Spaghetti Honduras is a spaghetti dish with warm, fragrant tomato sauce. There doesn’t seem to be anything Honduran about it. This recipe is more like Mediterranean food than anything you’d find in central America. The recipe comes to me by way of a 1949 community cookbook from the Eugene (Oregon) Welfare League. In my older……
Ingredient: chopped garlic
Thai Pork Burritos
Thai Pork Burritos is a gleefully inauthentic weeknight meal with vaguely Asian styling. They aren’t fancy enough to call fusion food, and would be unrecognizable in Thailand or Mexico. They are, however, delicious and easy. They have been a staple at our dinner table for nearly two decades, and were my son’s all-time favorite meal……
Soup Bagdad (adapted from Smart Shopper’s Cookbook, 1972)
Soup Bagdad is a warm and rich lentil-and-lamb soup punched up with a heavy hand of fresh herbs. Despite the long simmer time this is still a tractable weeknight meal, and requires very little chopping or active time. It’s also plenty hearty for a weekend meal. This recipe comes to me by way of Smart……
Tucson Chicken (adapted from Cooking with Regis & Kathie Lee, 1993)
Tucson Chicken is a richly sauced chicken and pasta dish suitable for a cool fall weeknight. And no, I didn’t misspell “Tuscan Chicken”. This recipe comes to us by way of Arizona chef Janos Wilder and a guest spot on Live! with Regis and Kathie Lee. Wilder was on Live! promoting his 1989 cookbook Janos: Recipes……
Curried Chicken with Rice Colombo (Oklahoma, 1920s, adapted)
Curried Chicken with Rice Colombo comes to us by way of a community cookbook published by the First Presbyterian Church of Enid, Oklahoma in the late 1920s. Originally published in the Kansas City Star, it provides an interesting window into perceptions of “exotic” cuisine in this area. Colombo presumably refers to the Sri Lankan port……
Chicken with Fresh Pears Stir-Fry (adapted from Sunset Wok Cook Book (1989))
Chicken with Fresh Pears is an enjoyable summertime stir-fry perfect for weeknights. If you’re looking for traditional Chinese cuisine look elsewhere. This dish, along with many others in Sunset Wok Cook Book (1989), falls squarely in the old school Americanized stir-fry tradition. Stir-frying is an ingenious technique that works well with almost any set……
Shrimps alla Fra Diavolo (adapted from The Mystery Chef’s Never Fail Cook Book, 1949)
Shrimps alla Fra Diavolo is a foolproof pasta dish fancy enough for company but easy enough for a weeknight. Like all recipes in The Mystery Chef’s Never Fail Cook Book (1949), success is a function of the recipe, not the chef. Aside from basic knife skills and a little bit of patience, this delicious dish……
Spam Puffs (adapted from Sunset Cook Book, 1949)
Say what you will but I’m a big fan of Spam. No irony, no poverty cuisine voyeurism, no pining for some lost Hawaiian vacation: fried Spam is a genuine treat for our family. At any given time we’ll have a half a dozen cans on hand, ready to whip up a quick batch of musubis……
Cheese Grits with Tomato Gravy (adapted from The Black Family Reunion Cookbook, 1991)
The Black Family Reunion Cookbook (1991) is a glorious cookbook compiled by the National Council of Negro Women. The recipes honor NCNW’s founder, Mary McLeod Bethune, and commemorate the organization’s annual Black Family Reunion Celebration, which honors “the historic strengths and values of the Black Family.” The recipes are peppered with stories of Ms…….