Vintage Eats

Hiya!

I met a couple of JJ’s acquaintances the other day, and upon being recognized as “VintageEats” on Twitter, found myself answering the question, “what, exactly, are vintage eats?”.  I think I’ve mentioned my penchant for vintage cookbooks before on this blog, but really, what I mean by vintage eats is the food my grandmother would eat.  Thanks to Michael Pollen, we’re all aware of the line “don’t eat anything your grandparents wouldn’t recognize as food”.  I try to live by it in a world where it’s so easy to nuke something or squeeze it out of a bottle.  In the midst of the post- WWII pseudo-food era, my grandma still cooked with lard, threw real mayonnaise into salads, and baked her own cakes.  She shook her head at boxed cake mixes, Miracle Whip, and other frankenfoods.  And, despite the relative convenience of all these foods, I too make things from scratch.  But I realize that one of the main reasons it’s easier for me to cook from scratch is that I’m always prepared.  Generally speaking, I always have something in my fridge that can be thrown together with something from my freezer and pantry to make a good meal.  Another term you hear me throw around often is “garbage food”.  I don’t mean junk food, I mean food made from ingredients that you don’t know what to do with.  You throw them together with a few basic pantry items and make it into something delicious.  Here’s a list of the stuff I typically keep in my house so that I can do just that:

Pantry

• Various pastas like spaghetti, penne, linguini, and pastina
• Legumes – black beans, lentils, split peas
• Jarred (no BPA!) strained tomatoes and tomato paste
• Rices – arborio, basmati, wild, red, and black
• Flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, yeast
• Red wine
• Capers and olives
  
• Vinegar – cider or balsamic
• Oil – olive, canola, and sesame
  
• Spices – kosher salt and whole peppercorns at the very least
• Potatoes, onions, garlic (I include them here because they should be kept cool, but not necessarily refrigerated.)
• Bread
  

Freezer

• Stocks – chicken, beef (if you eat meat), vegetarian (even if you aren’t)
• Scraps for stock – onion peels, carrot peels and ends, some celery leaves (aside: there are certain scraps that don’t make for good stock.  These include potato peelings, cabbage leaves, and garlic, to name a few. Also, save your chicken carcasses to boil with the scraps – voila, chicken stock!)
  
• Various meats – whatever you prefer
• Any fruit or veg. you froze from the summer/fall harvest

Fridge

• Milk, unsalted butter
• Eggs
• Cheese – hard (like parmesan), semi-soft (like cheddar), and soft (like mozzarella)
• Tomatoes
• Salad greens
• Herbs (like rosemary, parsley, and cilantro)
  
• Carrots
• Mushrooms
  
• Whatever other veg. is local and in season

So, check out my list and think of all the possibilities.  You feel like soup.  You defrost some chicken and some broth from your freezer.  You dice some carrots and onion, maybe some potatoes.  You saute the chicken when it’s defrosted.  You throw them all into the pot with the broth and simmer til they’re soft.  Done.  Throw in some pastina for chicken and stars.

You want pasta.  You pick which kind.  You settle on linguini, so you start sauteing some garlic in olive oil.  You add tomatoes and cook them down.  You throw in some capers, maybe some olives too.  Twenty minutes in, you start boiling your pasta and in a half hour, you’re eating.  Sprinkle some parmesan cheese over the top.  Prego. 

You want Asian.  You put some rice on the stove – 1.5 cups of water to every cup of rice.  You take some beef and cut it into thin strips.  You heat a pan with sesame oil til it’s hot.  Saute onions, garlic, and some ginger for a couple of minutes, then add the beef.  Keep cooking for a few more minutes and then add your thinly sliced veg – mushrooms, carrots, maybe some bean sprouts. 

How about good old American?  Roast your chicken at 350 for about 45 minutes or until fluids run clear.  While your chicken is in the oven, peel some potatoes and boil them in salted water until soft.  Add salt, some butter, and some milk.  Mash and set aside.  Toss a salad to round out your meal.

My point is you really never have to go out to eat and you always have time to cook for yourself.  If you’re armed with all the right stuff to produce a dinner of any ethnic origin in about thirty minutes, you can just bust it out yourself, no hassle, no reservations.  This, to me, is vintage eats – food I can recognized, cooked in cool ways, but always from scratch. 

Food fighters, have I missed any staples?

Copyright 2010 Vintage Eats