Horror D'Oeuvres

Fanny Cradock doesn't mention Halloween much. She gives plans, ideas and instructions for almost every other festivity. Nothing for 31st October. It's a surprise as you'd imagine that all the spookery and ghoulishness would be right up her street. Dressing up. Making your food look eerily scary. Over the top, spine-chilling colourings. Putting the fear of god into children. Perhaps it's simply that, in England at least, it's only a relatively 'new' thing. Not on her radar. Growing up in Scotland, it was a major part of my childhood. Perhaps it's just that all this scary stuff was just everyday living for Fanny.

We can only imagine, but my guess is that Fanny's house was one of those doors that the 'guisers' as we call them up here, or Trick or Treaters elsewhere, just walked on by. Not worth the actual total fright that chapping on her door would provoke. Don't make me knock on the scary lady's door. No amount of treats would be a suitable reward for accidentally hammering on her door. Poor Fanny was likely inside waiting expectantly for the bash that never came. Surrounded by her own blood-curdling bespoke blow-out buffet, ready to share them with the local children. Perhaps this was the real issue. What Fanny thought of as treats would have been at best terrifying to many young eyes.

As all the kids skip merrily by, or perhaps run at hair-raising speed, Fanny was inside preparing party snacks just in case. We know her beloved banquet bites were Hors D'Oeuvres that could be easily passed around by the horrifyingly hearty hostess. We know that her favourite party food can be made in advance. It gives you more time to get yourself ready for guests to appear like it's all been an effortless excursion, despite the fact you've been preparing for weeks. We know that Fanny simply loved eggs. So put all three together, add a sprinkle of spookiness and get the Halloween Party started.

Fanny has seven ideas of egg based Hors D'Oeuvres. Seven. All a variation on a theme. All start with boiled eggs - some hard, some soft - and end up usually with something or other being van dyked. Not as in Dick, but as in cut into zig zags. I'm only making three of the seven. You'll see why. For the first ones, Fanny stamps out rounds of puff pastry, bakes them and then hollows out a circle in the centre. The eggs sit in this as a base. The eggs themselves can be excavated, removing the cooked yolks, replacing them with lemon mayonnaise if you like. Then small rosettes of Orange Mayonnaise are piped round the base of the egg. Or it can be a row of peas. The final flourish is a leaf of parsley on top. Maybe a splash of Tabasco. It's like an exploded vol-au-vent, if they ever made vol-au-vents for the film Alien.

You never really see eggs paired with oranges do you? You do in Fanny's world. As if orange mayonnaise wasn't already a step too far, she van dykes a small orange, places an egg inside then pipes more mayonnaise into the gaps. Remember those egg yolks you hollowed out earlier to replace with lemon mayonnaise? Fanny uses them to stuff into hollowed out tomatoes. To disguise the tomato as, erm, an egg, she van dykes some egg white to cap it off. You get the idea. Marry eggs, van dyke skills and orange mayonnaise in any combination for a treat that will never be tricked. Children will give your horrifying home a wide berth at Halloween, which may also be a neat trick, depending on how you view them. You'll be left with the full horror of eating the hors d'oeuvres yourself though, so beware.

Beeton Eggs

Fanny Cradock wasn't really known for her love of other people, let's be honest. She was rarely portrayed as a supporter of other cooks, other broadcasters, other writers or for that matter other women. There are of course many exceptions, she did have some friends (honest) and some professionals that she raved about, but they were few and far between. She saved all her very special wrath for one particular female cookbook author however. She was a marketing genius, expert at self-promotion, and remains famous to this day. Sound familiar? Fanny 's blood boiled for a perfect four minutes at the very thought of Mrs Beeton.

Fanny was proud of the amount of research that she did to dis-credit this 'no-cook cookery writer' who 'could not even fry an egg.' The recipes that she published were not her own, but rather other people's ancestors recipes, sent in as part of a competition and published by Beeton - who Fanny recognised was at least 'a clever journalist'. Mrs Beeton died aged 29, and Fanny calculated that if she had tested every recipe in the Book of Household Management, even if she had cooked for 32 hours a day, she wouldn't have been able to cook them all even once. Fanny, by comparison, never poached other people's recipes (ahem) and always tested them over and over and over again before publication. Or at least her petrified assistants did. Fanny was too busy doing the research.

One area of severe criticism that is often scrambled Mrs Beeton's way was her recipes which began 'take 16 eggs...' People thought them excessive and out of reach for most household budgets. Fanny, rather surprisingly, defends her arch rival, stating that the criticism is simply NOT valid. Eggs are cheap and nutritious, and quite frankly, according to Fanny, Mrs Beeton certainly knew her eggs.

To showcase these wonderful orbs, Fanny chooses a very filling dish which makes the humble egg go a very long way indeed. There are three main components. The first is an onion sauce, which Fanny makes very simply from simmering chopped onions in milk until they are soft, draining and straining them through a sieve. Meanwhile the saved milk is further heated until it reduces, before the sieved onions are returned to it. It smells amazing. The next essential part is of course perfectly soft-boiled eggs. Four minutes, remember? Run them under cold water immediately and shell them. No need for 16 by the way.

Finally, Fanny takes an old cottage loaf, trims all the crusts off, cuts a large cavity in the top and deep fries it. This seems a step too far for me, and with premonitions of the fire brigade beating down my door (although...) I decide against this. I do cut a deep cavity though, which is filled with the onion sauce. Then the eggs. Fanny completes this treat by pouring a little of the onion sauce over the eggs, and decorating them with dill frongs. And of course a frill of dill around the edge of the cavity. Mrs Beeton would never have time for any of this marvellous detail.

Just Can't Get An Oeuf

Eggs. Fanny Cradock loves them. She has a myriad of recipes that she can whip up with them. Actually she boasts that she has five hundred. She doesn't cover them all in this new partwork, instead, showing only a little of their versatility on a fairly modest level. Eggs, Fanny tells us, are a nutritious investment which 'open sesame' to a vast range of sweet and savoury delights. Fanny has 'knitted' as much of her recipe repertoire into the cookery programme as she can manage, but to cover them all would be like, well, trying to mop up the Niagara with a baby sponge!

Fanny urges us to think for a moment about how many culinary methods can be applied to a humble egg. They can be boiled, poached, fried, grilled, scrambled, baked, stuffed, pickled or, erm, roasted on a spit. This is not a technique I am familiar with, but Fanny assures me it is. She says she will not waste any time on it however, before starting to explain. For Oeufs à la Coq, the eggs are spitted onto a slender set bar and then something happens which is all a bit chi chi, which instead of elaborating on, Fanny suggests we learn some of the basic rules of eggs. We are left high and dry wondering how on earth to spit roast a chi chi Coq.

Fanny has something much more straightforward in mind. Full warning. It involves Aspic. She calls them Cocotte Eggs with Pâté and Aspic. It doesn't help. I'm imagining individual oven baked eggs, which is what Cocotte normally means. However, as always, Fanny has other ideas. Firstly, she soft-boils the eggs, by which she means for precisely four minutes. Precisely. She then makes up a batch of Aspic 'for masking'. Masking what, she is not so clear on. What she is clear on is that once made it should be mixed with some mayonnaise. I fear it is myself who needs the mask.

For the pâté, any simple shop bought or pâté familial (home made) will do. Fanny whips up an appropriate amount of double cream and blends most of it into the pâté along with a large spoonful of sherry. Well, at least there is booze. She pipes this mixture, once the seasoning is corrected, into individual cocottes, or miniature soufflé moulds. I'm using some plain old tea cups. Fanny plonks the perfectly soft-boiled egg in the middle. Then it is time for a horror of the aspic'n'mayonnaise.

Fanny spoons the still 'syrupy' aspic over the egg to set, being very careful not to let it run onto the pâté. It glides smoothly over the already smooth egg white, making a shiny white surface of the already shiny white surface. Another layer makes it even shinier. Fanny sets half a stoned Black Olive in it to garnish, but as I am absolutely terrified of them, and frankly this is all bad enough, I substitute for some slivers of tomato. It doesn't end there. Remember that cream we whipped up earlier, and saved a little behind? Fanny takes a small nozzle and pipes it around the egg as a thin 'thread' of border. It makes it look pretty, but there is no masking the fact that it is an egg, covered in mayonnaise-y aspic, plunged in pâté. Pass me the sherry instead. Just the one, as Mrs Wembley taught me. Hic.