Retro Recipes and Traditional Fare

These tiny, almost impossibly perfect little Forelle pears are the kind I could only imagine in an Hironymous Bosch painting. They weigh almost nothing and go down in two bites.

I had never seen them before, and when I looked them up I discovered they are an old variety dating back to the 1600s in Germany. I spotted them in a supermarket and asked the staff what their name was. “I don’t know, but no one is buying them.”

I scooped up a few and coveted their shiny colorful beauty in such a small package. I placed them on a plate and put them in front of one of my recent paintings. I gazed at them for almost a week before deciding to use them to make a French classic dessert: Poires Belle Helene—a chocolate dessert with a healthy twist to it.

As far as easy desserts go, this has to be one of the easiest. Poach the pears. Ladle warm chocolate sauce over them. And use any kind of pear. I just happened to fall in love with these little wonders!

There is food that sustains us and then there are foods that make us happy, content and "primally" nourished. I don't eat food that has any labels or tags to read. I just eat the raw ingredient that has a little story to tell me quietly about how I should best cook it.

Whether it be vegetable or fish or meat or grain looking at it inspires me to figure out how best to prepare it in this moment. Recipes are only a guideline. It is the cook's choice to have a little fun or a burst of creativity and I guess that depends on the ingredients in front of you and how deeply you react to them.

I have to admit I am a veal chop junkie and I am verbalizing it to the world! I LOVE VEAL CHOPS, HOPELESSLY!!!  Whenever I say that, which is rarely I look around like I was talking about George W. Bush because everyone has a reaction to veal and I am sure that it isn't fifty fifty.

I could eat spaghetti and meatballs every night of the week. Of course my laundry bill would be astronomical. There are cleaning products for removing every possible stain including wine, coffee, ink and blood, but no one has invented a product to remove spaghetti sauce stains. Not yet anyway.

This recipe came about as part of my effort to "eat down the freezer." I had a package of two Italian sausages and some ground beef on hand, but neither were really enough to make a meal. The secret to these meatballs is a combination of pork and beef and also what you use to stretch the meat, plenty of bread and milk. The bread and milk create a very tender texture. Italian sausages have lots of seasoning and fat so you really don't need to add much more in that department though some fresh herbs are nice. I do like using dehydrated toasted onion flakes. I get them from Penzey's and they are great in dishes like this where normally I would want to saute fresh onions. They have good flavor and are a real time saver.

It's that time of year again when everyone is ready to jump onto the get-fit wagon. I could easily say that I should include myself in that group, but I believe it's best to start by taking small steps before diving into a plan that you might not keep up. My first step for the New Year is a healthy one, it's simply to eat more healthy foods, like whole grains and to limit my intake of sugar. I actually love whole grains, but I just don't eat them often enough. Luckily my only downfall sugar-wise is chocolate, so it's easy for me to exclude sweets and candies entirely. But I've recently found myself using agave syrup as my choice of sweetener. That was my first step, what's yours?

Eating whole grains doesn't just mean switching your morning toast from white to wheat. It means eating actual whole grains preferably in their minimally processed forms. In place of white rice try brown. Eat steel-cut oats rather than instant. Try some different whole grains, like amaranth, millet, buckwheat, barley, or bulgur. Bulgur is one of my favorites. If you've ever had Middle Eastern or Turkish food, you've probably already eaten bulgur without knowing. The salad tabbouleh and the meatballs called kofta or kefteh are made with bulgur. It's not an unrecognizable grain, bulgur is actually wheat.