Hollywood Salad contains cream cheese and dried fruit. Lawrence proclaimed it to be: “A cheeseboard on a biscuit”.
...
I think it was Nathalie that said this: “tastes like a lollipop”. I loved the fact Mr R popped a blue mermaid into her glass so that the cocktail colour co-ordinated with her outfit. Joshua sent a text to the daughter of Douglas Fairbanks Junior (she’s a chum) during the party. She didn’t know there...
On Sunday night Nathalie and I hosted a Hollywood and Canapes Party at my place – the first of many we hope. Our lovely guests were Becky, Joshua, Mr R, Amy, Vic and Caroline. As we made such an enormous spread I am just going to do short blog entries for everything and not type...
Mr Rathbone liked these. He thought they tasted like “candied rum” – how poetic! He liked the photo too – saying that the parrot added a “touch of the tropical”. I think that I got the recipe from the Stork Club Bar Book but for speed here it is on the internet… The Boris Karloff...
Boris went viral this week! A big thank-you to all the readers who emailed me a link to his guacamole recipe – it’s all over the place on t’interweb. I took it as a sign that it should be the recipe of the month – and so it is – you can see it here...
Oh YEAH. This was just as delicious second time around, and this time cooked on the BBQ rather than in the oven. For yes, it is summer and I’ve been to my first BBQ for about 3 years. It was lovely! Here’s me pretending to be in charge of the cooking… (but of course, when...
In honour of the 50th anniversary of the UK release of Cleopatra Mr Rathbone and I had a screening and lunch courtesy of Elizabeth Taylor. I attempted the make up, straightened my hair and wore the most suitable frock I could find: And we put Cleo on the DVD projector with the lights off even...
Camp Nanowrimo is over – boo. I am ridiculously fond of the whole Nanowrimo experience and it really feels like a holiday came to an end on the 1st August. Yeah, I WON. Well, effectively I met the target I set for myself so hell yeah, I am a winner. I still have a massive...
Woah! Television! I have been on a three day writing retreat and as usual when I spend some time at somebody else’s house I get obsessed by television because I don’t have one of my own. I allowed myself a 2 hour TV break each day. My programme of choice? Storage Hunters. Ohmygawd I love...
Had a wonderful evening last night with two of my Shellac Sisters, our beaus and two lovely visitors from New York. Film-maker Joel Schlemowitz and DJ MAC from the Vintage Phonograph Show on WFMU. It’s been quite a month for the Shellac Sisters. We DJd at this earlier in the month which was huge fun…...
Is this possibly the best Silver Screen Suppers chocolate cake EVER? It has pipped Gloria Swanson’s, Shirley Temple’s, Fred MacMurray’s and even Celia Johnson’s I think… This cake provoked more debate at work than any other I have ever made for my colleagues’ delight and delectation. Comments included “consistency is spot on” and from Lucy...
I am having lots of fun at Camp Nanowrimo and have done a big picture edit on all 52 of my film star entries for the Silver Screen Suppers book already. It really feels like the book is taking shape. Next step is recipe wrangling. I have the Bible according to Delora Jones by my...
The recipe of the month is UP and if you are reading this in July 2013 you can find it here – it’s an easy peasy one but there is a very SPECIAL reason I am featuring it this month. This month I have commited to attending Camp Nanowrimo – I’m packing my hiking pencil,...
I got a tip-off from my favourite food blog Dinner is Served 1972 that the Liberace biopic starring Michael Douglas was a humdinger. Yinzerella and her mom watched it on HBO celebrating the event with kaftans and a Liberace cocktail. Here in the UK we are VERY lucky as Behind the Candelabra got a cinema...
Suprise Sunday session with my squeeze yesterday as his prior engagement was canceled. What a TREAT! Firstly he disappeared into the kitchen to make me breakfast (he’d brought all the ingredients with him) and to my surprise emerged with this: Croque Monsieur a la Rathbone. Aint it pretty? It was the nicest breakfast anyone has...
Errol’s coffee enfused leg of lamb is my recipe of the month. I heartily recommend it – delicious! If you make it I would LOVE to see photos and have a little report on how it turned out. I’ve got two reader’s reports to blog – one for the Diana Dors Easy Fruit Cake and...
Ooh, this was a bit of a triumph. Made for my work colleague Anne’s birthday and wolfed down by the rest of the team with gusto. I made twice the amount of mixture because my cake tins are BIG and I know from experience that folks in the olden days weren’t as greedy as us. ...
I offered to teach Mr R to make pastry so that he could make the apple pie. This is beginning to sound like some kind of Rom-Com isn’t it? I do apologise for all the mentionitis over the last few posts but I am frankly still surprised that this geezer is still around. Anyhow, it...
Oh how decadent. The central dish for Vincent’s birthday celebrations was a whole chicken poached in ¾ of a bottle of champagne. The recipe for this dish is at the end of this post… Utterly divine. Once the chook was cooked I made a sauce with the chicken-y champagne-y stuff in the bottom of the roasting...
ooh , I am getting everything out of order today… We had one of these after the muffins and before the chicken in champagne. You get the idea… If you’d like the recipe for these -and you should as they are damn fine cocktails – you might be able to see the recipe better here…
...
You know when you make a perfect dinner? Everything works like a dream and tastes delicious and is ready right on time? Such was Vincent’s Toad in the Hole with onion gravy (made to Alastair Hendy’s recipe in Home Cook) with a bit of broccoli chucked on the side. Rrrowwwr! It was a “night before...
Birthday celebrations for Vincent on Bank Holiday Monday kicked off with a batch of these. The blueberries I got from Sainsbury’s were particularly FAT and some of them burst during cooking and that only added to the deliciousness. Eaten in bed.
...
On Sunday a fabulous new cocktail recipe arrived from my lovely chum in Athens, Georgia – fellow film archivist Margie Clark. It was superb timing as Mr R was hot footing it over for Vincent Price Toad in the Hole after doing his radio show so I rustled up a pair of these to whet...
Oooh, Errol’s leg was fabulous. His recipe was for a 6lb leg but I only bought half a leg (2lb) as it was dinner for two at Silver Screen Suppers Towers yesterday. I had ascertained that Mr R is very partial to lamb so I tempted him over with the promise of a coffee doused...
I don’t know where to start with this post really. There is romance in the air at Silver Screen Suppers Towers and it is befuddling my brain a bit. I will just say this. On Sunday Mr R cooked me a duck and it was divine. I made a Celia Johnson’s Chocolate Sponge Cake for...
Another pie! This time made for Shane and Ewan who battled their way around the British transport system to get to me – Northern Line madness. The pie was made exactly to Jimmy’s recipe – including the pastry and I was quite proud of it BUT I don’t think it was as good as the...
At the risk of showing off, I am going to mention again that my Diana Dors Easy Fruit Cake won second prize at the Muswell Hill Horticultural Show on Saturday. My feathers were all puffed up with pride. The morning of the show was always going to be hectic as I had to make a...
I do very much like a man who comes round to dinner with a James Mason film in his pocket that he thinks I might like to see. I had never heard of “The London Nobody Knows” but it is a truly fabulous film. It’s a vivid snapshot of life in London in 1968 –...
Neighbours, everybody loves good neiiiiiiiiiiigbours. And I am very pleased with the neighbourly gesture Chloe made in matchmaking me with her chum the very lovely Mr R. We had a top evening on Saturday, staying up until 4am discussing our musical star preferences. We agreed on the fundamentals – Judy Garland no, Ginger Rogers, yes....
Just a quick post as I have a DATE tonight coming to my house for dinner so I have an immense amount of cleaning to do… I don’t want to ruin my chances with someone who appears to be quite a stitch by revealing my slovenly side too soon. So just to mention that the...
Being a family of one and following recipes written for 6-8 results in a freezer bursting at the seams with spare portions of delicious but mostly unidentifiable things. I wouldn’t usually serve something from the freezer to company but needs must. I cannot keep buying chook after chook and trying to cram their lovely legs...
I LOVE it when other people cook! My darling friend Sanja recently cooked a Serbian feast which involved the most delicious thing anyone has ever made for me. SAUERKRAUT with bacon and Romanian sausage. Oh my word it was delicious. And what’s more, she sent me home with a jarful of this precious slow cooked...
Sometimes what you need is a big old steak and kidney pie and here is one made exactly to a recipe by Boris. It’s only appropriate that Vic should be a guest for a pie like this, as the Universal Monsters song he co-wrote includes a few lines about Boris Karloff in Frankenstein. I do...
Just a quick recipe tweak. Made another batch of these last night and realised that I’d only put the American oven temperature on this month’s Recipe of the Month page and newsletter. Had a sleepless night worrying about Brits burning their meringues to a crisp at 250 degrees C so the correct temperature is 250...
Oh what a joy to meet in person the lovely Lauren Hairston Collado of the glorious food blog The Past on a Plate. Lauren was in London from Wichita and I was so thrilled to meet her in person. I’ve been following Lauren’s blog since the day I discovered that she was a fellow fan...
Blime – it’s like looking in a mirror – if my nose wasn’t so big. Jane and I had our photo taken tonight and when we looked at it together I said, “I think my nose is getting bigger as I get older” and she said, “I think my head’s going out of shape”. But...
Ahh, it’s rolled around very quickly this month. Only 28 days in February so no wonder. I’ve chosen something cute as I am just in that kind of mood. This was a recent discovery on the world wide interweb that made my heart glad. I’ve sent it over to Brian at Caker Cooking as I know how he...
In The Treasury of Great Recipes Vincent announced: “Probably the most glamorous markets in the world are the Food Halls at Harrods in London” and I say hell yeah! He declared the whole Harrods emporium to be akin to “The British Museum crossed with Les Halles!” Well, you know how I feel about Les Halles…...
Barbara’s steak was good. Food writer guru Richard Ehrlich agrees with me that her recipe for Leg of Lamb is utterly bonkers. So I’m dropping the lamb and giving the steak a double thumbs up. I might give her Chicken Mousse recipe a go too, just in case that is a contender. There has been...
My foodie penpal package this month came to me from Bonnie Scotland. The lovely Isobel put together a perfectly packed box with these wonderful things inside. Everyone at work oohed and ahhed when the cheese came out – it survived the journey but had ripened beautifully on the way! It’s been really cold this week...
THRILLED to be mentioned on my favourite blog of all time Caker Cooking this week. Such an honour that Brian chose to throw caution to the wind and have a go one of the Richard O’Sullivan recipes I left out when I attempted his 7 Day Survival Course. I sent Brian this recipe before most...
My recommendation for Valentine’s Night – whether you will be alone – like me – or cosied up with your significant other is this. It’s a GENIUS recipe and is designed to impress your guest OR make you laugh out loud if you are eating alone. This is probably my all time favourite Silver Screen...
I have three friends who have birthdays really close to Christmas and they don’t tend to celebrate. So I decided, as they are three of my very favourite people, to make them a birthday lunch. I love my Vincent Price “Beverly Hills Cookbook” and I am working my way through all of the dinner parties...
When I was a pre-teen I joined an organisation that fixed you up with penpals. I really wish I could remember what it was called but you had to fill out a complicated form with tick boxes to tell them all about yourself so they could match you up. What your hobbies were, whether you...
I’m in bed with the heated blanket on listening to Friday Night is Music Night on R2 and it is FANTASTIC because it the theme is “Bond and Beyond” so there is tonnes of John Barry stuff and now they are talking about Hitchcock. The BBC Philharmonic Orchestra is playing the theme from North by...
Made with one hand only! My other was in a sling after a spectacular tumble on the cobblestones of Camden Market. It was quite a drama with lots of lovely stallholders coming to the rescue and work chums fussing and looking after me as I sat in reception limp wristed and ashen faced. Not broken...
Oh auspicious day! Firstly I went to the bfi to be filmed talking about NEWTS for a television programme. Then I got my tax return filed a week early. Then I finally took the plunge and sent my book proposal to Unbound. Ooh, I am so excited. I do so hope that they like it....
Corn. Mmmm. Bacon. Mmmm. Potatoes. Mmmm. This is real comfort food. I love it. Perfect for the book with no tweaking. One of my foodie bucket list items has already been accomplished – well half accomplished. My wonderful friend Cathy has her arm in plaster after falling down some rather unforgiving spiral stairs. She’s the...
My photo of Joan’s steak was rotten so here’s a picture of one of the things that made it so gorgeous. Joan sure knows what she is doing on the steak front. Roquefort, mustard and butter on top. Oh yes, yes, yes. I didn’t have Roquefort but I had Stilton – I am sure if...
Mmm. This was a perfect Sunday brunch to have in bed with The Archers. After a long discussion with Gordon about the fact that even though I’ve been listening to it for years I didn’t know what any of the characters actually looked like, I stumbled upon this in a charity shop yesterday: so now...
An update on yesterday’s post. On a little trawl around the internet I found this: The Clark Gable Salad, on the MGM commissary menu, consists of green chicory chopped with romaine, a deep covering of hard-boiled eggs and a circle of slivered beets. French dressing. Which reminds me that the Garbo sandwich now appears on...
I absolutely love getting things in the post. One day recently totally unexpectedly I got this from my old mucker Amy Sargeant. She’d mentioned ages ago that there were some film star foods mentioned in this book and I was intrigued. Buying a copy has been on my massive “to do” list for months, but...
Ducke wuckie! Mmm. This was good but strangely not as good as the time I made it for me and Lolly. Why? Not sure. Maybe because I was using Japanese rice wine rather than Chinese? I’ll have to fiddle around with it a bit to recapture the daintiness of the version 2. This is why...
It’s taken me a while to put away the sequined jumpsuit and get back to normal life. The festive season rolled over into the first week of January with an old skool rock and roll night out to Rock of Ages with James, a fabulous birthday dinner at Bonnie Gull with the Slomans and a...
A lovely new year celebration with Corinna last night. We ate pretzels, cashew nuts, mini sausage rolls, Vincent’s Goulash and a divine Sachertorte made by Corinna. We watched Dinner For One as is tradition (Corinna reckons she as probably seen this every year for about 20 years – it’s a must in Austria on NYE),...
I had a very vivid dream last night. It was like a fully formed documentary television programme about people who had record players in their kitchens. I saw it as a sign that I should move one of my many record playing devices into the room where I spend the vast majority of my time. ...
I’m off! Serious test cooking begins. These were delicious. I made them exactly to the recipe apart from being slightly generous with the salt. Served with a big slice of gammon and a mighty dollop of the Temple Big Pan Piccalilli. Mmmmm. Luckily there is some of the mixture left over for breakfast so...
It’s been a fabulous Christmas. I was VERY pleased with my turkey. Vic and Corinna and Isaac came over and we had the traditional Xmas dinner with all the trimmings, fiery Christmas pudding, mince pies and a huge pile of cheese and biscuits. Yum yum. We kicked of with Gin & Its in celebration of...
Mmm – this was lovely but I’m afraid there is no photographic evidence as I was too busy getting drunk with David & Katy. I was a bit worried that Vincent’s curry powder would be clove-heavy but in fact once it was all cooked up it was lovely. There is not a scrap left. There...
I absolutely love my Vincent Price “push button cookery” lessons. The Beverly Hills Cookbook tapes were recorded sometime in the 70s and are just bursting with Vincent’s humour, knowledge and joy of cooking. They are difficult to get hold of but Mike Vines has kindly bunged them up on the interweb here and I do...
For the pre-birthday dinner I also made a baked ham to Vincent’s specifications. Here’s a picture of it when it surfaced from the oven. Heather kept eating bits of the crust as I broke it all off. She does love her proper pastry. I didn’t have time to decorate it in the crazy fashion of...
I made this for my pre-birthday dinner and it was pastry-heavy but good. Really easy, just bung in the blackberries with some sugar, cornflour and salt then dot with butter. Sainsbury’s had run out of shortcrust pastry so I used puff – which looked pretty but I think shortcrust would have been better. I am...
It was my birthday on Monday and I decided that I’d invite some friends for a Vincent Price related experience. As part of my self-made-challenge to visit every single one of the restaurants Vincent mentions in his awesome Treasury of Great Recipes I decided that we should go to Boulestin. Vincent said of Boulestin in...
These little cuties are recipe of the month. They would probably have looked more festive if I had used strawberry jam rather than blackberry but I’m going to make some more next week with red jam and green dyed walnuts rather than pistaschios so they may be greener. Newsletter should be going out tomorrow and...
Last night I was eating grade 11 wagyu beef and tonight it was corned beef hash. That is just the way I roll! there has been no jiggery pokery Instagram style with this picture – that is exactly the colour it was – it’s got BEETROOT in it. Was it weird? Yes. Was it tasty? ...
I do so wish I lived in America and/or Canada. Tonight on TV is the premiere of “Liz and Dick” starring Lindsay Lohan as Liz. Through my day job I know a lot more about La Lohan than is really necessary and I’d love to see how she gets on attempting to harness the power...
Because I got smashed on cocktails on Thursday at the Kinolibrary launch I was a bit under-prepared for my dinner party on Friday but Cathy came to the rescue with a pastry case for my apple tart. There wasn’t enough pastry for a lattice but I think it looked just dandy without. Mary forbid me...
If I remember rightly, Richard O’Sullivan gets to live with two hot single chicks in “Man About the House” because he sleeps overnight in their bath after a raucous party and in the morning cooks them a rather fabulous hangover curing breakfast. He did quite a bit of cooking in that show from what I...
This is what the Lasserre looked like in 1965 when Vincent and Mary’s Treasury of Great Recipes was published. It looked exactly the same last week in 2012. Except the hydrangeas have been replaced with orchids and there is a new – but very similar carpet. Everything else stays the same, thank goodness. I had...
In the best cookbook ever written (IMHO) Vincent writes eloquently about the wonderful food available in Paris. As the lovely people at Eurostar offered me a cheap ticket to Paree recently I decided I would go on the second of my pilgrimages to walk in the footsteps of my food writer idol. I went for...
Any guest who arrives with a Fanny Cradock cookbook as a gift is tops in my book and if my weekend house-guest visits again I will definitely cook him something from “Fanny Cradock Invites…” Maybe “Winged Victory” as I have always wanted to make something that requires the purchasing of cutlet frills… Vincent didn’t let...
Ooh what a rotten photo! The Recipe of the Month is UP – and it is easy, peasy, goooooooeeeeey and yummy. You make the cake mixture and then pour boiling water over the top and when you take it out of the oven and turn it upside down there is a ready made chocolate fudge...
