Vintage Menu Madness

 

Welcome the very first post of what I hope will be something which you, my readers will enjoy.  I own a number of Vintage Cookery Books and it is my plan to cook, once a week, a complete menu from said books!

I hope that these posts will become an interesting dive into exploring our past culinary adventures! I will share some of the history of the book chosen, all about the recipes, how to cook said recipes and at the end my takeaway from this experience.  

The first cookery book I have chosen to highlight with this feature is "Betty Crocker's New Dinner for Two  cook book." I Purchased my copy from Thrift Books.   It was in gently used condition.

This book was published in 1964 and is devoted to recipes, basically sized for the two person family, although there are some company menus for times when you might have a few extra people over.

Scattered throughout are charming vintage illustrations and color photographs, with chapters covering such topics as All American Favorites, Season and Regional Favorites, Buffet Suppers, Hurry Up Dinners, Frankly Thrifty, etc.  

There is even one chapter dedicated to the Empty Nester who, at a certain age and having been using to cooking for a house full of people, suddenly finds themselves once again cooking for only two.

The Menu which I am highlighting today comes from the chapter entitled "Hurry Up Dinners."  From the introduction:

""Cook be nimble, cook be quick" might be an appropriate modern-day Mother Goose motto for the busy homemaker. Dinner in a hurry often means planning, marketing, and cooking  to fit a busy schedule of office, community and social activities."

The chapter is filled with "Planned Overs," (meals composed of carefully planned leftovers),  and "Instant Menus", (meals designed to take full advantage of a variety of convenience foods that one might have in their larder.)

I chose to do the very first recipe in this section.  As you can see there are charming illustrations as well as plenty of hints and tips.   None of the menus in this section are supposed to take one more than an hour of prep and cook time. 

Today's menu was designed to use leftover cooked beef from the Sunday roast and a quantity of leftover cooked/boiled potatoes.  

I have done different hashes on here in the past.   In 2021 I did a Roast Beef Hash Recipe.  Basically This was done the way I have always made my hashes, with chopped roast beef, cold potatoes, onions and some special herbs and spices. Really tasty served with some rich gravy leftover from the roast.

And what is Bubble & Squeak, but a hash composed of all your leftover roast and veg from your Sunday lunch. It is a very traditional British dish, so named because of the sounds it makes as it bubbles and squeaks away in the skillet.  Also very delicious!

The whole menu highlighted today  consists of:

Crispy Browned Hash

Lemon-Buttered Broccoli

Lettuce-Raw Mushroom and Radish Salad

Hot Buttered Rye Bread

Orange Fluff

I will include the recipes for both the hash and the Orange fluff. Both were very different recipes than things which I have ever made in the past.

The main star of this menu is the Crispy Browned Hash. It is designed to use a quantity of leftover cooked roast and potatoes from the Sunday dinner.  You can also use chopped cooked veal, lamb, ham, chicken or turkey in the place of the beef.

It was not all that hard to put together, but I do think it would be helpful and go a lot quicker if you had everything chopped and prepared ahead of time  ready to pop into the skillet.  If you knew you were going to be making it for your next day's dinner,  you could pre-chop the meat, onions  and potatoes the night before, ready to pop into the skillet when you wanted to start cooking your dinner.

 

Crispy Browned Hash

Yield: 2

Author: Marie Rayner

Prep time: 10 MinCook time: 25 MinTotal time: 35 Min

Crisp and buttery at the edges, this is a delicious main course that is quick and easy to cook.

Ingredients

• 1 cup (150.25g) chopped cooked beef
• 1 cup (4 medium potatoes) chopped cooked potatoes
• 1 small onion, peeled and minced
• 1 TBS minced parsley
• salt and black pepper to taste
• 1/2 cup (120ml) whole milk
• 1 TBS fat for frying

Instructions

1. Heat the fat in a medium sized heavy bottomed skillet over moderate heat. (I used 1/2 TBS butter and 1/2 TBS light olive oil.)
2. Mix the potato, onion and beef together in a bowl along with the parsley and some seasoning to taste. When the fat is good and hot, tip this mixture into the pan and spread it out evenly in the skillet.
3. Cook over moderate heat for 10 to 15 minutes. Tip in the milk and mix together. Cover the pan, reduce the heat to medium low, and cook slowly for a further 10 minutes until crisp.
4. Serve hot, sprinkled with additional parsley if desired.

Did you make this recipe?

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This was really delicious. I have never added milk to a hash before, but it added a lovely depth of flavor to the dish which I really enjoyed.  In full disclosure, I did not have any leftover cooked beef, so I used a package of deli sliced roast beef, which worked beautifully, and was probably a lot cheaper   cooking a roast for the leftovers or even browning hamburger.

The potatoes were all lovely and crispy without being dry. There was just enough of everything to make it really enjoyable, with there being an equal ratio of potato to meat, as well as plenty of onion. 

 

I had been tempted to add a splash of Worcestershire sauce or some additional herbs, or garlic, but I wanted to stay true to the original recipe.  In all truth, I really didn't need to as this was very delicious just as is!

One of the side dishes was Broccoli with Lemon Butter.  It was suggested that you cook either one 10oz/283g package of frozen broccoli and then dress it with the lemon butter, or you could use 3/4 of a pound of fresh broccoli, cooked as directed in the book. I chose to go with fresh broccoli.

To cook the fresh broccoli, wash it and then trim off the tips of the stems. Make 3 to 4 gashes through the stems. (I took this to mean the length of the stem.) Cook, uncovered, in a small quantity of boiling salted water for 10 to 15 minutes.  (I did not cook it for this long. It seemed to be far too long to cook broccoli, but that is often the way with these older recipes.)

Drain the broccoli well and dress with a lemon butter composed of 2 TBS of melted butter, whisked together with 1 TBS of lemon juice and a quantity of fresh lemon zest.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper, if desired.

Another side dish was this surprisingly delicious Lettuce, Raw Mushroom and Radish Salad, with a simple French Vinaigrette dressing.  To make this I combined some torn iceberg lettuce, with three thinly sliced fresh closed cup white mushrooms, and two large radishes trimmed and also thinly sliced.

To make the vinaigrette, whisk together 2 TBS light olive oil, 1 TBS cider vinegar, salt and black pepper to taste and 1/2 clove of garlic minced.  It suggested adding a small amount of msg. I did not do this, but I did add some parsley flakes for color.  

The salad was crisp, fresh and delicious with a nice variety of textures and the dressing, although simple, enhanced the flavors beautifully.

To make the rye bread, preheat the oven to 400*F/200*C/ gas mark 6.  Butter two slices of rye bread with a generous amount of softened butter and place onto a baking sheet.  (I used a multi-grain rye bread.)

Heat for about 10 minutes until piping hot.

What menu would be complete without a delicious dessert to finish things off???  The dessert in this menu was called Orange Fluff. It was  also very simple to make. It consisted of making a rich and sweet orange sauce which  you then folded into stiffly beaten whipping cream.

In hindsight, I probably should have made the orange sauce part of it the night before, ready to fold into the cream on the day. This would have made the menu even quicker to execute.  As it was I had to wait for the sauce to cool before I could do this.

 It really was a simple dessert, however, which was anything but  simple in flavor. It was fabulously rich and tasty!  I cut the original recipe in half to make only two servings rather than four.  It made for the perfect light dessert to enjoy after what was quite a substantial meal.

Yield: 2

Author: Marie Rayner

Orange Fluff

Cook time: 10 MinInactive time: 30 MinTotal time: 40 Min

Light, sweet, and zesty with a beautiful orange flavor

Ingredients

• 1 whole egg
• 1/4 cup (50g) granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup (60ml) fresh orange juice
• 1/2 TBS fresh finely grated orange zest
• 1/2 cup (120ml) whipping cream, whipped until stiff

Instructions

1. Whisk the sugar, orange juice and egg together in the top of a double boiler.
2. Cook over hot water, whisking constantly, until the mixture bubbles and thickens. Remove from the heat.
3. Whisk in the orange zest and leave to cool completely.
4. Whip your cream until stiff. Stir half of the cream into the cold orange sauce to combine and loosen the sauce a bit. Fold in the remainder of the cream.
5. Chill until you are ready to serve. If desired top with an additional dollop of whipped cream.

Notes

If you have any leftover fluff you can use it as a delicious topping spooned over white, sponge or chiffon cake.

Did you make this recipe?

Tag @marierayner5530 on instagram and hashtag it #marierayner5530

Altogether this was a really delicious menu. None of it was really difficult to execute, although I do think it was a bit of a stretch to consider it to be a "hurry up" dinner!  It certainly took me a bit longer than an hour to put everything together. 

It also created an inordinate amount of dirty dishes to wash up afterwards.  Thank goodness I have a dish washer!

 

This could be done a lot quicker by preparing some of the elements ahead of time, such as chopping the meat and potatoes, onions and mixing them in a bowl, ready to spread into the hot fat in the skillet.  Also making the orange sauce ahead of time ready to fold into the whipped cream would speed things up.

I have to confess that I could not finish what was considered to be half of the meal. Either I am slowing down in my old age, or the quantities are very generous!!

It was quite enjoyable, however, and something I think anyone would find to be very satisfying and filling!  I could find no fault with it. Simple and delicious!

Don't forget to tune in next week to see what vintage menu madness I cook up next!

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