I love to visit antique stores and search for hatpins.
I don't know why I started to collect them, especially since they are not used in modern times that I know of. Maybe Queen Elizabeth of England still uses them!
A hatpin is a decorative and functional pin for holding a
hat to the head, usually by the hair. They are typically around 20cms in
length, with the pin head being the most decorated part.
The first hatpins were handmade. In Britain,
demand eventually outgrew the number that could be supplied by hand-making, and
they began to be imported from France.
In 1832, a machine was invented in America which could
mass-produce the pins, and they became much more affordable.
During the 1880s, bonnets gave way to hats, and the
popularity of hatpins soared. They remained a standard women's accessory
through the 1910s and were produced in a vast range of materials and
types.
Hatpin holder boxes were also produced.
Laws were passed in 1908 in America which limited the length
of hatpins, as there was a concern they might be used as weapons.
Also by 1910, ordinances were passed requiring hatpin
tips to be covered, so as not to injure people accidentally. Various covers were
made, but poorer women often had to make do with items like potato pieces and
cork.
I don't have a large collection. The ones I do
have are very decorative. I also have a few of my mother's which I treasure.
I found this old advertisement for hatpins in a paper to give you an idea of what they looked like.
Unlike hatpins, this recipe will never go out of fashion.
Prawns and Mushrooms in a Special Sauce
Ingredients
3 tablespoons of olive oil 3 medium size tomatoes, diced 3 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed 500 grams of mushrooms, sliced 1 large onion, finely diced 1 tablespoon sweet chili sauce A pinch of salt Half a cup of sour cream 500grams of prawns, peeled and deveined One and a half cups of chicken stock, or vegetable if preferred
Method
In a large fry pan put in one tablespoon of olive oil, garlic and tomatoes. Cook on a medium heat for 10 minutes until tomatoes are soft and releasing juices. Remove from fry pan into a bowl and set aside.
Now in the fry pan place the rest of the olive oil and onions and cook until caramelized. Then add sliced mushrooms. When cooked add the tomato mix back in. Add salt, sour cream, chili sauce and combine. Then add the stock and stir. Bring the sauce to a simmer and add the prawns. Mix the prawns a couple of times until they are cooked. Do not leave too long or prawns will go tough. Only a couple of minutes is needed. I like to serve with steamed rice or linguine pasta, garlic bread and a glass of wine. Serves 4 People Enjoy!
Growing up in Australia and especially being from a large family, there was always going to be some sport that I was involved in, or watched as a spectator. The boys in my family, or that I knew, always played football in Winter and cricket in Summer. I played netball in Winter and tennis in Summer. Swimming wasn't considered a sport in my vocabulary, it was something I did for fun. These days, all sports seem competitive. Times have changed, but one thing that stays the same is food. People love to watch sport and either take food, or buy it at the sporting event they are watching. Today, we are encouraged to eat healthier food, but some still like the traditional food. While in America, I saw they associated the hot dog with most sporting events. After researching, I found the hot dog, the red hot, the wiener, or frankfurter have been around in some culinary form for a long time. It is believed to have been taken to America by immigrants from Europe.
They said a gentleman by the name of Harry Stevens, who had rights to serve food at the Polo Grounds in New York where the New York Giants played until 1958, was the one with the idea! He apparently, on a cold day in 1901, purchased a pound of sausages from somewhere in New York, encased them in a bread roll and sold them in the stand. The crowd loved them and they became popular. Some claim that story is a myth and it was another man, Anton Feuchtwanger, who created and sold them at the World's Fair in St. Louis in 1904. By 1910, it was a big hit and sold at all baseball parks. Cost in 1910 at the baseball parks was a nickel, then with inflation to 25c in 1950. Today, the same hot dog is sold from $2 to $4. Other sporting events such as football and basketball sell them, but the hot dog is mostly associated and sold at baseball games!
Briefly, another story that caught my attention was about a man who owned the "Lincoln Tavern" in Chicago, Illinois. The man, Billy Sianis, had a pet goat which he took to game 4 of the 1945 World Series. A home game at Wrigley Field against the Detroit Tigers. He had box seats, but the odor was too strong and he was ejected with the goat. Sianis is said to have placed a curse on the team, saying they would never win another Pennant or World Series again!
In 1964 the tavern moved and was renamed "The Billy Goat Tavern". It has several locations throughout Chicago and is known for great cheese burgers, or cheezborger as some say!
Here in Australia, the meat pie is a tradition at most sporting events, especially football.
Basically,
this pie consists of a hand-sized pastry filled with minced meat (ground beef)
and gravy – although it may also be filled with onion, cheese, mushrooms,
chicken, seafood, crocodile, emu, vegetables or other fillings. Typically it is
smothered in tomato sauce or ketchup.
Its
origins are thought to have developed amongst the early settlers who found the
pie a good choice with its basic, readily available, ingredients. The English
and Irish who came out to Australia already had their own pie versions –
Cornish Pasty, Steak and Kidney and Guinness pies. For the English, the pie has
been part of their cuisine since medieval times.
In
Australia, mutton was mostly used in the first pies as it was cheaper than
vegetables. Pies with golden crusts and gravy were available in Sydney from
about the mid 1800's as a counter lunch in hotels. Not long after, they were distributed in
pie carts to places of entertainment, holiday destinations and sporting events. Pies were often kept in tin boxes and warmed by a charcoal stove.
I am sure around the world each place has a traditional culinary cuisine enjoyed by many at sporting events.
Bernadette's Meat Pies
Ingredients
500 grams of minced beef (ground beef) 1 onion, diced 1 cupof water 2 beef cubes A quarter of a cup of tomato sauce or ketchup 2 teaspoons of Worcestershire sauce Pepper and Salt to taste A pinch of oregano A pinch of nutmeg 3 tablespoons of plain flour 1 egg, beaten 2 sheets of puff pastry
Method
ith
the arrival of white settlement to Australia the British and Irish
brought with them a lot of their traditions to the new colony and one of
those was the meat pie. Both the English and Irish settlers, the
convicts as well as their guards, had their own versions of the pie. The English pie dates back to medieval times and included such styles
as steak and kidney pie and Cornish pastry. The Irish can lay claim to
the Guinness pies. The interesting fact is that the pie can be traced back to the
ancient Egyptians' who made a sweet pie from rye, wheat and barley
filled with honey. Maybe a long distant relative to the apple and
apricot pie perhaps? Our meat pie was originally made from mutton because it was far cheaper to produce than vegetable ones were at the time. Our famous Aussie pies have stood the te - See more at: http://www.australian-information-stories.com/meat-pie.html#sthash.YUUsRCDT.dpuf
ith
the arrival of white settlement to Australia the British and Irish
brought with them a lot of their traditions to the new colony and one of
those was the meat pie. Both the English and Irish settlers, the
convicts as well as their guards, had their own versions of the pie. The English pie dates back to medieval times and included such styles
as steak and kidney pie and Cornish pastry. The Irish can lay claim to
the Guinness pies. The interesting fact is that the pie can be traced back to the
ancient Egyptians' who made a sweet pie from rye, wheat and barley
filled with honey. Maybe a long distant relative to the apple and
apricot pie perhaps? Our meat pie was originally made from mutton because it was far cheaper to produce than vegetable ones were at the time. Our famous Aussie pies have stood the te - See more at: http://www.australian-information-stories.com/meat-pie.html#sthash.YUUsRCDT.dpuf
Pre-heat oven at 180 degrees Celsius. In a deep fry pan brown meat and onion. Add three quarters of the cup of water, bouillon cubes,tomato sauce (ketchup) and Worcestershire sauce, pepper, salt, oregano, and nutmeg. Boil and cover for 15 minutes. Blend flour with the remaining water until it becomes a smooth paste and add to the meat mix. Put to aside and let cool. Grease a pie dish and line with one sheet of puff pastry. Add the cooled
filling mixture. Brush edges of pastry with milk or beaten egg and put the
other sheet of pastry on top. Press edges down with a fork. Trim edges and glaze top with milk or beaten egg. Bake in a moderate oven, 180 degrees Celsius for 35 minutes or until golden brown.
Western Australia has many historical buildings. This is a story about some cottages with a difference.
The Pensioner Guards arrived with the first convicts and for the 18 years convicts were brought to Western Australia.
They were Freemen and called Pensioner Guards because
they had been pensioned out of the British army and other military
establishments. They weren't necessarily old, but had finished their tour of duty. The men were encouraged to come out on convict ships and act as warders.
Upon arrival, their main duty was to act as a disciplined body
of men who could be called by civil authorities to quell any
disturbance.
In Western Australia, Pensioner Guards were placed on the fringes of towns with convict depots. The guards were offered packets of land, ranging from two to ten acres. The land came with a two room cottage costing 15 pounds to build. They were erected for the pensioner guards by convicts and ticket of
leave labourers.
The cottages were leased to the guards provided they remained and worked for at least seven years. After seven years, the land and cottage became theirs. There were four cottages built in West Guildford, now known as
Bassendean, of which Surrey Street is the only one remaining.
Number one Surrey Street was completed in 1857. Records show the first tenant was John Law Davis, his wife Amelia and children. Law Davis was a 30 year old Pensioner Guard,
originally employed by the East India Company. Over the next few years, five more children were born .
John died in 1870.
Amelia married John Bates in 1873 and had two more children. Bates was not an enrolled Pensioner Guard and their two children
were born in Guildford. It’s possible they too were born and
raised in the cottage, which presumably passed to Amelia on
the death of her first husband.
Creamy Prawn and Pasta
Ingredients
350 grams of fusilli or other short pasta 2 tablespoons of butter 2 whole medium sized leeks, washed and cleaned of any sand /grit halved and finely sliced salt and pepper to taste Half a tablespoon of crushed garlic 500 grams of peeled and deveined prawns One cup of heavy cream Zest of one lemon 300 grams of baby spinach Two tablespoons of olive oil Half a cup of white wine One whole corn on the cob (slice the kernels off the cob) Method Place the pasta in boiling water with about one tablespoon of olive oil and boil until cooked. Drain and set aside. In a large fry pan place butter, one tablespoon of olive oil and when it has melted add the sliced leeks and corn kernels, stirring for about two minutes. Then place prawns, lemon zest and white wine in and cook for about a further 3 minutes, or until prawns are done.
Lastly, add the cream, garlic, baby spinach, pasta, salt and pepper to taste. Stir until well combined and heated thoroughly. Serve with fresh crusty bread.
Cookbooks, are they dying as we use the internet to look at food sites?
Department stores were different when I was a child, they always carried different books, now they seem to be diminishing. Even book stores seem to be few and far between.
I still have my first cookbook purchased from a department store in Perth, Western Australia when I was only about 8 years old. 'The World Book of Meat Dishes' by Nina Froud. It was first published in 1965 in Great Britain and again in 1970. A medium sized book of about 140 pages, I spent all my pocket money on it! There are many books I have collected over the years and often refer to them. The oldest book in my collection is 'The American Woman's Cook Book' edited by Ruth Berolzheimer published by Consolidated Book Publishers, Chicago in 1944.
After some research, I found two interesting stories.
One on an old book written 600 years ago by chefs employed by King Richard II. Experts from Manchester University's
John Rylands Library, who discovered the manuscript, have translated a
handful of its 150 recipes, which are written in Middle English and date
back to 1390.
The recipes include
frumenty, a porridge-type dish made of bulghar wheat. Saffron and payn puff as well as a dish of boiled fruits wrapped in pastry.
The unusual cookbook, called
the 'Forme of Cury', is believed to have contained dishes to feed servants
and the royal family alike. It gives a fascinating insight
into the delicacies of the time, including dishes of swan and peacock.
After translating the recipes, historians wanted to try the dishes
themselves. However, with no ingredient quantities or instructions, making
the dishes proved tricky. John Hodgson, who looks after the library's
manuscripts and archives, said: "One of the difficulties was that a lot
of the recipes were very vague."
Another book, 'Apicius' dates
back to the 9th century and is owned by The New York Academy of Medicine. It is
the only surviving Roman cookbook, a 9th century copy of the original 2nd
century cookery manual. Only two copies of this cookbook, formally entitled 'De
Re Coquinaria' are known to exist. The other 9th century copy is believed to
reside in the Vatican library, which is older by a few years.
The Apicius is regarded by
culinary historians and those involved with cookery with an almost religious adoration.
The name 'Apicius' had long been associated with excessively refined love of
food, from the habits of an early bearer of the name, Marcus Gavius Apisius a
Roman gourmet and lover of refined luxury who lived sometime in the first century AD,
during the reign of Tiberius.
This 57-leaf document is written
in Latin and contains recipes used by the Romans.
The book had been rebound in the
18th century by a French book dealer in mottled calf with gilt edges. A book
dealer had removed the 9th century binding to separate the Apicius from a text
by Hippocrates, the two had been bound together. ("The Hippocrates"
now resides in a collection in Geneva, Switzerland, and is bound in the same
18th century mottled calf as formerly on the Academy's Apicius manuscript).
Some years ago, the worn 18th century binding was removed, and the
1,200-year-old manuscript needed to be rebound. The Academy hired Deborah
Evetts, the now-retired Head of Rare Book Conservation at the Pierpont Morgan
Library, to restore the Apicius using a generous donation from the Culinary
Trust. That donation was underwritten by The Brown-Forman Corporation and
Kitchen Aid. Evetts cleaned and repaired the 9th century manuscripts parchment
leaves, added new vellum end sheets for protection, and hand-sewed through
original sewing holes.
They say the cookbook is a
fascinating document that offers a glimpse of life in ancient Rome. It contains
many recipes and uses the secrets of ancient Roman and classical Greek cuisine.
They ate the same green vegetables, meats, poultry and seafood as called for in
these recipes and most of the same spices. The herbs used by Romans were
Oregano, Sage, Coriander, Parsley, Rosemary and Thyme.
The history of the Academy's
copy is interesting. The Apicius passed through different hands over the
centuries and eventually ended up at the Paris bookseller's shop. The cookbook
was purchased by an English aristocrat and book collector. After his death, it
was sold at auction and was purchased by Dr. Margaret Barclay Wilson, who
eventually gave it to the Academy.
This may have been cooked in the
old days and under a different name but today I call it.....
Bernadette's Creamy Chicken Deluxe
Ingredients 4 large Chicken Maryland pieces with skin on 40 grams of butter 2 Green Apples peeled, cored and sliced 10 small pearl onions 2 Bay leaves 1 teaspoon of thyme Salt and ground black pepper 6 tablespoons of Brandy 120 mls chicken stock 120 mls ofcrème fraîche Half a lemon, juiced 2 tablespoons of parsley, finely chopped
Method
Melt
half the butter in a saucepan over high heat, add apples and sauté,
stirring carefully with a spoon until golden brown and tender. Transfer
to a bowl.
Melt the remaining butter in the pan over medium heat and fry the onions, bay leaves and thyme for 2-3 minutes.
Add
chicken, skin-side down and cook for 5 minutes until golden brown.
Turn over and cook for another 5 minutes. Season generously with sea
salt and freshly ground black pepper.
Add the brandy, turning the heat up high to burn off the alcohol, and cook for 3-5 minutes.
Lower
heat to medium, add chicken stock and when stock comes to boil, lower
heat and simmer for 20-25 minutes, or until chicken is tender.
Stir
in crème fraîche and add apples, raising the heat again to allow some
of the cooking liquid to evaporate and the sauce to thicken.
Who created the Pavlova? Recently, I was making a Pavlova and it made me think about who created it. The pavlova is a beautiful meringue dessert with fresh whipped cream and fresh fruit on top. Named after the Russian Ballerina, Anna Pavlova, who visited New Zealand and Australia in the 1920's. The meringue dessert resembles her beautiful white ballerina costume.
Both countries still claim it as theirs! The Oxford dictionary favours New Zealand's case. Stating the first recorded recipe for pavlova was
in the 1927 book Davis Dainty Dishes, a publication by Davis
Gelatine (NZ).
Keith Money, a biographer of Anna Pavlova, wrote that a hotel
chef in Wellington created the dish when Pavlova visited the
capital in 1926 on her world tour.
Professor Helen Leach, a culinary anthropologist at the
University of Otago, New Zealand has compiled a library of cookbooks containing
667 pavlova recipes from more than 300 sources. Her book, The Pavlova Story: A Slice of New Zealand's Culinary
History, states that the first Australian pavlova recipe was
created in 1935, while an earlier version was penned in 1929 in the
rural magazine NZ Dairy Exporter Annual.
The Australian website Australian Flavour gives an even earlier
date of 1926 for its creation, suggesting that Home Cookery for New
Zealand, by E Futter, contained a recipe for "Meringue with Fruit
Filling". This recipe was similar to today's version of the
dessert. It was never called 'Pavlova' though! However, it has also been claimed that Bert Sachse created the
dish at the Esplanade Hotel in Perth, Western Australia in 1935. In defense
of his claim as inventor of the dish, a relative of Sachse's wrote
to Leach suggesting that Sachse may have accidentally dated the
recipe incorrectly. Leach replied they could not find evidence "because
it's just not showing up in the cookbooks until the 1940s in
Australia".
Now to throw a spanner in the works. I have found some other information that may cause a stir!
In 1720, a Swiss pastry-cook called Gasparini, practised his art in (Mehrinyghen) meringue,
in a small town in the State of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in Germany. Even the venerable
Larousse perpetrates this myth, in complete disregard for the fact that
confections made from sweetened, stiffly-beaten egg whites appear in
cookbooks printed well before that date. The earliest I can find appears
in the recipe collection of Lady Elinor Fettiplace, which is dated
1604, which she calls White Bisket Bread.
To Make White Bisket Bread. (Original Recipe) Take
a pound & a half of sugar, & an handful of fine white flower
[flour], the whites of twelve eggs, beaten verie finelie, and a little
annisseed brused, temper all this together, till it be no thicker than
pap, make coffins with paper, and put it into the oven, after the
manchet [bread] is drawn. Note: this is clearly what we would call ‘meringue’,
but Lady Elinor does not use the name.
The first use that I am aware of
(and I stand willing to be corrected) is in the cookbook of François
Massialot, the first chef of Louis XIV (1638 - 1715). His book was
published in 1692, and contained a chapter on “Meringues and Macaroons”.
For something different try this beautiful Pavlova roll.......
Peach and Passionfruit Pavlova Roll
Ingredients
Three quarters of a cup caster sugar 4 egg whites Half a cup flaked almonds 300ml thickened cream 1 tablespoon of icing sugar 400g tub of sliced peaches in juice, drained, chopped
2 passionfruit, halved
Icing sugar to serve
Method
Preheat oven to 180°C/160°C
fan-forced. Grease a 25cm x 30cm Swiss roll pan. Line with baking paper,
allowing a 2cm overhang on all sides. Place a second sheet of baking
paper on a flat surface. Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon caster sugar.
Using an electric mixer, beat
egg whites until stiff peaks form. Add remaining caster sugar. Beat for
10 minutes or until sugar has dissolved. Spread mixture over prepared
pan. Smooth top. Sprinkle with almonds. Bake for 10 minutes or until top
just starts to brown.
Meanwhile, using an electric mixer, beat cream and icing sugar until stiff peaks form. Pat peaches dry with paper towel.
Turn meringue onto prepared baking
paper. Remove lining paper. Cool for 30 minutes. Spread with cream
mixture. Top with peaches and passionfruit pulp. Roll up meringue from
one long end to enclose filling. Place on a plate and refrigerate for 1
hour.
Hatpin holder boxes were also produced.
3 medium size tomatoes, diced
