A return to the 70s

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Posted at 12:02PM, 04 June 2008 by Mary Cadogan - Food writer

My sister Annie and her husband Doug are staying with us for a few days and their arrival coincided with their 38th wedding anniversary. As they were married in 1970 (wearing matching white Levi jeans) I thought IÃ¢ÂÂd recreate the sort of dinner party we would have had then.

We kicked off with a nice chilled bottle of Mateus rose (not as bad as I remembered, but slightly fizzy with a flavour that reminded me of fruit pastilles), served with cheese and pineapple on sticks stuck into a foil covered half grapefruit.

As my sisterÃ¢ÂÂs son Seth and his wife were too young to really understand the joke they refused to eat this and thought the combo totally disgusting. We loved it, even with the tinned pineapple.

This dish has certainly stood the test of time and not a scrap was left for our ever hopeful dog Lily.

Next up was prawn cocktail, naturally. I bottled out of serving marie rose sauce with the prawns, which I never liked and instead made my own version of salad cream, made by whisking a lightly boiled egg yolk with lemon juice, mustard, olive oil and cream.

The main course was tricky to choose, but I ended up cooking Duck a lÃ¢ÂÂorange which was on every sophisticated restaurant menu in the 70Ã¢ÂÂs, usually served with a twist of orange and a great bouquet of watercress on the side. I slow roasted duck legs, and the sauce was based on a recipe from the Balthazar French bistro Balthazar French bistro in New York (a brilliant cookbook, by the way).

This dish has certainly stood the test of time and not a scrap was left for our ever hopeful dog Lily. As the candles flickered in the wicker Chianti bottles we rounded off the evening with yummy little black forest gateaux, my own recipe which you will find in the latest (July) issue of Good Food magazine. So, if you were to cook a 70Ã¢ÂÂs dinner party what would you have on your menu?

Comments

Mineke

4 June 2008, 1:35PM
Mineke

Starter would be: Melon with Parma ham. Main dish: We would have had Rollade, but I don't know if there is and Englisch equivelent. It's lean pork meat tied up in a rol and baked in the oven. Each would get a slice. This together with gravy, boiled potatoes and three kinds of boring veg sprinkled with nutmeg. Desert: Fresh pineapple with sweetened whiped cream. And Irish coffee. But this is the Dutch point of view of 70's dinnerparties.

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bronte

4 June 2008, 3:37PM
bronte

Hi Mary One of Mum's specials was beef curry with sultanas and chopped bananas on the side. And even then I thought it was disgusting! But I used to love her rice pudding baked in the oven and I thought Actic Roll was the height of sofistication. What was truly terrible then, but you could never admit it, were Vesta curry's - very little rice with added slime sauce! And you never went to a party without your Party 7. Great big tins of beer that you opened as soon as you arrived, had a dance, came back and someone had used it as an ashtray! Oh but we were young and we used to find a tea strainer and pour it out through that! Happy days.......

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Eileen

5 June 2008, 4:19PM
Eileen

My friend Lorna was getting married to a Belgian chap in the 70s. She wasn't much of a cook so practiced recipes on me. Vesta curry featured on the menu one night, but was never repeated - truly disgusting. Do they still manufacture it? She is now a good cook, as they say practice makes perfect.

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Gayns

5 June 2008, 9:07PM
Gayns

A nice little bottle of baby cham or country manor wine to accompany your meal-dead posh !! didn't ever have a starter as I recall A lovely sausage meat plait as a stunning main course served with mash and frozen veg and I would have to have a dessert of jelly with mandarins out of a tin and to fill you up some plastic bread and butter on the side which I was told later was meant to fill you up!! Actually my mouth is watering as they woud definitely go down very well !! my favourite puddings were actually rice pudding and apple crumble yummy!!!!

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Belinda

6 June 2008, 12:43PM
Belinda

Know what? From time to time, we still get out the "disgusting" combo of cheese with fruit .... as well as the prawn cocktail ... cannot have been that bad!

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Sharan

6 June 2008, 5:13PM
Sharan

Does anyone remember the tinned curry and rice that you boiled in a pan. One half of the tin had the curry and the other half the rice. We thought we were very sophisticated eating curry as most people had never tried it and called it 'foreign muck' Happy Days!!

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linda

8 June 2008, 4:59PM
linda

i loved the prawn cocktail and the sauce and know my eldest son loves it as well .but i have moved on in the curry stakes.my first curry was a vesta and my mum moaned at me cos i stank the house out and she still wont eat it or even try it

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gsymoo

8 June 2008, 9:18PM
gsymoo

I was born in 1973 and 70's cooking for me was my aunt cooking spagetti and everyone being impressed and when my parents had people round my mum would serve hard boiled eggs, cut inhalf. She would scoop the yolks out, mash with mayo and curry powder then pipe back in, with a sprinkling of cayenne on top and of course, the sprig of parsley on the side of the plate. I think they were from the Margaret Pattern book, Cookery in Colour which must of featured in every 70's kitchen.

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piginthekitchen

9 June 2008, 9:56PM
piginthekitchen

The stylish finale would have to be the classic ginger-biscuits-soaked-in-alcohol-and-sandwiched-together-with-cream dessert. Perfect.

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LizMacau88

10 June 2008, 8:00AM
LizMacau88

Oh yes! Prawn cocktail -- still an excellent dish if made well. saturday I am doing a twist on melon and ham with chilled melon soup with parma ham. Vesta Curries~!!! I practically lived on them when i was at college and found some in a couple of years ago and it was just the same. They were also invaluable in the galley when I used to do a lot of sailing years back! Retro is now the new fashion and jolly good fun it is too. Cheers! Liz

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syllabob

15 June 2008, 8:33PM
syllabob

love prawn cocktail, and love cheese with fruit - in Denmark cheese is eaten with marmelade and it is delicious! another one I miss for it social element is fondue - once had a red wine one which I still remember as being very tasty.

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Mrs. Mason-Brown

21 July 2008, 11:31PM
Mrs. Mason-Brown

In Canada it would be Tomato Aspic, Sweet and Sour Meatballs with tinned pineapple, Fondue, lots of things suspended in lime jello, Beer Beer (not a typo, but a brand called Beer Beer), Hamburger Helper, Ambrosia Salad, Goulash, and the height of sophistication, Quiche Loraine. If you really wanted to impress, it would be one of those horrid jelly set cheesecakes with tinned cherry pie filling on top. Fancy! Although, weird food aside, I do seem to remember a lot more regularity to people coming round to eat and socialize. Even though people lived on less disposable cash, people got together and ate simple things more often, and probably had more fun than we do now, stressing over the acceptability of our dishes of $5.00 on oz authentic hummus and plates of luxury-just-shaved-from-the-rump-of-a-secure-in-it's-future-heritage-farm-reared-Serrano-ham.

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