Retro Recipes and Traditional Fare

Surprised? I know. I wouldn’t normally post a recipe for sweet bars made with crisp rice cereal and marshmallows. I’m going to a family reunion. There will be lots of kids there — little ones and big ones, too, if you know what I mean. Kids love rice krispie bars. I’m taking a very light, bright and healthful cabbage salad, too. So, it will all balance out in the sugar and calorie department.

This recipe came to me from a friend sometime in the early 1980′s. My boys were at a rice krispie bar stage of their lives. That stage coincided with a “not-much-time-to-bake” time in my life.

No-bake Caramel Krispies are made by making two layers of the rice krispie, butter and marshmallow mixture in jelly-roll pans. A filling of caramel, more butter and a can of sweetened condensed milk is heated together and when the caramels are melted, the mixture gets poured over one of the layers that has been sprinkled with more mini-marshmallows.

I discovered the love of cooking at age 7. Since that first cake that I baked for my dad’s birthday, I have always cooked using ingredients found in the kitchen. I can probably count on one hand how many times I created something from a box or a mix and never really thought there was any other way.

I have always had weird food aversions(which is what I believe kept me out of culinary school). I didn’t like “white” food. Sour cream, ranch dressing, mayo, cream cheese, and anything with that consistency, or white – made me gag. Thus, at a very early age, I started making my own salad dressings; oil and vinegar based. When I order in a restaurant, it’s very, very specific and I can’t order a Caesar salad out.

Although I know exactly what is in the dressing, it really comes down to the consistency. If it’s too creamy or looks mayo-like, I can’t do it. I don’t like creamy food. My ice cream cannot get too soft, a Dijon vinaigrette has to look more oil based, and although I love hummus, tahini cannot be anywhere near me. Thus, my quest for the perfect salad dressings began.

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.

One day when I was a little girl watching my mom make dinner, I asked her why we weren't a "meat and potatoes" family. She said, "That's because we're Italian, and we eat good food."

I remember thinking, was meat and potatoes bad food? Would it make you sick? I suddenly felt sorry for all those kids at school whose moms cooked meat and potatoes. I secretly wished I could bring them home for dinner so they could have good food like my mom's eggplant parmigiana, escarole and beans, and macaroni with gravy and meatballs.

Other than the once-a-year New England boiled pot roast with potatoes and carrots, my mom never made meat and potatoes meals, and I don't either. The closest I get to making meat and potatoes is a burger and fries, which suits Jeff just fine since his mother also never made meat and potatoes.