Retro Recipes and Traditional Fare

montecristoA Monte Cristo consists of ham, turkey or chicken, and Swiss cheese sandwiched between two slices of white or challah bread that is dipped in an egg batter, then grilled or fried in butter until golden brown. It is often dusted with confectioners’ sugar and served with a side of red currant jelly.

The Monte Cristo is an American version of the Croque-Monsieur, the famed French grilled cheese and ham sandwich that is fried in clarified butter. The sandwich first appeared on the menu at Gordon’s, a restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, but it didn't get its big break until Disneyworld got involved. When the Blue Bayou Restaurant in the Pirates of the Caribbean put the Monte Cristo on its menu, its popularity soared.

I hadn't eaten a Monte Cristo since I was a kid, and I didn't remember particularly loving it. My, how things have changed. This sandwich has it all: it's sweet, salty, and chewy. It's addictive.

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tomsoupIt's easy to get so caught up in the idea of eating seasonally that we forget that there are certain things that aren't necessarily seasonal, for example vegetables grown in hothouses or greenhouses like Belgian endive, cucumbers and mushrooms, also preserved produce--jams, pickles, chutney, frozen and canned foods. Which brings me to canned tomatoes, which are a great choice for recipes since fresh tomatoes are in season for a fairly short period of time.

While I wouldn't use a canned tomato on a sandwich, they are a must for most tomato based sauces. Lately I've come to appreciate canned fire roasted tomatoes for their lovely smoky flavor. They are great in stew or chili and a sneaky shortcut when making this zippy soup. A nice option in this shoulder season when somedays still feel like Winter, it's something you can make from pantry staples--a few aromatics, cans of tomatoes and broth. Having tried many brands of fire roasted tomatoes, I like Hunt's best and while I prefer homemade, Swanson's is the only canned chicken broth I use.

Another little trick in this soup is the addition of cream cheese. I don't typically keep heavy cream on hand so I am always looking for other ingredients to add creaminess to recipes. In this case a tiny bit of cream cheese adds a lot of richness. But in all honesty this soup is really wonderful even without it.

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ImageI 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.

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ImageIt’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.

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pasties_001.jpgBe careful when you do a Google search for pasties. I was searching for the edible kind, the Cornish kind-- pastry stuffed with meat and vegetables. But, ummmm, you know, the other kind came up. Google misunderstood. It did try, though. Google asked: Did you mean to search for: all about pastry?

I had just returned to my office after a visit with Mark and Peggy Schultz, owners of a pasty (PASS-tee) shop in Turtle River, Minnesota, not far from where I live. After spending time in the Turtle River Pasties kitchen, watching Mark create very chubby pasties, all-butter pastry turnovers stuffed with beef and root vegetables, I was anxious to use the tips he shared with me to make my own batch.

I first learned of pasties over 20 years ago when I was in Ely for a state Legion baseball tournament. They were part of the line-up at the concession stand. A pasty is a little bit like a filled dumpling, but it's baked, not boiled. It's a little bit like a pie with a flaky crust, but it's eaten out of hand, not with a fork. It's a little bit like a sandwich filled with meat and vegetables, but there's no bread involved.

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