Mandrang or Mandram

After buying 2 cucumbers in order to make one into a Chinese salad for a party, I decided to make the other into salad as well (as opposed to tzatziki  and a tzatziki  delivery system).  After checking the index of Modern Cookery For Private Families (first published in 1845, reissued in 2011 by Quadrille), I decided to make the cucumber dish with the oddest name.

I canot find out much about the words ‘mandram’ or ‘mandrang’ or who went to to where in the Caribbean to bring the recipe back to Acton. Most descriptions of this ‘salad-like hash’ (William Woys Weaver, Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, edited by Harlan Walker, 1991), lead back to Acton’s recipe, although I enjoyed the idea of it as  an ‘unfailing stimulant to the appetite‘. Food in England by Dorothy White (1945) has completely different recipe for ‘cucumber mandram’, so perhaps I’ll have a go at that another time.

Shoyu Fried Chicken

Yeah, so basically if it has soy sauce and is fried I want to eat it. Plus meat. This is another from Practical Shoyu Cooking.

Norwegian Cucumber Salad

I really love cucumber – marmite and cucumber on brown bread is one of my favourite sandwiches and has been since before I could properly pronounce the words. So I jumped at the chance to make this for our Eurovision party – it’s from Scandinavian Cooking by Beryl Frank, (published by Evans Brothers, 1978).

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:

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.

Kyuurimomi – Japanese cucumber salad

From Rosalie Swedlin’s World of Salads, 1980, Book Club Associates. (picture will come – promise)!

The intro starts with “I have always been fascinated by salads”. And at that point I put the book down. For about two years. On a scale of “it was a dark and stormy night” to 10, that rates a miserable squib of a starter. But now I’m older, and wiser, and OK – I’ve been eating crap for the past weeks, and it’s summer. Perhaps it’s time for me to be… fascinated by salad too? Or at least have good intentions before you find me face down in a Tuc cheese sandwich coma next week…

Salad Elona

I have been looking forward to this salad since I bought the strawberries 2 days ago when the weather was delightful, but today it is grey and soggy out.  No matter, I love salads which mix fruit and vegetables and I also love WINE so I am excited about this.

This gem is one of many from the June chapter, written by Harold Wilshaw, of The Reader’s Digest Cookery Year (1976 edition).  Salad Elona was actually invented in the 1930s by cookery writer and journalist Ambrose Heath (1891–1969) for his wife but was popularised by this cookbook. Mr Wilshaw also wrote several other intriguingly titled volumes including Ready when you are: Recipes for Absentee Cooks, Delicious Chicken Dishes (I’m intrigued by this as the cover shows chicken drumsticks in cream sauce with grapes) and Cookbook for the Needy Greedy.