This is a fairly traditional recipe for a Christmas pudding and gives instructions about tying off the top of the pudding bowl with string. Mum always made a string handle to make it easier to lift out of the boiling water. Easy to do – lay a double thickness of string, long enough to go about 10cm over each side, across the bowl and catch it in when you tie around the bowl, then tie the overlap to secure the handle.
You can see from the typing that this is an old recipe. I used to make it back in the 70s and 80s and serve it as an entree with thin slices of toast. It was cheap and easy to make – ideal. I rediscovered it this year and now make it to have with drinks. It freezes well so I just put out what I need and keep the rest for later. If you don’t want to do that you can easily halve the recipe.
I confess to liking salmon, whether it’s smoked, baked, grill or even tinned, so that’s probably why I really like this salmon pate. You need to use red salmon to get a good flavour, that makes it a little more expensive, but it does make a good amount. As it says it’s quick, easy to make and everyone seems to like it. Also, leftovers are great on toast this next morning!!!
Homemade dinner mints, very 70s. Don’t think they’d be a patch on the bought chocolate ones, but maybe if you coat these with a layer of chocolate instead of the coconut they’d been worth doing.
This is another easy slice to make and is great because it’s no bake and can be kept in the fridge until you need it.
It’s a bit strange to see this 70s recipe using tinned carrots and tinned stir fry vegetables. The article says ‘hearty meals – don’t have to mean hours of work”, but I think using apacket of prepared fresh vegetables, that are available now in the supermarket, would be a lot tastier and just as easy.
I think this 70s recipe was probably devised by someone who had a large crop of rhubarb growing in their backyard and was trying to find a way to use it all. Mum wasn’t as creative with Dad’s produce she just stewed it with some sugar and served it with custard – Dad loved it that way.
Quite frankly this sounds a bit weird – even for the 70s. It’s a strange combination of a prawn cocktail and grapefruit. I used to make a grapefruit appetiser by halving a grapefruit, segmenting it, pouring in sweet sherry, sprinkling on brown sugar and then grilling the lot – it tasted quite good and was quick and easy to make. It was also pretty cheap (a definite consideration back then). I also used to make prawn cocktails, but only for very special dinners as they stretched the budget quite a bit, but I never combined the two and I don’t think I’ll start now.
Large filled Vol-au-Vent cases just screams 1970s entree to me. Of course the smaller version were served before dinner or at parties with drinks, but the larger ones filled with chicken or fish mornay were a popular first course. The good thing about this recipe is that you can dispense with the cases and just make the chicken filling, if you use a rotisserie chicken and serve it with rice it should taste great.
This “Real Chinese Taste” Sweet and Sour Pork was a free recipe handed out by Amoy Genuine Chinese Food sometime in the 70s. No mention is made of cooking it in a wok as I doubt that any non-Asian cooks had one or in fact even knew what one was. Guess Amoy thought they’d better just stick with a frying pan.
Beb's Recipe Drawer 