50s dinner - Steamed Meat Roll

There is an extensive pastry section in the reciepe book, so I did want some kind of pastry dish represened in the meal.  Suet crust pasty is unusual in that it is boiled or steamed rather than baked, with steamed savoury puddings of this sort not being seen very often now.  It also seemed a little more approachable than puff pastry or choux pastry! 


For the suet crust:
8 oz flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
3-4 oz. suet
cold water to mix

Sieve together flour, baking powder and salt.  Mix with cold water to a soft, not sticky, dough.  I did get my mixture a little sticky at one point, but just brought it back by adding a touch more flour.  The pastry was easy to work with and to roll out.  I rolled mine straight onto greaseproof paper to make the next stages easier.

For the filling:
1 lb. beefsteak
1 onion or leek
1 carrot
Stock

Mince the meat, onion or leek and the carrort, season and moisten with a little stock (I acutally used gravy).  Spread the mixture on the pastry, moisten the edges with a little cold water and roll up.  I was aiming for a swiss roll type of thing, using the greaseproof paper to coax it into place.  I didn't end up with a perfect spiral, but it got the job done.  

The greaseproof paper stops the pastry sticking to the pudding cloth.  I tied it all up with a muslin square (the type mums will be familiar with from mopping up baby sick), but a thin tea towel would do as well.  It shouldn't be too tight, as the roll will expand during cooking. 



By this time, despite my careful measuring, I'd created a monster too big for my steamer.  After some improvisation with a giant jam pan I got it going and, 3 hours later (checking as I went along that the pan hadn't boiled dry), we were ready to serve with a little gravy on the side.

The taste test
This was quite a hit.  Not the most sophisticated dish, but lovely rich and comforting flavours of beef stew, snuggled in a dumpling duvet.  Perfect for a cold dark night.

My 50s dinner party

In only own one true historic cookbook, which has made it all the way from the 1950s (all my others are reprints of old texts).  So I was excited to put it into use and terrorise delight a friend with a 1950s style dinner.

Good Housekeeping's Cookery Compendium from 1955 brings 3 books together in one trusty volume - Basic Cookery, Picture Cookery and Picture Cake Making. The book has lots of black and white photos to help illustrate every recipe, and even more exciting some colour pages, where you can gaze on dishes in lurid technicolour. 

Covering breakfast, lunch and dinner, it gives a real window on what people were eating.   Dishes are generally fairly plain fare, with directions for roasting, grilling and boiling meat.  Pies, stews and the occasional curry also feature.  In terms of salads and cold dishes, aspic is big news.  Why serve your ingredients fresh when you could encase them in jelly?  Pastry and cake making were part of even the basic cookery requirements back then

The book also highlights some of the continuing post war hardships.  "Cream, which formerly played so important a part in the making of cold sweets, is unfortunately now decidedly expensive".  Alternative mock creams and ice cream recipes feature heavily, using margarine, gelatin or evaporated milk.  But what they may have been lacking in ingredients, they certainly made up for in presentation.  Elaborate vegetable carving and moulded desserts were the order of the day.

I leave you with just the Hors d'Oeuvre as a taster for now - celery tassels, radish roses & lilies, with gherkins and pickled beetroot.