Mum's Dinners

By Joanne Stokes

Mum's dinners is a collection of recipes based on the author's 1980s British childhood.

 

Including dishes such as stew and dumplings, granny tea cobs and tuna lasagne, this is a fun cook book which tells the story behind each of the recipes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J Stokes
• Release date: Jun 24, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227776150

Book preview

A Note about Ingredients

In the 1980s, we used slightly different ingredients than we do now.  Lard, for example, was the fat of choice for frying, greasing, baking and basting.

I know this wasn’t just applicable to my family, as I can clearly remember having to take lard into school when we had Home Economics lessons.

I have not used lard in this recipe book, as I haven’t used it for years and actually don’t even know if it is still available.

These days, I use either butter, olive oil, or coconut oil blends, for cooking, depending on the recipe.  You can use whatever you have at hand.

We didn’t really use fresh herbs back then, not where I lived anyway.  We used dried, mixed herbs, or no herbs at all.  As dried herbs are still a thing, that’s what’s been used for the recipes in this book.  You can use fresh ones if you prefer.

The only cheese my family ever used for cooking back in the day was cheddar.  I seem to remember it being a mild, orange coloured cheddar, actually.  I used white, mature cheddar cheese for all of the dishes here.  You can substitute it with any white, hard cheese if cheddar is difficult to obtain where you are.

In the UK we always make cakes using self raising flour. I know this isn’t universally available.  To make your own self raising flour, add 1 teaspoon of baking powder per 75 grams of plain/all purpose flour.

A couple of the recipes in this book call for gravy granules as a thickening agent.  If you can’t get hold of these, you can use thickening granules. Alternatively, mix a tablespoon of plain flour with a tablespoon of water and add this bit by bit until food is suitably thickened.  You can add an extra stock cube when using this method if you would like