Agatha Christie - Retro Food For Modern Times

Tag: Agatha Christie

23
Aug
2021

Dry Martini – Peril at End House

categories: Cocktail, Dining With The Dame, Gin, Poirot

Greetings crime readers and food, well drink lovers! Today we are celebrating the delights of the Agatha Christie novel Peril at End House with a fabulous dry martini. And there are many delights to this book. First, it is a Poirot, second, the adaptation is filmed in the most gorgeous location and third, we get to drink a martini!

Also, for those of you who may think that Christie novels are all knitting and cups of tea at the Vicarage, this book has a Scarface-esque amount of cocaine in it. Those bright young things of the 1930’s were not shy when it came to a bit of blow!

Peril at End House – The Plot

Poirot and Hastings are taking a little vacay to the Cornish town of St Loo. While sitting on the terrace of the Majestic Hotel, they make the acquaintance of Nick Buckley, a young female who is the owner of End House, a ramshackle mansion next door to the hotel.

Nick tells them that she has escaped death a number of times recently – a heavy painting fell of the wall cliff and onto her bed. Luckily she had been making tea at the time and missed having her head bashed in by it. The brakes on her car failed and she is nearly crushed by a boulder on the cliff path. Indeed, even as she is talking to Poirot and Hastings she is bothered by what she thinks is a bee flying too close to her face. Poirot later discovers that this was in fact a bullet, not a bee.

Someone is apparently trying to kill Nick Buckley!

Poirot convinces Nick to send for her cousin Magdalena to help keep her safe. Magdalena is then killed whilst wearing Nick’s shawl, presumably in a case of mistaken identity.

On top of a dead cousin, rafts of cocaine and multiple life attempts we have

The wonderfully named Commander Challenger
Some shonky Australian housekeepers
Chocolates poisoned with cocaine
Some wonderful repartee between Hastings and Miss Lemon in the adaptation
Missing pilots
Love letters and secret marriages
Lost wills
Fake deaths and mad ex-husbands

Peril At End House – The Covers

There are quite a few foreign covers in this lot – some French, an Italian and even an Arabic (?) one. Also two FABULOUS pulp fiction covers from the 1950’s or 60’s!

The Recipe – Dry Martini

‘What about a cocktail?’ I suggested. ‘It’s just about the time.’

‘Well—’ She hesitated. ‘Thanks very much.’

‘Martini?’

‘Yes, please—dry Martini.’

I went off. On my return, after having ordered the drinks, I found Poirot and the girl engaged in animated conversation.

‘Imagine, Hastings,’ he said, ‘that house there—the one on the point—that we have admired so much, it belongs to Mademoiselle here.’

‘Indeed?’ I said, though I was unable to recall having expressed any admiration. In fact I had hardly noticed the house. ‘It looks rather eerie and imposing standing there by itself far from anything.’

‘It’s called End House,’ said the girl. ‘I love it—but it’s a tumble-down old place. Going to rack and ruin.’

Agatha Christie, Peril at End House

Dry Martini

Print Recipe

A classic dry martini

Author: Taryn Nicole

Ingredients

Scale

2 1/2 ounces Gin, I used Four Pillars Cousin Vera Gin
1/2 ounce dry vermouth. I used Noilly Prat
Green olive or a lemon twist to garnish
Ice cubes
Ice

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

Combine the gin and vermouth in a mixing glass full of ice cubes

Stir them to combine.

Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Garnish with an olive (or two) on a cocktail stick.

Notes

If you are not a fan of olives you can also garnish with a lemon twist

Other Food Mentioned in Peril at End House

Cup of Chocolate

Bacon and eggs (as per every other Poirot)

Marmalade, coffee and rolls.

Good champagne (of couse darling!)

Tisane

Chocolates

Brioches

Chocolate eclairs

I LOVED this book! It was probably my favourite so far and the adaptation is also mwah chef’s kiss perfect!

If you are reading along, next up is Lord Edgware Dies.

Have a great week and happy reading!

12
Jul
2021

Damn The Weather – The Sittaford Mystery

categories: Cocktail, Dining With The Dame, Gin

Hello crime readers and food lovers! Today we are drinking with the Dame because the Sittaford Mystery, as wonderful a story as it is, (and it is an absolute cracker) did not have the most inspiring food within its pages. So, I am playing with the atmospherics of the book and sharing a cocktail called Damn The Weather with Dame Agatha.

The Sit-tea -ford Mystery?

Despite having hardly any food and passing references to generic cocktails, what the Sittaford Mystery has in abundance is tea:

p73 – A good cry and good cup of tea – there’s nothing to beat them, and a nice cup of tea you shall have at once, my dear
p74 – I’ll send the tea up to you
p75 cup of tea
p 76 Strong tea, bread and butter. Devonshire cream and hard-boiled eggs
p 86 I ought to be able to produce a quiet cup of tea,
p178 Tea was laid ready. Mrs Willett poured out
p179 She must be sipping tea with that determined ladykiller Captain Wyatt
p186 A cup of tea

Despite its prevalence, there was no way I was going to do a post on the perfect cup of tea. Least of all because I don’t like it.

And bread and butter and hard-boiled eggs also seem a little….well…basic.

Next to tea, this is quite a boozy book with more than one reference being made to generic “cocktails” and also to brandy. I found a recipe on Difford’s for a cocktail called Damn The Weather which seemed very fitting to the setting of the book. Let’s see why.

The Sittaford Mystery – The Setting

The scene that met his eyes was typical of the English countryside as depicted on Christmas cards and in old fashioned melodramas. Everywhere was snow, deep drifts of it….up here on the fringe of Dartmoor it had attained a depth of several feet”

– The Sittaford Mystery, Agatha Christie

Sittaford is a tiny village, pretty much cut off from the rest of the world due to the terrible weather. Which makes it the perfect setting for one of Christie’s closed circle mysteries.

The Sittaford Mystery – The Plot

Mrs. Willett, the winter tenant of Captain Trevelyan, and her daughter Violet have invited guests for afternoon tea. After eating, the group decide to do a bit of table-turning (ie summoning the dead). A message comes from beyond telling them that Captain Trevelyan is dead.

A Short Aside on Table Turning

To my mind table-turning has to be the most inefficient way of contacting the spirits ever. From what I can gather the table rocks back and forth for each letter…so even to spell out the first part of the message TREV DEAD that is 20 + 18 +5 +22 rocks of a table. 65 rocks of a table to spell a four-letter word? No thank you. How long did that take? How bored do you have to be for that to become viable entertainment? I mean even trapped in a snow storm Dartmoor in the 1920’s I would be spelling out H-E-L-L -N -O on the table turning.

Anyway, after they have spent HOURS ( my words, not Christie’s) getting that 8 letter message, Major Burnaby, the Captain’s best friend decides to trek the 6 miles on foot to the Captain’s house to make sure he is all right.

He is not.

Trev is indeed dead, having been hit over the head with a sandbag. Estimated time of death? Five twenty-five. The exact same time as the ghostly message from beyond.

(Cue spooky X-files type music).

As if that is not enough, we also have:

An errant nephew being arrested for the murder
An escaped criminal
A reporter keen to get a good story
The mystery of just why the Willetts wanted to rent Sittaford House in the first instance
Retired police inspectors
Newspaper prizes
Boots hidden in the chimney
Aunts in the know and,
Maybe my favourite Christie heroine yet, the adorably plucky Emily Trefusis. (I am going to forgive her madly standing by her man, even though he is an idiot) because I love everything else about her.

The Sittaford Mystery has an average rating of 3.76 on Good Reads and comes in at # 26 at the time of writing on the All About Agatha podcast rankings. I feel Iike it a bit better than that but, I have not read all the books yet!.

The Covers

The covers for The Sittaford Mystery (called The `Murder at Hazelmoor in the United States) are amazing!

I love the nods to the table-turning at the weather and also the dead body on the carpet. I also like that the French version is called 5:25. You might also be wondering why some of the titles are called Murder At Hazelmoor and not the Sittaford Mystery. This was because the American publishers of the book thought their audience would prefer murder to mystery. Tell me, which title do you prefer?

The Recipe – Damn The Weather

You can find the Difford’s guide recipe here.

Other Food Mentioned in The Sittaford Mystery

Whisky and soda
Tea, bread and butter, Devonshire Cream and hard-boiled eggs
Eggs and bacon (i think every book thus far has referenced b&e)
Cold tongue, pickles, stilton, biscuits and soup
Beer
Bullseyes
Pate sandwiches

Oh, so maybe there was more food than I remembered! Still the Damn the Weather was a fabulous cocktail.

Just a quick note on the adaptation of The Sittaford Mystery. It’s kind of terrible. For some reason, they made it a Miss Marple instead of a stand-alone mystery as written. And to be honest Miss Marple does not do a lot. It’s worth a watch but it is not the best Christie adaptation out there.

Next up in the Christie list is Peril at End House for anyone who wants to read along.

Have a great week!

12
Apr
2021

The Red Signal Cocktail

categories: Cocktail, Dining With The Dame, Vodka

The Red Signal Cocktail came about by a bit of an accident. I recently tried to make a cocktail called the Seamist. Except, I could not get some of the ingredients so I had to improvise. The finished version looked beautiful and tasted lovely. It is the exact sweet/sour fruity taste that I love in a cocktail plus a tinge of dryness from the cranberry and a touch of bitterness from the grapefruit.

But there was something about it that was not right. And it bugged me for days on end. It tasted great, it looked beautiful. So what was wrong with it?

She Comes in Colours Everywhere

Let’s digress for a moment. As a child, I was OBSESSED with paint charts. I have already mentioned that I was a weird only child. But I don’t think I have mentioned that my parents would quite often spend their weekends going to display homes and DIY stores and inevitably during these excursions, I would pick up a paint chart (or two). I would then try to memorise all the names and the matching colours. And then get them to test me on the way home. Or during the week. Yes. School wasn’t enough. I wanted to be tested on random things outside of school as well.

For a while there I wanted to be the person who named those colours. Actually, you know what? I still do want that job! So, believe me when I say that I know my Paris Creek (pale slate green grey) from my Camisole Quarter (pale pink) to my Shampoo (mid Blue).

I. Know. My. Colours.

And the colour of this cocktail is not a Seamist. No wonder I felt in my deepest soul that there was something wrong with it!

Seamist is a pale grey green with a tiny touch of blue.

And I think we can all agree that this cocktail is possibly the very opposite colour of a greeny-grey.

So, the name of Seamist had to go. Life is hard enough at the moment without having additional cognitive dissonance caused by the colour of a cocktail! And because I had played around with the ingredients, it wasn’t a true Seamist anyway.

So, then the dilemma became what to call it.

The Red Signal

Luckily, for all of us, I happen to be reading The Hounds of Death. This is a book of short stories by Agatha Christie where each story has a spooky or supernatural twist. I am still undecided on what to do with the volumes of Agatha Christie’s short stories. When I started the Dining With The Dame series, I only ever considered her novels. And believe me, it’s hard enough to find food references to blog in some of the novels, let alone something a tenth of the size!

But, lo and behold, in that collection, there is a story called The Red Signal.

Is a tale of

Premonitions and intuitions
Seances
Falling in love with the wrong person
Madness and murder
And a weird sixth sense called The Red Signal!

Now…you tell me Isn’t The Red Signal a much better name for this cocktail?

The Recipe

The Red Signal Cocktail

Print Recipe

A sweet sour cocktail inspired by the Agatha Christie short story – The Red Signal.

Author: Taryn Nicole
Prep Time: 3 minutes
Total Time: 3 minutes
Yield: 1 1x
Category: Cocktails
Method: Shake

Ingredients

Scale

3 parts cranberry juice

3 parts pink grapefruit juice

2 parts vodka

Lemon and lime quarters

Ice cubes

Mixed berries for garnish

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

Shake the juices and vodka in a cocktail shaker over ice.

Gently muddle the lemon and lime quarters in a highball glass to release some of their citrus oils and some juice. Add ice cubes to the glass.

Strain the cocktail into the glass and give a light stir.

Garnish with mixed berries of your choice.

Other food mentioned in The Red Signal

Welsh Rarebit

Have a great week friends and remember if you feel “the red signal” pay it some heed!

Or make this cocktail!

28
Mar
2021

Cherry Brandy – Murder at the Vicarage

categories: Dining With The Dame, Drinks, Marple

Hello crime readers and food lovers! Today we are drinking with Dame Agatha and Miss Jane Marple. The beverage of choice as we journey to St Mary Mead and murder most foul will be homemade cherry brandy.

I must confess, I was not looking forward to Miss Marple. For all his pomposity, I very much like Hercule Poirot and I love the interplay between Poirot, Hastings and Inspector Japp. Poirot and Japp are also crime-fighting professionals which gives them some cred.

I also like the pluckiness of the female heroines we have met so far like Bundle and Anne Beddingfield and the adventure-seeking Tuppence. Miss Marple though? Has always struck me as being just an old biddy busy body. So I was delighted to read this very early on in The Murder at The Vicarage.

“My duty,” said Griselda. “My duty as the Vicaress. Tea and scandal at four-thirty.”

“Who is coming?”

Griselda ticked them off on her fingers with a glow of virtue on her face. “Mrs Price Ridley, Miss Wetherby, Miss Hartnell, and that terrible Miss Marple.”

“I rather like Miss Marple, ” I said. “She has, at least, a sense of humour.”

“She’s the worst cat in the village,” said Griselda.

Then a bit later on:

There is no detective in England equal to a spinster lady of uncertain age with plenty of time on her hands.”

Knowing that other people shared my view made me like this book a lot more than I thought I would. And I really liked this book! Despite Marple.

The Murder At The Vicarage – The Plot

Colonel Protheroe has been murdered. With a gun. In the study of the Vicarage. It seems like no one in St Mary Mead liked the Colonel. Even the vicar had been overheard saying that anyone who killed him would be doing the world a service.

As if that’s not all, we have:

Shennanigans with the handsome painter who is setting all the female heart’s aflutter
Suspicious husbands
A girl called Lettice. Maybe this is only interesting to me, given I was very nearly called Romaine.
Irregularities in the church accounts
False confessions aplenty
A mysterious woman in the village aptly called Mrs Lestrange
Suitcases containing stolen silverware and picric acid found in the woods
Threatening phone calls
Slashed paintings

It might actually be a good thing that the wicked cat Miss Marple is around to bring the villains to justice!

I LOVED the sense of humour in this book:

Unblushingly I suggested a glass of vintage port. I have some very fine old vintage port. Eleven o’clock in the morning is not the usual time for drinking port but I did not think that mattered with Inspector Slack. It was, of course, cruel abuse of the vintage port but one must not be squeamish about such things.

Murder in The Vicarage – The Covers

There are some truly bonkers covers for this book. My favourite of course is Tom Adams’ surrealist vision for Fontana which features a tennis racquet embodied as a vicar. More disturbing is the cover bottom right which makes it look as if it might have been the KKK who put Colonel Protheroe away!

Even stranger – in these early covers? Not a Marple in sight! As much as I am not really a fan, what kind of sexist ageist BS is that?

Murder at The Vicarage – On The Screen

Murder at the Vicarage featuring Geraldine McEwan as Miss Marple is on You Tube.

Persons of note in the episode are:

Mark Gatiss as Ronald Hawes the church curate.
Derek Jacobi as Colonel Protheroe
Jane Asher as Mrs Lester
Tim McInnerny as Reverend Leonard Clement
Miriam Margolyes as Mrs Price-Ridley

“Of course, of course” said Miss Marple. “I quite understand. Won’t you sit down? And might I offer you a little glass of cherry brandy? My own making. A recipe of my grandmother’s”

– Murder at The Vicarage

The Recipe – Cherry Brandy

Unlike Miss Marple, my grandmothers didn’t hand me down a recipe for cherry brandy so I had to find one on the internet. I used this recipe from Larder Love and I really liked the result. Not a bit like that awful cherry cough syrup which was my fear! I popped in two star-anise as well as the cinnamon called for in the recipe. The resulting cherry brandy had a lovely subtle spiciness to it.

Other Food Mentioned in The Murder At The Vicarage

“Oh, we’ll go!” she said cheerfully. “A glass or two of homemade liqueur is just what one needs on Sunday evening. I think it’s Mary’s blancmange that is so frightfully depressing. It tastes like something out of a mortuary”.

Whisky and Soda

The next book, if you are reading along, is The Sittaford Mystery. Snuggle in, this one will see us snowbound in a tiny village on Dartmoor.

Have a great week!

28
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!

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…

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.

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.

“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

Other Food Mentioned in The Seven Dials Mystery

Quails
Omelette (I feel every Christie book so far has mentioned an omelette)
The lightest thing in souffles
Grapes for dessert
Oysters
Lobster
Dry biscuits

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