These are BRILLIANT! I’ve been meaning to have a go at these for years, and I finally got around to it. Partly because a little jar of these have been earmarked as one of my competition prizes. They will be heading to the States sometime soon. I gave a little jar to Debbie for her...
Did you ever want to change your Christian name? I did, and I have. The name most people know me by (Jenny) is not the name on my birth certificate. But I’m not telling you what my real name is, because that way ridicule lies. When people find out, there is generally a bit of...
Vic came over for a Rockford Files last night and I had planned to serve up a chilli. I foolishly strayed from the preferred path of matching the recipe to the event. Instead of making a James Garner chilli (which I know from experience is the BEST chilli ever) I decided to try Warner Baxter’s...
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm – this was even nicer than the first time. For this version I used Hammerton’s Oyster Stout aka Pentonville which made for a darker, and for some reason moister, (is moister a word?) bread. I thought it was delicious! Isn’t this a wonderful sight to see? I stocked up on the family brew at...
All of the film star recipes I make and write about here have some kind of provenance. They are either something the star claimed to make themselves, or something they stated was their fave thing to eat in a particular Hollywood eating establishment, OR dishes that were made for them by their cook, wife, mother,...
Ooh, this is a nice easy one to have up your sleeve (so to speak). I’m a big fan of Shelley. I love her hanky-wringing character in A Place in the Sun. Let’s face it, when your hangdog boyfriend claps eyes on Elizabeth Taylor at her glorious best, you are not going to have much...
My second article for Eat Drink Films is live today and you can nip over there for Yul’s recipe. It’s very good – here’s the link to the recipe: Yul Brynner’s Potatoes in Sour Cream and here are a few photos of some I made earlier… I used Maris Piper potatoes. I used Panko breadcrumbs…...
The August recipe is up and it’s absolutely delicious. It’s one of those dishes that whenever I think about it I start licking my lips and thinking, I must make that again. I absolutely loved it. The lovely Charlie has updated my website to the new version of WordPress and I’m getting all kinds of...
I like a rice you bake in the oven, especially when it is baking hot in the kitchen. Mine gets very hot and steamy if there are lots of things on the hob and at the moment in the UK we are having a HEATWAVE. It’s lovely. For the book group I had made the...
It was my turn to host the book group last week and it is now tradition that I make a 10 boy curry. We didn’t have the 10 boys parading around with the condiments, they were on the sideboard, or the “buffeteria” as Lindsey christened it the last time we had a 10 boy curry....
It’s been all about the beer this week as the big news is: Hammerton beer has arrived in Muswell Hill! The delightful Prohibition Wines on Fortis Green Road is stocking the family brew. I am DONE FOR! I stocked up a bit and did my first experimental batch of beer bread. YUM. It’s very good. ...
My lovely penpal Margie in Atlanta mentioned ages ago that she’d spotted a Yul Brynner cookbook and I’m not sure why I didn’t get on the ebay machine immediately and buy one. No matter, his card was picked from the pack for recipe of the month for August so I pressed the buy button last...
Hereby follows a salutary tale. Battenburg Belle has told me that we must admit to our failures as well as our successes so here goes. So I bought all the gubbins for Clark’s dish including a LOT of expensive venison. Made the marinade including some red wine that was gifted to Mr R by Chloe...
I made a lovely boozy batch of this for the Naughty Habits Strolling Supper Club that Battenburg Belle and I collaborated on a few weeks ago. It was wonderful evening and BB has written about it more eloquently than I can over here. The punch was a big hit. In the end I used half...
Salad season is upon us. I’m trying to be healthy this week as I’ve been boozing it up and not eating particularly well. So today I bought loads of saladings (as they call them at the Muswell Hill Horticultural Society) and made a lovely fresh salad for my tea. But for me, it’s not a...
I was thrilled to get a first prize for my Vincent Price Raspberry Tart. I made it exactly to Vincent’s instructions in the “Treasury”. The only thing I did differently was to use cherry brandy rather than raspberry liqueur as I’d bunged all of that in my Madeleine Carroll punch. Mmmmm. I was so pleased...
I love goosegogs so when I spotted this recipe for jam I decided it could be a contender for the Muswell Hill Horticultural Society Summer Show. There are only 5 categories in the cookery section in the Summer show, unlike the Spring show which has approximately 1000. Well, it feels like it anyhow! Despite this,...
The results of the Muswell Hill Horticultural Society Summer Show Cookery Classes are IN. I was awarded one FIRST, one SECOND and one THIRD. Third was for my Vincent Price Blueberry Muffins. Read all about them and get the recipe here…
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Stop press! James Garner’s daughter Gigi got in touch via Twitter about this recipe. She thinks it may be her grandfather’s recipe rather than her father’s. I am devastated! I knew JG was a judge for the National Chili Championships so assumed that this recipe (published in several newspapers in the 1980s) with his name...
Oh the shame of it, like a stake through the heart. The judges at the Muswell Hill Horticultural Society Spring Show thought my fruit cake was “very tasty but just a little dry”. Oof! This post is therefore a note to self about what might have caused this. For the recipe is destined for the...
Happy National Blueberry Muffin Day! The first of my monthly columns on the lovely Eat Drink Films website is up! Isn’t it lovely? Vincent Price Blueberry Muffins Here’s some I made earlier… Thanks Vincent!
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Do you have a “to-do” list? Is it massive? Is there something on there that doesn’t get done, for months and months and months? I’m going to try and make my to-do list more like Johnny Cash’s… For me, the thing that’s been hanging around on the to-do list for far too long is sending...
Want to hear the most exciting news EVER? There is going to be a 50th Anniversary Edition of Mary and Vincent Price’s “A Treasury of Great Recipes”. Pass me the smelling salts! Yinzerella over at Dinner is Served alerted me to this, and sent me over me to a fabulous new website called Cooking With...
Call the exaggeration police! This Mile High Lemon Chiffon Pie should be renamed the One Inch High Lemon Chiffon Pie. I was sooooooo excited to get my recipe for the first annual Pieathalon, organised by my cyberchum Yinzerella over at Dinner Is Served 1972. People all around the world sent recipes to Yinzerella and she...
It’s official! The Shellac Sisters smashed it at Glastonbury! Armed with four gramophones and six boxes of 78rpms we trotted down to the Glade each day for 3pm to charm festival-goers with our old-skool tunes. They loved us! Highlights for me were: 1 – first sight of our wonderful venue – a beautiful bandstand called...
I’m going to be DJing with The Shellac Sisters at Glastonbury Festival. No kidding. Come on down and see us if you are so inclined! We’ll be taking four 1920s wind up gramophones and four hundred weight of 78rpm records…. Normal service will be resumed when I return…
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It’s the last of my posts about the cocktails and canapes party – phew! I feel a bit sad and have the song “The Party’s Over” going around in my head… No need to be sad, it was FAB and there will be another… Nathalie made some Gingerbread Men to Jackie Cooper’s recipe. There was...
This really must be Bob’s favourite lemon pie, I have a recipe for this in 13 different sources. I bet that after a while, every time anyone ever asked him for a recipe he told his secretary to “send them the old lemon pie recipe”. I may, at some point, compare them all for variations...
This was really lovely. Chunks of chicken in a creamy sauce, cooked up in a double boiler. The kind of “cooked dressing” that seemed to be very popular in the 1930s. It reminded me a bit of a posh Heinz Toast Topper type mixture, but it was super tasty. Can you still get Toast Toppers? ...
I liked the idea of serving a couple of different finger sandwiches at our party and this loony looking recipe caught my eye. It’s got olives, mustard, butter, hard boiled eggs and some other stuff I can’t remember, in. I’m not at home near my recipes so I’ll have to come back to this one...
There is no denying that these were a big hit. One minute the plate looked like this: The next minute it looked like this: I didn’t even get one! These were the first thing to get completely scoffed. I’m going to make this again because it is a combination of two things I love –...
These were the last things I made for the party. The guests were already arriving, and I was already drinking Vincent Price Tonics and New Fashioneds, so I missed part of the recipe. After mixing the peanut butter into the cooked rice and making them into little footballs, I should have dipped them in egg...
Note to self and everyone else who might attempt this, jelly/jello takes a lot longer to set than you would expect. You have to make this the day before your party and keep shaking it at regular intervals to see if it is ready to bung all the walnuts, apple and celery in. When Julie...
At the last cocktails and canapés party there was much talk about the word Kebob as opposed to Kebab (which is what we call them here in the UK). At this cocktails and canapés party there was much talk about haircuts. I was saying how well I remember the time Michelle turned up at White...
I knew these were good as I’d made them before. I love it when you find all the cinammony pine nuts inside. Julie suggested making them a bit smaller as she found chomping on a whole one a bit difficult. I think she is absolutely right. Bite sized Kibbees next time. Besides, the smaller you...
First ingredient in Spring’s ingredient list was “1 pint cottage cheese”. A PINT of cottage cheese? I was puzzling over this measurement and looking at the 600g pot I had bought when Mr R had a bright idea. He got a can of San Miguel out of the fridge (500ml so around a pint) and...
Nathalie made some of this at home and brought it over in lovely bottles with hand made labels. Tres chic and very tasty. Directions were to add water, but as the party progressed, guests diverted from this and topped it up with Prosecco – booze hounds! A bit like a Bellini. Nathalie had the...
Some folks opted to have another pink tonic rather than the booze fuelled New Fashioneds but I preferred these of the two. They sure packed a punch. Too busy drinking them to get a good photo… Recipe for these is as follows: A lump of sugar dissolved with 3 dashes Angostura and a splash of...
The world cup has just started and hence normal service at Silver Screen Suppers Towers will be interrupted. I’ll be drip-feeding some findings on the third of the recipe testing parties Nathalie and I have thrown whenever I get a few moments away from the telebox. After the first goal was scored – an own...
Ooh, ooh! I met my hero on Thursday – YOTAM OTTOLENGHI. Oh it was so exciting! It never would have happened if I hadn’t have been so merry on red wine, and chatting to Heather from Cook Up a Party at the Guild Awards after-party. I said, “ooh, there’s Ottolenghi, would it be really starstruck...
A long time ago I changed the “Sent from my iPhone” sign off to: “Sent from the land of the Celia Johnson Chocolate Sponge Cake” and never got around to changing it. When I booked a fishing trip with Stacey aboard the Lady Grace she sent a response confirming the date and time and asked:...
You know a true friend when they give you a part baked home made baguette the day before you go on your holidays and say: “you can take that for the Company Shed”. Battenburg Belle, Queen of Baking, knows me so well. Here’s some she made earlier. The Company Shed is a legendary spot on...
When Mr R told an Italian work colleague where he was going for his holiday (Mersea Island off the coast of Essex) he was told, “Meh, it isn’t very exotica” (in an Italian accent). But you know what? I think it is VERY exotic. Especially when you can cook up a Hawaiian dish in your...
Eggs, butter, cheese, cream… How could it be anything else but delicious? And delicious it was! Yinzerella over at Dinner is Served 1972 was celebrating Liberace’s birthday all week, and I decided to join her from across the Atlantic. Does Liberace deserve a spot beside all the greatest stars of Hollywood’s golden era? I say...
I’m thrilled to be featured on Emerald Street today. So if you are visiting from there, welcome to the wonderful world of film star dining and drinking! Check out your favourite stars from the side-bar or just have a roam around… As the article mentioned Bette’s Baked Beans I thought I would post the recipe...
Ooooh Tooona. Chicken of the sea… Sometimes I get a powerful craving for it and when I saw some French beans in my fridge that needed using up, my immediate thought was SALAD NICOISE. I checked out the spreadsheet and I have 3 film star recipes for Salad Nicoise – one from Grace Kelly, one...
This was mighty fine. Although Doris’s recipe calls for an Angel Food Cake mix: you can’t get one of those for love nor money in the UK, so in a reversal of all that I have learned via Caker Cooking, I made one from scratch. To Rita Hayworth’s recipe which you can find at the...
Do you know that Della Reese song, “It’s So Nice To Have a Man Around the House”? I love it. Especially the bit that goes: “…Just a guy in pipe and slippers Who will share your breakfast kippers And will help you zip your zippers, it’s so nice…” One of the things I really like...
YUM. Mmmm. This recipe was good. Made for Easter Monday when I organised a little celebration of the glorious entity that is Doris Day. She was ninety recently and hearing her on the transistor radio chatting to Michael Ball the other day, she is obviously is in full control of her faculties. Doris, we love...
I am on a diet. Boring but true. As I was home alone on Bank Holiday Monday I thought I’d check out what Diana recommended for breakfast on the X-cel Diet. I have much to say about Diana and her diet. In fact, am slightly obsessed with it. As I am with all things Diana...
Do you talk in your sleep? I sure do. Mr Rathbone wrote down some things I said last night. The first bit went as follows: Me: I don’t know where to start baby, shall we start with the big first Columbo? Does that have the snow toast people in it baby? Mr R: I can’t...
I won an Oscar last week! Well, the film archiving world’s equivalent of an Oscar. I am the proud recipient of the Focal International Footage Employee of the Year Award. Look how happy I am about it. It’s a bit like winning the Best Actress at the Academy Awards. Sort of. It’s reminded me that...
I am a Hammerton (it’s my surname) and I love beer. Can you imagine how happy I was last Wednesday to be at the soft launch of the HAMMERTON BREWERY?! My genius nephew Lee has resurrected a Hammerton business dormant since the late 1950s, and his first brews were let loose on the world this...
David Niven was plucked from the pack for this month’s recipe of the month and it’s a goodie. I love fish cakes. I like the way David writes a recipe too… I’m going to transcribe his recipe exactly as he wrote it, then let you know how I actually made them… As David wrote...
My neighbour (and matchmaker extraordinaire) Chloë has asked me to write something for a pitch she is doing for a publisher. She’s creating a brand new magazine and it sounds like it will rock. I might have a regular column about film star recipes. Am I excited? YES. I can’t say too much about it...
It was annual Duckie Day chez Mr R yesterday and he cooked up a divine combination of perfectly roasted duck, corn on the cob, brussels sprouts, roast potatoes and roast parsnips. Bloody gorgeous. I wanted to make a cake but was somewhat restricted by Mr R’s selection of bakeware. As I sat like the Queen...
When I was single Buckingham Eggs was my regular “Spinster Saturday” treat. I love this stuff. Anchovies. Mmmm. Eggs. Mmmmm. Cheese. Mmmmm. I was on my lonesome most of the weekend before Easter, and I had a bit of a trip down memory lane to those Saturdays. I made the anchovy/butter/mustard paste with the anchovies...
I am so proud of my lamb cake I had to share it, even though it is not a film star recipe. What do you think? When I first put his googly eyes on he looked a bit worried… But not as worried as when we sliced his bum off… I have to say a...
I have decided. I am no good at making jam. This was my third attempt at this jam and although I thought it was pretty much a fail, the judges at the Muswell Hill Horticultural Show thought differently and awarded it second prize. I’m not going to challenge the decision, but to my mind, the...
After the disaster that was Myrna Loy’s Shortbread I wasn’t sure about entering this category for the MHHSSS (see previous post) but I spotted this recipe in The Treasury of Great Recipes and it sounded good. And good it certainly was. I did everything exactly to Vincent’s recipe which I am posting below, except for...
Helped by the stars of the silver screen, I won a TROPHY on Saturday. I won the Cookery Cup at the Muswell Hill Horticultural Society Spring Show. GET ME! Quite frankly I am exhausted, so I’ll be having an early night tonight rather than ranting and raving about it but here is what I won:...
I have had one huge success and one huge failure in the kitchen this week… You know how it is when the hardest person to please can make you the very happiest by damning with faint praise? I spent last week in charge of making sure my god-daughter did her homework and her piano practice...
I am shocked to the core. Today when I got home from work, the Muswell Hill & District Horticultural Society Handbook and Schedule of Spring, Summer and Autumn Shows 2014 was on my doormat. Despite assurances from the committee that the cookery categories would be the same as last year, they are DIFFERENT! Where is...
Chocolate mousse was obviously a big favourite in the world of puds for movie stars. I have recipes by Deborah Kerr, Jack Hobbs, Moira Lister, Raymond Burr, Rose Martin, Wendy Toye, Agnes Ayres, and Carol Burnett. There are possibly more tucked away under other names too, but Vincent’s recipe is SO good I’m not sure...
Today I have a fabulous report from my old mucker Gus. When I lived on a houseboat Gus lived on the boat next door and much fun was had by us shouting at each other through our respective kitchen windows, feeding the swans that swum up and down between our two boats and risking a...
A couple of people recently have asked me what my favourite film star recipe is. For a long time I have said Marlene Dietrich’s Lamb Chops En Casserole but I have switched recently to Liz’s chicken. It is simple and utterly delicious, and the use of a posh EXPENSIVE dessert wine makes it extra special....
What is scampi? It’s complicated. For me, the word scampi puts me in mind of something I loved when I was a little kid and my parents took me out to dinner. Scampi in a basket seemed like a VERY sophisticated dish for a pre-teen at the Berni Inn. Crispy unidentified fishy things in crispy...
Last night I had the best meal of my life. After it was all over, I was in a kind of dumbstruck food shock state. Everything had been so wonderful, I eventually announced: “That’s the best meal I have ever eaten that I paid for myself!” but after obsessing about it ever since, I have...
Mr Rathbone loves toad in the hole so for Valentine’s night I decided to do chicken in-a-toad-in-the-hole-style. Hen in the hole if you will… For me the chicken was not finger licking… I was in one of those fearful cooking moods. The chicken was top quality corn-fed chook and I was worried about how it...
The date of the Muswell Hill Horticultural Society Spring Show has been set and the cookery categories have been announced – exactly the same as last year. Hence much good-natured rivalry between myself and Battenburg Belle has commenced. Coffee Cake is the only category I have a hope of winning as BB doesn’t like coffee...
Hereby follows a fabulous guest post by Uncle Vic, my ex boyfriend, current neighbour and lover of all things Vincent Price related…. This was Vic’s challenge for the Vincent Price Halloween Cookalong, but he was poleaxed by lack of cooking pans in his own gaff. Therefore he came down two flights of stairs from his...
Ooh, I do love venison. It is so rich and delicious and flavoursome and lean and it always seems extravagant. Clark’s method is a really nice way of cooking it – marinating it for aaaaages in red wine, oil, vinegar and herbs then cooking it up in an onion-y, bacon-y, floury sauce. Yum. I think...
