The Slow Food USA Blog

Table Talk Winning Recpies & Stories: Taste Traditions

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Over the next few weeks we’ll be bringing you a set of recipes that employ good, clean, fair food, and how the cook feels that they embody those values. The recipes are the inventions of the winners of our Table Talk recipe contest.

This week we’re bringing you the stories behind the winners of the Taste Traditions category: recipes inspired by family or cultural cuisine. Here’s how the winners explained how they came to develop their tasty creations.

With her recipe for blueberry piergois, Martyna Hogendorf, the category’s first place winner, reminds us, “grandmothers have secret powers of creating magnificent meals”. Inspired by afternoons picking blueberries in Poland, Martyna and her family recreated the family recipe using local, organic berries from New Jersey. The magic of her grandmother’s recipes yields “the explosive purple color on our plates, and the sweet, tangy and rich flavor.” With blueberry season upon us, Martyna’s recipe serves as another way to take advantage of local, seasonal produce.

Click here for Martyna’s recipe for blueberry pierogis

Second place winner Lucy Verde-Ortiz also reminisces about cooking with her grandmother in her recipe for dandelion greens with white beans. One day, her grandmother came back from a walk where she had foraged the dandelion greens from a nearby field; “she was very proud of this great foraging find and she said it reminded her of her home in Italy”. Lucy’s philosophy reflects fresh, local summer food, and she believes “that the best food you can make and eat consists of simple dishes.”

Click here for Lucy’s recipe for dandelion greens with white beans

Nora Painten takes advantage of local summer produce in her recipe for braised lamb shanks. She invented this recipe while working on a farm, where she grew the tomatoes, onions, garlic, and herbs that comprise this Italian recipe. Now, Nora’s family uses this saved and stored summer produce to make braised lamb shanks for their annual Christmas dinner, birthing a new, delicious tradition for her and her family.

Click here for Nora’s recipe for braised lamb shanks

We’re proud of all the winners. Comment below if you try out one of the recipes!  Next week’s theme: Young Cook (recipes from people aged 25 and under).