Retro Recipes and Traditional Fare

Technically defined as “thin cuts of meat, sautéed and cooked in a rich sauce,” the scaloppini fashion for cooking pork, chicken, and veal is simple and elegant. In the midst of my stew, soup and comfort food wintertime phase, I ere toward the side of something fresh and light in betwixt the heaviness comfort food affords. Enter my Skinny Pork Chop Scaloppini.

Lemon, garlic, thyme, rosemary, parsley and white wine all meld and mélange together to form a succulent sauce with the renderings of the thinly slice pork cutlets.

Why pork for this dish? Well, to quote my Mimi, “If I have to eat one more piece of chicken, I may scream! There IS another white meat!” Upon delivery of such a statement, Mimi and I drove to a fast food chain and scarffed down cheeseburgers and fries. Sometimes there is nothing better. Back to the dish at hand!

Like my Mimi, I do like a break from chicken and thinly sliced pork cutlets fit the bill. Veal too is luscious in this manner but many folks have an aversion to said meat; thus, the pork cutlets make do marvelously. This cut of meat is economical, easy to handle and the perfect portion to plate. They brown well, yielding that flavor as a delightful element for the sauce. Ahhhhh – the sauce!

Modern entertaining is all about having fun with your guests while enjoying the food. It's not about being chained to the stove, never being allowed to mingle for a moment. For cocktail parties, especially around holiday time, I'm always looking for recipes that can be prepared in advance or put together in just minutes on the same day of the get-together. Plus I plan around using some store-bought items, like cheese, prosciutto, or olives.

The unique thing about French cuisine, is that it has both extremely complicated and yet surprisingly simple recipes too. Specifically, I love Provençal cuisine for its simple recipes using vibrant flavors. Besides all the wonderful fish dishes, salads, and homey stews, there are a number of simple things that work wonderfully as appetizers. In this case I'm focusing on olive tapenade, a pungent paste of olives used as a spread on bread.

Tapenade is the perfect party appetizer, because it's so easy to put together (less than 5 minutes) and it's very flavorful. It truly whets the appetite! All you need are some pitted olives and a few other typical Mediterranean ingredients to make this spread. Then just use a food processor to purée everything together (though the French would prefer mortar and pestle) and you're all set. Your guests will appreciate the simple and rustic yet elegant nature of tapenade.

One of the best things of being a food photographer is the access to new tastes, flavors and recipes. Because 100% of what we do at our studio is actually edible, you’ll find me on set most days asking this series of questions to Adam, my food stylist partner:

a)     I’ve got the shot. Can you review it and tell me if there’s anything you’d like to change?

b)    Ok, fantastic. Looks great. We’re done. Can I eat this?

I can’t really remember a day where I haven’t dug into a casserole or broken off a piece of bread or stolen a cookie. I often tell myself that it’s part of my job and that I actually should know what things taste like. When I photograph a cookbook it’s inevitable that people will ask me what the process was like and if there was a favorite recipe. Why shouldn’t I be prepared?

Recently a rather unfamiliar dessert landed on my shooting surface. Ok, let me back up. Unusual for me. But then again I’m not a Sweets kinda guy, generally. But this item, Banoffee Pie, is an English favorite that we were shooting for Cooking Channel and it really caught my attention.

Umbria 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.