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!
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