Hi Michael, Melissa Clark.
Pleasure to meet you, Michael DiMartino.
[chopping and stirring sounds]
So what do you have here in this very nice looking, very symmetrical dish?
this is from 1942 cookbook from Columbia University it's a
family lamb dinner. So what it was is lamb shanks we took it off the bone we
braise them took it off then we follow the recipe to keynote with this is they
finished the lamb with a cream sauce.
when I first opened the Colombia 1942,
cookbook it was like finding a little time capsule, it was so wonderful because
all of these recipes are not the kind of recipes that you see even in retro
cookbooks or cookbooks that are historical, these are the real things
that people were cooking and what struck me was how first of all how voice-y they
were-- each recipe was just so wonderfully-- it just sounded like the person was
talking to me and telling me how they made the recipe.
you go back to 1940s health wasn't an issue at the time. Fat content, saturated fat content, trans fa,t
gluten, stuff like that. So the way we cook now it's a more healthier version we do
a lot healthier and it's different things we do to protect the people who
eat who have the allergens. Back then it was like, "here's what we're eating today,"
and if you're in this kind of household this is what you ate and that it
definitely shows in the recipes in that book.
The Columbia cookbook reminded me
of the community cookbooks that are fairly frequently published there's one
in my small town upstate of a local woman's group who collected recipes and
presented those recipes of prominent people in town so you have, it's not
surprising, a portrait of a Columbia population: it's a well-traveled
population, there are a fair number of foreign preparations sometimes it will tell
you in parentheses "Egyptian" in case you didn't know and someone
with an Italian name probably from Italy giving the real scoop on-- against all the
quote "crimes" done in the name of spaghetti.
something delightful that I found in the
book was, it was this just um, unapologetic use of awful. I thought it
was great there was kidneys, there were gizzards, there were, there was tongue,
there were all kinds of things that today if I wrote a recipe calling for
kidneys I would have to do a big long apology like, "really these are delicious
I promise!" but back then it was just taken for granted so in one way you know
we've come a long way we're eating a fresher we're eating fewer canned and
boxed products but then again we're also more limited in what we eat, we don't
have we're not eating all of the animal the way they were back then and I think that is a great lesson for us
we don't get to cook that way anymore I can't add
protein or meat or beef items to a vegetarian dish we made a planted today
it called for back fat, we used bacon. There's no way in multi feelings you could put
bacon and some like that because so many people don't like pork or don't eat
bacon or can't eat meat because they're vegetarian or vegan. We learned how to
adapt to make people happy so we're trying to make the masses happy instead
of individual families which these recipes were made for.
these both have apple, these are like similar apple pies [yes] same filling, same crust and this has
a top crust and this has rat cheese. That just sounds so-- I don't want to eat rat cheese!
but I-- [laughs] .
in 1942 [maybe you did] you lived in America, you ate rate cheese. [they ate rat cheese]
Any cheese that was born or raised or grew in America or made in America, they'd say they're just good for rat
traps [that's so funny] that's where they got this name of rat cheese.
although I have a feeling though if
they're putting it on pie that means, and especially if Eisenhower is putting on a
pie i'm assuming that means that there is a-- it's said with affection and love it
is "rat cheese," but yet it is beloved because here it is on this pie-- and you
know it is very, I mean we do have the tradition in America especially in you
know, up in the Northeast of serving cheddar cheese with pie that's very
traditional so this is kind of a take on that
Tastes change over the years and
the way that we like our food done today is different from back in the 40s for
example the cooking times on some of the recipes-- we would never cook fish for an
hour and a half. We just wouldn't, it would fall apart, but you know what
that's how they liked it back then and that's
valid and it is a, it's just a difference in taste and our taste is our
own but it doesn't necessarily mean it's any better