Retro Recipes and Traditional Fare

It's easy to get so caught up in the idea of eating seasonally that we forget that there are certain things that aren't necessarily seasonal, for example vegetables grown in hothouses or greenhouses like Belgian endive, cucumbers and mushrooms, also preserved produce--jams, pickles, chutney, frozen and canned foods. Which brings me to canned tomatoes, which are a great choice for recipes since fresh tomatoes are in season for a fairly short period of time.

While I wouldn't use a canned tomato on a sandwich, they are a must for most tomato based sauces. Lately I've come to appreciate canned fire roasted tomatoes for their lovely smoky flavor. They are great in stew or chili and a sneaky shortcut when making this zippy soup. A nice option in this shoulder season when somedays still feel like Winter, it's something you can make from pantry staples--a few aromatics, cans of tomatoes and broth. Having tried many brands of fire roasted tomatoes, I like Hunt's best and while I prefer homemade, Swanson's is the only canned chicken broth I use.

Another little trick in this soup is the addition of cream cheese. I don't typically keep heavy cream on hand so I am always looking for other ingredients to add creaminess to recipes. In this case a tiny bit of cream cheese adds a lot of richness. But in all honesty this soup is really wonderful even without it.

When I think of casseroles, I imagine layers and layers of meats and vegetables slowly cooking together until fork tender. Baeckeoffe is that casserole; it beats all other casseroles. Beef, lamb, and pork are combined with onions, leeks, and carrots, then drowned in wine, and slowly braised for hours in the oven until just perfect. Baeckeoffe, which translates to baker's oven, originates from Alsace, France, a region that has changed hands many times between France and Germany. In many ways, especially gastronomically, it maintains a German identity. Here you will find beer, sausages, sauerkraut, and vineyards growing typical German grapes like Riesling and Gewürztraminer. Many dishes are specific to this region, Baeckeoffe being one of its most famous traditional foods.

The most appealing features of the dish are its minimum supervision to make and ability to feed a large, busy family—of particular interest in olden times. As the story goes, Alsatian women would drop off their casseroles with the local baker on Monday, which was the day set aside for doing laundry. The baker, who may have had many casseroles in his oven at one time, used a rope of dough between the rim and lid of each casserole to form a tight seal and keep in moisture. The low, steady temperature of the baker's oven was the ideal environment for cooking the Baeckeoffe.

There was a time when gathering people around a fondue pot to cook their own food was very popular. It was the 1970's I think – about the same time I got married. My husband and I recieved three of these "communal" pots as wedding gifts. I think I remember using one or two of them one or two times soon after the wedding. And then they sat. For years.

My experience with fondue was very limited. I remember going to a Minneapolis restaurant with my parents on special occasions where they would serve a a bowl of cheese fondue warming over the flame of a tiny tea candle. Each table of diners would recieve this bowl of melted deliciousness along with a basket of crunchy, house-made garlic croutons. As a young girl, the process of poking one of those toasted chunks with a long, slender fork and dunking it into the warm cheese before popping it into my mouth, felt quite elegant.

And, I do remember a couple of times when my parents had friends over for a "fondue party." It was a long, drawn-out affair, with the meal lasting for hours as each person skewered a piece of meat with a fondue fork and placed it into a fondue pot full of hot, bubbling oil to cook. It's definitely not fast-food. And it's not a meal in 30 minutes or less. It's slow food.

When I was growing up in England in the fifties and sixties, there was a snack called a flapjack that could be occasionally bought at bakeries but was more often found in homes, served up by diligent housewives. It was never found at my home: the only time my mother turned on the stove was to light a cigarette. But some of my friends’ mothers did make them, and the sweet, buttery smell of freshly baked flapjacks is one of those childhood aromas that still haunt me today.

Now, for the American reader a point of clarification is required. British flapjacks bear absolutely no resemblance to American ‘flapjacks’, which seems to be just another word for pancakes. The British flapjack is a unique item unto itself, but if a comparison is required, I suppose a granola bar would come closest in look and texture. But it is simpler, more elemental, only requiring four ingredients (long before Michael Pollan came up with his five ingredient mantra): oats, sugar, butter and golden syrup.