{"id":22984,"date":"2018-11-23T19:23:16","date_gmt":"2018-11-23T19:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=22984"},"modified":"2018-11-23T19:23:16","modified_gmt":"2018-11-23T19:23:16","slug":"the-terrifying-world-of-1970s-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=22984","title":{"rendered":"The terrifying world of 1970s food"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(CNN) \u2014 <\/cite>Ham and bananas hollandaise. Eggs in a cage. Beef tingler. <\/span><\/p>\n

In the days before Instagram, before clean eating and kombucha<\/a>, aspirational cooking — in 1970s Britain at least — meant a showstopper dinner party. <\/span><\/div>\n

Set-piece dishes were designed to astound, and often confound. <\/span><\/p>\n

Inspiration came from recipe cards and cook books, where the new art of food photography was entering its difficult, experimental teenage years. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The bland and the bewildering <\/h3>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

The book is partly “a reaction against the self-satisfied nature of some food now, and the virtuousness that’s meant to go with clean eating and healthy eating,” Pallai tells CNN.<\/span><\/p>\n

“It’s not like I advocate eating unhealthily, but I do think the food of the ’70s and that period was cooked to be enjoyed by other people, not only visually, but also to be eaten. <\/span><\/p>\n

“Whereas now it’s very much about ‘look at this healthy thing I made for myself.’<\/span><\/p>\n

“I far prefer something that includes others.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The dishes’ names leap out as dazzling combinations of the exotic and the prosaic — Emerald Cantaloupe, Fish Whirls, Wurstel Sausage in Aspic. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Suspended meat <\/h3>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

While these were dishes designed to impress, they were also sturdy structures built to withstand hours of standing about waiting for guests to arrive.<\/span><\/p>\n

If that meant suspending meat in savory jello or layering green mashed potato with boiled eggs and sliced olives, then so be it. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n
\n
\"Only<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Cauliflower Surprise: Those brown bits are beefburgers. <\/p>\n

Tom Pallai <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Some dishes could pass as cutting-edge contemporary art — Mushrooms under Glass, Brains in Butter.<\/span><\/p>\n

Others sound like the kind of X-rated games found at the swingers parties of feverish imagination — Ladies’ Seafood Thermidor, Italian Bananas, Prune Whip. <\/span><\/p>\n

But, says Pallai: “What I didn’t want to do was just unnecessarily mock the food of the time. <\/span><\/p>\n

“It’s very affectionate and there’s lots of things I far prefer about it.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Just as we chuckle about the fashions we wore in earlier decades, the mason jars and avocado toast of our own era are likely to get old as quickly as a cheese-and-pineapple hedgehog on a doily. <\/span><\/p>\n

“It’s the colors and the styling,” says Pallai. “There were quite a lot of things that looked pretty awful but when you boil it down, it’s actually just how it’s been shot. <\/span><\/p>\n

“Things date and our food will date in the same way.”<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(CNN) \u2014 Ham and bananas hollandaise. Eggs in a cage. Beef tingler. In the days before Instagram, before clean eating and kombucha, aspirational cooking — in 1970s Britain at least — meant a showstopper dinner party. Set-piece dishes were designed to astound, and often confound. Inspiration came from recipe cards and cook books, where the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":22985,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}