Lamb Rolls Billabong

One of this week’s jobs was to sort a lifetime of recipe clippings. Today I came across this souvenir cookbook of the 1964 bake-off. It was an insert in the Woman’s Day of July 13, 1964.  Ruby Borrowdale was one of the judges and there is a photo of her with the other judges.

And who was second senior grand champion? Mrs Charmaine Solomon, home cook and mother of three. 500 pounds prize, which was a fortune.

Bob and Dolly Dyer were the hosts.

I have a hard copy Best of the Bake-Off Recipes 1969 which I actually use, and some of the ones from 1964 are in it. Very disappointing that the cooks’ names are not listed with the recipes, or in fact anywhere. The recipes are “from the finalists and prizewinners of over one hundred thousand recipes submitted…”  Glad I didn’t have to sort and rank those! Ann.

Best of the Bake Off Recipes, edited and compiled by Trevor Wilson 1969 Sydney

Main Dishes: Lamb Rolls Billabong

Serves 6

12 lamb chops; 6 rashers bacon; 1 egg; 12 pineapple rings; plain flour; breadcrumbs; cooking oil

Remove bones from chops. Trim and shape each chop into a round. Wrap ½ rasher bacon round each, then secure with small wooden stick. Dip each into flour, then beaten egg and breadcrumbs. Brush with oil. Place on oven tray and bake in moderate oven 15 to 20 minutes. Serve each lamb roll on a ring of pineapple ad garnish with parsley. Serve with green peas, duchesse potatoes, glazed carrot straws and Sauce Supreme.

Sauce Supreme: 4 oz mushrooms; 1 cup canned tomato soup; ¼ cup dry white wine; ½ cup cream; 1 tblsp butter; ½ cup finely chopped shallots; 1 chicken cube; black pepper

Fry sliced mushrooms with crumbled chicken cube in butter about 5 minutes. Add shallots, soup and wine, season with black pepper. Simmer 20 minutes. Add cream and serve.

I was worried about it falling apart in the oven.  I used leg steaks and instead of wrapping the bacon I placed it on the top of the meat, no toothpick, and crumbed it all together.  After five minutes in the oven I thought “Oh No, the bacon is going to curl up as it cooks and my efforts will be wrecked.” So I turned two of them (I made four) upside down to keep the bacon flat, but all four turned out perfectly, no curling or lumpy bacon. And I only crumbed it once. Often I would crumb twice (flour, egg and crumbs, then egg and crumbs again) but had run out of egg by that stage.

 

And the flecks in my sauce are some parsley. As you can see I didn’t bother with the duchesse potatoes, carrot straws and peas. Ann.