Sections of Resurrection Confection

Fanny Cradock loves a festivity. None more than the feast following the fast for the faithful, frazzled, dedicated lenters that is Easter. The Easter partwork is a fanfare for the eyes too as Fanny goes into overdrive with the props, staging, colours and teeny tiny fluffy chicks. It's been a long lent of, well, mostly vegetables and eggs so who can blame her for a fabulous facelift of fanciness? Fanny the fashionista even has a springy new hairdo for the season, very froufrou. Incidentally, and somewhat flippantly, she does have huge hands doesn't she?

Fanny puts her feisty new do and mahoosive flapping hands to perfect use in a glorious pic-strip to show us how to 'play together' as we make our own chocolate Easter Eggs. At a fraction of the cost of shop bought naturally. She is sure that any famished youngsters in the house will 'squeal with delight' on Easter Day to receive one of her highly decorated fancily-finished Easter eggs. But first things first, we need to make them... Although Fanny claims these Eggs are easier on the hard-stretched purse than those to be found in the shops, you do need to shell out for a few bits and bobs to get going. Flim flam. The most expensive is possibly the egg mould.

Fanny recommends an array of fiddly old-fashioned metal moulds (both in plain and 'crocodile' pattern) together with the easier-to-work-with modern plastic versions. I have a super-modern polycarbonate mould. Fanny demands that we set about burnishing the moulds ferociously with a little liquid paraffin, which Fanny finds much better than oil. Just a tiny drop, and rub, rub, rub as hard as you can until they are as slippery as glass, and you are fatigued. The eggs will flip out as if shelling peas seemingly. Fanny tries to reassure me that the fractional amount of paraffin would not upset the stomach of the faintest canary, but I'm still a little sceptical. The polycarbonate moulds really don't need it anyway...

Before Fanny can get cross with me, I turn my careful attention to the chocolate chips, or couverture, which must be softened to a creamy consistency without letting them get hot. Fanny does hers in the warming drawer of her oven overnight to avoid a fiasco. I don't have one, so it's the trusty bowl-over-a-pan-of-simmering-water to avoid failure for me. I do hope Fanny would approve of my chips, they are gloriously and most fortunately green and flavoured with sweet garden mint from Guittard. I bought them in San Francisco. They may not *actually* be chocolate. They are described as 'baking chips'. They are definitely confectionary though, not McCains, for those easily confused.

Once the chips are softened, beaten and cooled, Fanny ladles spoonfuls into the burnished moulds and very slowly tips and turns it to cover the surface. When set, she re-coats and 'if you don't mind using a lot of chocolate' Fanny says, do it again. 'The thicker it is, the less tricky it becomes' she tells us, presumably still talking about the chocolate. Once fully cool and set they should just pop-out without fracture. Mine do, despite the lack of paraffin-enabled moulds. Fanny uses a little softened chocolate as glue to 'clap' two halves together before decoration. Just simple for now, we shall deal with more 'glamorous' ideas next time. Together, of course. Inadvertently, the fluffy chicks look a little disappointed.

Rock'n'Rissoles

Certain Fanny Cradock recipes just keep popping up time and time again. In different books, on different TV shows and in different newspaper columns. She does them slightly differently each time. I like to think it's less her recycling old ideas, and more about reinforcing a set of core recipes that can be used differently for different occasions. She wouldn't be taking shortcuts to fill a show, would she? It would never be that she had run out of ideas, would it? Surely she wouldn't think we hadn't been watching properly before, would she? Her Rissoles are one such recipe. They get everywhere.

In the partwork she also gives them her favourite proper name. They are Fondue Frites. She doesn't discuss them, just presents them, after all we have made them together before. Many times. She introduced them on TV as part of her Adventurous Cooking series in 1966 and again when she invited us to her Cheese and Wine Party in 1970. After showing us around her glorious kitchen bursting with young assistants, she gets straight on with this hardly extravagant form of 'hot cheese' which is ideal for informal parties and buffets. It's disputable if they are of French of Belgian origin, Fanny never really decides. She is too busy explaining to us the real nature of the word 'fondue' which, she says. is a classical cookery term and not just hot cheese. Except this one, which is hot cheese.

The ingredients are well known to viewers and readers alike. Duchess Potatoes. This time not dyed eye-popping green but simply steamed and sieved before butter is added. Fanny suggests chilling the mixture until it becomes stiff at this stage. At least in the partwork she does. On TV she just jumps straight in and adds the absolutely essential Gruyère cheese, for it must be Gruyère, eggs, salt and pepper. Except in the partwork it's two egg yolks only. In the booklets it is two egg yolks only. On TV it's one whole egg. Surely Fanny didn't get her own recipe wrong on TV, did she?

In print again she recommends chilling the mixture at this point. On screen she blobs the mixture into a dish of flour and shapes it very roughly into a 'fat sausage shape'. At least that's how she describes it. I follow the printed instructions of course, shaping my sausages when the cheese and potato mix is cool and firm from the fridge, not hot and sloppy. Or loose and flabby. Or however she is describing it at the time. And chill again. On TV when Fanny brings her shaped sausages out of ordinary refrigeration they are perfectly shaped anyway, so presumably it doesn't matter. Magic must be at hand in her kitchen.

The shaped and chilled rissoles are then dredged in flour, beaten egg and coated with fine breadcrumbs. On TV Fanny does this once and plops them straight into the fryer. In print she is at pains to point out that this procedure must be undertaken THREE times. For only a triple coating will give a suitable protective wall for the delicate cheese and prevent it oozing into a gooey mess in the fryer. This would be failure. The oil must be smoking hot, so as to almost blind you, apparently. Fried until just golden and then transferred to the oven to finalise the 'fondue'. At least on TV. In print they are fried and well, just served, but still gooey inside. There seems to be many ways to make rissoles the Fanny way. They are cheesy and gorgeous, so we can forgive Fanny for the repetition, and (perhaps) the errors. My rissoles are all goo inside and no escaped ooze outside. No failure. Just like Fanny's.

Beep, Beep, Fanny's Supermarket Sweep

Fanny was often somewhat shameless in her promotion, plugging and product placement on TV, in her newspaper columns, in her books and probably most notably throughout the partwork. Whether it was a careful but quick flash of the Lurpak wrapper she really didn't mean to show you while un-moulding the steamed christmas pudding, or the grapefruit knife that you really must have but was normally so hard to find in ordinary shops, she'd feature items in a recipe, in a picture and again on screen. And subtly let you know where to get them from. Surely she was in on the deal. Many bloggers do it today, and PR companies think they invented it recently.

I'd be rubbish at it, by Fanny's standards, as I like to feature products that I've bought, found and love. For Fanny though it seemed to be all part and parcel of the game. If she could convince you to purchase an item that you never really needed, to make something you were never really very likely to make again, she had won. We all love a gadget don't we, and, well, if Fanny was using it, it must've been the thing to have. After all, if you did as Fanny did, you were sure to be doing it right, the professional way.

Sometimes though she wasn't quite so subtle. To fill up a tin with goodies ready for Easter, Fanny suggests making her Honey, Nut and Date Triangles, or Petites Tranches au Noix. They are really just stuffed puff pastry sandwiches, baked. However, you clearly need something to make the perfect triangles of puff pastry, that you've bought in from your favourite supermarket. Fanny's suggestion is a 'wheel' contraption that you roll over the rolled out pastry and voilà, fourteen identical triangles. It is, Fanny tells us, particularly helpful if you happen to be making large quantities 'at speed'. Fanny shows you how, in a handy pic-strip. The wheel is coincidentally easily available (in person or by mail order) from Elizabeth Davids shop in London.

I'm not making large quantities, nor am I concerned about speed, so I employ Fanny's second best option, of cutting them free-hand. My own idea of how to do it involves a pizza cutter. I do use my favourite pizza cutter from my local pizzeria, La Favorita, so perhaps I should cut a deal with them to promote it? I bought my puff pastry ready rolled from Sainsburys. Another opportunity missed. Fanny also loves Sainsburys apparently. The cream cheese she lists in the recipe is not any old cream cheese. It's Sainsbury's cream cheese. Perhaps Sainsbury's would not be so pleased with me though, as I bought my walnut pieces from Tesco. The dates came from my local fruit and veg shop, Tattie Shaws. The honey came from local store, Earthy. I told you I wasn't so good at this promotion malarky.

Fanny mixes the cream cheese, chopped dates, honey, orange juice (I used Sainsburys Taste the Difference which was surely the right thing to do?) and zest. In her dash round the promotional opportunities she omits the nuts from the recipe, but I mix them in anyway. Thanks heavens for the photos, so I know where they should be. They get sandwiched between my imperfect triangles, brushed with egg whites and sprinkled with cater sugar. From Tesco. Topped with a dried piece of banana. I can't remember where I bought them. Then simply baked. They are really tasty, the orange zest and cream cheese make a wonderful partnership. One of the best things Fanny has suggested I make actually. Sadly I do not have a pretty blue plate that is readily available from Fortnum and Mason to display them on. I have such a lot to learn from Fanny. I am such a bad blogger.

What Colour Were The 1970's?

Brown. Everything was freakishly brown. Furniture was brown. Think of all those drab wooden sideboards and burnt-looking velour sofas that houses were so very full of. Our houses themselves were brown. With brown front doors. Wallpaper was brown. Sometimes it was more off-the-wall than on it with swirly patterns granted, but generally it was different shades of brown. Our clothes were brown. Our shoes were brown. We were all tanned. We liked it. Brown was where it was at. We fawned over it. We were happy with brown. Until someone paired it with another ludicrous colour of course.

Orange. We had outlandish orange curtains hanging in rooms to match the peculiar orange lampshades. Rugs were a range of far-out orange tones. Our kitchens were so orange we needed sunglasses to enter them. We had offbeat ornaments that were orange and maybe a bit space-aged. But orange still. And kooky. We matched them with brown. We embraced the eccentric, extraordinary orange and brown combinations in our homes, in our wardrobes and in our lives. Even our tans went orange. If it wasn't for orange the whole curious decade would just have been, well, brown.

Almost. Okay, Fanny did her best to banish the buff and beige, bringing every colour of the rainbow to the buffet table. But the table was probably brown, the table cloth would undoubtedly be brown and orange. The guests crowded round it would certainly be dressed head to foot in cocoa inspired patterns of chocolatey brown and zesty orange, with orange accessories that perhaps looked like they'd been fashioned from the space-age adornments scattered around the house. And dipped in extra brown. You get the idea.

Fanny decided to embrace the unavoidable brown-ness of the time. In celebration, she unveiled her Brown Meringue. She could've worked more on the name, but do remember how hip and happening it was to love brown. Today we want our meringues to be so glowingly white they match our overly-whitened teeth and pristine, shiny, clinical white homes. Not brown. In the 1970's Fanny replaced the white sugar in her meringue mix for the tawny brown stuff and whipped up a brown frenzy. If she could've got brown egg whites I'm sure she would've. That's how she rocked.

Bang on trend, she pairs it of course with... Orange. She replaces the milk in a custard with equal quantities of orange juice and water, using the otherwise abandoned egg yolks perfectly. A splash of orange blossom water adds a shade more orange. The brown meringue is baked on a sheet of rice paper for reasons unknown, but also why not. It emerges so fashionably brown, all it needs is a seventies swirl of the orange custard. And a whole mandarin orange plonked in the centre. With a bay leave decoration. And freshly released citrus segments to trim. It tastes wonderfully caramelly and orangey. It tastes like the 70's. There are no other descriptions. It's brown. It's orange. It is the 1970's.

Lacto Lenten Luncheon

Fanny wasn't a fan of Mrs Beeton. She mentions her often. Never in a good way. She says that the original Book of Household Management 'stuff' (she clearly can't bring herself to call it a 'cookbook') is all 'fiddle-faddle'. Fanny blames Mrs Beeton for so many English women failing. She gave all the wrong information. Fanny cannot imagine any professional chef in a professional kitchen wasting their time and money playing the farcical 'games' she outlined. After all, she never had time in her very short life to actually learn how to cook. The only evidence Fanny has seen that she cooked anything came from her sister who remarked that a cake she made when 8 years old 'was a sad failure and turned out like a biscuit'. In what seems to be the ultimate put down, Fanny asserts that Mrs Beeton 'couldn't even fry an egg'.

For Fanny, egg-skills are the most important. Especially for lacto-vegetarians. Especially during Lent. Especially when preparing a buffet for lacto-vegetarian guests during Lent. Not only a time of exclusion, but also a time for frugalness. To confront any nonsense in readers minds that eggs may be an out-of-reach expense, Fanny tells us that she, as a private person, buys her eggs direct from the local farmer at 19p per dozen. Fanny reminds us that any member of the public can do precisely the same thing. If in any doubt, Fanny points out that an egg has the nutritional equivalency to over two ounces of meat, so surely we must accept more readily that 5p is better spent on three fresh eggs than on almost any other foodstuff.

Fanny's point seems to be that the recipes for these lacto-vegetarian (she does love this description!) are good for the household too. As a result of spending prudently on ingredients, we should have more time to spend on cooking them. Apparently. So the less you spend, the more time you have. Great! Making a little go a long way demands more cooking time if what you make is to taste delicious. According to Fanny the only alternative is to cut down on both (and risk a nutritional crisis) and open a tin of something. This can never be a substitute for good cooking. Fanny does say that tins can be superb 'props or aids to good cookery', presumably just in case you happen to own her cookbook devoted to Cooking with Can and Pack in which she does exactly that.

No tins here, this is fresh, locally purchased, farmer approved, lacto-vegetarian fare after all. Oh, except the tin of sweetcorn. She serves it on a bed of 'health' rice, which is brown. All lacto-vegetarians love a bit of brown health. Simply sparkle it up with a hard boiled egg and a dash of paprika. Just like her Mum used to make. The Mushroom and Tomato Bake is layers of mushrooms and tomatoes, chopped roughly, cooked together, then layered with breadcrumbs and milled hazelnuts, also cooked together in butter. With Marjoram in-between each layer. Lacto-Vegetarians, like plain old vegetarians today, love a salad. So Fanny whips up her special Banana, Walnut and Orange Salad of sliced bananas doused in honey and lemon juice, with scattered chopped dates and walnuts, garnished with orange segments. It brings all the lacto-vegetarians to Fanny's yard. Or buffet.

To crown it all off, it has to be more eggs. Stuffed. Boil the economical yet nutritious eggs, peel and carefully slice the top off. Scoop out the yolk, carefully, mix with mayonnaise, ground almonds, grated cheese, a little tomato juice (for 'moistening' purposes), season and then, naturally, pipe it gloriously back into the hollowed out egg. Serve in egg cups stuffed with lettuce leaves. Poor old Mrs Beeton would never manage any of this, but thankfully for us with Fanny's help the buffet is a triumph. It all tastes good, even the Banana Salad. Fanny would never let us fail. Fanny would never let us present 'fiddle-faddle'. Thank heavens for Fanny!

Down and Out in London

When she wasn't encouraging us to squirt copious amounts of food colouring into every dish we were creating, Fanny Cradock was keen that we spent our time travelling around, soaking up as much culture as we could, and of course eating copious amounts of perfectly normally coloured food. Fanny wished of course that we did it in a very particular style - hers. I'm about to head off to London for a well deserved jaunt, and wondered how well her guide book of 1953 would hold up and help me to plan a suitably colourful trip?

Fanny says her 'unique' book will ensure that I have a happy and satisfying visit to the capital city, which is just what I am after. The book serves up, apparently, history as a 'fruity background' to the main mission of aiding me to lunch and dine in London's many fine restaurants. Naturally Fanny and Johnnie are the only people suitably qualified to help me on this quest, combining their 'gastronomic knowledge, literary skill and insight' (not to mention modesty) into the average person's problems of what dishes and wines to order. The average person. That's me.

Bon Viveur in London, compiled from various Daily Telegraph columns and articles from Fanny and Johnnie promises to give me the names of many restaurants, the prices of their dishes, detailed reports of the house specialities and even recipes which used at 'some' restaurants which I can introduce at home. So with a clarion call of 'Je ferai de mon possible' we are to be convinced that Fanny will indeed do her very best for us... Within limits. London of 1950 had changed beyond recognition from it's heyday of the late Victorian-Edwardian era as a 'gastronomes paradise'. Fanny notes that as a result of the two wars, much of the promised colour and fruity charm has been shed.

In 1953, Fanny is stepping into a restaurant on our behalf and seeing it with quite different eyes from the times when she allegedly went for 'private and personal enjoyment'. Now it's all about us, the average people. Fanny notes her task is akin to the painting of the Forth Bridge - endless - in that chefs move about, restaurateurs change and management switch. Reading through the guide there are so many altered places that I wish I could visit - the 'luxury class' of the Five Hundred Club in Albemarle Street, or perhaps an open sandwich lunch in the Débutantes Bar in the Brief Encounter on Brompton Road. Oh I forgot, I'm average, not high class.

I'll be staying on the South Bank. Fanny doesn't have recommendations for 'South'. Fanny recommends I eat at Whistlers Room Restaurant in the Tate Britain Gallery on Millbank. It's just across the river. Guess what, it's still there! I wonder if the unpretentious Mrs Adams is still feeding the hungry on 'good plain foodstuffs' - this is not a place for indulgent gastronomes - but Fanny recommends the soup. Will it still be hot and genuinely palatable? Will Kitty the star waitress still be adding a touch of extra character to the place with her watchful service? Will Chef Jasper still make his usual tour of the tables to enquire if all is well? Even for me, an everyday, average, lacking in colour person? Let's find out...

Quiche Me Quick

With the beginning of Lent looming later this week, Fanny Cradock is all set to rid meat, game and poultry from our diets. Oh. For some of us there is nothing to 'exclude' as we approach a period of practicing a 'little hopefully highly palatable austerity'. But hey, this means a whole partwork devoted to lenten food, and - wait for it - some special vegetarian recipes! Yahoo! She does say they are aimed at the 'less severe' lacto-vegetarians though, which perhaps clarifies her true feelings on the matter. Hang on though, before we get too excited, Fanny also warns us solemnly that this whole season of Lent can be wildly depressing gastronomically...

In an attempt to cheer us up, Fanny introduces four recipes for cod which she describes as 'dull as cold mutton'. It was known in her family as 'divorce meat'. Fanny's father considered any housewife who slipped cold mutton onto the table 'unsupported and unadorned' was providing more than adequate grounds for divorce. We are left to wonder what he thought of cold mutton 'supported and adorned'. Fanny says the same may be fairly said about her cod dishes, so we'll skip merrily over them. Fanny is particularly personally and positively despising of frozen fish fillets. She seems to like vegetarians only slightly more.

Her first suggestion is as equally palatable to her and her household - all devoted meat eaters she proudly tells us - as to her vegetarian guests. Perhaps she doesn't loath us all? Her first recipe idea is a classic one originally from Lorraine - Quiche, or Kiche - for which each local housewife has a recipe which they insist is better than their neighbours. Fanny does too. Her first vegetarian, lenten recipe contains bacon, which again perhaps displays her feelings towards both. I'll leave it out. Her first piece of respectful advice is to stick to a savoury version if serving it to someone actually from Lorraine. Who knew a sweet Quiche was even on the cards, certainly not those horrified luncheon guests who endured what Fanny herself calls a 'grim experience'.

Fanny's upholds her ominous undertones as she readies the pastry case for the Quiche. She calls it 'lining paste' which conjures up thoughts of dismal wallpapering and not cheerfully wow-ing vegetarian guests. This wallpaper lining paste is known as Pâté à Foncer Ordinaire and has a lower fat to flour ratio (roughly one third/two thirds) and a much higher water content, than the standard shortcrust stuff we are familiar with. It's all chopped up with knives, rolled out and used to line a suitable square tin in the usual way though. Yes, square it must be.

The pastry rolls out well. Fanny insists on blind baking with beans. If a raw pastry is used Fanny warns that the custard 'may go down and the pastry will come up in little humps and bubbles', so I'm not risking that. The filling is eggs, single cream (and/or top of the milk, every thrifty), Parmesan (or Parmesan-style for the 'more severe' than I in the vegetarian stakes) and a little seasoning. Poured into the case it is topped with thin slices of Gruyère and baked at two temperatures - first high for only five minutes then long and slow until set. This is Fannys key to success for custard which cuts creamily. The finished Quiche tastes yummily of yesteryear in all honesty, the lining paste is spectacularly crisp and flashes me straight back to childhood. Far from wildly depressing and grim, it is indeed a perfectly palatable beginning to Lenten. The wallpaper may still be ghastly, however, not everything from the 70's deserves a revival.