Episode 4 - Death at Victoria Dock

Phryne has a city girl's taste for veal. How else to explain the breaded veal cutlets in the Green Mill Murder, the veal cutlets she shares with her two adopted daughters early in this one and later Mrs B.'s production of roast veal with new potatoes and green salad for Phryne's dinner with her current lover, Peter Smith, a revolutionary and suspected anarchist. 

If Phryne had grown up on a dairy farm rather than the mean streets of Collingwood she would have seen the poddy calves flung into the back of a truck headed for the abattoir the morning after their birth. Further north, in beef cattle country, she would have heard the cows calling through the night after their calves were taken away and seen their wet eyes in the morning. If Phryne were a farmer's daughter, she wouldn't eat veal. And her "battle-scarred, sexy Slav" probably wouldn't either, if he was a true son of the earth.

So for Friday's menu I'm going off a revolutionary tangent to Russia, via France, with Boeuf a la Russe. Oysters are still on the menu and I'm afraid that, like Phyrne's cook Mrs B., I'm not big on desserts so it's quince fool again.

Quince Fool

Considered an old-fashioned fruit except, perhaps, in Adelaide, quinces need a lot of sugar to counteract their acidity, but have a deep red colour and dusky flavour. The quinces can be cooked a day or two beforehand, and kept refrigerated. Spices are optional, but I added half a dozen cracked cardamon pods.

3-4 quinces

2 cups sugar

200 ml cream

Spices (optional)

Take the quinces, wipe and quarter them. Place the quinces in a preserving pan with 2 cups of sugar (or to taste), spices in a bag if liked, and 3 cups of water. Bring to the boil, skim and simmer for 3 to 4 hours. Rub the quinces through a sieve and refrigerate the puree until needed.

Put the quince puree in the freezer for 15 minutes before serving. Whip cream with 1 tablespoon sugar, gently fold in the puree and serve in custard glasses or a glass dish.

If I made this again, I'd change the quince puree/whipped cream ratio and use four quinces rather than three.

Episode 1 - Cocaine Blues

The five-course menu I created in advance of this episode bears little resemblance to the food and drink actually consumed in it, but you could say it's thematically linked. Phryne drank cosmopolitans, champagne (twice) and tea, but the only food that passed her lips was a piece of plain toast. The murder victim also had toast, with cumquat marmalade, but it was laced with arsenic or strychnine.

Like Phyrne's cosmopolitans and the victim's cumquat marmalade, the menu of oyster cocktails, Waldorf salad, lobster cutlets, sauteed rabbit and quince fool is predominantly red: the tomato in the oyster cocktail, the lobster's flecks of coral, red wine in the rabbit and the blood red of the quinces.

This 1920's menu is anything but bland: Tabasco, Worchestershire and Cayenne add heat, celery lends crispness and colour, and the lemon cuts the oil and flour in the cutlets.