Retro Recipes and Traditional Fare

I remember reading her words like it was yesterday. Molly once said that prunes were among the few foods with their own built-in laugh track. And gosh darnit, she’s right. I still giggle when I think about them, even when people were saying they were delicious and I should try them. And you know exactly what this boy is talking about, quit trying to be coy and pretend you don’t know.  We’re friends here.

Luckily I can now tell you that I no longer laugh as hard as I once did when I say the words prune and I can also tell you that I no longer put the palms of my hand to my lips and make mega-sounds.  And why? Because scattered among the yards and yards of breakfast items on the buffet table at Club Med in the Bahamas were bowls of stewed prunes.

If you’re looking for a more sophisticated dessert to impress your friends at your next dinner party, try this Austrian classic. America’s Test Kitchen updated the recipe and it’s pretty easy to do.

I made it recently for a small dinner party and was able to prepare it in the morning and refrigerate it until we were ready for dessert. For the best flavor, it’s important to let it stand at room temperature about an hour before serving.

Use the best bittersweet chocolate you can find, Callebaut, Valrhona, or Ghiradelli.

It’s funny what you think you know. For the last thirty-five years I’ve been cooking chicken scarpariello – or shoemakers’ chicken — for my family. It’s one of my kids’ favorite dishes out of my humble repertoire – cut up pieces of chicken, still on the bone, flash-fried with garlic, white wine and rosemary. The best way to eat this dish is with your fingers, mopping up the sauce with a piece of good Italian bread. It’s heaven on a plate. I first came across the recipe in Alfredo Viazzi’s cookbook. Alfredo had a restaurant – he had a few of them, actually – in Greenwich Village where we lived in 1972. We ate at Trattoria d’Alfredo a couple times a week, often spotting James Beard at a table by himself, packing away Alfredo’s fabulous food.

Imagine my shock when I researched the recipe on the Internet and found that it’s not Italian at all. I typed in “pollo allo scarpariello – ricette” on Google, so that I could pull up the recipes in the original Italian and I came up empty. They don’t have that dish in Italy or, if they do, they call it something else.

Sometimes, Thursday’s roll around and all I really want to do is grab a friend and sneak out to a 10 a.m. movie. Eat popcorn for lunch and then come home and take a nap before the kids get home. This is merely a fantasy (aside from an occasional nap) and dinner on this particular day of the week can be easily coined, “use it up, Thursday”.

I have made a vow to stick to the weekly meal plan and no matter what, I swear off an unplanned visit to the grocery store, just because I saw something on the Internet that made my mouth water. I save that inspiration for the following week’s meal plan. Not only is this a huge time saver, but it also saves money.

It’s on this day that I clean out the vegetable bin, take inventory of what can be used for the following week, make the meal plan and lastly, type up  the grocery list. Over the past year, I have made a conscious effort to create meals with the inventory on hand.