Retro Recipes and Traditional Fare

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!

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!

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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Surprised? I know. I wouldn’t normally post a recipe for sweet bars made with crisp rice cereal and marshmallows. I’m going to a family reunion. There will be lots of kids there — little ones and big ones, too, if you know what I mean. Kids love rice krispie bars. I’m taking a very light, bright and healthful cabbage salad, too. So, it will all balance out in the sugar and calorie department.

This recipe came to me from a friend sometime in the early 1980′s. My boys were at a rice krispie bar stage of their lives. That stage coincided with a “not-much-time-to-bake” time in my life.

No-bake Caramel Krispies are made by making two layers of the rice krispie, butter and marshmallow mixture in jelly-roll pans. A filling of caramel, more butter and a can of sweetened condensed milk is heated together and when the caramels are melted, the mixture gets poured over one of the layers that has been sprinkled with more mini-marshmallows.