I asked Facebook about Romano’s and the post has going on 200 responses about favorite dishes. Tortellini in Alfredo. Stuffed mushrooms. Veal marsala.

Romano’s specialized in a kind of Italian- American restaurant cuisine that no one eats in Italy but that never goes out of style here. Tonight, there will be a wait at every restaurant in Anchorage that offers garlic bread, wine, and a menu that includes creamy seafood pastas, single-portions of lasagna served under rafts of bubbly cheese, and salads made of crisp iceberg lettuce, wedges of tomato, and a vinaigrette dressing made with dried oregano and wine vinegar.

But, maybe you’d like to have your ’80s romance at home? I offer you the main ingredient for many a Romano’s tribute pasta. Add shrimp, scallops, clams, smoked salmon (a little goes a long way), or top it with a sliced, breaded chicken cutlet. Turn the lights down and the Dean Martin up.

The key with this pretty simple recipe is to watch the heat. Keep it on the low side and pay attention; you don’t want butter or cream to separate. Also, don’t overcook the pasta, and it will not work with pre-grated cheese.

Restaurant-style Alfredo pasta

Ingredients  

• 5 tablespoons butter
• 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
• 1½ cups cream
• 1½ cups Parmesan, freshly grated (do not use pre-grated Parmesan), plus additional to serve
• Freshly ground pepper to taste, plus more to serve
• Pinch of nutmeg (optional)
• 1 pound fettuccine, preferably fresh
• Chopped Italian parsley to garnish

Instructions 

1. Put a pan of salted pasta water on to boil. In a large frying pan, melt butter over medium-low heat and sauté the garlic until it’s just fragrant. Pour in the cream and, on medium-low heat, allow it to reach a gentle simmer and then let it reduce for about 5 minutes. Stirring with a wooden spoon, add 1 cup of Parmesan and stir until sauce is thickened and creamy. Remove from the heat. Stir in several cracks of fresh pepper and the nutmeg, if desired. Meanwhile, when the water is boiling, add the pasta and cook according to directions, until it is al dente. Reserve ½ cup of pasta water and drain. Put the sauce back over low heat and toss with the hot pasta and an additional ½ cup of cheese. If the sauce seems thick, add reserved water, a little bit at a time, until the noodles are silky. Serve with a sprinkle of cheese, chopped Italian parsley, and additional cracks of pepper.

This recipe was originally published in Edible Alaska magazine.

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I gave myself a challenge to make a complete summer meal with all Alaska-grown foods and settled on homemade ricotta, made from Alaska Range Dairy whole milk, homemade sourdough bread, and locally grown cherry tomatoes roasted with Cousin Emily’s honey from Twitter Creek Gardens in Homer. I’m a real fan of Alaska Range Dairy milk. It’s Alaska’s only local cow milk, produced on the Plagerman family farm in Delta Junction. It’s not homogenized, so there is a layer of cream on top, and it’s pasteurized more slowly and at a lower temperature than milk from large commercial dairies. The free-ranging cows eat hay, grains, barley, and peas. The milk has a creaminess and distinct funk—perfect for making ricotta. You should be able to find it at your local health food store. In Anchorage, I find it at Blue Market, Johnny’s Produce, and sometimes Sagaya. In the Mat-Su, you can find it at Three Bears, Bushes Bunches, and even Walmart.

Of all the cheese a person might make, ricotta is pretty easy. It’s a process that takes half an hour, and it’s really more about having the right equipment than anything else. You need a heavy-bottomed pan, a thermometer, a strainer, and some cheesecloth. You heat the milk, add acid, in this case lemon, but you can also sub in white vinegar, and then strain out the solids. A lot of liquid whey will be left. You can stir that stuff right into your pancake batter for extra protein. (I am certain there is also a whole vein of homesteader social media videos about using whey.) If you want to add a little more volume to your ricotta, sub in some cream. I also sometimes sub a tablespoon of hot honey into the tomato mixture.

Homemade Ricotta With Honey-Blistered Cherry Tomatoes

Ingredients:

• 8 cups whole milk or 6 cups milk + 2 cups cream
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ¼ cup fresh lemon juice
• Honey-Blistered Cherry Tomatoes, for topping (recipe follows)
• 4 slices fresh sourdough bread
• Fresh basil leaves, for garnish

For the tomatoes:

• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons local honey
• 1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1½ tablespoons good olive oil

Instructions: 

1. Position a large metal strainer over an empty bowl that will hold at least 8 cups. Line the strainer with at least 4 layers of cheesecloth. In a heavy bottomed pot, heat milk and salt slowly over medium-low heat. Use a thermometer to monitor the milk’s temperature. When it reaches 185° F, add the lemon juice and stir gently for 2 minutes. You should see the milk separating into fat solids and whey liquid.
2. Remove from heat, cover, and let stand for 20 minutes. Ladle the milk mixture slowly into the cheesecloth, allowing the liquid to drip out. Once you have ladled all of it in, let it drain for at least 20 minutes. Then, if desired, you can wrap the cheesecloth around the curds, twist the top, and gently squeeze to remove a bit more moisture.
3. Once the tomatoes are prepared, spoon the ricotta onto the fresh sourdough bread slices, spoon the tomatoes on top, and drizzle with some sweet tomato liquid. Garnish with fresh basil.

FOR THE HONEY-BLISTERED CHERRY TOMATOES:

1. Preheat the oven to 350° F. Whisk the salt into the honey. Place the tomatoes, cut side up, on a prepared baking sheet. Drizzle half the honey over the tomatoes. Bake for 25–30 minutes, until soft, dried a bit, and slightly scorched on the edges. Remove to a bowl. Drizzle in the rest of the honey and the oil.

This recipe was originally published in Edible Alaska magazine.

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I happen to have just such a muffin recipe in my back pocket. I never make it totally the same and tend to riff. You can too. Sometimes I add lemon zest, sometimes I skip. Sometimes I add just a tiny drop of almond extract and throw some slivered almonds in the topping. I often reduce the sugar to 2/3 cup when I use store-bought berries, which tend to be less tart. And, I use whatever dairy I have on hand for the liquid, including heavy cream, buttermilk or even plain yogurt or sour cream.

For a tidy look, when I’m using store-bought berries, I toss them in a little bit of the dry ingredients. This keeps them from sinking to the bottom of the muffin cup and eases their tendency to bleed juices. It’s far harder to control those things with wild blueberries, but I still do the toss. Frozen blueberries should be added when they are thawed. Those are going to turn a muffin blue no matter what, but there’s something kind of nice about that too.

Essential Alaska blueberry muffins

Makes 12

Ingredients

For the muffins:

2 cups flour

3/4 cup sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon lemon zest

2 eggs, beaten

1/2 cup milk (can substitute buttermilk or sour cream)

1/2 cup (one cube) salted butter, melted

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups fresh blueberries

For the topping:

1/4 cups flour

2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons white sugar

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon allspice

1/8 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons cold salted butter

Method: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line a 12-muffin pan with paper muffin cups. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and nutmeg. Pull out a 1/4 cup of that dry mixture and set it aside in a medium bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, melted butter, milk, lemon zest and vanilla. Pour that mixture into the bowl of dry ingredients and stir with a wooden spoon until well combined into a batter. In the bowl with the 1/4 cup of dry ingredients, gently toss the blueberries until they’re floured. Fold the blueberries into the batter. Now make the topping. Combine all the dry topping ingredients in a bowl. Using your hand, work the butter into the dry ingredients until it is broken down to balls slightly smaller than a pea. Using a cookie scoop or spoon, fill each muffin cup with 4 tablespoons of batter. Sprinkle each with a little less than a tablespoon of the topping. Bake for 20 minutes or until the top of a muffin springs back when you press it. Serve warm with butter.

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This sauce inspired me to think about making a special Sunday dinner extra-green lasagna with some of the greenest things I could find at the grocery store: leeks, baby asparagus and green peas. The result is a verdant take on classic “lasagna in bianca” or white lasagna, as beautiful and seasonal as it is delicious. I call it Green Queen lasagna because it feels very fancy.

This recipe has a number of components — green sauce, bechamel and sauteed spring vegetables — but I found making it went faster than I expected, thanks in part to using no-boil noodles. You can make the pesto ahead of time, like when you have some extra Costco spinach you need to use, and store it for a few days in the fridge. I wouldn’t freeze to preserve the green color. I used regular grated mozzarella, but you can also use torn fresh mozzarella. In that case, I would use a light hand with it because it can get heavy. When I make it again, I may lay basil leaves on top for one more touch of spring.

Green Queen Spring Lasagna

3 cups baby spinach, loosely packed

2 cups basil leaves, loosely packed

1/2 cup olive oil

1 large clove of garlic, crushed

2 tablespoons white miso

Juice and zest of one lemon

One 9-ounce box oven ready lasagna noodles

2 tablespoons butter

1 large leek, white part only, thinly sliced

1 bunch thin asparagus, bottoms removed, diced in 1/2-inch pieces

1 cup frozen peas

Salt and pepper

2 cups whole milk

1 stick or 1/2 cup salted butter

2 1/4 tablespoons flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

A pinch of nutmeg

1 15-ounce container whole milk ricotta

1 egg

4 cups grated mozzarella

1/2 cup of grated Parmesan cheese

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

2. Make the green sauce. In a powerful blender like a Vitamix or a food processor, add spinach, basil, olive oil, miso and lemon zest and juice. Blend on high until all the ingredients are fully broken down into a smooth, very green, concentrated sauce, that’s sort of a smoothie texture. Set aside.

3. Make bechamel. Melt butter in a sauce pan over medium heat. Sprinkle flour over it and then whisk a minute or two until it smells nutty. Slowly whisk in the milk. While whisking, bring to a gentle simmer until the sauce begins to thicken. Remove from heat and whisk in salt and nutmeg. Set aside.

4. Make the fillings. Heat a large pan over medium heat and melt the butter. Once it’s melted, add leeks. Saute until softened, add asparagus and peas. Saute until the peas have defrosted and the asparagus is a brighter green, about 2 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Remove from the heat. In a small bowl, combine ricotta with one egg and two thirds of the green sauce.

5. Assemble the lasagna. Butter a 13-by-9-inch lasagna pan. Drizzle 2 or 3 tablespoons of bechamel in the bottom. Lay three noodle sheets in the pan, spread with 1/3 of the ricotta mixture, 1/3 of the vegetable mixture, about 1/3 cup of bechamel and about 1/3 cup of mozzarella. Continue the layers until you get to the last set of noodles. Spread these with the remaining green sauce, pour remaining bechamel over the top, sprinkle with about 1/2 cup mozzarella and the parmesan. Cover with foil and bake for 35 minutes. Remove foil and bake for 15 more minutes, until the top is browned and the sides are bubbly.

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The main trick is trying not to overcook the cauliflower. Depending on the size of your florets, this might require a little trial and error. I think it’s better to err on the underdone side. I also recommend doubling this recipe if you plan to serve it as a side with a meal. I love Frank’s RedHot, but some in the family are sensitive about heat. In this case, I’ve reduced the hot sauce-to-butter ratio for a milder version and recommended a healthy serving of cooling ranch. If you’re good with an air fryer, this recipe would be easy to adapt.

Buffalo Cauliflower

Makes four snack-sized servings

1 large head cauliflower, cut into florets

1/2 cup white flour

1 cup water

1 teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoons garlic salt

1/2 cup Frank’s or other Buffalo-style hot sauce

3 tablespoons melted butter

Ranch or blue cheese dressing (Here’s my go-to homemade ranch recipe)

Celery and carrot sticks to garnish

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper. In a bowl large enough to hold the cauliflower, whisk together the flour, water, paprika and garlic salt. Toss the cauliflower in the batter and place the pieces on the sheet pan, giving each plenty of room. Bake for 15 minutes. While those are roasting, make the sauce by combining hot sauce and melted butter in a medium bowl. After 15 minutes, the cauliflower pieces should be softened but still a little toothsome and the batter should be dry and set. Remove them from the pan and toss them gently in the sauce. Discard the parchment on the pan and replace it with a fresh piece. Pull each of the florets out of the sauce and place it back on the pan. Roast for another 5 to 8 minutes, until the sauce is set and bubbling around the edges. Serve immediately with dressing and carrot and celery sticks.

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Because you cut the meat into chunks before cooking, it tends to braise a little faster than a regular pot roast. You can do this recipe in a slow cooker, transferring it from the pot to the cooker and going for 6 hours on high. The only trick, really, is getting the right gochujang. I like the kind made by O’Food that comes in a box with a gold lid, which you can for sure get at Sagaya and New Central Market. Whatever you get, make sure you don’t get the kind that says “spicy,” “medium hot” or “very hot.” Those might be good, if you like a kick, but won’t give you the warm, savory sweetness that comes with regular gochujang and makes this recipe totally fine for diners at your table who don’t like spicy food.

It’s also basically essential to serve this roast with kimchi, which adds a lovely acidic punch that perfectly complements the sweet, soft, braised beef. I also like to serve with fluffy white rice. If you’re not a kimchi person, go for pickled Korean vegetables, called banchan, that you can buy deli-style at New Central Market or order from most Korean restaurants. I like to do both.

Gochujang Pot Roast

Ingredients:

1 approximately 5-pound chuck roast, cut into six chunks

1 tablespoon neutral oil

1 shallot, sliced

1 yellow onion, sliced

4 large cloves of garlic, grated

1 1/2 tablespoons ginger, grated

2 1/2 tablespoons gochujang paste — the regular, not the “spicy” variety

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup soy sauce

2 cups beef stock

Chopped scallions, cilantro, warm rice and kimchi to serve.

Method: Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. In a large Dutch oven, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Brown the meat on all sides, working in batches if necessary. Remove the browned meat from the pan and set aside. Turn the heat down to medium, add the shallot and onion, and saute until soft, about five minutes. Add grated garlic, ginger, gochujang, fry for a minute or two. Add brown sugar, soy sauce and beef stock. Return the meat to the pot, put the lid on and place in the oven. Cook for two hours, flipping the meat over halfway through. Once the meat is tender, remove it from the liquid. Skim the fat from the liquid and then put the pan over medium heat to simmer and reduce for about 10 minutes. Serve with warm short-grain white rice and kimchi, and garnish with thin-sliced scallions and cilantro.

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Alaskans were disproportionately reliant on canned fruit, and canned pineapple was one of the first fruits widely available here. Pineapple cakes can be found in Alaska’s community and church cookbooks going back almost 100 years. Flash forward to the 1970s, when cake-mix cakes had totally taken over cookbooks, and “poke cakes” became a common thing. These were sheet cakes, pierced with holes, soaked in Jell-O, pudding or condensed milk and loaded with toppings, including Cool Whip and crumbled candy bars. This led to a bunch of very indulgent cakes jokingly named “Better Than Sex” or “BTS” cakes. Some were named more specifically for hunky actors like Robert Redford and Tom Selleck, who played a charming, mustachioed private investigator on the show “Magnum, P.I.,” set in Oahu. I picked this cake to adapt because it combined both our long tradition of pineapple cakes and the 1970s cake mix craze. And it involves maraschino cherries, which I get nostalgic about because I grew up eating them in canned fruit cocktail, also a longtime Alaska staple.

This recipe is written for a regular coconut cake mix, but I like the Dolly Parton mix the best — it calls for more eggs and butter instead of oil. Use it if you can find it! It’s usually at Walmart. I toned down this recipe a bit, removing a layer of instant vanilla pudding that some versions call for. I also used condensed coconut milk instead of condensed milk, which has a deeper flavor, and I reduced the sugar. I thought about Tom Selleck’s mustache the whole time.

Better Than Tom Selleck Cake

Ingredients:

1 package coconut cake mix

3 eggs

1/2 cup oil

1 cup water

1 14-ounce can condensed coconut milk, divided

1 20-ounce can crushed pineapple

2 cups heavy whipping cream

1 cup shredded coconut

Maraschino cherries for serving, optional

Instructions: Preheat the oven to 350. Grease a 13-by-9-inch pan with cooking spray. Prepare cake mix, blending it with eggs, oil and water. Pour into the pan and bake according to package directions. Meanwhile, drain crushed pineapple well, reserving its juice. Whisk together the pineapple juice and half the condensed coconut milk. When the cake is done, but still hot, poke it all over with a fork and pour the pineapple/condensed milk mixture over it, allowing it to absorb. While the cake is cooling to room temperature, whip the cream and other half of the condensed coconut milk until spreadable. Fold in the pineapple solids. Spread the cooled cake with the whipped cream-pineapple topping. Sprinkle with the shredded coconut. Refrigerate for an hour before serving. If desired, decorate each piece with a cherry.

(This recipe was adapted from “Let them Eat: Cold War Anxieties, Cake Mix, and Alaska Women’s Inner Lives,” a recipe zine produced by the Anchorage Museum.)

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Here’s how the story begins:

In October, as planeloads of evacuees from Alaska villages leveled by Typhoon Halong touched down in Anchorage, Tim Ackerman set about organizing a tribal hunting party.

They gathered their rifles and left out of the town of Haines on Alaska’s southeast panhandle, driving north along the rocky shore, scouting for sleek, dark heads breaking the smooth surface of the water.

The evacuees, the hunters knew, would soon be craving seal.

The storm hit a Yupik region 700 miles west on the Bering Sea coast, and even though Mr. Ackerman is Tlingit, he knew that Alaska Natives most everywhere took comfort in the taste of golden seal oil, rich in omega-3s and considered a medicinal soul food. It didn’t take long for him to shoot a 150-pound harbor seal, he said. The group paddled out by canoe, hooked it and hauled it in.

“Came into town, cleaned it up, wrapped it in two layers of Visqueen and tied it all shut, put some handles on it and took it out to the airport, weighed it in, and it was ready to ship,” Mr. Ackerman said.

The seal traveled by small plane to Juneau and then on an Alaska Airlines jet to Anchorage, where it was butchered and portioned for individual meals. The meals rode to a giant freezer at the Alaska Native Heritage Center, an organization at the center of an unprecedented wild food distribution effort to help more than 600 evacuees, mostly sheltered in Anchorage hotels, maintain their traditional diets as they await word on when, if ever, they can return home.

“Holed up in a hotel room and not able to go out and practice your subsistence, you’re basically separated from what you knew,” Mr. Ackerman said.

Read the rest here.

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Listen here.

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