We dined seventies-style and survived

Theme: the ’70s
8 guests plus two cooks
Three courses plus appetizer
Drinks: champagne cocktail, party punch and beer
$11 per head

Guest and longtime friend, Gill, and I dressed authentically for the first dinner party project event—if that’s what you call compressing yourself into clothes you should have thrown out 30 years ago.

She wore the Osti creation she’d worn at her engagement party in 1977, I frocked up in my Form 6 (Year 12) formal dress. Why did we still have these dresses in our wardrobes after three decades, you ask? Because everyone knows that clothes come back into fashion, a theory proven in our dining room last Saturday night.
(Mind you, it was lucky Gill’s long elegant Osti frock was polyester, so it had a bit of give to accommodate the effects of four children. As for me, I didn’t fill the bodice of my dress any more than I did at 17 AND I could only zip it half way up my back. Thank goodness for the all-concealing little cardigan.)
Our six trendy younger guests arrived in varying degrees of  ’70s style. Jocelyn, Chelsea and Michelle had intended to wear bridesmaids dresses from the era borrowed from a friend’s mum, but the 35 degree day and the multi-layers of chiffon were too much when combined. (Why was everything polyester in the ’70s? Were natural fibres banned or something?) Instead, the ladies looked delightful in short dresses in seventies-inspired patterns. So did the cutest granddaughter in the world, complete with a sweet headband around her almost-bald head.
Their partners showed great creativity in capturing the essence of the ’70s, although I hadn’t expected to host Darth Vader. Still, you can’t dispute old hoarse throat was around then; nice look with the black cape and plastic mask, Paul, almost as nice as Martin’s blonde mullet wig.
As for Jordan, he was resplendent in one of his Dad’s  ’70s tops, a dressy mustard-hued polo-shirt affair with embroidered detail. So, men keep clothes for 30 years, too! I’m not sure, though, that the ‘clothes-come-back-into-fashion’ rule applies to baby-poo-coloured polos.
The evening kicked off with champagne cocktails, punch and beer on the pool deck, with French onion dip served in a pottery ramekin (for those who remember: it was from Potters Cottage, Warrandyte). While the guests shovelled in their dip with slices of celery and carrots, to a sound track of ‘70s music (Cat Stevens, Creedence Clearwater Revival among others) I put together the prawn cocktails—shredded lettuce and prawns arranged in wine glasses, topped with a thousand island dressing. I must say that the combination of Worcestershire, tomato and tabasco sauces mixed with cream tasted better than it deserved.
Each glass was garnished with a whole prawn and lemon slice to look exactly like the photograph in the Women’s Weekly cookbook—and entrée was served.
Mains involved another Worcestershire sauce extravaganza, but no tomato sauce this time. No, no, this called for serious tomato input: I added an 810ml tin of condensed tomato soup to the mixture of chopped onion, celery, garlic, brown sugar, sherry and mustard to pour over the lamb chops. They were baked, along with the potatoes topped with plenty of butter and parmesan cheese and served with beans almondine (beans topped with almonds) and carrots vichy (thanks to sous chef Ian).
‘These carrots are yum,’ said Jocelyn, spooning more on her plate. Of course they were, sweetie. Couldn’t you see the butter and sugar dripping off them?
But the piece de resistance was the bombe Alaska. This was a last-minute change to the original menu, thanks to the weather. The idea of a steam pudding bubbling away on the stove for hours was unappealing, so I decided to serve an ice-cream based dessert I’d never cooked and hadn’t eaten since the early ’80s.
In the end, my nerve almost failed me. I’d prepared the ice-cream and raspberry-topped sponge, no worries. But when it came to making the meringue to cover it, I put on a sooky face and enlisted the skills of my domestic-goddess daughter, who whips up that kind of stuff all the time with one hand while with the other she simultaneously vacuums, feeds the baby and posts about her latest business venture on Facebook.

But even she looked concerned when we put the meringue-topped concoction into a 250 degree oven. As soon as that meringue turned golden, we whipped it out and ran to the table, threw brandy over it and lit it for the fabulous flambé effect. Nothing: the match fizzled. But the ever-patient Jordan struck another match and struck gold, or rather blue, as the brandy flamed spectacularly over the meringue. I tell you, I was impressed myself.
But, all good things must come to an end—the ‘70s did, disco music did, Thousand Island dressing did, and so, indeed, did the first dinner party project.
So the quest is on to find the next theme—and group of culinary guinea pigs.

Canning the first DPP menu...

The first Dinner Party Project (DPP) menu comes from the pages of the 1977 edition of the Australian Women’s Weekly Cookbook. We received this excellent publication as an engagement present in 1979 and it was really the go-to book in the early years of our marriage.

 It certainly looks well-used, as you can see by its food-stained pages, its broken spine broken and battered cover (pictured left). The photo is a bit deceiving, though—the cover didn’t come off as a result of overuse. That happened while we were moving house;we put the book on the car roof while piling stuff into the boot, then drove off.

We found it on our way back to collect more belongings from the flat, lying there like roadkill in the middle of Maroondah Highway. The back cover and the index from ‘S’ onwards was gone, which was a pain, but luckily by then I knew the trifle recipe was on page 219. That was my staple offering for family get-togethers. At least my father liked it.

It’s been some years since I’ve flicked through the cookbook and I admit I was surprised by the number of recipes that used canned or processed food. Cans of tomato, mushroom and chicken soup, cans of champignons, creamed corn, shrimps and pineapple (not to mention packets of French onion soup) were well represented in recipes.

There was also a cute section labelled ‘international cookery’. This featured dishes from a selection of countries including China (chicken and corn soup and prawn omelettes); Italy (cannelloni) and India (chicken tandoori), terribly exotic for our 1970s meat-and-three-veg society. We were just starting to embrace new cuisines and, flicking through some of these recipes, I'm sure glad we did.

Our dinner party menu, however, will not come from the ‘international’ section. It will be the sort of food we served up to our guests on brown and yellow stoneware dinner sets, which at the time we thought was pretty sophisticated.

 And yes, a packet of French onion soup and at least one can of condensed tomato soup will be involved. Yummmmmmm!

We're living in the 70s, for a night anyway

One of our friends, who was little older and a fabulous cook, gave me and my husband a wise piece of advice after she attended one of our dinner parties in the late ‘70s. Don’t serve guests a dish you’ve never cooked before.

 Are you kidding? Where’s the fun in that?  It was advice we never took on board; nearly all our early dinner parties debuted a dish we’d never cooked before. In fact, come to think of it, they still do.

OK, so there were a few failures. But picking through oil-sodden breadcrumbs mixed with melted ice-cream (it took a few false starts before we perfected our deep-fried ice-cream balls) or spooning down unset strawberry mousse were not the worst things our friends have ever had to do.

On the other hand, eating a three-course pancake meal might have been. Yep, seafood mornay pancakes for entree, savoury mince pancakes for main and crushed pineapple crepes for dessert. For days after, my stomach felt like I’d poured concrete into it, and ditto for my bowel movements.  

Nevertheless, in honour of our early dinner party days, I’m channelling the ‘70s for the first Dinner Party Project event. It’s time to dust off the Australian Women’s Weekly Cookbook we got as an engagement present and relive the glory of those days.

The guest list will comprise some friends who sat through those early years of learning to cook with us and survived.  It will also include three young couples who weren’t even born in the 70s. It’s my mission to introduce them to some of the dishes popular in those days (did we really eat prunes wrapped in bacon?), play some good old disco music and maybe even break out our ABBA karaoke disc.

So, dig out your flares from the back of the wardrobe—‘70s, here we come.

Next blog: 11 February —the menu revealed