Macaroni burgers

I don’t know what possessed me to look in Beverly Pepper’s Potluck Cookery (Faber and Faber, 1955) for a secondary use for pasta and cheese sauce, but I’m glad I did.

Notes

• I made exactly the amount stated, for a change.
• This combined with some veg, was enough for 9 1 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch burgers.
• I used black olives, as I didn’t have any pimento ones.
• I used brown bread crumbs, so as per, there’s no ‘golden’, there’s just brown and darker brown.
• I only managed one layer of egg and breadcrumb because after that point, everything is a sticky mess.

Results

Firstly,  God bless Beverly Pepper for delivering us from bland food – I felt these were almost over-seasoned. Perhaps green olives or a little spinach (or other finely chopped green veg) would have been an improvement. The olives and parsley really cut the richness of the flavour, although I was unable to finish the portion of four.  (The rest I froze, I will update this when I cook them to see how they fare after a month or so in the freezer.)

I must confess, I felt a little dirty making this. It’s quite step from the spaghetti frittata which normally uses up any leftover pasta I have. Thank the Lord for the internet and a discussion board which drew my attention to this. In comparison, my efforts are positively spartan.

Macaroni’d by Elly

Cheese and Tomato Savouries

These were my contribution to our Canape party’s ‘Guess The Cheesy Decade’ competition, where 3 canapes were made, from various decades and guests were asked to, well, guess the decade. I can’t remember what the consensus was on when this recipe was from, but I don’t think anyone got it right. The recipe is from Modern Cookery Illustrated by Lydia Chatterton (Odham’s Press Ltd), and my edition is a 1947 reprint.

Notes

• I made 3 times this amount, yielding 12 savouries.
• Not being sure what patty tins are, never mind actually having any in my kitchen, I used fairycake papers instead.

Rather unfortunately I appear to not have a photo of these. However, if you can imagine irregularly formed splodges of cheese and tomato on rounds of toast you’re pretty much there. They tasted a little like vomit – the parmesan didn’t work well here, and the overall effect was not great. I wouldn’t make these again.

To make up for the lack of photos of these savouries, here’s some scans from the source book:

Party Pyramids

Another of my contributions to the canape party – this comes from our old friend Make a Meal of Cheese. Is it just me or do the prawns in the picture below look kind of weird? Like…too pink?

Really very straighforward stuff – mostly involves chopping things up, and also finding something in one’s kitchen that will cut a slice of bread into a 4″ circle.  That was harder than I thought! Once assembled they looked like this:

Photo courtesy of Sarah

(I suspect this photo is actually from the day after, as it’s daylight outside. It appears to be the only evidence we have of their brief existence so it’ll have to do).

Tasting notes

I didn’t actually eat any of these, because 1) I was already drunk when I made them, and 2) they were kind of huge and pointless. You wouldn’t have a whole one to yourself, but to pick at it and eat, say just the top 2 layers was a bit odd, and bits keep falling off anyway. So nobody really ate them, and they sat there looking majestic and sad and drying up as everything else around them got eaten. They seem kind of for show anyway; more a display of colour than something intended to be delicious. You can hardly look a them and wonder what it’s going to taste like – it’s just familiar ingredients piled up with some bread. No seasoning, no sauces, nada.  If any of our readers were at the party and tried these can they please come forward in the comments box please? You can remain anonymous if you like.

Partied by Alix

Savoury Éclairs

This was my entry in the ‘Guess the Decade of the Cheese-Based Canape’ contest, held at our party.

I am delighted to have an opportunity to make these, which I have fancied since my first browsing of Florence Greenberg’s Jewish Cookery Book. First published by the Jewish Chronicle Publications in published in 1947, I have the 6^th edition, from 1958, a family tome with a lovely range of recipes from  bloaters devilled to mock duck to nut frappe.

Despite having shrieked at countless episodes of Come Dine with Me, I didn’t manage to do a practise run of choux pastry earlier in the week, so at 1pm on Saturday, it was fail or fail time.

Savoury Éclairs

Make a choux paste (see page 297), omitting the vanilla essence. Put in a forcing bag with a half-inch plain tube and force into a greased baking tray – not too close together, and about 3 ½ inches long and bake in a moderately hot oven (400 degrees, Regulo 5) for 30 – 40 minutes.

Remove from the tin, slit down the sides with a sharp pointed and leave on a cake tray to cool; then fill with any savoury mixture.

Suggestions for fillings:

1. Remove skin and bone from some sardines, pound thoroughly with tomato ketchup, and season with salt and pepper.
2. Pounded hard-boiled egg and tomato, moistened with salad cream
3. Tiny roll of smoked salmon
4. Soft cream cheese, with chopped gherkin, olive, or chives.
5. Mix 2oz grated cheese with 4 pounded anchovies, a little mustard, and sufficient milk to make a soft paste.
6. Green peas or macedoine of vegetables mixed with cheese, in a thick white sauce.

So… I slightly re-interpreted suggestion 6, by making a filling of  very thick cheese sauce and adding some shredded spinach.

I also don’t own a ‘forcing’ bag and instead made buns. The amount of pastry made 12 buns.

Choux Paste

(for Cream Buns, Éclairs etc)

Flour 4oz
Butter or margarine 2oz
Water ¼ pint
Pinch of salt
Three eggs
Vanilla Essence

Use a saucepan  to make the paste, one large enough to allow the eggs to be beaten in. Put in the butter, pour over the boiling water, and when the butter has melted stir in the sieved flour, mixing very thoroughly with a wooden spoon, and stir over a gentle heat until the mixture-which is called a panada-thickens and leaves the sides of the pan quite clean. Cool slightly, then beat in the eggs one at a time. Beat very well and add the vanilla essence.

• I halved the recipe which made 12 profiterole-sized buns.
• Why doesn’t it say in the recipe that I’m supposed to boil the water?
• Please note this recipe has been copied out exactly. (I.e. Yes, it is punctuated exactly like this.)
• I actually beat the eggs together before adding them as I feared making a horrid mess if I misjudged the temperature of the ‘panada’.
• I wasn’t sure if it was thickening sufficiently so I cross-checked with the choux recipe from the Reader’s Digest Cookery Year, which has such excellent descriptions for the beginner. I was reassured by the instructions but that recipe had different proportions of ingredients. I found this very worrying.
• I baked the buns in the oven for about 20 minutes.
• I then left them to cool for about half an hour.
• Then I realised they were still a bit pale and gooey looking at the bottom so put them back in the oven on a low heat for another 15 minutes.
• Assembly at Alix’s involved slicing the buns open, forcing in some filling with a blunt knife and then sprinkling some more cheese on top and heating them in the oven.
• They may have ended up slightly over cooked.

Conclusion

Success! They were so tasty that I was glad a couple of our lovely guests had left to attend other events so I could eat two. Yes, I am a mean drunk. I was  interested (and pleased) to see that the consensus was strongly that they were from the 1970s. Probably if I had served them cold, they would have had a different effect. Anyway, they were worth the effort and I am no longer scared of choux pastry.

Chouxed by Elly

Eggs a la Suisse

This comes from the oldest of my cookbooks – a recent score from Help The Aged. It’s C.E Francatelli’s Cook’s Guide, first published by Richard Bentley of London in 1860 (as far as I can tell), and this edition is from 1864. Part of me is incredulous  that I would find a  145 year old book for £1.50, but it appears I did. It’s a fascinating read, the vast majority of the dishes look like they would be pretty hard to make, for want of obscure or obsolete cuts of meat, brands of seasoning or kitchen equipment.  The end of the book does have a series of adverts, including one for Adams and Son, Kitchen Outfitters of Haymarket, and one for Crosse and Blackwell (‘Purveyors in Ordinary to Her Majesty’), both merchants advertising a staggering array of goods unfamiliar to modern cooks (see Flickr for images from the book).

The layout of the book is dense, and complicated. Each recipe is a single paragraph, with no ingredient list – to know what is in a dish requires the entire recipe to be read through to the end. Many of the recipes read like a Choose Your Own Adventure, for example Salmon Fillets à l’Indienne (recipe No 205)  requires one to also make Indian Sauce (No. 73),  which in turn requires some Tomata (sic)  Sauce (No. 21), which again requires you to use an ounce of glaze from No. 14, which is a second boiling of stock, so you have to have first made some stock (various recipes). It’s exhausting. There’s no helpful pictures either, just minute woodcuts of dishes like Croustade of Larks.

The book has a chapter of different ways to prepare eggs, and this is one that sounded practical (it also sounds pretty gross, but in for a penny, in for a pound, eh).

Eggs a la Suisse

Spread the bottom of a silver dish with two ounces of fresh butter; cover this with rather thin slices of fresh Gruyère or any other cheese; break eight whole eggs upon the cheese without disturbing the yolks;  season with grated nutmeg, mignionette pepper, and salt; pour a gill of double cream on the surface; strew the top with about 2 ounces of grated cheese, and set the eggs in the oven to bake for about ten minutes; pass the hot salamander over the top, and serve with strips of very thin dry toast separate on a plate.

How this looked before cooking:

And after:

And served up:

Notes

• I halved the amounts.
• Weirdly, I couldn’t lay my hands on a single item from my vast collection of silver dishes, so had to use a ceramic dish.  Hard times indeed.
• Very tricky to spread an ounce of butter evenly. Even worse when you realise you have buttery fingers and the radio is playing The Corrs and there’s no way to change the station. I’m telling you; I suffer for this blog.
• A gill is a quarter of a pint.  Even halved this seemed like an awful lot of cream.
• I don’t have a salamander. I’m not even sure what one is (Adams and Son sell them though). I guessed that putting the dish under the grill for a few minutes would suffice. Does anyone have a salamander?
• My oven was heated to 180°C
• I used medium mature cheddar on the top.
• No dry toast here – I had a soft brown roll.
• Didn’t know what mignionette pepper was, so used black pepper. Appears these are one and the same, hurrah for lucky guesswork!

The Taste

I was expecting this to be inedible as it is incredibly rich, but it was rather nice. Admittedly I could only eat a small portion before starting to feel queasy and I’m not sure I can face the other three quarters of the dish that’s leftover, but the cream works nicely with the albumen, the yolk firms up nicely, and the Gruyère is vaguely chewy on the bottom and the cheese on top crisps up like sugar on a crème brûlée. It occurs to me that that’s a fairly accurate description of the dish – savoury crème brûlée. With a fried egg in it.

Suissed by Alix

Bacon and Sweetcorn Pudding

New Casserole Treasury was written by Lousene Rousseau Brunner and published in 1970 by the Cookery Book Club by arrangement with Harper & Row. I bought it for £1.50 in a church charity shop in Dalston last May and have decided to try and make something which actually sounds as though it was conceived in another era, rather than my usual cop-out.

The first owners of my copy were a newly-wed couple in 1971, apparent by the dedication at the front of the book and the author has left space throughout the book for note-taking, some of which has been put to good use. At the end of the ‘Meat’ section:  11/10.71. Tried pork chops in cider. (NO.)

Bacon and Sweetcorn Pudding

2 6oz packets frozen sweetcorn, cooked or 2 medium tins whole-kernel corn
3 eggs, well-beaten
3 tablespoons thin cream
1 teaspoon salt
Dash pepper
2 tablespoons minced onions
¼ teaspoon baking powder
Thinly sliced cheddar
3 slices bacon cut in 1-inch squares

Mix the sweetcorn, eggs, cream, seasonings, onions, and baking powder. Pour into a greased medium casserole. Cover with cheese, cut to fit, and then with bacon squares. Bake for 40-45 minutes in a moderate oven, 350 degrees, or until firm. Serves  6.

Notes

• I made a smaller portion as per – probably about a third.
• Apart from that, all very simple.

Conclusion

This didn’t smell particularly appetising when it was baking but actually turned out rather well. This was mostly because half of the onion had been used a few days before and the remainder (used in this dish) had been stored in the fridge with the resultant mellowing of flavour, particularly the acid notes. I left it in the oven a little longer than the recipe suggested so that the bacon crisped up – I hate flabby bacon. My only criticism of the flavour was that with bacon and cheese, it was rather salty. If made differently – with a deeper dish and subsequently a smaller top surface area, this wouldn’t happen.

It isn’t what springs to mind at the word casserole (which I only learnt was a type of vessel, not a type of stew, about a year ago). My mini-version, in particular was so thin, it was more like a pancake. I ate half for supper and the second two quarters for breakfast over the next two days, reheated in a dry frying pan and stuffed into half a wholemeal pitta bread. Although I found it very enjoyable, I’m not convinced it has any advantages over a frittata – they are, in my experience faster and contain less fat. (If I’m going to eat something that would make a dietician fret, I want it to taste like it.)

Cheese Biscuits

I realise one of my fellow bloggers has had a crack at these before (from another tome, I’m using ‘Cookies and Biscuits’ in  the Good Housekeeping Institute’s Cookery Compendium, Waverly 1955) but I’m going to a picnic tomorrow and anyway, I love them. Such a ominous illustration though! Curry knots and savoury plaits are clearly the snacks of doom. The little ‘boat shaped’ (I’m assuming that’s ’50s cookbook talk for ‘pointy oval’) cheese biscuits appear to be about to fall into the abyss.

Cheese Straws and Biscuits

Ingredients

3oz flour
Salt and cayenne pepper
½ an egg yolk
1 ½ oz butter or margarine
2oz grated cheese

Sieve the dry ingredients and rub in the fat very lightly with the fingertips. Add the cheese and mix well.  Beat the yolk with about 1 tablespoon of water and mix into the dry ingredients, to give a stiff dough. Knead lightly, then place on a floured board and roll out into a strip about 4 inches wide. Trim and cut across into “straws”. Cut rings from the trimmings.

Place biscuits on a greased tin and bake in a moderately hot oven until golden brown and firm – about 7 – 10 minutes. When cold place straws through rings, and serve hot or cold.

This cheese pastry is the basis of many savoury biscuits, and can be cut into triangles, boat shapes etc  as seen in the picture.

Notes

• I  followed the recipe exactly including taking the advice of the last paragraph and making some triangular ones and some round ones. (I’m easily amused.)
• If you’re using a cutter, keep some of the yolk and water mix by you as you work, so when you squeeze the trimmings back together to roll out again and cut some more, you can add a little, to prevent the dough from becoming too dry and cracking. (You may need more than 1/2 yolk per batch anyway.)

Conclusion

They worked perfectly –  although I may have overdone it slightly with the cayenne pepper.

Baked by Elly

Notes

· I exactly what it said, except that I took the advice of the last paragraph and made some triangular ones and some round ones. (I’m easily amused.)

Conclusion

They worked perfectly – although I may have overdone it slightly with the cayenne pepper.

Spinach Cannelloni

Here’s one I cooked about a month ago – the stodge was perfect at the time but now it’s salad weather and the idea of a creamy pasta dish is less appealing, so please cast your mind’s back to chillier times in order to give this recipe the attention it deserves.  It’s from The Sainsbury Book of CHEESE -  including Cheesecakes and Fondues by Rhona Newman, first published 1982 (this ed. 1983), so a fairly recent resource, with generally sensible recipes .  The difference between this book and Make A Meal of Cheese from 10 years previous is notable – where MAMOC was cheddar-centric here we have recipes for a range of cheeses (unsurprising really, given the publisher).  There’s still some slightly icky recipes (Sardine Fish Cream?) and some where you feel you’d have liked them to try a bit harder (I’m looking at you Garlic Sausage Spears, aka slice of garlic sausage wrapped round cream cheese on a cocktail stick).

Spinach Cannelloni

500g frozen chopped spinach, thawed

175g matured Cheddar, grated

50g fresh breadcrumbs

salt and pepper

grated nutmeg

8 sheets lasagne

25g butter

25g plain flour

300ml milk

1 teaspoon made mustard

Drain the spinach thoroughly and mix with 50g of the cheese, 40g of the breadcrumbs and salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste.

Cook the lasagne in plenty of boiling, salted water for 15 minutes or until just tender. Drain and rinse with cold water. Cut each piece in half and lay on a clean tea-towel.

Divide the spinach mixture between the lasagne and roll up. Place in a greased shallow ovenproof dish.

Melt the butter in a pan, stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute. Slowly blend in the milk, then heat, stirring until the sauce thickens . Add 75g of the cheese, the mustard, and salt and pepper to taste.

Pour over the cannelloni. Mix the remaining breadcrumbs and cheese and sprinkle over the sauce.

Bake in a moderately hot oven (190°C/ 375°F/ Gas Mark 5) for 20 to 30 minutes or until the topping is golden.

Serves 4.

Results

Notes etc

• This was really really delicious – it’s a very acceptable vegetarian main course that I would happily serve friends
• I didn’t bother making up mustard; I just sprinkled powder into the mix. I couldn’t decide whether this would be more or less potent than mixing some up properly, but looking back I think I could have put more in. But then again I appear to like things flavoured very heavily, so perhaps that’s not to everyone’s taste.
• The assembly of the lasagne and filling is messier than you’d think. Have a decent sized worktop free!
• If you are hungry whilst making this the urge to just eat some of the spinach and cheese mix will be strong. Resist!
• I used up more of the shop-bought breadcrumbs from the Welsh Eggs – this worked alright, but I’m pretty sure that it would be worth the effort of making your own breadcrumbs for this recipe.
• In conclusion – really tasty, pretty darn easy, generally a winner.  Perhaps the old ones aren’t the best after all….

Nommed by Alix

Chocolate-Cheese Fudge Cake

Back in April, you might remember Alix and I hijacked Chris and Vicky’s bbq with a vintage bake-off. I took along this lemon butter cake which turned out going down well. However, I didn’t feel confident whilst the cake was cooling so I made a second cake – three columns along from the other one so another from “Female Cookbook 1978″.

INGREDIENTS

125g (4oz) butter
125g (4oz) processed cream cheese
1 cup caster sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 cup chopped walnuts
85g (2.5oz) Van Houten cocoa
300g self raising flour
0.25 tsp bicarbonate of sofa
0.25 tsp salt
1 cup sour milk
whipped cream

Method
To make frosting – heat 1/2 cup cream with 60g (1oz) butter until the latter has melted. Remove from heat. Gradually add 3.5 cups sifted icing sugar and 0.25tsp salt. Add 85g (2.5oz) melted Windmolen cooking chocolate and 1tsp vanilla essence. Beat all together over ice until thickened to spreading consistency.

For the cake – Cream butter and cream cheese with brown and caster sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in walnuts. Fold in sifted flour, cocoa, bicarbonate of sofa and salt alternately with sour milk. Fill into well-greased and lightly floured 20cm (8in) sandwich tins. Bake in a moderate oven for 45 mins. Turn out onto cake cooler and when cool, sandwich cake with sufficient stiffly whipped cream and cover with frosting.

The result

Notes

- no walnuts, I *think* I used hazelnuts instead.
- I loathe cream so didn’t bother with the frosting at all. I do hate recipes which don’t list all the ingredients at the start and run the risk of leaving you in the lurch when you get into the ‘guts’ of the recipe.
- Van Houten cocoa (and Windmolen chocolate for that matter) – this is like when American chocolate cake recipes harp on about “dutch processed cocoa”, whatever that is. Don’t worry yourselves, I always use ‘regular’ cocoa and it’s fine. I can’t think if I’ve ever even seen specific Dutch cocoa, even in Waitrose ponce section full of Charbonnel & Walker…
- did I mention I hated cream? I sandwiched these together with a basic cream cheese icing rather than cream.
- How to sour milk= tip a tablespoon of vinegar in it (I use rice vinegar – I think most people use cider vinegar. I’ve used rice vinegar mostly because I generally have some. I did invest in cider vinegar a while ago and I actually didn’t like it as much in it’s role as curdler).

Conclusion

This makes a large cake when both parts wedged together. I felt like the lemon cake I made earlier hadn’t risen enough and was too flat, and this chocolate cake went the other way! I still feel like I’m yet to find the happy medium – am sure this doesn’t happen when making Victoria sponges. Or perhaps it does? I really enjoyed the anarchy~ of mixing butter and cream cheese to start! I don’t think I’ve ever done this before and it made the cake kinda crumbly.I stuck with the cream cheese theme by making a cream cheese icing but perhaps this would have been better if I’d just gone the whole hog and made a chocolate filling? Or maybe orange – there’s an orange cream filling in the cake recipe immediately proceeding this one. Oh for goodness sakes, I must cook something other than cake sometime… let me just recover from the indie flu and I’ll see what I can do. Ehhh. Why didn’t this auto publish when it was supposed to~

Tian de Courgettes a la Provencale

It’s not quite courgette season yet – they still need plenty of seasoning so this recipe by Escoffier (Paul Hamlyn, 1934) is perfect.

Tian de Courgettes a la Provencale

The name tian is given to a round dish, which is popular in Provence; it is about 2 inches in height and of various sizes.

Ingredients

1lb courgettes
Salt
Pepper
Pinch Nutmeg
Oil
Pinch Garlic
4 oz rice
½ pint water
Grated cheese
Chopped parsley
1 slice bread

Peel and thinly slice the courgettes, season with salt, pepper and nutmeg and cook gently in the oil with the garlic. Cook the rice in the boiling water for 18 minutes. Mix the courgettes and rice together, add 2 – 3 tablespoons of grated cheese and a little chopped parsley. Put in the tian.

Dip a slice of bread into the water, press well to extract the moisture and spread over the top. Sprinkle with grated cheese, brush with oil and brown in a moderate oven.

Note: In place of the tian, a soufflé or gratin dish could be used. [Thank God!]

• I took ‘a pinch’ to mean one very small clove – probably this was more than the recipe intended.
• I cooked the courgette in a pan with the lid on for about 10 minutes – shaking it occasionally for even cooking.
• I used brown bread and as I estimated the bread was supposed to cover the top of the dish entirely, I used one and a half slices, as the loaf was small.
• I used Cheddar, although I imagine Gruyere was the intended cheese.
• I tried baking it in the oven, but got bored with waiting for it to brown sufficiently and ended up finishing it off under the grill.
• The only oval dishes I own are very large so I used a small square one. (The portion showed below is half of the amount I cooked.)

Conclusion

I think when people rue the prevalence of Thai red curry etc, it’s this kind of  thing they miss. (Not, sadly, the fact that most such food in the UK bears little resemblance to the original dishes.) This was just so easy and satisfying. The seasoning, in particular, is fantastic – the nutmeg, courgette and cheese blend together perfectly. I wasn’t in love with the bread topping, although the brown bread I used was very light – I thought crumbs and cheese would have been more suitable but apart from that, the whole was  much more than the sum.   I’m also very happy with my decision to  have some thick tomato sauce with it.

Baked by Elly