Ethnic American Cooking

Ethnic American Cooking: Recipes for Living in a New World is much more than a cookbook. It contains recipes from almost every nationality or ethnicity residing in the US and includes a brief introduction to understanding how those recipes represent that group's food culture. It illustrates the ways in which recipes, like identities, are fluid, adapting to new ingredients, tastes, and circumstances and are adjusted to continue to carry meaning--or perhaps acquire new ones. The book is based on the two-volume Ethnic American Food Today: A Cultural Encyclopedia, which looked at the way ethnic groups in the US eat. Here, the recipes of the varied groups are brought together for the adventurous chef, the curious reader, and the casual cook alike. The recipes have been tested for use in modern American home kitchens with ingredients that can be found in most supermarkets. Substitutions and options are also suggested where needed. The dishes range from gourmet to everyday and offer a taste of the myriad ethnic culinary cultures in the US.

Ethnic American Food Today is the first encyclopedia to illuminate the variety and complexity of ethnic food cultures in this country and to address their place within the larger American culture.

Ghulam Bombaywala sells bagels in Houston. Demetrios dishes up pizza in Connecticut. The Wangs serve tacos in Los Angeles. How ethnicity has influenced American eating habits—and thus, the make-up and direction of the American cultural mainstream—is the story told in We Are What We Eat. It is a complex tale of ethnic mingling and borrowing, of entrepreneurship and connoisseurship, of food as a social and political symbol and weapon—and a thoroughly entertaining history of our culinary tradition of multiculturalism. The story of successive generations of Americans experimenting with their new neighbors’ foods highlights the marketplace as an important arena for defining and expressing ethnic identities and relationships. We Are What We Eat follows the fortunes of dozens of enterprising immigrant cooks and grocers, street hawkers and restaurateurs who have cultivated and changed the tastes of native-born Americans from the seventeenth century to the present. It also tells of the mass corporate production of foods like spaghetti, bagels, corn chips, and salsa, obliterating their ethnic identities. The book draws a surprisingly peaceful picture of American ethnic relations, in which “Americanized” foods like Spaghetti-Os happily coexist with painstakingly pure ethnic dishes and creative hybrids. Donna Gabaccia invites us to consider: If we are what we eat, who are we? Americans’ multi-ethnic eating is a constant reminder of how widespread, and mutually enjoyable, ethnic interaction has sometimes been in the United States. Amid our wrangling over immigration and tribal differences, it reveals that on a basic level, in the way we sustain life and seek pleasure, we are all multicultural.

2018 James Beard Foundation Book of the Year | 2018 James Beard Foundation Book Award Winner inWriting | Nominee for the 2018 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Nonfiction | #75 on The Root100 2018 A renowned culinary historian offers a fresh perspective on our most divisive cultural issue, race, in this illuminating memoir of Southern cuisine and food culture that traces his ancestry—both black and white—through food, from Africa to America and slavery to freedom. Southern food is integral to the American culinary tradition, yet the question of who "owns" it is one of the most provocative touch points in our ongoing struggles over race. In this unique memoir, culinary historian Michael W. Twitty takes readers to the white-hot center of this fight, tracing the roots of his own family and the charged politics surrounding the origins of soul food, barbecue, and all Southern cuisine. From the tobacco and rice farms of colonial times to plantation kitchens and backbreaking cotton fields, Twitty tells his family story through the foods that enabled his ancestors’ survival across three centuries. He sifts through stories, recipes, genetic tests, and historical documents, and travels from Civil War battlefields in Virginia to synagogues in Alabama to Black-owned organic farms in Georgia. As he takes us through his ancestral culinary history, Twitty suggests that healing may come from embracing the discomfort of the Southern past. Along the way, he reveals a truth that is more than skin deep—the power that food has to bring the kin of the enslaved and their former slaveholders to the table, where they can discover the real America together. Illustrations by Stephen Crotts

Ethnic American Cooking: Recipes for Living in a New World is much more than a cookbook. It contains recipes from almost every nationality or ethnicity residing in the US and includes a brief introduction to understanding how those recipes represent that group’s food culture. It illustrates the ways in which recipes, like identities, are fluid, adapting to new ingredients, tastes, and circumstances and are adjusted to continue to carry meaning—or perhaps acquire new ones. The book is based on the two-volume Ethnic American Food Today: A Cultural Encyclopedia, which looked at the way ethnic groups in the US eat. Here, the recipes of the varied groups are brought together for the adventurous chef, the curious reader, and the casual cook alike. The recipes have been tested for use in modern American home kitchens with ingredients that can be found in most supermarkets. Substitutions and options are also suggested where needed. The dishes range from gourmet to everyday and offer a taste of the myriad ethnic culinary cultures in the US.

Academic discussions of ethnic food have tended to focus on the attitudes of consumers, rather than the creators and producers. In this ground-breaking new book, Krishnendu Ray reverses this trend by exploring the culinary world from the perspective of the ethnic restaurateur. Focusing on New York City, he examines the lived experience, work, memories, and aspirations of immigrants working in the food industry. He shows how migrants become established in new places, creating a taste of home and playing a key role in influencing food cultures as a result of transactions between producers, consumers and commentators. Based on extensive interviews with immigrant restaurateurs and students, chefs and alumni at the Culinary Institute of America, ethnographic observation at immigrant eateries and haute institutional kitchens as well as historical sources such as the US census, newspaper coverage of restaurants, reviews, menus, recipes, and guidebooks, Ray reveals changing tastes in a major American city between the late 19th and through the 20th century. Written by one of the most outstanding scholars in the field, The Ethnic Restaurateur is an essential read for students and academics in food studies, culinary arts, sociology, urban studies and indeed anyone interested in popular culture and cooking in the United States.

The first cookbook to present the dishes of more than 120 ethnic groups now in America, The American Ethinic Cookbook for Students illustrates how those dishes have changed throughout the years. This cookbook contains more than 300 recies plus references to ethnography, food history, culture, and the history of American immigration. A bibliography at the end of each ethnic group section is included. Covering the cooking of Native American tribes, old-stock settlers, old immigrants from 1840-1920, and the new immigrants, no other cookbook describes so many different ethnic groups or focuses on the American ethnic experience. Arranged alphabetically by ethnic group, each chapter consists of a brief introduction to the ethnic group, its food history and ethnogaphy, followed by recipes, with step-by-step instructions, techniques hints, and equipment information. Among the 120 ethnic groups included are: Amish-Mennonites, Arcadians, Cugans, Dutch, Cajuns, Eskimos, Hopi, Hungarians, Jamaicans, Jews, Palestinians, Serbs, Sioux, Turks, and Vietnamese.

The much-anticipated debut from the author behind the popular food blog Seven Spoons, featuring distinctive, crowd-pleasing recipes; engaging, writerly essays; and the same stunning photography that has earned her website a devoted following. Tara O'Brady was one of the earliest food bloggers to enter the scene, and now, more than ten years after she first started Seven Spoons, she has become one of the most highly regarded and unique voices in the culinary arena. In her debut cookbook, Seven Spoons, O'Brady shares stories and recipes from her Canadian home--fresh, ingredient-driven food that is easy to make yet refined. Recipes like Roasted Carrots with Dukkah and Harissa Mayonnaise, Braised Beef Short Ribs with Gremolata, and Plum Macaroon Cake are wholesome, hearty, and showcase the myriad culinary influences at work in O'Brady's kitchen. Her evocative writing and gorgeously simple, elegant photography has earned her accolades from Saveur magazine, the Daily Mail, and more. Impeccable food photography and a lavish package round out this beautiful, personal collection.