For the 3rd of the Heinz 57 extravaganzas, I had a fun cookalong with Jan Manthey – winner of the Vincent Price Cucumber Crocodile competition,
cult film director extraordinaire,
and one of the frontmen of The Dylan Rabbit.
Jan runs the most excellent Saucy Seventies Adventures Twitter account (18K followers and counting) and we decided to make the Jon Pertwee Spaghetti Flan featured in this Heinz advert together (but in our own kitchens), and tweet about it.
Jan had discovered this advert in his journeys around the internet and there is quite a buzz around it, especially in the Doctor Who fan community. There is even a website that appears to be dedicated to the Jon Pertwee Spaghetti Flan
There is a fabulous post on this site entitled Who Discontinued My Cheese, about the sad fact that Heinz’s Spaghetti with Tomato and Cheese is no longer available in the US and UK. After posing himself the question WWJPD? (what would Jon Pertwee do?), the author of the blog then concludes, “Research and analysis, of course. Here are the ingredients and nutrition facts for some of the options available in the US plus the Canadian import. I’ll try a couple of them, but I need to pick up some flan rings first.”
Definitely worth a glance if you are planning on making this dish and you can’t get hold of the main ingredient!
Alas, there are only 3 more posts on the Jon Pertwee Spaghetti Flan blog after this forensic examination of HSITSWC (Heinz Spaghetti in Tomato Sauce with Cheese). The last one is dated October 13th, 2013. No attempt on the flan was made (at least none was recorded for posterity) so I wonder what happened? Was this blogger totally exhausted by efforts to obtain a can of Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce with Cheese? Gone off the idea?
All the more reason for me and Jan to attempt it!
This is shaping up to be a very long post so I will just say two things about the flan and let the photos speak for themselves.
1 – In ye olden days, a tin of Heinz spaghetti was 15 and 3/4 oz which in new money is 446g. Nowadays in the UK, a tin is 400g. So I decided to make up the 46g with grated cheddar – lack of cheese in tin of spaghetti sorted!
You can see how serious Mr R is about our Heinz 57 challenge by his “wall of Heinz”.
2 – I had no idea what this flan would turn out like. Would it be disgusting or good?
Well, me and Mr R had a small piece each as we were trepidatious.
Then we decided to have a second piece.
Then we ate the WHOLE FLAN.
So there you go, it was delicious. All that cheese and bacon I expect!
Mr R said it would have been nice to have some Dalek bread on the side…
By the way, this wasn’t the only Heinz product Jon Pertwee was involved with. For those of you that remember Heinz Noodle Doodles (yum, yum, yum, food’s never been such fun)…
…here’s Jon Pertwee singing a song about them with a great video mash-up of some foodie scenes from Doctor Who.
But beware of this book…
Even though Jon is on the back…
and there is lots of discussion about it on the world wide interweb…
there are no Jon Pertwee recipes inside. Some very weird recipes it is true, but none specifically from Jon’s kitchen. I am still tempted to request to be a member of The Jon Pertwee Recipe Book Appreciation Society as their seal is brilliant.
Plus I am working on this right now, “Initiates of the Jon Pertwee Recipe Book Appreciation Society are expected to recognize and take responsibility for their inner hair do.” Haha. I’m doing my best.
Jan’s verdict on the pie? He made a veggie version and here’s a pic.
He wrote, “Our flan was slightly overcooked, but I really liked it, and it went well with roast potatoes! Mrs was not so keen, and would not want to eat it again. Posy thought it was ok. I strongly suspect that the Pertwees never made this dish….”
You could be right Jan!
Jan sent me some fab food photos of Jon, I don’t know if “Mrs Pertwee” is in either of these but I’m sure someone out there does…
Plus, here’s one I found – Funyun or real onion ring?!
For the record, here are close-ups of the other recipes that feature in the legendary Spaghetti Flan ad. Recipes are attributed to Kenneth Horne, Teddy Johnson, Cyril Fletcher, David Jacobs and Jonathan Routh. I have got my eye on the Spaghetti Pizza!
What a great post! I enjoyed every bit of it! I will make the spaghetti flan thanks to this!
Oooh, Amy! I’d love to hear how it turns out, do let me know – and take photos!!
I have yet to try this…being a huge Jon Pertwee fan, I need to. To answer your question of if Mrs. Pertwee is in those pictures, yep, she is in both of them (she is the one standing up serving in the first picture). Also the onion ring picture was taken by a fan while he was visiting in Texas.
Brilliant Ashleigh! Thanks for that info, I love it! I do encourage you to try the flan, surprisingly delicious and I’d love to hear how it turns out for you if you make it. Are you somewhere where you can get hold of spaghetti with cheese? It’s making me hungry just thinking about this dish, I might make it again sometime…