Corn Chowder

Today we welcome another guest post by Cluedo – find her others here and here

As readers of my last post may have already twigged, I’m not a big fan of domestic goddess style cooking, so the She Quickie Cookbook with its faux feminist agenda is a bit of a red rag to me. Be a career woman AND a fabulous cook, and do it all in 15 mins to make your man happy. Hand me the vomit bowl.

But maybe I should not be so unkind, after all, working married women in the 60s were a bit of a novelty*. On the other hand, taking the mickey out of the cookbook is fun, so I thought I’d do it again. This time, I chose the Corn Chowder (cost: 3/9, calories: about 550 each). I had most of the ingredients, so I didn’t check on the pricing, although 3/9 would be £2.85 in today’s prices – I somehow doubt you could get all the necessary stuff for that money nowadays

Now for the cooking:

The recipe is nice and easy as you can see from the images below. I did actually try and be more organised this time, i.e. put all the stuff that I needed near me rather than what I usually do, which is run around frantically, pulling stuff from the fridge and the pantry like I only just realised now that the onions should go in with the minced meat rather than sitting unchopped at the back of my food box while the mince is nearly done. So I was quietly confident that my timing would be not too far off this time, after it took me more than double the time to make the Tomato Rarebit – bad Cluedo.

But again, no such luck.

Of course, I blame the cookbook: despite their near-anal description of things to collect and plates to warm up before you start, they completely omit that you would need a chopping board and that you need to peel the potato**. Also, I defy anyone but Antony Bourdain on coke to peel and slice an onion, dice 4 rashers and cut up 2 potatoes and 2 tomatoes in 3 minutes, especially if you need to peel the potatoes first. Or did they have pre-peeled potatoes back then? It also doesn’t help that Sainsbury’s fancy bacon comes fanned out in the pack rather than just stacked as it does with their cheap “I-Can’t Believe-This-Has-Pork-In-It”-water bacon. So you lose valuable time stacking them up to dice them in one go. Time is money, honey, especially if you’re working against the She-Quickie-Cookbook-Clock! Also, in which universe do potatoes cook in 10 minutes in not very much water, even when sliced?

Anyway, trying not to be too panicked by the quarter hour deadline, I proceeded apace, and it was all very straight-forward. I did start frying the onions, bacon, potatoes and tomatoes in the frying pan rather than as indicated in the sauce pan, which I always find weird. But that’s probably just me. I transferred the mix over when it was time to put in the sweetcorn & water. The fritters scared me a little bit, as I have a similar success rate with nice-looking fritters as with fried eggs, but surprisingly, they turned out ok. And were very yummy. I altered very little of the recipe – no cooking fat but sunflower oil for the fritters as I was out of Stork and prefer oil over fat anyway. I also used quite a lot more cheese than indicated, but that was because I was trying out lacto-free cheese for the first time and pigged out. Note: lacto-free cheese is bland, but works quite well as glue-cheese required for this dish. I halved the ingredients, and ate the lot alone, when I realised that it’s meant for four – which will go some way to explaining why I felt quite so full afterwards *burp*. But who quarters a tin of corn, and one rasher is never enough, in any circumstance.

It is nice and yummy, so if you’re looking for something quick and easy and comforting, it’s your ticket. It took me 27 minutes to prepare it, which is slightly better than last time. And the potato was still undercooked, albeit edible.

Err, and I do have to apologise for the lack of a picture – I was so hungry by the time I was finished that I simply forgot. Trust me, it looked nice, like the picture in the cookbook, just in colour.

*(not really, women have always worked, but that’s a yarn to be unspun somewhere else at another time…)

**they give you 2 minutes to collect all the stuff together. Hah, I laugh in your face Quickie Cookbook, I live in a house with 7 other people, my tin opener cannot be found that quickly. And cleanly.

Tomato Rarebit

Another guestpost by Cluedo (the first can be found here). Many thanks to her for attempting this dish. I bought both (yes, there are two) Quickie cookbooks in a charity shop in Crouch End for  £1 each.

It’s been a while since I had an adventure in the land of brewis, fidget pie, singin’ hinges and other stuff I have no idea what it is. This is partially due to the fact that I’ve been a lazy bastard too busy with other stuff, and partially due to Elly’s inability to chose a recipe for me, so I had to do it after all. Pffft… if you don’t do it yourself… But alas, Elly provided me with the perfect choice of book: the She Quickie Cookbook  from 1965, which suggests the kind of Martha-Stewart-cooking-goddess that makes me reach for the sick bag. Each of the photo-story recipes “gives a hot meal that can be prepared and cooked in 15 minutes”, as verified by “Good Housekeeping Institute”, who timed and tested each recipe (feeling nauseous already?).

Bacon Cornettes

Look at this wonderful thing! A friend liberated it from his grandmother’s bookshelves for me and I appreciate it so very much. If I had unlimited shelf space and an extra few hours in the week, I’d probably collect and blog about etiquette and entertaining manuals as well, but there’s only so much time a person should devote to horrified chuckling at kaleidoscopic interiors, conformist gender roles and devilled ham.

 

Spaghetti Bolognese

Collier’s Pie

It’s a bit late for Pie Month, but I did make this during February, but it’s taken me this long to write it up because [insert flimsy excuse here]. It’s from Good Things in England and has no definite date, though, given when GTIE was published, it was before 1931.

Danish Savoury Pie

Basic Fried Rice

Here’s another dish from Kenneth Lo’s Cheap Chow. I went for the Chinese classic of fried rice, which I’ve attempted before without reference to a recipe, with limited success. I figured starting at the very beginning when it came to fried rice might be a good idea, so Basic Fried Rice it is.

Fidget Pie

I’ve been feeling guilty about the fact that the info bit for this blog starts with ‘Adventures in the land of brewis, fidget pie, singin’ hinnies‘, yet we’ve never tried to make any of these dishes.  Something needed to be done about this, so the other Sunday myself and Sarah made Fidget Pie. We used a recipe from Good Things in England, a 1930 compendium of English cookery compiled by Florence White, which is currently available as a sleek looking reprint from the wonderful Persephone Books. The recipe is listed as ‘Mrs Dale’s Fidget Pie’, in the Specialities section under ‘Shropshire’.

Prawn and Bacon Quiche

This is from 500 Recipes for Electric Mixers and Blenders by Marguerite Patten (Hamlyn, 1972).There are loads of 500 Recipes… books around – they’re large, flimsy things, usually with yellowing pages, and quite a low budget look to them. I have this one, and a casseroles and stews one, which promises a lot and delivers little. But, on to the recipe. I like prawns, I like bacon, and I like quiche. So how did this recipe go so horribly wrong?

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.)