, lovely life-affirming B & E.
History lesson over. And that’s about all the history I can give you because the reasons oysters are linked with angels, prunes with devils and either wrapped in bacon is termed “on horseback” are lost in time. Maybe that could be the subject of the next Dan Brown… an obscure culinary term could lead Robert Langdon on a search that reveals the long hidden conspiracy behind whether Elvis really did die on his toilet. (If you’re reading this Brown, back off now. I know what you’re like. The Fried-Peanut-Butter and Bacon-Sandwich Code is mine.)
Angels on Horseback
Inspired by the Angels on Horseback recipe in The Party Cookbook I recently went on a bacon rampage and made three versions of this classic hors d’œuvre.
If you like it spicy, adding a dash of tabasco sauce to the Angels only makes them more delicious!
For Devils on Horseback, substitute Prunes for the Oysters above and leave out the paprika.
Devils on Horseback and Cheesy Devils on Horseback – Ingredients
For Cheesy Devils, stuff the prunes with Goat’s Cheese before wrapping in the bacon.
Devils and Cheesy Devils
Some people like to serve their Devils on Horseback with Mango Chutney. I’m not a big fan but I did have some Kashmiri Date Chutney in the fridge and this was quite nice as a dip for the Cheesy Devils.
Devils on Horseback with Chutney
These were all delicious and I would make them all again. In order my preference was Angels on Horseback, Cheesy Devils, then Devils on Horseback but I would not discount any of them.
I no longer desire the Sobranies, but Angels on Horseback with a Glass of champagne and the Sunday Cryptic crossword? C’est parfait!
Whilst I love all old cookbooks, there is a special place in my heart for the celebrity cookbook and finding Roberta Ashley’s “Singers and Swingers In The Kitchen” was like finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Subtitled
“The Scene Makers Cookbook Dozens of Nutty Turned On Easy-To-Prepare Recipes From The Grooviest Gourmets Happening”
Singers and Swingers is a collection of recipes from The Rolling Stones, The Byrds, Leonard Nimoy, Barbra Streisand, Liza Minelli and other icons of the ’60’s “that will keep you grooving with the greatest.”
Life really does not get much better than this!
Front Cover – Singers and Swingers in the KitchenBack Cover – Singers and Swingers In The Kitchen
As teenage columnist for This Week Magazine, Ms Ashley often asked bright young things of the day what their favourite foods were. She advises that many of these dishes were:
“Worked out while they were quietly starving or working in a “pass-the-basket” coffee-house. That means that most of these dishes can be cooked on allowance type money…or very little bread as they say”
Which just makes me love it more…star studded AND thrifty is one of my favourite combinations!
And for those readers who may be new to the kitchen, or hesitant cooks, Ms Ashley offers the following words of encouragement.
“Give it a try, the recipes are mostly easy ones and remember a year ago, Barbra Streisand couldn’t cook at all”
Adorable!
The recipes in the book are mostly solid, with only the occasional piece of WTFery thrown in. If there is a real problem with the book it is that there is a certain degree of repetition in the recipes. Of the 68 main recipes in the book, minced meat features in 11. These include:
Chili Esperanza by The Mamas and The Papas. They liked to eat this with scrambled eggs…the thought of that makes me gag a little. (Then again, maybe they should have stuck to softer types of foods like chili and scrambled eggs and avoided the types of food that can get stuck in your throat like sandwiches.)
Chili for Chums. This is not name checked but to my mind is actually the best of the lot.
Paul Revere was the lead singer of a band called Paul Revere and the Raiders who liked to dress up in period costume and presumably precede all of their gigs by repeatedly shouting “The British are coming, the British are coming”.
Paul Revere 1967
Ah, those crazy days of the ’60’s. I bet he feels a little silly about wearing that costume now….
Then again, maybe not.
Paul Revere 2007
Returning to the prevalence of ground mince, there are also 3 recipes for Sloppy Joe Type Creations:
Sloppy Joe A La Sam The Sham
A Jones Delight by Jack Jones
Snick Snack Hamburgers by Lesly Gore. Lesly Gore was famous for her song “It’s My Party and I’ll Cry If I Want To”. She must have self catered because these sound repulsive.
Lesly Gore’s Snick Snack Hamburgers
There is an equally revolting concoction called Robb Stew made by one of the three Robb brothers from the band called….you guessed it…The Robbs…They appeared to operate on the principle that if you can’t be original, be consistently unoriginal. Surprisingly, all members of this band were not wiped out by food poisoning in 1968 but 3 of them went on to have illustrious careers in the music industry by founding Robb…I mean…Cherokee Studios in Los Angeles. This studio has produced artists such as The Gogo’s, Aerosmith, Lenny Kravitz, Devo, Public Enemy and Jane’s Addiction to name but a few! Quite possibly this is truly a case of what doesn’t kill you making you stronger.
Robb Stew
There are also 4 instances of minced meat with pasta:
Whilst their recipe does sound delicious, some of those Buckinghams look a little druggy around the eyes if you ask me!
The Buckinghams
Not like these clean living young men from groovy London town!
Rolling Stones 1967
Wow! Look at the young Keith Richards in 1967 (middle row on the right). And look at him now:
Keith Richards 2012
If you ever needed a reason not to take a bucket load of drugs look no further!
The Stone’s recipe is one of the six that contain frankfurters as one of the key ingredients.
Chili Dog Chili by the aforementioned Paul Revere. That man sure did love his chilli!
Golden Joys
Hurry up Casserole
Frankfurter Casserole
Hot Dogs on The Rocks by the Rolling Stones
Frank Pops by The Cyrkle. I have no idea who The Cyrkle were. And if this recipe is anything to go by, I’m not surprised that they have faded into obscurity. Placing battered franks on a stick doesn’t make them more fun, it only adds insult to injury!
The Cyrkle’s Frank Pops
Mind you, the recipe from The Rolling Stones is not up to much either…although…with the right sausage, a proper gourmet one, and proper mash, this could be a perfectly acceptable meal! It can, can’t it? Or have I just been married to an Englishman for too many years?
Hot Dogs on The Rocks
I love a recipe that comes with its own warning! In case you were wondering
“Mick Jagger invented the potatoes and franks; Charlie Watts added the beans”
There is a tone to some of the entries that suggests there may not have been much love lost between Ms Ashley and some of the celebrities. Here is Ashley’s introduction to Liza Minelli’s recipe for Crepes Suzette:
“Liza Minelli is a little girl who’s come a long way despite a terrible handicap”
The part of me that craves gossip and scandal read on with an overly avid “Wow, really? What’s she got?”
The so-called terrible handicap?
Famous parents.
Unless they had different meanings for both the word “terrible” and the word “handicap” back in the late ‘60’s that is a nasty thing to say about someone! Poor old Liza doesn’t even get a proper photo, just a teeny thing on the cover!
Carol Lawrence also gets short shrift (even if she does get a very glamorous photo).
We are told that Carol is:
“Making a rather nice name for herself in Hollywood; not as a star but as a lasagne-maker”
Ouch!
Not really how a Tony Award Winning Actor would want to be known! Mind you, she did go on to write a best-selling cookbook about Italian Cooking so maybe Ashley’s comment is more prescient than catty.
You may have noticed whilst reading this that there have been no pictures of food. That’s because the book doesn’t contain any. This, as with most celebrity cookbooks, is long on celebrity, short on food. That some of the recipes sound super is a bonus. That some of them sound absolutely vile will be the subject of the next post.
In the meantime, put some flowers in your hair, light some incense and groove out to some fabulous sounds of the sixties. It’s what I’ll be doing!
Last week I mocked some of the food styling in The Hot Weather Cookbook, so in the interest of fair and unbiased reporting I thought it was only fair to show what I think is easily the best photo in the book. Not only that, I was so inspired by the photo I had plans to cook the exact meal as shown for a barbecue dinner we were having.
Lamb Sosaties, Carrot Salad, Cucumber Salad
Why do I love this so much? First, I think it has a clean modern look to it. This would not look out-of-place in a current issue of Bon Appetit or Delicious magazine. Second, I love gingham. One of the reasons is that it evokes memories of summer, picnics by a river in the shade of a tree, the gingham table-cloth spread on the ground absolutely loaded with super tasty picnic food, the sound of birds and crickets chirping lazily in the background, the sun dappling through the leaves…In my mind picnics look like this. Thanks to the lovely Amber Clery from the Vintage Homeblog for her permission to use these gorgeous photos.
In reality, I remember having a picnic with my parents by a river. I went for a swim and got a leech on my leg. The sounds of that picnic weren’t so much the gentle noises of nature or the hushed sounds of silence but hysterical screaming and uncontrollable sobbing. I vastly prefer Amber’s version.
Apart from the gingham, the other things I liked in the photo from “The Hot Weather Cookbook” were those amazing looking kebabs and the saffron rice with juicy raisins that they are lying on top of. The legend for the picture told me that were Barbecued Lamb Sosaties accompanied by Carrot Salad and Cucumber Salad. No mention of the rice. I had never heard of a Sosatie before so I flipped to the glossary which told me that Sosaties were a:
“Cape Malay (South African) dish of curried meat, cooked in small pieces on a skewer”
So now, not only do these kebabs look delicious, they sound delicious. I was salivating in anticipation of finding out how to cook these delights because I thought they would reconfirm my position as queen of the barbecue. One of the first things I ever cooked for my family was a “Spicy Feta Burger”. I must have been eight. I didn’t even know what feta was but begged my mum to buy some so I could make these burgers. Some decades later we still make them. People invited to family barbecues demand them. In my family and circle of friends, they are legend. However, all empires fall and it had been quite some time since I had come up with some delectable barbecue goodness. I’ve rested on my feta burger laurels for far too long. The time was ripe to launch a new taste sensation.
In my mind, my spicy feta burgers were already singing that Coldplay song about “that was when I ruled the world”. My Barbecued Lamb Sosaties were running up and down flights of stairs and humming “The Eye of The Tiger.”
We’ll pause there and I’ll tell you about the rice with raisins. Remember how I said they weren’t mentioned in the picture tag? I searched for the recipe in index. Under R there are two entries:
Radish Salad, Cool
Rice Salad
I didn’t really know where else I might find the recipe for the rice with raisins (it was not the rice salad recipe listed). So I flicked through the entire book and found the recipe on page 64…well I found something on page 64 called Yellow Rice With Raisins. As it’s not name checked in the photo, I can’t be entirely sure it is the same recipe but given that what is pictured is yellow and it’s rice and it contains raisins I used my best Sherlock Holmesian powers of deduction and decided they were one and the same. I then went back and checked the recipe index. This time, I not only checked under R in case I had missed something in the vast number of recipes beginning with that letter. (I hadn’t.) I then checked Y…just in case. Not there either. I then checked every recipe in the index to see what exactly was listed for page 64. There’s a Barbecue Sauce which is actually on page 64. There is no mention of the Yellow Raisin Rice in the index at all. Grrr….
That annoyed me. It’s slapdash and surely someone in the editing process should have picked it up before the book went to print. Never mind, at least I could make it. After all, I had the recipe, even if it appeared to have been inserted into the book by stealth.
Ok, so the last time we saw the Barbecued Lamb Sosaties, they were fist pumping the air and claiming global victory in the barbecue stakes. I looked up Barbecued Lamb Sosaties in the index.
I started with L…not there.
S…not there either.
I tried B…I may was well not bothered.
I tried a lateral approach and looked under K for kebab and, harking back to the glossary definition, I looked under C (Curry and Cape Malay). I then looked through every other letter. There was no mention to the Barbecued Lamb Sosaties in the index. Double Grrr!
But the rice recipe wasn’t in the index either. No point in getting upset. So, in the spirit of keeping calm and carrying on, I flicked through “The Main Course” section of the book.
Nothing.
I flipped back to the picture. Those kebabs look hearty but I thought that maybe they are meant to be a first course, like satay sticks in an Asian restaurant.
They weren’t in the first course section either.
I then looked through the entire book.
Zippedy doo dah.
I then looked through the entire book again, this time focussing on the page numbers. (This was a second-hand book and, given the awesomeness of the Barbecued Lamb Sosatie, someone may have ripped the page out to keep it for posterity).
Every page was accounted for.
THE RECIPE FOR WHAT LOOKED LIKE THE MOST AWESOME DISH IN THE BOOK….WAS NOT IN THE BOOK.
If that looks like I am yelling, it’s because I am. It’s actually a lot nicer than what came out of my mouth when I initially made this discovery. I probably wouldn’t be allowed to print exactly what I said. It’s more than likely illegal in some countries and frowned upon in most others.
I could give you a recipe for Barbecued Lamb Sosaties. I (eventually) found a number of them on Google. Instead, I was so annoyed with the HotWeather Cookbook, I am going to give you the original recipe for the spicy feta burgers. This recipe is so old now, it comes from a time where they didn’t quite know how to spell spicy. These are awesome and you should all make them immediately. (Sorry it’s a bit crooked, that is literally the way it is stuck to the page in the family recipe compendium).
Just to top off a few days where recipes from the past have really let me down, it is also wrong.
I defy anyone to make 12 burgers out of 50g of minced steak. Unless of course they happen to be pixies. (To anyone not familiar with the metric system, as a point of comparison, I just weighed an egg from my fridge. It came in at 64g. )
I used 500g of mince when I made the burgers this time and made 12 decent sized burgers. I left all other amounts as stated.
This can also be very much treated as a base recipe. For instance, this time round I added some dried chilli flakes and some chopped up coriander. You could use mint or parsley or basil. Pinenuts in the mix are fabulous! You can also use lamb mince instead of steak for another variation in flavour.
Spicy Feta Burgers
Out of sheer spite I also didn’t make the rice or either of the salads from The Hot Weather Cookbook. I made a gorgeous carrot salad inspired by a recipe from Gourmande in the Kitchen. This recipe is amazing…quite possibly the most vibrant delicious taste sensation I have had all year. The orange flower water in the dressing is a stroke of genius! The original recipe required watercress. I tried three local green grocers and was advised that due to the hot weather, we are suffering watercress drought. I used rocket and it was lovely. I will definitely also try it with watercress as soon as I can get my hands on some!
The cumin and the orange flower water actually go very nicely with the lamb and feta to create a lovely Middle Eastern vibe to this meal.
I made a really quick cucumber salad to go with this, just sliced cucumber, a sprinkle of cayenne pepper and chives, and a squeeze of lemon. I had a small bowl of pomegranate molasses as a condiment for the burgers.
Et voila! Here is my Not The Hot Weather Cookbook Middle East Feast!
Feta Burgers, Carrot and Orange Flower Water Salad, Cucumber Salad and Pomegranate Molasses
This will more than likely be my last post before the New Year as I need to focus on cooking and other things related to the season for the next few days.
Best wishes to all for a safe and happy Christmas and a joyous New Year.
After harping on about the awful recipes contained in this book last time, it was only fair to showcase some of the better recipes. Three of them will be included here (I actually made 4 however this week is all about being positive so we won’t mention the Asparagus Italienne. Ever.)
I chose the Stuffed Celery Curls as my first course. This was jam-packed with flavours I love – celery, walnuts, chives, cream cheese and Tabasco so there was everything to like. I chose not to add the red food colouring. I’m hyperactive enough without it and I could see no earthly reason why it should be there. I think the “au naturel” version looks much prettier anyway!
Ingredients
Sadly, my celery did not curl as per the picture in the book. I read the recipe as saying you needed 15 pieces of celery 5 cm long. Which is what I did. In retrospect, I think it may mean an unnamed number of pieces of celery 15 cm long by 5 cm wide. Although that doesn’t seem quite right either – 5cm seems too wide. If you really want your celery to curl, here’s how.
It didn’t really matter though because whilst mine did not look as fun, they tasted amazing! We had these as our starter however they could just as easily be a lunch box snack or as finger food. Blue cheese would be an amazing variation.
Original
Mine – with obligatory knife but no curls
Next up, for our main dish I made a Farmhouse Potato Bake. This dish contains potatoes, Hungarian sausage (I used salami), sour cream and paprika so I guess is Eastern European in tone. It was damn good wherever it came from. If you weren’t fond of salami you could make this with ham, bacon, or left over roast beef or chicken or for a spot of luxury some smoked salmon. As you will see from the picture, I subbed in basil for the oregano. I think it is one of those recipes that you could pretty much use whatever proteins and herbs as you wanted. You could layer in other vegetables as well. Asparagus, green beans, spinach would all be great!
Ingredients
Salami and Onion Sauteing, Potatoes Par-Boiling in the background
Layering
Crumb Mixture
I made a Panama Radish Salad from the book to go with this. Well, I sort of did. There is no intended slur to the recipe for my changes, I think you could follow it absolutely and the result would be delicious. I just happened to have no red onions and a bucketload of chives and rocket that I needed to use. So I swapped these in. I also used my favourite Black Russian tomatoes so my salad is probably “greener” than it should be….it still looks pretty good though.
Ingredients
Panama Radish Salad
These worked really well together, the pepperiness of the rocket and the radish in the salad, the freshness of the mint and the lemon in the dressing cut through some of the creamy, potato, salami induced richness of the Farmhouse bake. Two big ticks here, will definitely be making both of these again.
The original recipe for this used escarole. I’ll admit I wasn’t entirely sure what that is. Cook’s Thesaurus said that spinach or rocket could be substituted, so of course I used something completely different. Cavolo Nero, or Tuscan Black Cabbage is an ingredient I love. It is at the peak of its season at the moment so I substituted it for the green in this. As the leaves are a lot tougher than spinach or rocket (or possibly escarole) I adjusted the cooking times accordingly.
The other change I made to the original recipe, with full apologies to Jules J, was that it originally was a soup. I wanted it as a side dish so I decreased the amount of stock I added back in my version. If you want it as a soup, you will need to add 2-4 cups of stock where I have placed the asterisk in the recipe below.
This was, awesome. I have a very fussy easter for a husband, and it is not often he asks for second helpings of sides, particularly ones that are vegetable heavy. Maybe it was the bacon in this but he not only had seconds, he took the last little bit into work for his lunch the next day!
500 grams eacarole / cavolo nero / greens of your choice
2 cups chicken stock
1 medium onion, sliced
1 clove garlic, chopped
2 spring onions, chopped
1/3 cup lean bacon, diced
1 can chickpeas
1 tbsp parsley, chopped
1/2 tsp basil
2 tbsp grated parmesan
Trim cavolo nero. Discard tough ends. Chop into slices about 1 cm thick.
Put chicken stock in a saucepan. Heat to boiling. Add cavolo nero. If there is not enough stock, top up with water until leaves are just covered.
Cover and cook until crisp/tender.
Drain and reserve cooking liquid.
Saute bacon in a heavy saucepan, add onion, garlic, spring onions, and saute until soft but not browned. Add the chickpeas and cavolo nero and a few spoonfuls* of the cooking liquid.
