Banana Mayonnaise

At a recent dinner party, before we started eating, the usually decorous hostess had the kind of glint in her eye which brings fear to the staid palate. After half-heartedly offering to help in the kitchen, I wandered off to chat to the other guests and drink, only to later hear the words ‘Good Housekeeping’ ‘fifties’ and ‘mayonnaise’.

My salad choices for the blog have mostly been quite conservative, so I was grateful for the opportunity to try a combination of foods which have thus far only gladdened my heart separately.

Chocolate cream cheese fudge

Recently I have made far too many tasteful, sensible recipes, the last (savoury) French dish I made was vegan, for pity’s sake. The time I fried macaroni cheese is so long ago, it’s moved from reality to pub anecdote. (Yes, I am very popular.) It’s time for something ridiculous, and what better to inspire me than the food industry itself, with the recent launch of chocolate-flavoured cream cheese, the thought of which makes me feel faintly nauseous, but this recipe… I was…intrigued.

Chocolate Butterscotch Brownies

On a recent trip to Scotland, I visited Leakeys (Greyfriars Hall, Church Street, Inverness, IV1 1EY), the bookshop of your dreams – a hundred thousand volumes on tall wooden shelves in a converted 18th century church whose mezzanine also houses a café where incredibly friendly and efficient staff serve exactly the kind of food you want to eat in an area where it sloshes down with rain in August. My travelling companion, a fiction buyer-bookseller extraordinaire and glutton, was most impressed, stating that while popular, the bookshop-café combination is rarely well-executed.

Cheese and walnut squares

In my neverending quest to find new ways to eat potatoes, I decided to try these potato scone-pancake hybrid from Florence Greenberg’s Jewish Cookery Book (6th Edition, 1958)

Recipe
Cooked potato 1lb
Grated cheese 3 oz
Salt and cayenne
Walnuts 2 oz
Milk ½ teacup
One egg