Retro Recipes and Traditional Fare

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.

Here's a great dish that does double duty: it can be dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow. It's delicious served slightly warm or chilled. And it's especially great for a Friday night Lenten dinner. Using readily available ingredients including my favorite cans of tuna, this dish is light on the wallet too. For the best taste and texture use white albacore tuna packed in oil. It's much better than the chunk light in water.

My version of the French salad Niçoise is crossed with the American macaroni salad. Instead of boiled potatoes, I use pasta as a delicious alternative. Cavatappi, a corkscrew-shaped pasta, makes a playful addition, but elbow macaroni works well too. Green beans are quickly blanched and pasta is then cooked in the same pot before being combined with all the ingredients. A finish of briny olives and capers and a fresh vinaigrette make it feel like springtime on the Mediterranean coast.

When my friend Sara from Culinerapy visited Concord, Mass. last year, she made a reader’s pilgrimage to Orchard House, the historic home of Louisa May Alcott. Since Sara and I (and half the women we know) share an abiding love for Alcott’s 1868 novel Little Women, she sent me a thoughtful souvenir: the author’s recipe for Apple Slump. It’s a homey, deliberately simple dessert, comfort cousin to fruit buckles, bettys, cobblers, grunts and pandowdys. Still, reading the calligraphy-script recipe, I could see where I might tweak it. And I thought, who am I to edit Louisa May Alcott?

Not editing, really. Finessing. Alcott may have mastered prose at the desk, but in the kitchen she was likely closer to Jo March, for whom the “bread burned black” and the “cream turned sour.” Making Apple Slump would be like cooking with Ms. Alcott’s domestically-challenged ghost, and while I cored and sliced I considered my years reading and rereading the March girls, picturing Amy’s limes, Meg’s vain high heels and lonely Jo in the attic with apples, writing and cursing scarlet fever, the villain that stole Beth. I regretted that my little tweaks – dash of vanilla, an extra apple – could not make Laurie come to his senses and dump Amy. Pecans would add crunch but they would never make Jo marry Laurie, nor bring Beth back. They’re a matter of personal taste, like my feelings about Meg wedding that dull John Brooke, and while they won’t change the story they can at least enhance Ms. Alcott’s kitchen legacy, and certainly perk up the Slump.

Whether or not you’re trying to lose weight, here’s a hearty but superhealthy one pot dish that’s perfect on a cold night: Skinny San Francisco Cioppino.

An iconic seafood stew that evolved in the late 19th century when Italian and Portuguese fisherman ruled the bays of San Francisco and Monterrey, some say its name originated from “Ciuppin,” the Genoese word for fish stew.  Other folklore holds that it came from the heavily accented fishermen who called out to one another to “chip in” to the communal stew pot any leftover scraps from the day’s catch.

But wherever the name came from, the basic recipe is always the same: any combination of fresh fish and shellfish–like calamari, cod, halibut, sardines, crabs, clams, mussels and/or shrimp–cooked in a flavorful broth made of fish heads, herbs, onions, tomatoes, fennel and wine, sherry or vermouth.

In this version, all the flavorful veggies, herbs, spices and vermouth are there…but since no one (sadly) boils their own fish heads anymore, I’ve called for good quality seafood broth or chicken broth mixed with anchovy paste, instead. And by bumping up the ratio of vegetables to seafood, the result is lower in calories  but just as satisfying as the original…which means you can afford to have a slender slice of toasted sourdough bread with it as well.

So if you’re looking for a taste of the bay area without making a trip, pour a glass of red wine, put on a little Tony Bennett and try this!