Cooking my mother...time travelling through food

The evening of Friday 25th June was the second dinner party, set in 1973. I had decided not to try the cocktail beforehand, so as to be a surprise (strangely, I’ve never drunk one before!)  The cocktail was a Tequila Sunrise and I know the layers are supposed to be separate, but when I poured things in, it all just mixed…pretty orange colour, but not right! I also missed the lemon out, so pleasant, but sweet. I tried it again on Saturday lunch time, and got it very pleasantly right. Turns out putting ice in on top of the grenadine slows down the tequila/orange juice etc so keeping the layers distinct. (Pre-dinner nibbles…cheese and pineapple hedgehog) The starter was salmon mousse and melba toast, and it’s a starter that’s made from ingredients which are all in tins or packets, which is possibly all mum would have available when she first started making it in Nassau in 1967. It’s got a bit of sharpness to it from the vinegar, and tasted just as good as I remember it from our Christ...

 So looking back at mum’s planner, there are just 2 pages of notes… We’ve got the first mention of a starter that we as a family still have today, a salmon mousse, and beef stroganoff comes up 5 times. Mum is also branching out with desserts: there are now 2, sometimes 3, being served at each dinner. Cheese pie (well, cake) and brandied fruit, as well as Black Forest. So, I’ve made the salmon mousse a few times, so that’s ok; I’ve done mum’s cheesecake recipe a number of times as well, and brandied fruit is pretty simple… I wanted to get a particular group of friends for this meal as one is a vegetarian. Mum and dad didn’t have any vegetarian friends, so no meals would automatically fit …but I know there is a mushroom stroganoff which is supposed to be just as nice as the beef stroganoff. So I’m doing beef stroganoff AND mushroom stroganoff…the beef one my mum’s recipe, and the mushroom one a modern recipe.  Slight problem: I’ve never cooked beef stroganoff, so a trial run was...

 Context again, personal, historical and gastronomical! We returned from Nassau as mum and dad decided that, however interesting a time they’d been having, my brother and I were 7 and 5, and needed to be going to school in the UK.  So dad took a job with a civil engineering company in Sheffield, working on Hallamshire Hospital. We started out renting a house while mum and dad decided where to live (so no dinner parties at that point) and then we moved into the second house to be built in a new development in Ecclesall, Silverdale Close. Gradually, the houses got built past us and around us, and gradually new people moved in, and mum and dad began making friends and entertaining again for both business and pleasure.  To start with, mum and dad and their friends would pool the younger children at one house, with the older teenagers babysitting us, and the adults would enjoy dinner next door. Later on, as we grew older and hopefully more sensible, we’d still be ‘babysat’ but...

 So, having made decisions, time to put them into practice. I invited 2 friends (thank you, Diane and Tina!) for this first retro dinner party, and it took me a very relaxed 2 days to make the preparations. First, the cocktail: the Moonwalk, made in honour of the moon landing, and supposedly the first thing given to the astronauts as they arrived back on earth. I purposefully didn’t try it before the dinner, as I wanted it to be a surprise for me as well as my guests…and it was gorgeous! Light, refreshing, and then a nice kick. Recipe: 1 measure of grapefruit juice (I used the bigger side of those measuring cups that come with cocktail shakers), 1 measure of Grand Marnier (well, I used Cointreau, because that was the orange liqueur that I had in the house) a couple of drops of rose water (I don’t know that I’d worry about including that again, because I couldn’t taste it) and 2 measures of sparkling wine, per person. I got 6 glasses out of the bottle, and rather happy we were… Star...

 So my starting point was mum’s dinner party planner, which she started in the Bahamas in 1967, when she and dad, and my brother and I, moved there for a couple of years. Looking through the first 4 pages, they seemed to be having a dinner a month, with just one, or later two, couples per time. Mum recorded things simply, just one option as starter, main and dessert, no comments on extras or veg. Starters and desserts seem to be repeated quite a lot, while mum rang the changes with the main courses a bit more. Having looked at the plans, and worked out what got repeated the most, I was able to decide that the dessert should be trifle...although ‘cheese pie’ seemed to be a strong contender... And that the starter should be conch fritters, whatever they were... ...I’ll come to that later!... And the main course could have been almost anything, because mum was only occasionally repeating something. Dad reminded me that where they lived in Nassau, mum was being influenced by American f...

 A bit of context: personal, historical and gastronomical! Dad is the son and grandson of miners in County Durham; passing the 11 plus, he went to grammar school and then to University, training as a civil engineer. Mum was born in Somerset, and left school to work in the bank. Mum and dad met when dad joined a major civil engineering firm and went to take charge of a small part of a big project in Somerset. As well as wanting to succeed in work, he wanted to meet girls, so he and a friend joined the Young Conservatives there, and went on an outing to a BBQ. Also on that outing was my mum and one of her friends...and so mum and dad started dating. After a time they talked about getting engaged, but dad was offered the chance to work in Fiji, and so they decided that dad should take up the offer, and they would get engaged when he got home, which they did. They married in June 1960, and spent some time in West Africa as well as the UK. Mum remembered dad had a more cosmopolitan appr...

 Probably I ought to explain the title of the blog? To be honest, I’m fairly certain I ought to, or risk possible arrest... In February this year (2021) my mum passed away (honestly, I’m explaining the title, not confessing something awful...) and during the grief and sorrow, of missing mum but looking after dad, and cooking in mum’s kitchen, I realised that the place I most missed mum was in that kitchen. Every where I looked was something that she had taught me to use, or a place I would sit or stand while she cooked and I watched or both of us cooked together, or her recipe books and folders of dishes that were part of her repertoire and had become part of mine. So I started to look properly through her books and folders, and pulled out one that I’d been aware of, but hadn’t fully explored: her dinner party planner. She and dad had always had people round to dinner, and been to friends’ houses, but I hadn’t seen the whole picture. Mum had kept a dinner party planner, not just oc...