For a novelty cookbook I’m getting a lot of mileage out of Cooking with Regis & Kathie Lee. I picked up the cookbook out of a sense of nostalgia for the old Live! with Regis and Kathie Lee daytime show. I’d still say the book is more fun to read than it is to……
Ingredient: tomato sauce
Tomato Beef Chow Yuk with Pea Pods (Oregon, 1974, adapted)
I’m fortunate to live in an area with a large Asian population and have ready access to high-quality traditional Chinese food. And I occasionally like to tell myself that I’m somehow fancy or cultured because I can distinguish regional cuisines or appreciate cold, spiced jellyfish, but I also have a soft spot in my heart……
Mock-Steak Joubey (adapted from The Smart Shopper’s Cookbook, 1972)
Mock-Steak Joubey is one of the more entertaining recipes in The Smart Shopper’s Cookbook. To some degree it captures the essence of the cookbook – making elegant meals with ground meat or inexpensive cuts – but very few of the recipes take that charge quite so literally. Mock-Steak Joubey actually fashions a ground meat patty……
Chili Wheat (Oklahoma, 1978, adapted)
Let’s be honest – Chili Wheat is not a particularly appetizing name for a supper dish. It sounds like it ought to be a snack food or some kind of hipster breakfast cereal. Or maybe even a bad joke. The truth is more mundane: think Chili Mac but with wheat instead of macaroni. To understand……
Tomato Barbecue Jell-O Salad (Georgia, 1960s, adapted)
This is one of those recipes that belongs to another time and place, and probably should have stayed there. Savory Jell-O salads have always fascinated me, but I don’t get around to making them all that often. There’s usually a weird crunchy ingredient like celery or chopped nuts that prompts the gag reflex just reading……
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……