Retro Recipes and Traditional Fare

double-kraut-double-cheese-burgersThere used to be this hole-in-the-wall place in Hollywood serving these super-juicy out-of-this-world burgers. Cheese and kraut were literally melting and dripping down the sides as well as my fingers and chin. I swear these burgers were messier than a Tommy's burger, and that's saying something. I used to frequent this place when I was interning for an entertainment company right across the street from the old Grauman's Chinese Theater.

I wish I could remember what the place was called, but twenty years have passed and I can barely remember last week. It was the type of eatery only locals frequented or knew about. The bead board walls were shabbily painted red. There were a few scratched up tables and not much else but a giant flat top grill and a register. Two guys in the back flipped some of the best burgers I can recall. They took "cash only". Who knows if they are still around, but their kraut burgers have lived on in my mind.

Since Father's Day is on the forefront it's time to start thinking about "manly food" and what to make for the dad's in our lives. Fermented foods like sauerkraut have also been on my mind. My current work with Sargento has me investigating fermented foods as a culinary trend.

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“Eat poor that day, eat rich the rest of the year… Rice for riches and peas for peace.” – Old Southern saying for New Year’s Menu

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Collard greens, black eyed peas, cornbread and pork are the foodstuffs of the South, rich in legend, lore, and superstition. Money or not, every Southern family I know dines on these same vittles for their New Year’s supper. Not too poor of eating if I say so myself.

According to this Farmer, the New Year’s Day menu is a Southern supper at its finest. Steeped in tradition, flavored with history, and doused with a touch of superstition, this meal encompasses the South’s ebb and flow of classicism and eccentricity–a meal of our heritage. Here in America’s Deep South, the cultures of Europe, Africa and the Native Americans combine with their respected refinements and sentimentalities making this meal fit to usher in a new year.

Growing up in rural Middle Georgia, we knew our food’s legacy before it arrived on our tables. This Farm to Table movement of late has always been the custom for those of us raised in a more bucolic fashion. We know our farmers and growers. In his blessings before a meal, my brother-in-law’s father always gives thanks for “not only the hands that prepared the food but grew it as well...” whereas our New Year’s meal is of no exception.

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vongole-veraci.jpgUmbria is the only province in Italy that doesn’t touch the sea. That’s one reason they call it the Green Heart of Italy. However, it’s not more than an hour and a half from both the Adriatic to the east and the Mediterranean to the west and we have a fabulous fresh fish store in our village that draws from both.

I was there today, browsing, and saw a big mesh bag filled with vongole veraci – they’re the wonderful, tiny, briny clams that work so well in spaghetti vongole – pasta with clam sauce. I love making this dish in Italy — because of the superior ingredients, of course. My version is a bit ornate and not really classic. I’ve been checking different recipes – from Venice, from Liguria, from Naples — and they’re mostly quite simple – garlic, oil, clams, and maybe a little parsley.

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coffee cake 001A couple of weeks ago I stopped into a cozy coffee shop tucked into a rural community in West Central Minnesota. On the exterior, it was just an old brick building, but one step through the door and my nostrils were greeted with the aroma of rich brewed coffee. Cookies, sweet rolls and scones tempted me from the case of sweets. I decided this was a place I could nestle into for a while.

As I ordered my first cup of coffee of the day — large dark roast, no cream — I spied a cake in a 9-x13-inch pan situated on the counter. A couple of pieces had already been served from the cake, so I could see its insides.

I thought for sure it looked like a rhubarb cake. If I could be that lucky, I would definitely splurge on a big chunk to eat with my coffee. It was a very brief back and forth conversation with the server in the shop that dashed away any dreams of satisfying my taste buds that had begun to salivate for rhubarb cake.

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oneeggomeletAs with many good things, a cherished recipe resulted from an accident.

My wife wanted an omelet for breakfast and we had only one egg in the refrigerator. That egg was an especially good, farmers' market egg, but it did not have a companion and my wife was used to having a two-egg omelet.

Many solutions came to mind.

Go to the market to buy more. That seemed like too much trouble with a cup of coffee already brewed and waiting on the dining room table next to the Sunday New York Times. Use a lot of milk as "filler." But the resulting omelet would have been more like a custard than what my wife likes, a very firm cooked egg.

So, I did the only thing any guy would do in the circumstances. I punted.

If I was short an egg, well, I'd compensate with a lot more filling, hoping my wife would be distracted by all the goodies so she wouldn't notice the paucity of "egg."

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