Category: World Cooking


Apr
2021

Eggs Hamine

categories: 1970's recipes, Africa, Easter, Eggs, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, World Cooking

Happy Easter to those who celebrate it!  At Maison de la retro foods, we are supplementing our chocolate eggs with some North African Hamine Eggs.  These came to us via Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery.  The book offers two versions of this recipe.  There is the traditional way:

In Egypt there are special shops selling them; there, after the eggs have been cooked for 3 or 4 hours, they are put under the ashes of a fire and left for as long as 8 hours – this makes them as creamy as butter”

– Good Housekeeping World Cookery

Never mind the pyramids and the Sphinx.  Get me over to Egypt pronto for some of those buttery eggs!!!

 

Eggs Hamine – The Recipe

The non-traditional version of these eggs is so easy!

 Put the brown outside skins of some onions into a saucepan of ocld water with the eggs and boil for 2 hours or as long as possible.  The onion skins turn the shells of the eggs and the whites brown.  Shell and halve the eggs and serve hot or cold with lemon wedges, salt, pepper and mixed spices”

I cooked my eggs in the slow cooker for a full 8 hours.

Pre – Water

Hamine Eggs2

4 hours –  One of the eggs cracked during the cooking but did not ooze out like they do when they crack during normal boiling.

Hamine Eggs3

Eight hours!

Hamine Eggs 4

Note, if you decide to make these in your slow cooker, the onion skins will stain your slow cooker brown along with the eggs.  Get ready to soak and scrub to remove it!

Eight hours and fifteen minutes!

Hamine Eggs 6

I sprinkled my egg with some salt and some dukkah and dug in!  It was delicious.  There was a faint taste of something – not exactly onion but slightly savoury to the egg which was different to a normal boiled egg.  I would not say that it was buttery  but the white seemed more delicate than a normal boiled egg.

I was also very surprised to see that the onion skin dye had penetrated not only into the white which became a gorgeous soft caramel colour but also the yolk!  This was startling because it is so strange to have a monochrome egg!

Hamine Eggs 5

These were nice and an interesting experiment but for me, it was a long time to wait for a fancy boiled egg so I will probably not make them again.  If I ever do get to Egypt though, I will be making a breakfast beeline for the Hamine Eggs shops!

Making these eggs might be a  fun thing to do with kids for Easter or for a science project on osmosis.

Happy Easter everyone!

 

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Mar
2021

Raiff of Cheese

categories: 1970's food, 1970's recipes, Africa, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, World Cooking

Hello Globetrotters and food lovers!  Given we can no longer travel in actuality I guess the next best is to travel virtually via our tastebuds.  And today, we are turning the page in Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery to a whole  new continent!  And what better way to celebrate anything but with some cheesy pastries otherwise known as Raiff of Cheese!

Cheese Pastries 1

So, where are we off to?  Here’s a clue:

I hear the drums echoing tonight
But she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation
She’s coming in, 12:30 flight
The moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation

Yes, my friends, we are going to be blessing the rains down in Africa for the next little while.  And I, for one, am here for it!  Africa is a real knowledge gap for me in terms of food.  I have cooked tagines and couscous, I have eaten Doro Wat and Injera in an Ethiopian restaurant and I have read about Bunny Chow and Sosaties. But that’s pretty much it for what is a massive continent!  So,  this will be a journey of exploration for me. Not that I am expecting Good Housekeeping from 1972 to provide any 100% authentic recipes but I”m hoping it will be enough to give me a taste of African food!

Cheese Pastries 2

These cheese pastries or Raiff of Cheese come from the North African section of World Cookery.  I chose to cook these because they reminded me very much of the Cheese Pastries we love at our local Syrian restaurant.  Believe me, I could sit and eat plate after plate of their Bourak B’jebneh!  I was also inspired by the menu at Shaam to use haloumi as the cheese in my pastries.

Raiff of Cheese – Recipe and My Variations

I used bought filo pastry because life’s too short to make homemade filo.  If you do want to do that, here’s a recipe and good luck to you!  I do want to try to make my own haloumi one day though.  I think it would have been nice (but maybe not very North African) to sub in some mozzarella for the haloumi to give the pastries some lovely melty cheesy stretchiness.  Next time maybe!

Cheese Pastries 3

Another little change I made to the recipe as given in GHWC was to add in a little sauteed leek and the very last of the chervil from my garden.  This combination features in many of the other North African recipes and it just so happened that I had half a leek in the fridge.  I had no idea that either of these were used so extensively in North African cooking.  Like I said, journey of exploration!

Finally, to serve my cheese pastries, I added a little drizzle of pomegranate molasses – the sweet-sour of this being a perfect counterpoint to the salty haloumi and some toasted sesame seeds to add some nutty crunchiness.  Any chutney or relish would be good with these.

Raiff of Cheese RecipeCheese Pastries 4

I’m not sure how authentically North African these cheese pastries are but they were really tasty. And as sure as  Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti I’ll be making these again!

Have a great week!

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Feb
2021

Fish and Chips – The Seven Dials Mystery

categories: Dining With The Dame, England, Fish

Hello crime readers and food lovers!  Today we are eating some fish and chips with Dame Agatha.  And discussing The Seven Dials Mystery.  This book could best be described as a caper – I thought it was a really fun romp of a read.  The book features Lady Eileen Brent (aka Bundle) and Inspector Battle who we first met in The Secret of Chimneys.  I very much liked Bundle in the Secret of Chimneys and I like her even more in this one!  She is mostly fearless, smart and funny – my kind of heroine!

Fish and Chips1

The Seven Dials Mystery – The Plot

Chimneys is being rented to Sir Oswald and Lady Croote who are hosting a house party.  One of the guests, Gerry Wade is a chronic oversleeper much to the dismay of Lady Croote.  Gery’s habitual lateness is putting strain in the running of the house.   His friends decide to sneak 8 alarm clocks into Gerry’s room all set to go off at different times of the morning in the hope that the resulting cacophony will get the sleepyhead up at a decent hour.  The clocks go off but Gerry does not wake up.  Then or ever.  Gerry has been murdered!  And weirdly enough, there are now only 7 alarm clocks in his room…

Fish and Chips2

On top of a missing clock and a dead body we have

  • Mysterious references to The Seven Dials in hidden letters and on the lips of a dying man
  • Another murder – by gunshot this time
  • Seedy nightclubs in a London area called Seven Dials
  • Secret letters
  • Shady Russians,
  • Sinister secret societies of seven who wear masks  of clock faces
  • Stolen chemical formulae
  • And a marriage proposal for Bundle!

The Covers

There is not much variety in the covers for this book.  Nearly all of then feature clocks of some sort.   I like the image of the burning gloves but my favourite is the very are deco looking version (bottom left and below. The  back of this cover also contains an image of Bundle’s reckless driving which features in the story.

Seven Dials Collage

Note the above version of The Seven Dials Mystery will set you back a cool £819 GBP so maybe not one for most of us!  At the other end of the spectrum, you can get the Tom Adams cover version on Ebay for $1 AUD  at the moment.

The Recipe – Fish and Chips

Full disclosure here.  I was getting myself into a bit of a tizzy about this meal.  I have one deep fryer which meant that either the fish was going to get cold while I cooked the chips or vice versa.  My solution was to make the fish as per the recipe below but to use frozen oven fries.

Second disclosure. I would normally never make fish and chips at home – to me, this is a meal best eaten as a take away ideally by the seaside.

I used  John Dory as my fish because that is the fish used by our favourite pub fish and chips.  In Seven Dials, they would traditionally use cod.

I added some dill and a little homegrown horseradish into my tartare as well as all the ingredients listed in the recipe.

Fish and Chips3

“Where did everyone go?”

“To the Seven Dials Club of course, ” said Bill, staring.  “Wasn’t that what you were asking about”

“I didn ‘t know it by that name,” said Bundle.

“Used to be a slummy sort of district round about Tottenham Court Road way.  It’s all pulled down and cleaned up now.  But the Seven Dials Club keeps to the old atmosphere.  Fried fish and chips.  General squalor.”

Agatha Christie, The Seven Dials Mystery

Fish and Chips Recipe (2

Other Food Mentioned in The Seven Dials Mystery

The next book, if you are reading along, is Murder at the Vicarage.  Yes, March will bring our very first Miss Marple murder mystery!  

 

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Jan
2021

REPOST – General Satisfaction

categories: Baking, Berries, Custard, Desserts, England, Lemon, Limoncello, Meringue, Pudding

Pop quiz hotshots…

General Satisfaction is:

a) A minor character in the Stanley Kubrik classic Doctor Strangelove,

b) A new character in the game Clue / Cluedo. ” It was General Satisfaction in the billiard room.  With the Candlestick” or,

c) A Victorian nursery pudding with the most awesome name ever?

General Satisfaction
General Satisfaction

I made this to take to my family on Christmas day and let me tell you…general satisfaction became major happiness as people tucked in.  And who would not be happy with this mix of lemony berries, topped with sponge finger biscuits liberally soaked in limoncello, topped with a lovely lemony custard and then baked with a meringue topping?

Yep.  It’s like you’ve died and gone to heaven….

One of the side effects of the Paleo diet is that I seem to have become hyper-sensitive to sugar.  The first version I made of this was so sweet I actually couldn’t eat it,  Someone else in the house had no such qualms.  He’s lying in a diabetic coma as we speak.

My first introduction to General Satisfaction came from recipe came from Tamasin Day-Lewis’ Supper for A Song .  There is also this version online:

General Satisfaction

I “unsweetened” this by swapping out the jam for a slightly more tart lemon curd and adding some fresh (frozen) berries into the base mix.  I also added some limoncello to the custard mix. Just because…name me one thing that isn’t made better by a liberal splash o’ booze.  And you know, it is the season….

General Satisfaction

It was still pretty sweet though.

This is at it’s best straight out of the oven with the custard runny and the meringue all crispy. However the last few pieces were also pretty good at room temperature a few days later as part  of an afternoon tea.

General Satisfaction
General Satisfaction

And if you make this, true to it’s name, I promise you will not be disappointed!!!

I am also interested to know what are most kookiest food names you have come across? General  Satisfaction must be right up there but I would love to know yours!!!

General Satisfaction 3Wishing you and yours not only general satisfaction but super happy fun times for 2015.  May it also be the year you learn to stop worrying…

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Print

General Satisfaction

Print Recipe

A lovely tangy take on a Victorian nursery pudding.

Ingredients

Scale
  • 1 level tbsp cornflour
  • 425g full cream milk
  • 1 vanilla pod, split, seeds scraped (or 1 tbsp vanilla essence)
  • 3 large eggs, separated
  • 5 tbsp caster sugar
  • 170g lemon curd
  • 1 cup mixed berries, thawed if using frozen
  • 1 tbsp warm water
  • 1/4 cup limoncello, maybe a bit more….
  • 10–12 savoiardi or sponge finger biscuits

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 180c.

For The Custard

  1. Mix the cornflour with 1 tbsp milk.
  2. Pour the milk into a small, heavy saucepan. Add the vanilla seeds, empty pod and cornflour mix.
  3. Bring to the boil, stirring then drop the heat and simmer, still stirring for a coupe of minutes. Remove from the heat.
  4. Whisk the egg yolks in a bowl then whisk in a tablespoonful of the milk mixture. Repeat three times then pout the combined egg and milk mixture into the warmed milk.
  5. Set the pan back over low heat, and whisk until the custard thickens and is perfectly smooth. Don’t let it boil. Remove from the heat, and whisk in 2 tablespoon of the sugar and half of the limoncello. Set aside to cool.

For The Lemon Berry Sauce

  1. Mix the lemon curd with 1 tbsp of just boiled water until runny and pour into the base of a medium baking dish.
  2. Scatter the berries over the curd then press them down with a potato masher to flatten them down a bit and get their juices running.
  3. Lay the savoiardi on top of the curd and berry mix and sprinkle with the remaining limoncello.
  4. Poor the cooled custard over the biscuits, straining if it is lumpy.

For The Meringue

  1. Whisk the egg whites until stiff, then whisk in the remaining sugar, little by little until you have a firm shiny meringue.
  2. Spoon the meringue over the custard.
  3. Bake on the middle shelf of the oven for about 20 minutes until the meringue is pale golden and crisp when you tap it.

Notes

  • Adding a little bit of the milk to the egg, prevents the egg from cooking.
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Jan
2021

Pink Dawn Salad

categories: Prawns, Salad, ThaiLand, World Cooking

Hello friends!  Today we are talking Thai.  I love Thai food in general but I absolutely love Thai salads – my favourite is green papaya or green mango salad but a Thai beef salad or a banana blossom salad are also fine by me. I love their freshness and zing!  So I had high hopes for a Thai inspired salad with a lovely name –  Pink Dawn Salad. This comes from Good Housekeepings World Cookery (1972). Imagine this as a salad –  the perfect mix of colours becoming the perfect Thai mix of sweet, salt, hot and sour!

Gorgeous huh?  And now that I’ve set your expectations….let’s take a look at the salad.  I mean, I knew from the ingredients that it was not going to be a typical Thai salad but it was definitely touted as such by the press back in the 1970’s.  I found an article from back in 1978 in the Vancouver Sun that contains this same recipe which certainly implies if not downright states that this is an authentic Thai Salad.  Anyway, here it is…Pink Dawn Salad

Hmm…not great is it?

There was nothing wrong with the Pink Dawn Salad.  I like eggs, tomatoes and prawns.  I’m not that keen on bananas but Holy likes them…

Pink Dawn Salad 2

Between the two of us, we ate it all. It was just…meh.  Boring…bland…not really cohesive. Not a bit Thai. And only marginally pink.

Pink Dawn Salad 3

I’m calling a fail on the Pink Dawn Salad – the great name did not equate to great flavour.  And I had to skin tomatoes which is something I find weirdly repulsive.

Pink Dawn Salad – The Recipe

Here it is…although I  can’t recommend that you give it a try.

Pink Dawn Salad (2)

If you are looking for a good Thai salad, I made this a few days ago and it was heaven!!!!  It was actually this on a plate!

Have a great week!

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