Dishing Up New Jersey: 100 Recipes from the Garden State
by John Holl
If you are new to the Garden State, Dishing Up New Jersey is a great resource to familiarize yourself with all that New Jersey has to offer. Long time residents such as myself may also find a few new recipes to try as well as enjoy hearing the stories behind their favorite dishes. It wouldn’t be an authentic New Jersey cookbook if it didn’t mention the buttered roll, a simple NJ breakfast classic, though for those looking to use a little more culinary skills there is also the Taylor Egg and Ham Sandwich or the award winning Pork Roll Surprise to get things started in the morning. Many recipes come from local NJ businesses including my favorite food truck, The Cinnamon Snail, and Anthony and David’s one of the best restaurants in Hoboken that my husband and I used to dine at frequently when we first married and lived a block away. I’m looking forward to trying to make the Bacon-Cheddar Boxty, a delicious Irish Spin on the potato pancake from The Shannon Rose in Clifton. A nice addition in the book, is a listing of harvest dates for New Jersey’s produce including everything from blueberries to our famous Garden State Tomatoes. Coming up in the fall there are apples, grapes and of course for Halloween, pumpkins. Dishing Up New Jersey also has additional resources at the end including festivals like Hoboken’s St Ann Italian Festival and links to local Restaurant Weeks including the one here in Hudson County. If you love learning more about State Cuisines check out a previous post I wrote about the TV series State Plate.
Endangered Eating: America’s Vanishing Foods
by Sarah Lohman
Endangered Eating is the latest by culinary historian, Sarah Lohman. Lohman’s previous book Eight Flavors is available to check out in print from BCCLS Libraries and as a digital audiobook from Hoopla. The foods she writes about in Endangered Eating are produced or prepared in unique ways that as the title suggests may not be around that much longer. Lohman picked the food she covered from the Ark of Taste a project that encourages biodiversity and tries to prevent losing unique foods due to industrialization, genetic erosion, climate change, and migration. It was fascinating to learn about foods such as variety of dates unique to California and sugarcane in Hawaii. I had visited a date farm and sampled fresh sugar cane juice in Australia, but had never before considered how those foods might have uniquely American counterparts. Lohman also examines a special Native American fishing practice, reef net fishing that was developed by the Straits Salish people, and the unusual Navajo-Churro sheep breed by the Dibé people, as well as Anishinaabe wild rice, and Choctaw Filé Powder, which is a classic ingredient in gumbos. I was most interested to learn more about the Heirloom Cider Apples that were once ubiquitous in this area of North Jersey and New York before Prohibition. Recipes are included for each of the ingredients she writes about and I’m curious to try the dishes such as a date shake, The Bright and Sunny Cocktail, gumbo, and the Charleston Groundnut Cake, based on a treat from circa 1855 for use with Carolina Africa Runner Peanuts, one of America’s oldest cultivated peanuts. I received an an advance copy of Endangered Eating from Netgalley and the publisher in order to provide you with an honest review. I’m planning to include one of the cider cocktail recipes for my Thanksgiving meal with my family and friends; what better way to celebrate our country’s bounty than with some uniquely American dishes.
Written by:
Aimée Harris
Information and Digital Services Manager
Hoboken Library Staff Picks 