Retro Recipes and Traditional Fare

Italian food isn't just all about pasta and tomato sauce. Much of it is simple and rustic home-style cooking, like simple sautes and slow braises. The recipes I like the most are both simple and elegant, such as scaloppine, which involves cooking thin pieces of meat. All that the word scaloppine means is thin piece of meat. Veal or chicken are commonly used in classic recipes. The meat is breaded, fried, and then served in a sauce, such as a piccata, which features white wine, capers, and lemon.

What's great about a recipe like scaloppine is that it's great for dinner for two or a large family gathering. It's a perfect dish for a quick weeknight meal because it's fast and easy. I update the classic recipe by replacing the breading with just Wondra flour. The low-protein flour creates a brown exterior that's light and just thin enough so as not to get soggy. Plus I don't add the chicken to the sauce. This way the coating stays crisp as long as possible. Simply serve the sauce spooned over the chicken and enjoy it right away.

Casseroles make some of the most practical and delicious all-in-one meals. When you have a dish like lasagna, you really don't need sides, the lasagna takes all the attention. The thing that makes lasagna so popular is its ability to bring joy to everyone who eats it. I've never met a person who didn't like lasagna. It has to be all that cheese and sauce melted together between layers and layers of pasta. Most people would agree that lasagna is Italy's answer to comfort food. Not to mention it's practically a sanctified Italian-American specialty.

Omelets are a great main course. Perfect for breakfast but also satisfying as lunch, dinner or a snack.

Easy to make, infinitely variable, filling, healthy and affordable, they are warming and delicious.

Just about any ingredients that can be sauteed can be used as a filling. (Why saute the fillings? To eliminate excess water and caramelize the ingredients.)  I like mine with cheese, but that's a matter of personal choice.

For breakfast this morning, I made my wife a vegetable omelet with spinach and shiitake mushrooms while I had a bit of bacon in mine.

A 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.