Instant Pot Creamy Chicken Italiano is a dump and go weeknight dish that tastes like a throwback to simpler times. The recipe comes to me by way of a community cookbook from my home congregation. The cookbook was compiled in 2006, but this recipe likely has its origins in a late 1970s kitchen. The recipe……
Ingredient: cream cheese
Empanadas de Queso de Crema (adapted from Elena’s Secrets of Mexican Cooking, 1958)
Empanadas de Queso de Crema is a simple empanada pastry recipe from Elena Zelayeta, author of several well-received cookbooks in the 1940s and 1950s. Zelayeta’s penchant for cooking is made all the more remarkable by the fact that she was entirely blind. For those interested, I’ve written a more in-depth biographical sketch in my review……
Eggs and Tomatoes, or American Shakshuka (Wisconsin, 1962, adapted)
Eggs and Tomatoes is a simple main dish from the good women of Arcadia, Wisconsin ca. 1962. Nestled among a variety of chicken casseroles and chop suey recipes, this recipe is something of an outlier. No meat. No condensed soup. And a keen-eyed observer might recognize this dish looks an awful lot like shakshuka, a North……
Grandma’s Cheesecake with Chocolate Sour Cream
I spend a lot of time reading cookbooks from communities and churches that I’ve never seen written by people that I never knew. I’ll do some basic internet research to learn about the community and what it must have been like way back when, but it’s rarely possible to connect the dots completely. Food can……
Tomato Soup Cake (Oklahoma, 1970s)
This bizarre spice cake recipe has a minor cult following online, a trend that Campbell’s has embraced wholeheartedly. Campbell’s takes credit for inventing the recipe in the late 1920s and making continuous tweaks and updates to “evolve the recipe with trends in the culinary world”. I personally have no nostalgia for this cake. Condensed soup……