« Gingerbread for tea | Main | Choice in the country »
April 4, 2006
An old favourite: McDonnell's Good Food Cook Books
One of the big advantages of being settled back in Dublin, with book shelves once again, is having all my old cookbooks to pore over and rediscover. Although I did manage to build up a fair collection in New Zealand, it couldn't really compare to my beloved older stacks of books by Nigel Slater, Darina Allen, Tamasin Day-Lewis, Nigella Lawson and my ancient copies of the Paula Daly-written McDonnell's Good Food Cook Books. The first and second books in this series, bought from saving up the tokens on Stork Margarine packets, were two of the first cookbooks owned by my mother.
Every recipe, of course, used Stork Margarine - they were first printed in 1976, long before Darina Allen started turning the Irish nation back into butter lovers - and just leafing through them is an exercise in nostalgia. As a child I cooked my way through Drop Scones, Franzipan Flan, Steak Diane and Melba Toast, while a picture of The Runaway Train children's birthday cake furnished many hours-worth of dreaming. I subsequently made this for a cousin who probably was too young to appreciate more than the Liquorice Allsorts used for wheels and the Smartie cargo - it's not really a cake worth returning to. But many of the recipes, albeit with Stork swapped for butter, definitely are.
Every Christmas Cake in our house was, and still is, covered with Almond and Royal Icing according to the tables in the first book. I learned how to make choux pastry from the step-by-step photographs when I was about eleven and subsequently became famed for my Chocolate Éclairs. Family get-togethers were normally preceded by several days of Éclair-making when I took over the kitchen and most of the freezer (and probably my mother's nerves!) to make what I considered a sufficient supply - normally 2-3 per person. While I haven't made Éclairs in years, I have returned to several other of the recipes, with a few modern updates, to great success.
The Sausage Plait pictured on the cover was a particular favourite when I was younger. One day I cooked it on the shelf below one of my mum's Apple Tarts and, although I initially thought it was ruined when the tart's sweet, appley juices overflowed on top of it, the apple flavour actually complemented the pork so much that I now add apple to the recipe. It's a great supper dish, especially with a good accompanying salad, and it also travels very well as part of a picnic spread.
Sausage Plait
Puff pastry - 1 x 400g packet, defrosted
Filling:
Sausagemeat - 350g
Onion - 1, peeled and finely chopped
Garlic - 1 clove, peeled and finely chopped
Tomato ketchup - 2 tablespoons
Fresh thyme - 2 teaspoons of leaves or 1 teaspoon of dried leaves
Tinned chopped tomatoes - ½ x 400g tin
Tart eating apple - peeled, cored and grated or finely chopped
Beaten egg or milk to glaze
Preheat the oven to 190°C. Roll out pastry into a 30cm square on a floured worktop. Using the rolling pin, lift the pastry carefully on to a large flat baking sheet.
Put the sausagemeat, onion, garlic, ketchup, thyme, tinned tomatoes and grated apple into a bowl and mix well. Place the filling mixture down the centre of the pastry, leaving a margin of 10cm on each side. Cut diagonal 2.5cm strips each side of the filling. Take each strip and plait it across the filling, alternating each side.
Tuck in the ends neatly and brush with either beaten egg or milk. Bake in the preheated oven for 30-40 minutes until well risen and golden brown.
Serve hot or cold with plenty of green salad leaves. Serves 4.
Posted by Caroline at April 4, 2006 9:12 PM
Comments
"I learned how to make choux pastry from the step-by-step photographs when I was about eleven and subsequently became famed for my Chocolate Éclairs."
Me too!
They are fantastic. my mother won't part with her originals, but the best of went on sale a few years ago and she has several copies to pass on when she feels like it.
The Brown one is the best. By the time the 4th (the green one) Daly seems to have ran out of the staple recipes and turned to low fat foreign cooking.
The thing about her is that every bakery item is perfect, regardless who makes them.
Posted by: auds at April 4, 2006 10:16 PM
Hi Auds - it's great to hear from someone that actually remembers using these books! You're right - the first brown one was the best. After looking out for my own copy for years, I was thrilled to come across both the first and second books in a local second-hand shop, complete with loads of handwritten notes and bookmarks which are recipes torn out of newspapers and magazines. My mum's copy was so food stained and dog-eared that she eventually threw it away a few years ago, once I'd sourced her a replacement. But, as a result of learning cooking from these books, both myself and my 16-year-old little sister are much more comfortable with imperial rather than metric measurements...
Posted by: Caroline at April 6, 2006 12:31 AM
Me too, I'm always dividing recipes by 25/30 to get an idea of how many oz I'm using.
Her pastry is flawless as is things like pavlova, victoria sponges and Hedgehog cakes - they are still my height of cake decorating. That and the swiss roll you could make in to a train.
I remember once liking recipes (from the red one, I think) like fishfingers in bought soup - they were under the quick family tea section. My father brought them up recently while talking about the things we forced him to eat. They were his least favourite.
That and a spectularly burnt batch of oatmeal biscuits that my sister said were "golden"!
Posted by: auds at April 11, 2006 9:21 PM
Ugg...those fish fingers sound awful - I can well understand your father not being impressed with that dinner! I think Paula must have run out of ideas as time went on but all of her best recipes are definitely in the first brown book. There's lots of them that are totally seventies throwbacks, though, aren't there? When was the last time you were offered Steak Diane? I think that was one of the first Sunday lunches that I cooked my parents - god bless my mother's nerves!
Posted by: Caroline at April 12, 2006 10:06 PM
Hi there,
My mum is a big baker and was devastated to lose her Stork cookery book! It was a book she had in school and has been unable to source one anywhere at this stage.
She loves making all sorts of cakes like coffee, chocolate and cheesecakes. Would it be possible at all to have a look through your books to look for a recipe for buttercream in the Paula Daly Stork books please?
She has tried a number of other receipes but it just come out the same. Thanks!
Posted by: Marie at March 31, 2007 1:03 PM
Sorry Marie - didn't realise that you had left this comment until now. I'll definitely take a look for that recipe.
Posted by: Caroline at July 25, 2007 12:01 PM
I also fondly remember Paula Daly's cookbooks. Mine got burnt in a fire several years ago and I would love to have the recipe for the pizza with the scone mix as the base. It was a particular favourite of my children also if anyone knows where I could buy some of these books I would be very grateful
Posted by: Sally at October 11, 2007 3:37 PM
