Cook from the past, eat in the now

Madison restaurant recipes from the Isthmus archives

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Food & Drink

When we started brainstorming our 50th anniversary issue, I was perplexed on the food front. I’d already written about restaurants in Madison circa 1976 for our 35th anniversary. I wanted to avoid waxing poetic about a bunch of closed restaurants people can’t eat at anymore. Then I remembered that Isthmus ran a cooking column from Suzanne Breckenridge and Marge Snyder from 1981 to 1998 that often answered reader requests for recipes for some of their favorite Madison dishes. I hit the archives. 

There were recipes from the Ovens of Brittany and the Rennebohm’s lunch counter, The White Horse Inn and Shanghai Minnie’s, Himal Chuli before it was brick-and-mortar. How to choose? Some recipes seemed over-the-top, like a Cafe Palms carrot soup that called for a quart of half-and-half and a quart of heavy cream. Others seemed too mundane, like the recipe for Rennie’s brownies. 

The Ovens of Brittany-Shorewood Chocolate Chip Cookies with Nuts seemed like a no-brainer place to start — seemingly everybody’s bygone favorite restaurant and everybody’s favorite cookie? Kismet. 

It was so popular back in the day that Isthmus printed this recipe twice, originally as a cookie from Concordance, a bakery in the Shorewood Shopping Center in the space that the Ovens took over (apparently along with the cookie). I cut the recipe down to a more manageable two dozen and scratched my head at the proportions — a ridiculous amount of sugar relative to flour — and checked my math. And checked it again. Yup. A lot of sugar. I stepped into the Isthmus 50th Test Kitchens, aka my house, and started baking. 

While I don’t think I did anything wrong, this was an impossible dough to work with, like trying to shape a mound of streusel. I tried the refrigerated log roll, which did not make the cookies any easier to form. I tried hand-pattying (messy but doable). I tried big cookies, small cookies, flat cookies and round cookies. I discovered that the piles of streusel did resolve into cookies in the oven — the trick is somehow wrestling the dough onto the cookie sheet. Verdict: sweet and almost toffee-like, and quite different from chocolate chip cookies in bakeries these days. Worth the effort? Maybe once.

My next attempt was easier. Porto Bananas was a Mexican-ish place with attitude on King Street. It billed itself as a “small banana port in the Caribbean.” The reader requesting the recipe said it was called “Reagan’s Polyps” (Google it) but we called it “Avocado-peanut vinaigrette,” though it’s a lot closer to a chunky salsa.

My last attempt (I’m an editor, not a cook) was the Cajun chicken pasta from the Wild Iris Cafe on Regent Street (now Indie Coffee). That bistro was the brainchild of Jane Capito (who also ran Botticelli’s, Lazy Jane’s Cafe and more) and Anna Alberici (who went on to open the Greenbush Bar). This recipe, reflecting an early ’90s craze for Cajun, carries a pleasant amount of heat, and though it didn’t strike me as overwhelmingly Cajun, it was a big hit at dinner. 

Chocolate chip cookies with nuts 

(Concordance/Ovens of Brittany-Shorewood)

Cream together at low speed:

1/2 cup butter

1 cup shortening

3 cups white sugar

3 cups brown sugar

1 tsp. vanilla

3 eggs

Add:

1 1/4 lb  white flour

1 1/2 tsp. baking soda

3/4 tsp. salt

Mix well, then add:

12 oz. chocolate chips

1 c. chopped walnuts

Refrigerate dough until chilled. Wrap in wax paper and roll into a long cylinder about 2 ½” in diameter. Slice into rounds ½ “ - ¾” thick and bake at 350° for 15 min.

Note: This should produce about 24 cookies. Beware overbaking!

Porto Bananas’ Avocado-Peanut Vinaigrette

1/8 lb. raw peanuts, almonds or cashews

2 ripe avocados

1/2 c. peanut oil

1/2 c. rice wine vinegar

1 bunch cilantro

1/4 c. chopped red onion

salt and pepper

Toast peanuts carefully under a broiler until dark brown; cool. Peel the avocados and dice. Place avocado chunks in a bowl and add the peanut oil, rice wine vinegar and red onion. Dice the cilantro and add to the avocado mixture. Add peanuts. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve at room temperature over boned chicken breasts or fish, or use as a dip for crusty bread.

Note: I used peanuts.

Wild Iris Cafe’s Cajun Chicken Pasta

Seasoning mix for the sauce:

2 tsp. dried thyme

1 tsp. cayenne pepper

1 tsp. white pepper

1 tsp. black pepper

1 tsp. dried basil

1 1/2 tsp. cumin

½ tsp. ground coriander

Sauce:

1/2 lb. butter

1 c. chopped onion

6 cloves garlic, minced

3 ½ c. chicken stock

1/2 c. tomato sauce

1½ tbs. Worcestershire sauce

1 tbs. Tabasco sauce

1 tbs. sugar

1/4–1/2 c. tomato paste

Chicken:

2 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into half-inch cubes

1/4 lb. butter

1½ tbs. salt

1 ½ tsp.white pepper

1 ½ tsp. black pepper

1 ½ tsp. garlic powder

1 tsp. cayenne pepper

1 tsp. cumin

1 tsp. dried basil

1/2 c. chopped scallions (white and some green)

In a bowl, combine all the ingredients for the sauce’s seasoning mix. Set aside.

In a large saucepan, melt butter. Add onion and garlic and sauté 5 minutes.

Add seasoning mix and cook over medium heat 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add chicken stock and simmer 10 minutes. Mix in the tomato sauce, Worcestershire, Tabasco, and sugar and simmer 30 minutes. Stir in tomato paste and continue to simmer for 20 minutes.

While sauce is simmering, mix seasonings for chicken: salt, peppers, garlic, cayenne, cumin, and basil. Toss chicken with seasoning, coating well. Melt butter in a skillet over medium heat, add coated chicken and cook over medium heat until lightly browned. Add scallions and cook one more minute. Add to the sauce and simmer until the chicken is cooked through. Toss with pasta of your choice. Serves 4.

Note: Cutting down on the salt would be a good idea.