Retro Recipes and Traditional Fare

Most people look at an artichoke and think: "What do I do with this?" But artichokes only look intimidating, they're actually easy to prepare once you know how. Originally from the Mediterranean, artichokes have a history that dates back to Roman times. There are countless cultivated varieties, especially in Italy, where artichokes are enjoyed in many different preparations including raw salads, stuffed and baked, steamed, grilled, etc. In the States we have just two varieties: the large globe and small baby. The simplest way to prepare artichokes is steaming. Not only is it easy to do, the method also retains the subtle flavors that make artichokes so revered.

Artichokes make a fun party food since they require a hands-on approach. Each leaf is removed one by one and nibbled on. Once all the leaves have been removed, and the choke has been scraped away, only the heart remains. The heart and the stem have the most flavor. The leaves are not entirely edible, so you need to use your teeth to scrape the bit of flesh from each leaf. Typically steamed artichokes are served with melted butter or hollandaise, but I like to dip into Dijon vinaigrette, which is much lighter. Serve steamed artichokes as an appetizer for any occasion.

My Dad was crazy about this; it's what I recall him craving the most. He always happily obliged my mother as chief taster when she was in the kitchen trying to get the flavors just right.

I know my Dad was smiling down from heaven the other day as he watched us make his prized Sauerkraut.

However, sauerkraut is not what we called this dish, being Polish, we referred to it as kapusta (kah-POOS-tah), a word meaning cabbage. It just sounds wrong.

Anyway, I grew up on this stuff. Just the aromatics alone take me back to my childhood kitchen. I can still see the pot my mother cooked it in and my Dad standing there, waiting to inform her if it was sour enough or needed more salt.

It's a good memory but one that leaves me a bit emotional.

I am very much intrigued by the unique food of Alsace, the tiny region that shares a border and many culinary similarities with Germany. My love for Alsatian food stems from my visit a few years ago to The Modern, which is run by Alsatian chef Gabriel Kruether. There I enjoyed many traditional Alsation dishes, among them a tarte flambée, a simple pizza-like tart. It is also known as flammekueche in Alsatian or flammkuchen in German. It's fundamentally a very simple combination of smoky bacon, sautéed onions, and rich cream on a crispy bread that forms a most amazing salivatingly savory meal.

The flavors I experienced that day still linger in my memory. I knew then that I would try and re-create this Alsatian tart at home. But it wasn't until last week that the thought crossed my mind once I discovered my local supermarket sold crème fraîche, the French sour cream, which is a necessary ingredient for this recipe. To recreate the flavor profiles of the tart I enjoyed at the restaurant, I also searched for applewood-smoked bacon, which I was also luckily able to procure. With all the ingredients in hand, I was now absolutely ready to bake and devour a traditional tarte flambée.

Growing up my mother and grandmother fed us picadillo, a dish of ground beef, potatoes, tomatos, onions and spices. It was the perfect meal–delicious and satisfying–and always enjoyed with fresh flour tortillas on the side. It’s a dish I still crave to this day, and like most Latin cuisine it has its regional differences.

As I’ve traveled I’ve noticed that almost everyone has their own version of meat and potatoes, and it’s easy to see why. A traditional Irish corned beef and potatoes, a Kashmiri Rogan Josh served with slowly stewed potatoes, or Brazilian churrasco enjoyed with mounds of Brazilian potato salad- – mix a protein and a starch and happiness is always guaranteed…not to mention a fully belly.

Sometimes in my moments of quasi-food snobbery I chide my friends who refuse to join me for dinner, fearing I’ll pick something that falls outside their culinary comfort zone. I practically have to sign a form promising them no organ meats, no intense heat, no stinky cheese, no bellpeppers and certainly nothing that comes from the “strange” parts of an animal (which always leads me to ask why a rump roast isn’t strange but a tongue is, but whatever!) However, the perfect meal to satisfy my picky meat-and-potatoes kind of friends are, well, meat and potatoes. But only meat and potatoes in their most simple, smoky and stripped down form: steak frites.