Seventies' cooking - a game of horrific cuisine

[Lindorm]

A while ago, Darlica and I were throwing round ideas for a little card-based game themed on the terrible cooking of the seventies and early eighties, as featured in various old books and Home & Garden magazines. You know, those "Oriental Casserole with cabbage and tinned pineapple chunks", as well as "Textured Vegetable Protein with Piquante Sauce and lemon jelly" recipes. Yes, those.

The basic idea was that all the participants would be dealt a set of cards. These cards would be of four categories:

-Ingredients, such as tinned mandarin oranges, filet of pork, Maggi Fondue Mix and instant mashed potato mix,

-Techniques and methods , such as deep-frying, grate coarsely, flame and bake in clay pot

-Drinks, such as Charter-Holiday Sangria, Beyaz (a horrible extremely cheap white wine), Kir and Lemonade

-Accessories, Condiments and Piquant Touches, such as toasted almond flakes, chopped hardboiled eggs, Instant Bearnaise Mix and Mayonnaise Salad

-Wild Cards: Giving special bonuses, abilities and tasks. For example, "Big Special Theme in this week's Issue of "Your fridge and You": Deep-fried Lard and it's uses. You may use lard as the main ingredient in any course during the meal, irrespective of the type of course. Or "Healthy living with crudites: You must incorporate a grated or chopped root vegetable in every course. You gain 5 bouns points if you succeed." Possibly also some negative effects: "Disaster strikes: Your Jello mould has mutated from all the preservatives, gained intelligence and escaped from the kitchen, devouring the cat in the process. Lose all your Jello cards, as well as all Jello-based dishes!"

The object of the game is then for the players to put toghether a three-course meal (starter, main course, dessert) using ingredients and techniques, as well as any other cards on hand. We haven't ironed out all the details yet, but players are supposed to trade cards between each other, as well as draw from a deck.

Points will be gained based on the complexity of the dish (number of cards used) as well as for the number of finished dishes. Bouns points will be gained for replicating authentic and verifiable seventies dishes, as well as dishes in exceptionally bad taste. The game will be played in a number of turns, say about three or four, with each turn being a three-course meal.

[beagle]

OK here's my Seventies recipe:

Prawn cocktail:
  Dodgy looking prawns
  Soggy shreds of lettuce, brown at edges
  Fluorescent pink sauce.

Steak
  Well done steak (aproximately the colour of coal).
  Chips/French Fries/Freedom Fries (whatever the name is at the moment)
  Half Tomatoes (with crinkle cut edges)
  Other vegetables (preferably boiled to death)

Black Forest Gateaux
  Soggy sweet sponge
  Tasteless chocolate.
  Tasteless (if you're lucky) cream.
  (Note, in preparing this one it is vital the recipe and ingredients have been no nearer the Black Forest than a Slough trading estate).

Wine - Blue Nun (save some for de-icing the car windscreen).

Flares and shoulder-pads will be worn. Or was that the Eighties? It's all a blur.

Anyway, I remember the "lard with everything" bit. How times have changed. Now it's ruddy sun-dried tomatoes with everything.
   

[Griffin NoName]

I am hoping Lindorm will score Beagle's recipe.

[beagle]

If I don't win I'll be serving seconds. You have been warned.

[Lindorm]

The recipes themselves sound authentic enough, although for full points, the steak ought to have been served on an old piece of plank to make it more rustic, and accompanied by a instant bearnaise. 

Seriously though, the starter would have consisted of the Ingredients Dodgy Prawns and Soggy Lettuce, the Accessory Pink Sauce and using the techniques of Shredding and Mixing

So, few ingredients would normally lead to a low score. But the dish uses two techniques (more points], and is a verifiable original recipe (bonus points], so it shouldn't be all that bad, points-wise.

Of course, creating something like a Flygande Jacob, a genuine Swedish cult horror of the seventies featuring store-grilled chicken, whipped cream, peanuts, bananas, Heinz "chili" sauce and crumbled bacon, and then gratineed in the oven would lead to a grand slam in points -several techniques, authentic recipe, lots of ingredients, genuinely horrific dish etc, but such a masterpiece should be quite difficult to pull off.



Going back to the rules I sketched out above, Darlica and I have been pondering a few things. For example,  how should the players get the cards, use them and abuse them? We are thinking along two lines, but can't really decide which one to pursue.

Maybe something Talisman-like with a gameboard to ramble around, drawing cards as directed, with the opportunity to "blast" each other with event cards a bit like spells, and perhaps some sort of pick-pocket option allowing players to steal ingredeints from each other if they land on the same space? However, that could perhaps lead to too much focus on the conflict, to the detriment of the building of dishes.

Or perhaps something on the lines of trading in the Civilization boardgame? You trade cards with each other, and you have to be honest about some factors, but don't have to disclose everything, giving the other players a chance to figure out if you are hiding something, and whether it is worth the risk of accepteing your trade, risking getting a negative card in the bargain.

Any thoughts and comments?

[Aggie]

Anyway, I remember the "lard with everything" bit. How times have changed. Now it's ruddy sun-dried tomatoes with everything.

Not sure of transmission time for ingredients - I remember sundried tomatoes with everything as being a bit '90s here, but then again, BC is a bit closer to California (where more than a few fusion-food trends have been launched, or were).

Are chipotles ubiquitous there yet?

Besides, isn't animal fat considered sexy again?  I've been playing around with chicken fat, as the boneless-skinless thighs I'm buying seem to be loaded with it - better to pull it off and allow a little to stay behind from the cooking than have it on the final product. You might also catch me rendering Chinese BBQ duck carcasses (mmm, duck stock from the bones) for "duck butter"*.

I remember Emeril going on about "pork fat good, beef fat bad" about 5+ years ago, maybe it's passe' again.


_{*there's an alternate usage of the term amongst cooks that you DON'T want as an ingredient; not sure how pervasive the term is.}


Like the idea for the game, although actual '70s cuisine seems a bit too nasty for belief to me (I HAVE seen cookbooks with such monstrosities).  Where the hell did things go wrong?  I have some much older cookbooks (early 1900's, I presume) that feature some curious ingredients in the spirit of use-it-all-from-horn-to-hoof, but the general recipes are solid. I blame industrial-food manufacturers trying to horn their product into anything they could - many of these messes use convenience foods like whipped topping, gelatine, canned goods, etc. 

[Darlica]

Nostalgia paired with the nastiness and horrible combinations of 70's and 80's cooking is partly of the point of the game.

Comments from your fellow players like "Ewwwww, I remember that from the school kitchen!" should render you some extra points.

We are contemplating the existence of the disaster cards "Your toast got stuck in the toaster, your neighbour called the fire brigade, you neighbour to the left will take 2 random cards of you"

As L said, should you get hit by them when you pick them up or should other the players be able to sabotage by throwing them at you?

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

But how about those 'ready in five minutes' recipe with precooked ingredients that has been the rage on and off for the past 30 years? Bad cooking isn't limited to the 70s, you know?

[Darlica]

Of cause bad cuisine isn't limited to a decade or two...

I don't know much about the 70's and 80's cuisine of USA but here it was kind of special...

It's like bad TV shows... They came as soon there was TV and we still have them but during the 20 year period between the late 60's and late 80's they where more spectacular than usual (or we have just become jaded these days).

Taking on the weird food of all times, at the same time would be to a bite of more than we can chew ... (yes, pun intended)

I'm sure we could master a second game in the same spirit as the first, as soon as we have the game mechanics down... Crossing Over, Questionable Cuisine of the 90's
Mix everything the and pile it as a tower.

And don't worry Zono there will be recipe options like: frozen peas+ frozen chopped up carrots+ mayo in plastic bottle= Legume salad. 

[beagle]

Like the idea for the game, although actual '70s cuisine seems a bit too nasty for belief to me (I HAVE seen cookbooks with such monstrosities).  Where the hell did things go wrong? 

Cadburys were in the pay of the Martians

[nefyuBB]

ummmm
oil hav sum instint jellwo an instint potaytows an instint puddin an tha fwozin suppurs dat i kin eet wen i watch tha punch an judy shew an sum of dat mushy cheez dat kum inna jar
annnnnnnn den smush dem all togeddur an eet a widdel bit an den pway wiff et sum moor .
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

[Griffin NoName]

Martians

[Lindorm]

Like the idea for the game, although actual '70s cuisine seems a bit too nasty for belief to me (I HAVE seen cookbooks with such monstrosities).  Where the hell did things go wrong?  I have some much older cookbooks (early 1900's, I presume) that feature some curious ingredients in the spirit of use-it-all-from-horn-to-hoof, but the general recipes are solid. I blame industrial-food manufacturers trying to horn their product into anything they could - many of these messes use convenience foods like whipped topping, gelatine, canned goods, etc. 

The "Oriental Rice Dish with Grated Cabbage and Tinned Pinapple Chunks" did certainly show up in manifold incarnations. There were lots of other concotions that could make you shudder in those days...

I suppose it's a case of taking a bunch of unlikely ingredients, throw them all together and brand it as a exotic dish from Farawayistan. Other examples are all those strange "real Scandihoovian" dishes that can be found in some US:ian cookbooks, such as all those strange variants of meatballs in dill-and-yoghurt sauces. I once browsed through a Time-Life book on the "Scandinavian Countries and Their People" which had a lenghty feature on "Skoaling", the genuine (cough!) and ancient (coughcough!!) custom of drinking vodka and looking into each other's eyes and binding and affirming community and whatnot. I suppose I felt something akin to a Tobriander watching the season's deluge of anthropologists and ethnologists step of the plane...

In the Swedish case, I think it is also a matter of the late sixties and seventies being a time when industrial food products really took off in Sweden, coupled to a boom in foreign travel, with lots of Swedes going on charter tours to Spain, Yugoslavia, Tunisia and other strange locales. So: An emerging food industry, an interest for the exotic and on top of that a stronger interest in nutrition, health foods and environemental concerns, coupled with an increased availabilty of more exotic and alternative ingredients turned into a cauldron that produced some good stuff, a lot of bland stuff, and some utterly horrible terrors beyond mention. It is, of course, the latter ones that are of interest to our little game.

Elseforum, we have discussed this game and a poster suggested that we turn it into a live-action game. I am not sure I can afford the booze and antacid tablets necessary for such an experience, but it would be interesting to try...

[Opsa]

I am unclear on how this goes, but remember the 70's quite well (in spite of rumors) and know that processed foods were then thought of as "convenient" and modern.

You don't need to make up recipes, there were a bunch going around. Some featured SPAM (thus the Monty Python mockery). My Mom had one that featured canned Vienna Sausages served over prepared boxed Macaroni and Cheese. Revolting! Especially after I opened a can of Vienna sausages and found a grasshopper neatly lain within the top layer of agar jelly. No wonder I became a vegetarian.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

But grasshoppers are tasty!