Retro Recipes and Traditional Fare

Cold Cucumber Soup

When it's incredibly hot outside, like it has been this month, standing by a hot stove is not something anyone wants to do. Grilling outside is another option, but when it's too hot to even do that, what do you do? Why not make a no-cook recipe, like a chilled soup? The cooling qualities of a cold soup are perfect on days where you need a refreshing respite from the sweltering heat. And there's no better way to achieve that than with a cold soup.

The tradition of cold, raw soups comes by way of Spain and their famous gazpachos. Originally, the recipe was made with just bread, garlic, and oil (bread and oil were the thickeners and garlic helped cool the body by way of sweating.) After the New World explorations, tomatoes were added to the recipe, creating what we know of today as the classic gazpacho. Many other nations have cold soups too, just think of borscht. In Hungary cucumber soup is very popular during summer. The pairing of cucumbers and yogurt is one that can be found in Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and Indian cuisines. This recipe takes inspiration from all of these.

Recipe Redux: Grapefruit Fluff, 1941

From the NY Times

The 1940s were a good time for drinking; eating, however, could be a dicey affair. Grapefruit fluff, published in The Times in 1941, was like a shining beacon in the sea of dull food. When looking for recipe inspiration in the paper’s archives, I moved right on by the date icebox pudding made with evaporated milk and the fruit turnovers that called for canned fruit. (A footnote, which only further proves my point: the original recipe had the uninspiring name “Grapefruit Dessert.” I changed this to fluff, for reasons you’ll understand when you make it.)

This fluff, the love child of broiled grapefruit and baked Alaska, is as joyful as it is unexpected. After assembly, you set the grapefruits in a pan filled with a bed of ice, then send them under the broiler for a quick singeing before the ice and everything else melts. To eat it, you pierce through a crisp, sugary snowcap to discover first a layer of warm, floppy meringue, then a pocket of vanilla ice cream and finally a well of tart and boozy slivers of grapefruit macerating in the grapefruit shell. It’s the perfect impromptu treat: you may already have all the ingredients in your pantry and fridge.

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Cracking the Code of Panna Cotta

From the LA Times

pannacotta I've spent a good chunk of the last two weeks surrounded by spreadsheets, crumpled paper packets, cartons of dairy products and dirty ramekins. Josef Centeno has a lot to answer for.

A couple of weeks ago I stopped in at his Bäco Mercat restaurant downtown for a lunch that ended with one of the best panna cottas I've ever had. You know what I mean: Delicately sweet, it was like a dream of cream held together by faith and just a little bit of gelatin.

It struck me — how long had it been since I'd had panna cotta? A few years ago you couldn't go anywhere without seeing it. Then just as suddenly it went away. It makes no sense. A good panna cotta is as good as dessert gets. Vowing I would never again leave my panna cotta cravings to the whims of restaurant fashion, I determined to master the dish.

How hard could that be? There's not a lot to a panna cotta recipe. It's just dairy, sweetened and bound with gelatin. A bit of vanilla for flavor. That's basically it. Why, then, are some of them so wonderful and others so blah?

Tamarind-Glazed Baby Back Ribs

tamarindribs Ribs are undoubtedly a cornerstone of American summer barbecues, especially in the South where it's practically an art form. Die-hard 'cue masters will argue there's a difference between barbecue and grilling. And there is: Barbecue is a low and slow process of cooking meat in a smoky humid environment.

Grilling is about quick contact-cooking. Steaks and burgers are grilling. Ribs and pork shoulder are barbecue. Barbecue can be broken down further into wet and dry versions. It's pretty self-explanatory but the debate as to which is better is one that will never be decided upon. The secret is in the sauce—or is it the rub?  

What most Americans know as barbecue is based on the wet barbecue technique that originated in Kansas City. Large food brands further popularized wet barbecue with their lines of sauces. Wet barbecue is all about the sauce whereas dry barbecue is all about the rub. No thick sauce is used to baste the meat except for a mop sauce (typically made with vinegar, which helps keep the meat moist). You'll find dry barbecue in Memphis, where they serve sauce on the side for dipping, but you will never see it slathered on the meat. Most at-home barbecue includes a combination of both dry and wet methods.

Easy as 1-2-3-4 Pineapple Upside Down Cake

If man could only have one pan, it would probably have to be an iron skillet. You can fry, bake, sear and roast with these workhorses of the kitchen. Baking, as in cornbread, is most often thought of when using these pans for non-frying purposes, but there is a class of cakes that take the cake when it comes to iron skillet cooking, and the Pineapple Upside Down Cake is one of them.

I actually made this cake for Mama and Mimi’s birthday. They share the same birthday and don’t always want the same cake for their special day, but, this one is a great neutral for our family – everyone likes it! Mimi makes hers in an iron skillet as did Mema, her mother. This is one of those desserts with one arm reaching back to the “Ol’ South” via an iron skillet and another broadly stepping into the mid-twentieth century with the Baby Boomers and the craze for canned fruit! It seems that by the 1980’s and 90’s fresh fruit was hard to come by in Suburbia, USA, but thankfully those days are waning and fresh, seasonal produce is here to stay!

Retro Recipes and Traditional Fare