Retro Recipes and Traditional Fare

As with many good things, a cherished recipe resulted from an accident.

My wife wanted an omelet for breakfast and we had only one egg in the refrigerator. That egg was an especially good, farmers' market egg, but it did not have a companion and my wife was used to having a two-egg omelet.

Many solutions came to mind.

Go to the market to buy more. That seemed like too much trouble with a cup of coffee already brewed and waiting on the dining room table next to the Sunday New York Times. Use a lot of milk as "filler." But the resulting omelet would have been more like a custard than what my wife likes, a very firm cooked egg.

So, I did the only thing any guy would do in the circumstances. I punted.

If I was short an egg, well, I'd compensate with a lot more filling, hoping my wife would be distracted by all the goodies so she wouldn't notice the paucity of "egg."

The biggest problem with dating an ultra-runner is how unimpressive your small, daily achievements seem in comparison.  My boyfriend, Shannon, ran 8 ultra-marathons (marathons longer than 26.2 miles) in 2012, bringing his race and training mileage to around 3500 miles in just one calendar year. 3500 miles- the distance from New York to Los Angeles, on foot.

I’m still in a great deal of denial about the whole thing.

One of the perks of dating an ultra-runner, however, is that you get to cheer them on in some truly amazing places.  This past January, we traveled to Hawaii so he could compete in one of the hardest ultra-marathons in the world; The H.U.R.T. 100 Mile Endurance Run.

“Compete” is actually the wrong word.  Most 100 mile races are so challenging that the runners try to concentrate more on finishing than finishing first.  I learned a lot on this trip while listening to racers tell stories about how desperately they wanted to quit mid-race but reached deep within themselves and found the emotional and physical fortitude to continue on.

But wait a minute.  Back to me.

With Thanksgiving around the corner, my wife and I have started talking about the menu. Mostly we want to enjoy favorite dishes. One of those is a turkey liver pate I adapted from a chopped liver recipe my mom made when I was a kid.

Even people who love chicken livers view turkey liver as too much of a good thing. Whoever has the job of prepping the turkey on Thanksgiving Day frequently looks with bewilderment at the large double-lobed liver in the bag tucked ever so neatly inside the turkey.

Following my mother's lead, my solution is to turn lemons into lemonade or, in this case, turkey liver into pâté. My mother prepared chopped liver using a shallow wooden bowl and a beat-up, double-handled, single-bladed mezzaluna knife that her mother had given her.

She would cut up and sauté the turkey liver with a chopped up onion. Two eggs would go into boiling water. Once hard-boiled, they would join the sautéed liver and onion in the wooden bowl, which she would hand to me along with the mezzaluna. While she prepared the turkey, she put me to work.

There is no soup more classic than the French onion soup. It's famous around the world and here in the United States, no bistro menu is without it. It's a soup that is ultimately comforting, flavorful, and adored by everyone who tries it. The best part is breaking through the irresistible topping of bread and melted cheese. No wonder so many people have claimed to be its inventor.

I first came across French onion soup a couple of years ago when a small group of friends and I gathered to celebrate my birthday at Cafe Deville, a rustic French bistro in the East village. We gorged on crusty bread, wine, escargot in butter, and ordered everything that was stereotypically French, including French onion soup. The cheese in that bowl was so stretchy that a knife was needed. It was a very memorable time. Good fun was had by all and the bottle of wine helped too.