Retro Food For Modern Times - Yesterdays Recipes, Cooked Today

06
Sep
2023

Not Quite A Hershey Pie-Pieathalon X

categories: 1960's recipes, Desserts, Pieathalon

Hello friends and PieLovers! Welcome to Pieathalon Ten. And welcome to my Not Quite A Hershey Pie! For new readers, Pieathalon is the time of year where food bloggers all over the world, lead by the lovely Yinzerella swap recipes for all sorts of weird and wonderful pies. This year, I was sent a recipe for Hershey Pie by Kari from The Nostalgic Cook. And I’m going to start right off by saying that this was a delight. It was so easy to cook, it looked absolutely gorgeous and tasted like a little piece of heaven.

Having said that, it was not without some problems. Notably, this was a very American pie. And as the name suggests, this pie called for Hershey Bars. Six Almond Hershey bars to be exact. So what, I hear half the world (The American half) exclaim. Well….Hershey’s is not the chocolate of choice in Australia. It’s not impossible to get Hershey bars but you either have to buy them off the net or go to a shop that sells American candy. And both of these places charge like wounded bulls. Luckily, Cadbury which is our chocolate of choice does a Milk Chocolate and Roast Almond Block which I was able to sub in for the Hershey’s. And if Hershey’s are hard to find….Graham Crackers? Impossible. I have never even seen these for sale here. So another substitution. Marie Biscuits for Graham Crackers this time.

I won’t even begin to enter the mathematical saga of if 6 Almond Hershey bars weigh x ounces and 2 Cadbury Family Size Blocks of Roast Almond weigh y grams, how much chocolate do I need for the pie? Or the trauma of how big is a large marshmallow?

Somehow, I managed to convert a SIX ingredient recipe into an international, mathematical, imperial to metrical brain scramble.

Having said that. The Cadbury / Hershey Pie was….wait for it…

It was so good.

First, it looked gorgeous!!! As I was mixing in the marshmallows, I noticed that they created a marble effect which I thought was quite beautiful. I kept some of those streaks in the finished pie. I also sprinkled some of the leftover crumb crust on top. Then the taste!!! It was like a little bit of heaven. Very rich, very sweet but utterly delicious!!! Personally, I found a tiny bit of salt sprinkled over the top helped to cut through the sweetness. The Fussiest Eater in the World liked it as is.

Hershey Pie – The Recipe

The Pieathletes

Here is a list of the other Pieathletes. Why not pop on over and see their creations? I wonder who got my Villa Pie?

(For early readers, I’ll update the links once each recipe is posted)

S.S.made a Microwave Peach Pie

Dr Bobb made Anthony Hopkins’ Four Star Shepherd’s Pie

Poppy Crocker made a Coconut Cream Pie

Surly made a Hot Fudge Pie

Kari, who sent me the delightful Hersjey Pie made an Aspic Salad Pie. Oh dear….

Camilla made a Ballymaloe Chicken Pie

Cathy made a Delicious Apple Pie

Jenny made Anthony Hopkins Beef and Hash Brown Pie. Goodness, Mr Hopkins is getting about this Pieathalon!

Thanks to Kari for the wonderful recipe and to the wonderful Yinzerella for organising! Have a great week…I’m off to eat some more of that yummy, yummy, pie!

03
Sep
2023

Busy Bird Chicken

categories: 1970's recipes, Chicken, The Busy Woman's Cookbook

Memories, Iike the corners of my mind…misty water-coloured memories…Greetings Friends and welcome to a very nostalgic instance of Retro Food for Modern Times. Many of the vintage dishes I make here are not from my own childhood but from old cookbooks I own. This one is different. Apricot or Busy Bird Chicken was something we would eat on the reg when I was growing up.

Why Busy Bird Chicken? That’s what the recipe my mum used was called. However, it is almost exactly the same as the recipe I found in The Busy Woman’s Cookbook by The Australian Women’s Weekly (1972). The only difference is that our version had almonds sprinkled over the top. The busy woman of the 1970s had no time for such frivolities. Her Apricot Chicken is unadorned. I really liked then in this thought, so I would urge you to also include them.

The Busy Woman’s Cookbook

We last met the busy woman way back in 2016. Then, as now, we lusted after her floral serving dishes and her perfectly coiffed hair, admired her skill in floristry / fruit wrangling and worried about her proximity to a naked flame whilst wearing a gorgeous but most likely highly flammable 1970s caftan.

They say you can’t step in the same river twice and so revisiting this beloved dish from my childhood came with a fair amount of anxiety. What if it wasn’t the charming dish of my memories? It’s very simple – four ingredients (with the almonds). Would the sweet / salty / oniony flavour be as I remembered it? Or would it be sickly sweet and awful?

I served my chicken with Sabrina Ghayour’s Coriander, Garlic and Lime Rice. I thought the savouriness of this would act as a counter if the Busy Bird Chicken was overly sweet. Back in the day, we would have had plain boiled rice with it. And to be honest, that would have been fine!

I’m happy to say that the Busy Bird Chicken was EXACTLY as I remembered it. It was a delicious blast from the retro past and I will certainly not be waiting such a long time to make it again!

If you would like to have your own blast from the past here’s the recipe!

Have a great week! I will be popping into your inboxes mid-week this week too as it is PIEATHALON time. I made my pie today (Sunday) and I am so looking forward to sharing it with you!

26
Aug
2023

Riceycoco

categories: 1970's recipes, Good Housekeeping World Cookery, The Caribbean, World Cooking

Greetings friends and welcome to Jamaica! Today, on the back of my trip to tropical FNQ (Far North Queensland), I am featuring a recipe from the Caribbean. Riceycoco comes to us via the pages of Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery (1972). It also comes very high on the list of words I find pleasant to say! And that is all the justification I needed to make it!

Riceycoco, is as the name suggests, rice cooked in coconut milk. It is traditionally eaten for breakfast which reminded me of a Sri Lankan dish called Kiribath (milk rice). There the difference ends. Kiribath is eaten with chutneys and sambols as a savoury dish whereas Riceycoco is sweet. I am not fond of a sweet breakfast so I ate mine as a dessert, similar to a rice pudding. To amp up the tropical vibes, I added some mango to the mix.

Rice and coconut milk is a classic in many Asian countries and I enjoyed the twist of having a sweet version of something I am more familiar with as a savoury dish. It was also a nice reminder of the tropics now we are back in cold, grey Melbourne! Its also a very soothing comfort food – a little bit like being cocooned in a warm cuddlepillar!

Riceycoco – The Recipe & Notes

I used coconut milk from a can instead of fresh coconut milk.
I also swapped out the brown sugar for maple syrup.
I served some additional coconut milk on the side.
This would also be spectacular with a dollop of coconut yoghurt.

If you want to be reminded of the tropics, like a sweet breakfast or want the nursery comfort of a rice pudding why not give Riceycocoa try Even just so you get to say the name a few times!

Have a great week!

21
Aug
2023

N or M – Aperol Betty

categories: Aperol, Dining With The Dame, Drinks

Hello crime readers and food lovers. Or in this case, cocktail lovers because we are celebrating Agatha Christie’s wartime thriller N or M with an Aperol Betty. N or M has few references to food. I wonder if Agatha Christie did this intentionally as food was rationed during the war. Reading about lots of food may have led to readers becoming disgruntled with their Mock Crab and other wartime foods. I found my inspiration from one of the characters in the novel Betty Sprott, who despite only being a little girl is key to two pivotal parts of the novel!

N or M -The Plot

It is 1940 and Tommy and Tuppence Beresford are disheartened because no one wants them for war work. Tommy is then approached by Mr Grant, the head of the secret service to hunt out some fifth columnists. Tommy is sent on a top-secret mission to Leahampton, to search out two Nazi agents, a male and a female, known only by their code names, N and M. Imagine his surprise then on his arrival at the Sans Souci guesthouse to see Tuppence there!

We have quite the cast of shady characters including

A landlady who may or may not be Irish
A German refugee chemist
A female resident of the Sans Souci who is watching Tuppence very closely
A mysterious Polish woman hanging about the Sanc Souci
Little Betty kidnapped
The kidnapper killed by a crack shot from Mrs Sprott
Someone hitting Tommy over the head with a hammer
Someone holding Tommy captive in their basement

Luckily we have Tommy and Tuppence on hand to figure out who is N and M and save Britain from the evils of Nazism via enemies from within. .

This is a thrilling tale that I feel really captures what life might have been like in England during 1940. I really enjoyed the depiction of “ordinary” life at this time – the talk of the war, everyone having their own theories or having heard “on good authority” what was happening at the front. The setting for this tale of espionage is perfect and Tommy and Tuppence are as adorable as ever!

N or M – The Covers

There are some fabulous covers here, lots of French ones, a Danish one and one that I think might be from Hungary.

The Recipe – Aperol Betty

The Aperol Betty is a very simple but very tasty cocktail with a strong citrussy taste. It was even easier for me because I didn’t even have to bother to combine the grapefruit and orange juices in the recipe. We have a tangelo tree (tangelo = tangerine x grapefruit) in our garden which is currently laden! (Also look how pretty that bright orange looks on a grey Melbourne winter day!!!!

But anyway, when life gives you this many tangelos, you don’t go buying grapefruit or orange juice! I walked to the garden and chose some lovely fresh fruit for my drink!

Here’s the recipe with the OG ingredients!

Betty had changed her mind and demanded instead:

“Wead me story.”

Tuppence pulled out a rather tattered book from one end of the cupboard – to be interrupted by a squeal from Betty.

“No, no. Narsty…Bad…”

Agatha Christie – N or M

As an alternative, for anyone who does not drink, the close runner up for this was a Pasta all N or Ma. I didn’t make this because I am somewhat allergic to aubergines / eggplants but if you were having an N or M themed dinner, for me, the pasta would be a good choice!

What does Agatha Christie have in with Leonard Dawe?

First, I hear you ask, who is Leonard Dawe?

Well. he was a crossword compiler for the Daily Telegraph who was investigated by MI5 in 1944 because he published the names of several of the D-Day Landing sites in his crosswords.

A few years earlier, Agatha Christie got into trouble over the name of one of the characters in N or M. One of the residents at Sans Souci is Major Bletchley. In the 1940s, Bletchley Park was the place where code breakers ultimately cracked the German enigma machine. Of course, neither Dame Agatha nor Leonard Dawe were acting in an untoward manner but they were both investigated by MI5 for their unfortunate choices! (I really hope that after they questioned her, Dame Agatha then grilled MI5 on their techniques for her next novel)

Links to The Christieverse

There are a few references to the earlier Tommy and Tuppence novel, The Secret Adversary.

Other Food & Drinks Mentioned in N or M

Whiskey
Tea
Bread and Cheese

As mentioned, last week, I am currently on holiday in beautiful Port Douglas. Part of my reading material for the trip is The Body In The Library which will be our September Dining with The Dame read. Marple fans, this one’s for you!

Have a great week!

13
Aug
2023

Mock Crab

categories: Eggs

Hello, retro food lovers and…war buffs? Today I am sharing a recipe for Mock Crab which was inspired by my reading of N or M by Agatha Christie. The real Dining with the Dame post will come next week but during my reading of this book, I became mildly obsessed with the food of wartime Britain. I found a fabulous blog called The 1940’s Experiment and decided to give one of the wartime recipes a whirl! I am also mildly obsessed with “mock” foods so I chose mock crab.

Umm…what? I hear you say. Mock crab looks like this! However, it looks to all the world that you have posted a photo of some scrambled eggs on toast. Did you mix your photos up? Might we finally be getting a post on the bacon and eggs that is mentioned in EVERY Agatha Christie novel but has yet to make an appearance in Dining with the Dame?

Well…no and no. This my friends is mock crab.

But also yes. Because this is scrambled eggs on toast. Albeit some mildly vinegary scrambled eggs on toast. This recipe perplexed me and I’ll tell you why as soon as I share the link. Here it is: Wartime Mock Crab.

Mock Me Not

So here is what I don’t understand about the mock crab. Cheesy scrambled eggs are delicious. And not just for breakfast. I would eat them at any time of day! Cheesy scrambled eggs with salad dressing and additional vinegar? Not so much. This, for me, was, unfortunately, something that was less than the sum of its parts. I’m also not quite sure why, particularly when you are on rations, you would add anything to cheesy scrambled eggs. My preference would have been to save the dressing and vinegar for something else (maybe a salad?) and to eat the eggs as scrambled eggs.

I can only surmise that the addition of the salad dressing and vinegar was to make it taste more crabby. If so, it didn’t work. No one in their right mind would mistake the taste of this for crab. And yet….there was something. Maybe the texture? Or possibly the power of suggestion…that made this somewhat reminiscent of crab.

Whilst I didn’t love the mock crab, it was nice to take a peek into war time cooking and imagine the gang at the Sans Souci (from N and M) tucking into a plate of of it for lunch.

Next weeks post will be on N or M, an Agatha Christie wartime thriller featuring Tommy and Tuppence. At least I hope it will be. I will be on holiday, soaking up some sun in the north of Australia so I will schedule it to run on Sunday. Fingers crossed it works!

Have a great week!