VINTAGE RECIPES HAVE long been a fascination of ours on The Sister Project. (see my commentary on my grandmother’s treasured tripe dish, for example.) The recipe box, after all, is one of the ways women have stayed connected across generational boundaries. So of course, I was delighted to read about a vintage cuilinary adventure that writer Wency Leung recently embarked on–an adventure far more interesting than just reading through your grandmother’s old recipes.

Inspired by Michael Pollan’s advice to not eat “anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food,” Leung decided to do just that. Usuing archival recipes that The Globe published during the 1910s, she spent a week only cooking (and eating) food from a century ago.

You can read the hilarious (and, not suprisingly, harried) results of the experiement here. Spoiler alert: obscene amounts of butter and cream were ingested.

I’m definitely impressed by Leung’s ardour. (She only broke her challenge once to eat a few jelly beans and peanuts!) And even the description of gray, gelatinous ham didn’t keep me from feeling charmed by the narrative potential of old recipes, I’m just glad that Leung has written about sampling these century-old treats so that I will never have to.

(photo via)

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Photo by Stephanie Foley for Gourmet

STRAWBERRY SEASON MIGHT be waning south of the Mason-Dixon but since I know it’s still going strong up north, I thought I’d share my new favorite strawberry-centric recipe that I’ve been perfecting during the recent months. (And I say “perfecting” because I’ve made it and then ate all of it more times than I would like to admit.) It’s a strawberry dumpling. Yes, dumpling. And it’s delicious.

Strawberry Dumpling (Originally from Gourmet):

• 1 qt strawberries, trimmed and thickly sliced (about 4 cups)
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1 cup flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 2/3 cup whole milk

Stir together strawberries and sugar in a 4-qt heavy saucepan and let stand, stirring occasionally, until juicy, about 15 minutes. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally.

Meanwhile, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Blend in butter using a pastry blender or your fingertips until mixture resembles coarse meal with some roughly pea-size butter lumps. Stir in milk until just blended, then add mixture to boiling berries and stir once or twice. Tightly cover saucepan and reduce heat to low. Cook, undisturbed, until dumpling looks dry on top, 15 minutes. Let stand off heat, uncovered, 5 minutes before serving. Serve with whipping cream or a dollop of vanilla ice cream.

P.S. The dumpling tastes a lot better if you’ve picked the strawberries with a friend!
Bon appetit! And happy summer!

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Click here to view the embedded video.

THIS WEEKEND, MY FRIEND Erin’s parents are driving up from New Orleans with 70 pounds of crawfish. We’re all going to contribute our favorite summer side-dishes (I’m bringing the potato salad), get a keg, and have a ruckus outdoor crawfish boil! I’ve never eaten crawdads (have you?), but apparently this kind of neighborhood crustacean boil is a bayou tradition. I think it’s a perfect way to wrap up the semester. And until then, I’ll be practicing my Louisiana Waddle, a la the lovely NOLA native Boswell Sisters.

(I’ll post pictures of the big boil next week…stay tuned!)

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THIS IS OUR YEAR FOR A THANKSGIVING with a twist. I’m living in my first apartment that really feels like home (hooray!), so last week my mom packed a bag and drove down the coast to spend the holiday with me. We’re going to be eating an all-vegetarian meal with some dear friends in Charlotte. On the menu is old-fashioned corn pudding, apple crisp, mashed potatoes, sautéed kale, and baked squash with apples. What won’t we be eating, you ask (turkey and ham aside)? Seaweed. Yup, that’s right. Because we already tried that on Thanksgiving.

Two years ago my mom declared that she would be making a Hijiki seaweed salad as her contribution for our extended family’s big Thanksgiving feast. No one argued. But she defended it nonetheless. As a devout health-food eater (and a dreamer at that), she told us all that a seaweed salad was, in fact, a far more traditional choice than a turkey stuffed with bread or sweet potatoes mixed up with sugar and marshmallows because the Early American settlers lived by the sea. And, duh, they ate seaweed.

But the Pilgrims would have used animal fat instead of sesame oil, she assured us later.

This year, the Hijiki will be absent. In part because Mom claims no one ate it the last time (although I do remember some very manly Italian family members shoveling forkfuls of the dish in their mouths between bites of turkey). We’re going a different route for the Thanksgiving 2k9 menu, but perhaps the Hijiki will be back another year, taking its place between the green beans and the cranberry sauce as the only truly black food of the harvest season. It’s a quite delicious recipe. So if you’re looking for the perfect Early American Plymouth Rock Japan fusion this holiday season (or whenever), here’s your ticket:

Mom’s Thanksgiving Hijiki Salad

1 tablespoon sesame oil

2 cups soaked reconstituted Hijiki

1 small onion, finely chopped

1 ½ cups carrots, cut into matchsticks

1 cup corn kernels (fresh or frozen)

several stalk of scallions, chopped

2 tablespoons mirin

tamari to taste

Heat sesame oil over medium head in a large skillet. Sauté onion until tender and translucent. Add carrots, and continue to cook until crispy tender. Stir in Hijiki, corn and mirin together. Cover the seaweed vegetable mixture, stirring occasionally for 8 – 10 minutes. Add tamari and scallions. Stir well and transfer to a salad bowl. Toss with more sesame oil to taste. Serve room temperature.

(photo via Japanese Food Dictionary)

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1970s Polaroid of my mother (back) with my grandmother and my aunt.

MY FAMILY’S STORY OF FOOD is partly the story of our evolution, of our identities unraveling into who we are today. As a third-generation American, I can barely pronounce gnocchi, let alone make it. And while that seems almost tragic to me, that’s the way my Italian grandmother and great grandmother would have wanted it—their offspring bearing the regional accents of New England and not of Asti. (My great grandmother, Nanny, actually used to pronounce that pasta dish “gnoch” in an effort to sound less Italian.)

Like her own mother, my grandmother called gnocchi “gnoch” and risotto “risott,” chopping off ending syllables in denial of her linguistic and culinary roots. My mother grew up eating white sauces on pasta, pots of polenta, animal intestines, giblets, and boiled chicken feet (or at least that’s the impression I’ve gotten)—dishes made with a delicate mix of Italian cuisine carry-over, spendthrift, and just the right amount nutritional weirdness supplied by my grandmother. Money was tight, and things were generally not very joyful.

We had never eaten meat until we adventurously branched out as teenagers, nibbling buffalo wings at restaurants or tasting a sliver of turkey on Thanksgiving.

As adults, my parents shed their chicken feet-eating (or in the case of my dad canned Chef Boyardee ravioli-eating, but that’s another story) identities from times they didn’t particularly admire, and became vegetarians. They grew their own food and canned it for winter—rutabaga, corn, squash, peas, beets, and beans. They rarely ate animal products at all. After T and I were born, our parents raised us as vegetarians. We asked for hot cereal mush in the morning and tofu for dinner. We had never eaten meat until we adventurously branched out as teenagers, nibbling buffalo wings at restaurants or tasting a sliver of turkey on Thanksgiving.

So today, as the TSP sisters share the stories behind their favorite auxiliary cookbooks, I’m offering one of my grandmother’s recipes for “Tripe in Sour Gravy” from her 1937 copy of America’s Cook Book. I’m sure anything with “American” in the name truly tickled her fancy. (She was known, after all, to favor Velveeta over “mozzarell” on occasion.)

Tripe is bovine stomach lining. I wouldn’t eat this, nor would I recommend eating this. Don’t worry, T’s and my kinds of recipes—for dishes like cabbage salad, veggie fritters, and crispy tofu—are forthcoming. I actually think enough tripe could turn anyone vegetarian. Take heed. Or maybe give it a try if you’re trying to kick the habit.

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Ms. Pink of Perfection herself, Sarah McColl

WHEN WE FIRST started TSP, we knew we had to collaborate with one of our favorite bloggers (and sisters), Sarah McColl of Pink of Perfection (dot com). We featured an interview with Sarah and her sister, Katy, in our very first TSP gallery show, alongside some of their holiday menu-worthy recipes.

Sarah is still at the helm of Pink of Perfection, where she’s cooking (try fetuccini with Brussels sprouts) and keeping cozy (cinnamon rolls, anyone?), all the while staying on a practical budget (here’s a tip on dressing for less). What’s different at Pink of Perfection is the look—the site’s recently had a revamp. I love the updated pink style, and I can’t thank Sarah enough for keep my belly and wallet full this winter. Feels like perfection to me!

Oh, and I forgot to mention: I love that Sarah loves France!  She’s expertly incorporated a little French je ne sais quoi into the archives at Pink of Perfection.

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