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Favorite Cookbooks -
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I Hear America Cooking: The Cooks and Recipes of American Regional Cuisine by Betty Fussell (Penguin Books, 1997)
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This wonderfully written book, one to read in an armchair as well as to cook from, begins in the Desert Southwest and makes a gigantic counter-clockwise sweep around the United States, examining the state of cooking in every region and searching for our culinary roots. Anyone who has moved from one section of the country to another knows that foodways bind us and sometimes separate us. We carry our tribal dishes and eating customs with us, hoping we won’t have to let go of the food of our childhood, hoping to find others who will love it as much as we do, hoping we will like the food and customs of our new home.
The author visited hundreds of restaurants and private kitchens while researching this book. She ate tamales in Santa Fe, sampled barbecued pork in about ten different places in the Carolinas, bought White Lily flour for angel biscuits in Knoxville, investigated chowder and beans and Concord grape pie in New England, and just kept going through the Great Lakes states and out to the Pacific Northwest and its salmon prepared every-which-way. Historical photos of a proper Charleston dining room in the 1890s, fresh fish at Seattle’s Pike Place Market in about 1900, a German picnic in Milwaukee in 1892 (featuring fresh fruit, cold meat, and plenty of beer), and other subjects link us to the past and feed our preoccupation with food.
The recipes — authentic yet modernized — are fun and inspiring. If you are traveling around the United States this summer, trying hard to avoid the fast-food chains in favor of local specialties, a copy of this book might be your best guidebook.
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Sample Recipes:
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Peanut and Oyster Soup
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Here’s a Creole soup adapted from an old Louisiana cookbook, quick and easy to make. With a crusty loaf of bread, you have a meal.
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1/2 cup peanut butter
4 cups chicken broth
1-1/2 pints oysters, shucked, 1 cup oyster liquid reserved and strained
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon each black and cayenne pepper
Put peanut butter with 2 cups chicken broth in a blender and liquefy until fairly smooth. Pour into a saucepan and add remaining broth and oyster liquid. Add seasonings and heat soup gently, stirring, until liquid is hot. Add oysters and let simmer just until the edges of the oysters begin to curl, 2 to 4 minutes. Serves 4 to 6.
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Fresh Corn and Pecan Spoon Bread
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Spoon bread is to the South what johnnycake is to the North — a matter of endless controversy. The author describes this dish as "hopelessly good."
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1 cup stone-ground white cornmeal
1 cup boiling water
1 cup buttermilk
3 eggs, separated
3 tablespoons butter, softened
1 ear fresh corn, kernels scraped off or grated
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup pecans, ground fine
In a large bowl, soften cornmeal in boiling water. Mix buttermilk with the egg yolks and add to the cornmeal. Beat in the butter and the grated corn with its corn milk.
Beat egg whites until stiff but not dry. Mix together the salt, baking powder, and soda, and add to the corn mixture. Then mix in the nuts, and finally fold in the egg whites.
Scoop batter into a well-buttered 1-1/2- or 2-quart baking dish and bake at 375°F until the top is browned and a cake tester comes out clean, 50 to 60 minutes. Serves 8.
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Indian Cress Salad
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The earliest New England settlers were delighted to find wild cress, the same as the cress in England, and also Indian cress, or nasturtiums. They combined the two in this salad.
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2 bunches fresh watercress
6 hard-cooked eggs
2 green onions, with tops
a handful of young nasturtium leaves
Dressing:
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1/2 teaspoon each salt and anchovy paste
1/4 teaspoon nasturtium seeds or ground black pepper
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1/2 cup olive oil
Garnish: 4 nasturtium or marigold blossoms
Rinse watercress, spin dry, and remove thick stems. Slice or chop 4 of the eggs. Chop the onions fine and mix eggs and onions with the cress and nasturtium leaves.
Prepare dressing by blending remaining 2 yolks (discard the whites) with all remaining ingredients except blossoms until the mixture is smooth. Pour dressing over the greens, mix well, and top with the flower blossoms. Serves 4.
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California Omelet
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Country-style omelets — whether related to Chinese egg-fu-yung or Central European egg pancakes — simply use eggs to bind other ingredients. This one makes the most of California’s bounty.
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6 eggs, beaten
salt and pepper to taste
2 tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and diced
1 ripe avocado, peeled and diced
1/2 cup fresh crab meat
4 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup sour cream
Beat eggs with the salt and pepper and set aside. Mix diced tomatoes, avocado, and crab. Heat 2 tablespoons butter in a small sauté pan, add the tomato mixture, and warm through; then, off heat, fold in the sour cream.
Heat remaining butter in an omelet pan until bubbling, add the eggs, and stir them with the back of a fork in a circular motion while shaking the pan back and forth to keep the eggs from sticking. When the eggs are nearly set, spoon half the filling in a line across the middle and fold the omelet in thirds over it. Pour remaining filling onto a serving platter and roll the omelet, seam side down, on top of it. Serves 3 or 4.
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