This morning there was news of a recall of tomato soup powders in the USA. Still powders? Not time? Not the all-American Campbell’s?
The title sounds like post WW2 rationing. Except there would have been one banana unless you had a tree.
And it was paw-paw.
Back then in Australia much bigger than these. More like small watermelon sized.
In Sydney as a child I picked passion fruit off the vine growing below my bedroom window after I had been wakened by the thousands of cicadas that my brother was keeping in my closet. That and the staccato racket of kookaburras in a gum tree nearby.
We had two banana trees both giving little Lady Finger bananas. Sydney was too far north for apples, and too far south for pineapple.
But we had a few paw-paw trees and lots of the fruit. The fruit we stored in an icebox for a short time after it was picked ripe. One into which we put a black of ice every 3 days. A benchmark. From then on, I could never fully appreciate fruit in which many of their perfumes and flavors had been deadened by mechanical cooling.
For mangoes we used special forks.
For years unique to Australia, but now on Amazon and there is no other so satisfying way to eat a ripe mango.
Leaning over a sink to catch the juices.
In tropical Queensland I was given a pineapple right from the plant. A local swiped the top leaves off with a machete and I scooped out the fruit with my fingers. No core. And was forever spoiled. That was another benchmark.
After leaving Australia and living in London, still with food rationing, and my daily trip was to Harrod’s Food Hall. To visit my pineapple. There was only one. On top of a 15-foot pyramid of fruit. Its price 28 shillings. Twenty shillings to a pound, one of which has the buying power today of about 50 dollars.
The crowd gathered daily to look at it were entranced.
Awe struck.
As for tomato soup, none in any form except black-market US Navy dried powder. Post war rationing at its worst.
I don’t remember tomatoes at all.
WAITER, THERE’S A FROG IN MY CURRY
“A recipe for “Australian Curry” in the 1981 Catholic Women’s League of Tasmania cookbook calls for “tinned pineapple, a granny smith apple, two bananas, meat, a tin of tomato soup, and one dessertspoon of curry powder.”
Hence the tinned pineapple title by Elli Benaiah, who is currently at work on Jewish food of the Indian Ocean.
Not a bad occupation.
He writes of “A Little India in a Jar,” and goes on abut one of my favorite cookbook authors. “One of the key English cookbook moments is 1747, in Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. Her mention of curry was far more interesting than the more famous Mrs. Beeton and her Book of Household Management. “Who filed curry under cold meat cookery.” And has a section Recipes for Australian Dishes. “Soup from kangaroo tails, roast wallaby, parrot pie.”
I grilled a galah, or rose-breasted cockatoo, a la broche, on a beach in the Great Barrier Reef when I was six. My ‘parrot’was as uninteresting at the barracuda caught the next day.
No curry. I was a bit off it in those days after a incendary motuth-burning experience with it in Ceylon on the way to Australia.
Another writer, Collingham, said there was “virtually nothing the British would not stew in curry sauce, from ordinary cuts of meat to calf’s feet, ox palates, sheep’s heads, lobsters and periwinkles.”
Even Curried Wombat
Elli writes, “the colonial record carries iguana tail curry and curried wattle bird. And mentions that writing in the Melbourne Herald in 1874, journalist Marcus Clarke declared that a man who had not eaten curried wombat had not used his opportunities.”
But that was the British colonists who arrived in a land full of animals they did not recognize. How to eat them? Well, the answer was to render the unfamiliar familiar and they had their pots of curry powder with them.
Would one have had to be desperate to eat wombat? Not sure. but if you did, perhaps sous les cendres like truffles and potatoes.
SCOTT’S
https://scotts-mayfair.com
A great friend of mine just told me that she had a perfect Dover sole at Scott’s in London.
I spent my 50th birthday there. A long time ago, and I wish it were now, because the menu is now one of the best I know of anywhere. I could eat there for a week and never respite an order. Apart from oysters and perhaps a repeat of the Dover.
Diving right onto the Potted Shrimp just for nostalgia (my London childhood) sake. And the Smoked Eel and Devon Cock Crabmight also be a repeat.
Tarragon Buttered Spring Vegetables a daily must whether with Sole or one day at least of Cornish Lamb. Or Fish for Two especially if Turbot Hollandaise just big enough for two.
After a glass of champagne promptly when seated, I would know that all my meal planning and choices would see on the horizon the perfect desserts.
Bakewell Pudding with Almond Ice Cream if a light main course preceded it. No beloved, Sticky Toffee Ginger Cake because of the Banana Ice Cream that comes with it, and I don’t believe in rearranging the kitchen’s food.
Always up for trifle.
And I adore freshly made perfect Petits Fours.
And a glass of Muscat Beaumes de Venise. Sometimes with an almond biscotti my only dessert.
Of course, I would sit at the counter.
And stare at the crab in various forms.
While I wold think of what was in my summer garden or local farm stand and whater I would cook at home.
THE HEIGHT OF SUMMER DESSERTS
First a simple, fast, and easy one.
Mixed Berry Compote with Ice Cream
This wonderful summer dessert can be cooked with any ripened fruit: mangoes, papayas, figs, peaches, plums, cherries- and of course berries. If you use raspberries, throw them in only for the last minute of cooking.
¼ cup water
½ cup sugar
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1 cup strawberries, rinsed, cut in half
1 cup blueberries, rinsed
1 cup blackberries
4 tablespoons sweet butter, cut into cubes or softened
1 pint vanilla ice cream
Serves 4
Make a light sugar syrup by heating the water and sugar together in an 8-inch sauce pan, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Add the lemon juice and berries to the syrup and cook over medium heat 2 to 3 minutes, shaking the pan gently to coat berries with syrup. Add the butter and continue to cook, swirling the berries and butter around in the pan, until the butter is melted.
Spoon the fruit compote onto 4 plates and place scoops of ice cream in the center of each serving.
Summer Pudding
More work but ultimate satisfaction.
Not on the Scott’s menu because, although it can be made in individual protions, it never tastes quite the same, and certainly not the same visual impact as one of these brought to the table with a large bowl of the best cream you can find.
1 ½ cups strawberries, hulled
1 ½ cups raspberries
1 cup red currants, stemmed
1 cup blueberries, loganberries, or ollalieberries
1 cup sugar
Pinch salt
½ cup medium sugar syrup
2 cups fresh raspberry puree
10 to 15 slices dense white bread, crust removed
2 cups custard (creme anglaise)
Serves 6 to 8
Coarsely chop the strawberries and put them and the other berries in a saucepan. Add the sugar and salt and cook over high heat until the berries are heated and just beginning to bleed their colors, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and cool.
Mix the syrup and the raspberry puree.
Line a 2-quart pudding mold or other deep bowl with cheesecloth. Dip both sides of some of the bread slices in the berry puree and arrange around the sides and bottom of the mold. Soak the remaining slices in the berry puree and layer with the berries, ending with bread to completely cover the top.
Using a plate that fits just inside the top of the mold, place it on top of the pudding. Put the mold in a pan and weight the plate. Refrigerate the pudding overnight.
To serve, unmold the pudding onto a serving platter, slice, and serve with the custard.
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