One hundred years of one house in Chorlton ... part 135 ….. chicken in a basket ……Black Forest Gateau and Blue Nun

 The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*

How we ate in 1975

Now Monday was one of our anniversaries, and as it coincided with Valentine’s Day I opted to do something special.

Over the years, like any house we have had shedloads of them stretching back to when Mike, Lois John lived here in the 1970s.

And on a whim, I chose to cook a meal from that decade.  It all seemed simple enough, a starter of Prawn Cocktail or pate  with Ritz Biscuits followed by chicken in a basket and rounded off by Black Forest Gateau, cheese and more but different  biscuits, and all accompanied by a bottle of Blue Nun.**

The Galloping Gourmet, 1972

Instantly there will be plenty of people who can share alternative dishes, some who will slip back a decade and offer up Pineapple Upside Down Cake, Beef Bourguignon and duck a l'orange, and those who did “interesting things” with spam, and cornbeef.

The purists out there will also quibble over some of my choices arguing that prawn cocktail was their signature 1960s dish.

In my defence at home in Well Hall vesta boil in the bag was as close as we got to exciting and exotic eating in the 60s.

That said all of us who were born in the immediate post war era, grew up with new and different foods which were a product of the growing tide of prosperity and consumerism along with cheap foreign holidays which combined to make us adventurous.

And made more possible by the acquisition of a fridge and later a freezer, which offered up the possibilities of buying into Artic Rolls, frozen foods and the TV dinner for the lazy.

Blue Nun, 1970s

Here in the seventies we fell on a heap of new dishes which were as much about experimenting with “foreign foods” as it was a reaction to the food we had grown up with.  In that respect Beef Bourguignon was always going to sound more exciting than beef stew with dumplings, and a pavlova would score above rice pudding, jam rolly polly or fruit salad with carnation milk.

It also chimed with the Habitat furniture, quirky kitchen utensils, and the duvet.

All of which I suspect passed Joe and Mary Ann who lived here from 1915 until 1973, which I know is a big assumption given that they had embraced plenty of the “new” from a telephone in the 1920s to a telly three decades on.

They may well have enjoyed the starters of Prawn Cocktail and pate with Ritz biscuits followed by chicken in a basket and rounded off by Black Forest Gateau, accompanied by a bottle of Blue Nun.

Sadly, we didn’t.  

The plan stalled when I couldn’t get the Black Forest Gateau, took another dip with the knowledge of what went into the pate, and just what prawns eat, and finally crashed with the idea of cooking the chicken.  

So, faced with an alternative plan I abandoned the Blue Num and went with a roast pepper salad and an orange salad, followed by Parmigiana di melanzane, and tiramisu with a selection of red and white wine.***

Parmigiana di melanzane, 2022

And here I have to confess that I can never better Tina’s tiramisu, so went with one from Morrisons.

If there was a theme it was home cooking from Italy, and especially from the Italian south, but it still fitted with the idea of something different, and that has been how we have served up meals in the house for decades.

Cooking in the 1970s with Jeni Wright, 1978

Leaving me just to reflect I may go back to the 1970s relying on another favourite cookbook published in 1978, by Marks and Spencer.  

We shall see.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; how we ate in 1975, from the collection of Lois Elsden, The Galloping Gourmet, 1972, The St Micahel All Colour COOKERY BOOK, Jeni Wright, 1978, and  Parmigiana di melanzane, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and a bottle of Blue Nun, 1970s, displayed in the Little Museum of Dublin, 2020, LitMusDub, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

*The Story of a House, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house

*Blue Nun, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Nun

*** Parmigiana di melanzane, fried slices of aubergine, cooked between layers of mozzarella and parmesan cheese, and topped with tomato sauce.