Mexican Gazpacho Salad

To go with the Camarones y Arroz Blanco as recently blogged I served this salad from Ursel and Derek Norman’s Salad Days (1975). I really like this book, and am looking forward to summer when I shall live entirely from its recipes. Here’s the recipe and picture:

Spanish Salad

This is from Ursel and Derek Norman’s Salad Days (1975), as featured on this blog in the summer. I decided tonight that I needed a salad, having spent the weekend eating nothing but crumpets, toast and pizza. It’s not an ideal diet, I fully concede, but dear lord, the closest I can get to fruit and veg when I’m that hungover is Lucozade Orange. So salad tonight. I wanted cheap and easy, and this with its limited ingredients fitted the bill nicely. Here’s the lovely seventies illustration and instructions:

Béchamel Chicken

After Alix’s success with salads, I was delighted to find a copy of Ursel and Derek Norman’s Chicken Feed (Fontana, 1979) for £1 in the RSPCA shop on the Hornsey Rd (prices for it online start at £18 – wha’?!) and even more delighted to find that it is full of delicious-sounding, easy dishes. I chose this one as 1) different to how I would normally make chicken 2) I could make it without shopping for extra ingredients.

Cucumber Salad

And…another from Salad Days. I think I shall try to work my way through the entire book. Including the Heringsalat. This was served with the Plaice in Savoury Custard, it cut through the rich custard but wasn’t quite right.

Cucumber Salad

This beautifully juicy salad with a taste of spring is very smooth on the palate, and is ideal with rice dishes or new buttered potatoes. The addition of dill gives it a slightly sweet and very delicate taste. A favourite with children.

Bohnensalat

This is another from Salad Days, as featured here. I ate it with the Quiche of Fail.

Bohnensalat

An Old German salad. This is my own recipe inherited from my mother, who inherited it from her mother, who I suspect inherited from her mother. However, this particular version I like to feel is distinguished by its simplicity. Smooth and soft, it can be served instead of a vegetable with just about any dish.

Salad Niçoise

Picked up this book in Oxfam recently – it’s from 1977, published by Fontana, called Salad Days by wife and husband team Ursel (recipes)  and Derek (illustrations) Norman. It’s the illustrations and general design that convinced me to buy it – it’s saturated with jaunty drawings of the food and preparation process, eccentrically coloured in, with a double-page spread for each recipe. Sometimes the recipes are supported by diagrams/ drawings – arrows pointing from one ingredient to the next, helping the cook understand how they should be combining the various bits and pieces. Or at least that’s the idea – I found them a little too whimsical to be practical. Basically, this book is the polar opposite of the last I cooked from, the densely packed, illustration light Francatelli’s Cook’s Guide.  No haphazardly coloured in pictures of coleslaw for him!