The Time Life American Regional Cookbook

Home cooks and gourmets, chefs and restaurateurs, epicures, and simple food lovers of all stripes will delight in this smorgasbord of the history and culture of food and drink. Professor of Culinary History Andrew Smith and nearly 200 authors bring together in 770 entries the scholarship on wide-ranging topics from airline and funeral food to fad diets and fast food; drinks like lemonade, Kool-Aid, and Tang; foodstuffs like Jell-O, Twinkies, and Spam; and Dagwood, hoagie, and Sloppy Joe sandwiches.

Old Southern Cookery: Recipes from America’s First Regional Cookbook Adapted for Today’s Kitchen gives new life to a beloved book that has spanned two centuries. Using the historic recipes from Mary Randolph’s 1824 bestselling cookbook, The Virginia House-Wife or Methodical Cook (considered by many culinary historians to be the first real American cookbook––and all describe it as the first regional cookbook), the authors have chosen the best of the original recipes to show how home cooks can prepare the food using contemporary methods. In translating these historic cooking methods to today’s kitchen techniques, headnotes contain pertinent historic facts about such things as butchery, firewood cooking, spices used, European origins of certain recipes, dishes brought by slaves to the New World, and even how our cooking utensils have evolved through two centuries.

From the Emmy award-winning chef and bestselling author, a collection of wonderful, uncomplicated recipes from little-known parts of Italy, celebrating time-honored techniques and elemental, good family cooking. Penetrating the heart of Italy—starting at the north, working down to the tip, and ending in Sardinia—Lidia unearths a wealth of recipes: • From Trentino–Alto Adige: Delicious Dumplings with Speck (cured pork); apples accenting soup, pasta, salsa, and salad; local beer used to roast a chicken and to braise beef • From Lombardy: A world of rice—baked in a frittata, with lentils, with butternut squash, with gorgonzola, and the special treat of Risotto Milan-Style with Marrow and Saffron • From Valle d’Aosta: Polenta with Black Beans and Kale, and local fontina featured in fondue, in a roasted pepper salad, and embedded in veal chops • From Liguria: An array of Stuffed Vegetables, a bread salad, and elegant Veal Stuffed with a Mosaic of Vegetables • From Emilia-Romagna: An olive oil dough for making the traditional, versatile vegetable tart erbazzone, as well as the secrets of making tagliatelle and other pasta doughs, and an irresistible Veal Scaloppine Bolognese • From Le Marche: Farro with Roasted Pepper Sauce, Lamb Chunks with Olives, and Stuffed Quail in Parchment • From Umbria: A taste of the sweet Norcino black truffle, and seductive dishes such as Potato-Mushroom Cake with Braised Lentils, Sausages in the Skillet with Grapes, and Chocolate Bread Parfait • From Abruzzo: Fresh scrippelle (crêpe) ribbons baked with spinach or garnishing a soup, fresh pasta made with a “guitar,” Rabbit with Onions, and Lamb Chops with Olives • From Molise: Fried Ricotta; homemade cavatelli pasta in a variety of ways; Spaghetti with Calamari, Shrimp, and Scallops; and Braised Octopus • From Basilicata: Wedding Soup, Fiery Maccheroni, and Farro with Pork Ragù • From Calabria: Shepherd’s Rigatoni, steamed swordfish, and Almond Biscottini • From Sardinia: Flatbread Lasagna, two lovely eggplant dishes, and Roast Lobster with Bread Crumb Topping This is just a sampling of the many delights Lidia has uncovered. The 175 recipes she shares with us in this rich feast of a book represent the work of the local people and friends with whom she made intimate contact—the farmers, shepherds, foragers, and artisans who produce local cheeses, meats, olive oils, and wines. And in addition, her daughter, Tanya, takes us on side trips in each of the twelve regions to share her love of the country and its art.

Photographer and author Roger Phillips has compiled a wide-ranging, delectable guide to finding and cooking wild foods. Unlike other books that focus on foraging, Phillips gives detailed recipes and preparation instructions that are critical to cooking and enjoying wild foods. Phillips provides an appetizing and attractive selection of recipes using the many plants, mushrooms, and seaweeds that are edible. Photos help bring these possibilities to life. Recipes range from syrups and teas to main courses. As we are beginning to rediscover the deep nutritional value of wild foods, the missing ingredient until now has been a reliable guide to deploying these healthy, natural ingredients in the kitchen. The Wild Food Cookbook will admirably fill that niche.

Tracing the intertwined roles of food, ethnicity, and regionalism in the construction of American identity, this textbook examines the central role food plays in our lives. Drawing on a range of disciplines_including sociology, anthropology, folklore, geography, history, and nutrition_the editors have selected a group of engaging essays to help students explore the idea of food as a window into American culture. The editors' general introductory essay offers an overview of current scholarship, and part introductions contextualize the readings within each section. This lively reader will be a valuable supplement for courses on American culture across the social sciences.

"My New Orleans: The Cookbook is a rich stew of Besh's charming, personal stories of his childhood, his family, and friends, and the unique food history of the city and its cooking ..."--Publisher's blurb.

This eighteenth century kitchen reference is the first cookbook published in the U.S. with recipes using local ingredients for American cooks. Named by the Library of Congress as one of the eighty-eight “Books That Shaped America,” American Cookery was the first cookbook by an American author published in the United States. Until its publication, cookbooks used by American colonists were British. As author Amelia Simmons states, the recipes here were “adapted to this country,” reflecting the fact that American cooks had learned to prepare meals using ingredients found in North America. This cookbook reveals the rich variety of food colonial Americans used, their tastes, cooking and eating habits, and even their rich, down-to-earth language. Bringing together English cooking methods with truly American products, American Cookery contains the first known printed recipes substituting American maize for English oats; the recipe for Johnny Cake is the first printed version using cornmeal; and there is also the first known recipe for turkey. Another innovation was Simmons’s use of pearlash—a staple in colonial households as a leavening agent in dough, which eventually led to the development of modern baking powders. A culinary classic, American Cookery is a landmark in the history of American cooking. “Thus, twenty years after the political upheaval of the American Revolution of 1776, a second revolution—a culinary revolution—occurred with the publication of a cookbook by an American for Americans.” —Jan Longone, curator of American Culinary History, University of Michigan This facsimile edition of Amelia Simmons's American Cookery was reproduced by permission from the volume in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts, founded in 1812.