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?).

Crusted Cheese Pie

Well. It’s Pie Month again. Where better to find a suitable pie than in the classic Make A Meal Of Cheese? Yes, the recipe book that gave us the abject horror of the Hollow Cheese Loaf. Good idea. There’s no way that could go wrong. Here’s the instructions:

Coral Island Eggs recipe

As requested by in the comments on this post, here’s the recipe for Coral Island Eggs:

For 4-8 people you need:

8oz peeled shrimps

2oz butter or pork fat

2 egg whites

2 teaspoons Chinese (Shao Shing) wine, or sherry

2 teaspoons ginger juice from preserved ginger seasoning

8 slices thick white bread

4 hardboiled eggs

deep fat for frying

For garnish:

Parsley

1 Finely chop the shrimps and mix with butter

2 Add 1 egg white and mix in sherry, ginger juice and seasoning

3 Cut bread into diamond shapes, place a small mound of mixture on each piece

4 Halve hard-boiled eggs lengthwise, place 1 half, flat side down, on each mound, pressing mixture firmly round base

5 Brush all over with second egg white

6 Fry in deep fat, egg side downwards, turn over and continue cooking until bread is golden brown

7 Remove from fat, drain on absorbent paper

Cheese Hollow Loaf

Hello! It’s Alix! It’s been months! Sorry about that! Enough exclamation marks now, on to the recipe! (!)

Uses for Stale Bread and Etceteras for Soups

Inspired by a trip to the Imperial War Museum yesterday to see the Ministry of Food exhibition, I thought I would share two extracts from Florence Greenberg’s Jewish Cookery Book, (6th Edition, 1958). This book was first published in 1947 when rationing was still in effect and even more restrictively so, than during the war itself.

In the age of freezers, it’s far easier not to waste bread, but there are some new ideas here for things to do with breadcrumbs, just in case you were feeling uninspired.

Peanut butter and apple sandwich

Third and final vintage sandwich. Yes, more grated apple (I like apples!). I used an own brand of pb which I shall avoid in future as it was insufficiently crunchy.

Sweet Fillings
Peanut butter mixed with an equal amount of jam, honey, syrup or grated apple.

Haricot Bean Sandwich

Second sandwich of the week. Although aware of the popularity of ‘white bean dip‘ in the US, I was unsure how to how this recipe would turn out, mostly because I was using tinned beans which can sometimes have a tinny taste which requires a ton of garlic to get rid of it. Also from Florence Greenberg’s Jewish Cookery Book (Jewish Chronicle Publications, 1947).

Bean Filling

Mash some cooked haricot beans to a paste with a little butter or margarine, season with salt and pepper and flavour with any kind of savoury sauce or vegetable extract. Add a little chopped parsley, chopped watercress or powdered sage.

Apple and Raisin Sandwich

I set myself the tiny challenge of, instead of having nuked leftovers for work lunches, crafting a sandwich as per the specifications of one of my recipe books for 1 working week. All three sandwich recipes are from Florence Greenberg’s Jewish Cookery Book (Jewish Chronicle Publications, 1947) (For various reasons, this project was abandoned after 3 days. I really am an almighty flake.)

Squash Pie

I roasted half squash a couple of days ago, having used the other half in a stew and, as these were so good, decided to attempt another, similar recipe from the same book, Potluck Cookery by Beverley Pepper (Faber and Faber, 1955).

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.