Recipe suggestions for a Retro Feast

[CountValiummwahahaha]

Every year we spend New Year with friends, taking it in turns to provide bed and board. There's always a little light-hearted competition so, to counter their 5-course Mexican extravaganza from last year, the DH has proposed we provide a retro feast. [hsmile]

So far, he's suggested Chicken Kiev.[hhmm]

I plan on doing Black Forest Gateau for dessert but beyond that, I would be grateful for any suggestions for canapes, starters, mains, vegetables, wine, drinks, etc etc.

Pleeeeeeaaaaaaassssssssseeee?

Starters: Prawn cocktail, salmon mousse, minestrone, quiche lorraine

Mains: duck a la orange, macaroni cheese, beef bourguignon, steak diane.

Drinks: vermouth, blue nun wine, skol beer, bloody marys

Can't think of much else will be back if more come to mind!

Got to have cheese and pineapple on sticks [hsmile]

Volauvents! Cheese fondue, chicken in a basket...and I'm done

something in a ring- jelly or terrine or whatever.

mini chicken kiev canapes to go with the vol au vents?

I always think a cheeseboard is very 80s but that may be just me!

Can you still buy Blue Nun? Can you still drink it? Maybe I should get a bottle???

Oooo....salmon mousse, complete with wafer-thin cucumber slices. I likey!!

Cheese a little tricky as DH is allergic, but I am definitely pondering vol-au-vents! Must adopt Delia circa 1979 haircut....

Oh God, had forgotten all about Blue Nun!

I cn remember my Uncle and Aunt coming for Christmas Lunch about 1978 and bringing a bottle. Everyone thought it was very exotic [hgrin]

Chaudfroid of chicken [boggles]. The picture in my 1960 Good Housekeeping is absolutely gobsmacking - a super-shiny pale chicken covered in chaudfroid sauce (apparently), surrounded by a bristling defensive palisade of cocktail sticks with grapes and things on them. I have no idea how you cook it or, indeed, eat it.

More helpfully, Steak Diane with new potatoes - they say 70s but I reckon 60s myself. Goes well with a midnight-blue plunging hostess gown and one of those big hairpieces in a coil on the back of your head. Looks genuinely nice to eat.

Prawn cocktail it must be.

Talking of hostess gowns, can you rustle up a hostess trolley?

Beef stroganoff too!
Those thin after dinner mints, with instant coffee

You could always try the charity shops to see if they have a lovely cookbook like Maktaitai's.

Incidently I think you should cook the Chaudfroid of chicken Maktaitai and tell us what it was like. [hgrin]

Black tower as alternative to Blue Nun, or perhaps Vinho Verde.

Soup, avocado with prawns, paté and toast

Steak with or without sauce such as green peppercorn and garnishes such as deeo fried onion rings, tournedos rossini, scampi mornay, gammon, deep fried scampi with tartare sauce, 1/4 roast chicken, veal escalope. Don't forget tinned garden peas.

Really retro - no oven chips, don't think they came out until the 80s.

Definitely Black Forest for dessert or syllabub (brandy or lemon), trifle

Drinks - dry martini and soda, rum and coke, dubonnet, beers - double diamond, Newcastle Brown

Dry roasted peanuts, twiglets, cashew nuts bit too posh and expensive, plain or cheese and onion crisps, mini sausage rolls.

Can't remember any more 70s meals - due to crippling cost of £9500 mortgage, couldn't afford to go out much.

Angel delight with canned whipped cream

LMAO at crippling mortgage tb.....(no offence of course, since it's all relative. I think my student loan was £9500 when I left uni....)

and what the hell is Dubonnet?

Can you still get Tip Top?

Love this thread. What about some Mateus Rose? Or Harveys Bristol Cream sherry?

Definately some cheese and pineapple on sticks. Fondue. Tinned fruit cocktail with evaporated milk? Paste sandwiches? Nimble bread, where she floats off in a balloon?

And of course you'll have to listen to some dodgy 70s music while enjoying the feast.

Actually, proper chicken kiev is actually v nice - I can remember my mum making it in the 70s, bashing hell out of chicken breasts to flatten them. And black forest gateau is also lush - this could be a very successful party.

Can you still get those barrels of Watneys? Or Double diamond?

I also vote for a lava lamp to help create the ambience.

For the benefit of those that weren't of an age to drink alcohol (legally) in the 70s Dubonnet is a red wine-based aperatif containing quinine, I suppose it's a sort of tonic wine - but assume it's miles better than Sanotogen. There used to be a 'blanc' but that's disappeared. The queen mother used to drink it diluted with gin.

If you do cubes of cheese, for the truly authentic feel, I would suggest Edam served with Dry Martini. I swear this was the only reason I was ever sick after student parties, it was nothing to do with the quantity.

Scuttle - do you mean the 'party 7s'?

Countvalium - 'twas at 11%, so took all of my miserable salary of £125 a month (after tax at 33% and which was £1 a month less than the full student grant). We lived on what DH earned. We even paid at the rate of 16% when we borrowed over £15k and went to the bank - they had a surcharge of 1% to avoid accusations of poaching customers from the building socs. I digress!

I actually own a hostess trolley! My gran gave it to us as a housewarming present when dh and I bought our first place. I was very at the time but she'd gone to so much trouble to get hold of it I can't bear to be parted with it. The following year we received a teasmaid... You get the gist?

It's wood effect with some rather natty glass dishes that fit inside. It gets wheeled out once or twice a year for big roasts etc and is very useful actually!

tb- thanks for the Dubonnet info. Have you paid off the mortgage yet?

I'm quite tempted to get a hostess trolley....and a special long apron to protect my blue evening dress.

70's music....slow and seductive or full-on disco? Richard Clayderman???

Count - yes paid off £70k 4 years ago and moved to sw France where we blew it all on buying and renovating a 50s house.

Definitely long dress - with low neck and push and shove bra underneath. A 70s must have (the bra).

Music-wise, how about some James Last? He and his orchestra did some great 'interpretations' of classical music [hgrin].

If you're looking for some easy options, Vesta meals are fab - the beef stoganoff is particularly tasty.

Or you could look in the Hamlyn All Colour Cookery Book, from the 1970's. My sister and I used to read this as a form of aversion therapy when we were trying to stick to our diets [hgrin].

Tuna Casserole mmmm...tinned tuna mixed with Campbells mushroom soup, topped with crushed crisps and baked. I think in the book it was garnished with a solitary fried mushroom and a teeny sprig of parsley.

oliviacrumble that sounds so delicious. Must remember to cook that for DH next time he has really pissed me off [hgrin]

Campari anyone?

I recommend you watch the Supersizers eat the '70s on YouTube. It was hilarious and very nostalgic.
Maybe you could serve a glass of Apeel OJ on a plate as a starter (I defo remember this!)

Heston Blumenthal did a 70's feast in his channel 4 series. Probably a bit more extreme than any one at home could go for but if you watch it it may put you in the mood this is the gist

Spam fritters and pot noodles are a part of it!

OMG- I'm soooo going to watch Heston!

Glad your mortage got paid off tb- worth all the condensed soup feasts then

Great idea for a party!

What about melon balls? Oh and if doing vol-au-vents a filling made (only) of Campbell's mushroom soup should pour forth interest (if nothing else!). Heinz still do tinned "vegetable salad" too.
Salt 'n' shake crisps.

How about putting some sweets out in tiny plastic bowls: flying saucers, cola cubes, pips, rhubarb and custard, "cigarettes", toffeee bonbons etc

Wash them all down with a glass of Shloer, the height of sophiostication!!