Mi Comida Latina
By Marcella Kriebel
Plenty of people keep travel journals, but how many of them turn out like this? Marcella Kriebel traveled through Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Puerto Rico, taking notes and making sketches of the food she encountered along the way. Upon returning to the States, she decided to collect these notes into a stunning, fully-illustrated cookbook, which proved so popular she managed to fund printing copies of itvia Kickstarter. Twice.
Now Kriebel is back witha professionally-published edition ofMi Comida Latina, printed by the brand new Running Press imprintBurgess Lea. Burgess Lea is a non-profit cookbook publisher, andaccording to their website"donates 100% of our after-tax profits on every book." The author works with the publisher to choose where to donate the money; Kriebel's pick,Adelante Mujeres, works with Latina women and girls in Washington County, Oregon with programs focusing on empowerment and education.
The cookbook itself reminds me of the hand-lettered and drawn vegetarian cookbooks from the 70s, in a good, homey, familiar way. The instructions are, perhaps, not as exacting as they could be, but that's okay in this instance.Mi Cocinais home cooking, meant to be riffed on, and the recipes here are more outline than they are precise technical instruction. One dish I made, a Colombian coconut-rice and shrimp one-pot meal, stood up well to a couple improvisations (I added chiles for spice, and reduced the quantity of shrimp slightly).
The Takeaways:A beautiful cookbook full of tasty, home cook-friendly dishes that benefits a worthy cause. What more could you ask for?
New Prairie Kitchen
By Summer Miller
The Midwest is a big place. Big enough that the foods that make me nostalgic for a childhood in Wisconsin (kringle, cheese curds) have little overlap with the foods Epicurious editor David Tamarkin grew up with in Ohio (five-way chili, goetta). That's why I was so pumped to seea book likeNew Prairie Kitchen,which narrows its focus to the little-served regional cuisines of Nebraska, Iowa, and South Dakota.
Profiling chefs, farmers, and artisans, Summer Miller presents a culinary portrait of this Plains region that is both modern and deeply-rooted. Paul Kulik, chef at Omaha restaurant The Boiler Room, explains to Miller: "The Midwest at large, the Plains more specifically, have been utterly excluded from the conversation about food. We've done a big part in excluding ourselves by refusing to update, by refusing to be part of the national dialogue."
Not any more. Some of the updated Midwestern cuisine you'll find in these pages: Sweet-Corn Custard with Ground Cherries, Rabbit Stew with Mushrooms, Kale, and Juniper Berries, and a tasty Blue Cheese Broccoli Soup that the headnote claims can be made with "whatever vegetable is plentiful at the time." (Did you know Iowa is known for its blue cheese? Now you do.)
The Takeaways:A passionate (if at times slightly overwritten) plea for the Plains states' inclusion in the American culinary lexicon, with great recipes to boot.
The Beetlebung Farm Cookbook
By Chris Fischer with Catherine Young
Chef Chris Fischer's family has lived on Martha's Vineyard since 1670. That'stwelvegenerations. His grandfather, Poppy, worked Beetlebung Farm for 50 summers and died there at the age of 96. Fischer himself is a chef: he trained at Babbo (NYC) and St John (London) before moving back to the island, landing a gig as restaurateur Keith McNally's personal chef, and eventually becoming executive chef at Beach Plum Inn. (Hehas since moved on.)
In other words, if there was ever anybody who could talk about the foodways of this unique American outpost, Fischer is the guy.
The recipes in Fischer'snew cookbook,The Beetlebung Farm Cookbook, are modern, restaurant-y Americana with a Massachusetts accent. Think: Blueberry pancakes, maple syrup ice cream, lobster pan roasts, local seafood every-which-way. There are also Thanksgiving and Christmas menus. The book is divided into dinner party menus, which are then arranged by season. Don't be intimidated by the entertaining menu format, though: plenty of these dishes could be separated out for a weeknight meal. For example, a dish of cauliflower, chickpeas, and green olives would make a great simple dinner served over rice or pasta, or even with toast.
The Takeaways:If you've got nostalgic memories of Martha's Vineyard (or the East Coast in general), have sampled and loved Fischer's food, or are simply curious about this remote pocket of Massachusetts,Beetlebung Farmis full of great stories and dinner party menus for every skill level.
The Big Jones Cookbook
By Paul Fehribach
Big Jones isa Southern restaurantthat is not in the South. It's in Chicago. And chef Paul Fehribach is not Southern, but rather from Indiana. Unlike the other three books here, which are so deeply rooted in their geographic locations and regional cuisines,The Big Jones Cookbookmay, at first glance, seem uprooted from its inspirations.
And yet as Fehribach explains his food in a book that, while it does contain many recipes, is certainly meant to be read cover-to-cover, Southern food in Chicago begins to make sense. After all, the foods of his childhood and those of nearby Kentucky were not that different: "Fried chicken and abundant vegetable dishes at virtually every celebration, an obsession with cakes and pies bordering on the insane, cured and smoked pork products permeating seemingly every aspect of cooking, pantries full of pickles and relishes, and a healthy appetite for wild-caught fish and hunted game from deer to rabbit to squirrel and even possum." Perhaps the borders between American regional cuisines are more fluid than they appear at first glance.
And as you continue reading, it becomes clear that while biscuits and gumbo and fried green tomatoes are certainly important staple dishes, the most sacred quality of Southern cooking—oranycooking—is a deep respect for your surroundings. Suddenly Fehribach's black walnut sorghum pie and chicken fried morels seem less like a mashup and more like an old fashioned stab at making the most of what you have. And what could be more true to the spirit of Southern cooking than that?
The Takeaways:This love letter from a Midwestern chef to Southern cuisine might change how you think about American food as a whole. (And as a bonus, maybe you'll learn how to make a killer gumbo.)
