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Cooking Up Local Cuisine and Preserving the Past: Dishing Up NJ and Endangered Eating

25 Oct

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

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Tales of Recipes Old and New: National Dish and Tasting History

21 Jun

National Dish
by Anya Von Bremzen
National Dish is Anya Von Bremzen’s ambitious project to write about the origins of national dishes in nations including such diverse destinations as France, Italy, Mexico, Japan, Spain and Turkey. Von Bremzen is the winner of three James Beard Awards and her descriptions of the dishes are vivid and transporting, but this isn’t a book just for food history fans, those with an interest in travel writing will enjoy hearing about Von Bremzen’s journeys. She navigates the complexity of the chosen countries which are becoming progressively more diverse with new immigrants and increasing globalization of trends. She looks at not only how the recipes came to be, but also the cultural factors that shaped the feelings about the dishes. I thought it was interesting that with both pizza and ramen, their popularity elsewhere elevated them in their own homelands. An immigrant, herself, she also thinks about her own sense of home and the significance of dishes in her own life such as her Francophile mother’s attempts to create her own version of pot-au-feu. I found the personal aspects of the book enjoyable, but they do sometimes noticeably color her attitude towards places. It can always be a tricky balance when viewing other places, not to let one’s own biases create blind spots so I did appreciate that she does acknowledge at times the perspective she is coming from. Her last poignant dish is a Ukrainian Borsch prepared in Queens, which now has even more significance. National Dish was intriguing for me, in that it not only taught me about the interesting history of some of my favorite dishes, but also gave me a greater appreciation in living in such a multicultural area of how people around the world have shaped not only what we eat, but our understanding of who we are. I received an advanced copy of National Dish from Netgalley and the Publisher. Von Bremzen has several cookbooks including one about Cuban food, Paladares.

Tasting History
by Max Miller and Ann Volkwein
My family always enjoys watching Max Miller’s Tasting History Youtube videos, which he started during the Pandemic as a fun diversion and became a huge hit. Miller finds and researches recipes from all over the world and all throughout history. Each episode looks not only at the recipe itself, but the history and legends associated with it at that time and how it has changed through the years. I was excited to have some of the recipes he has talked about in past episodes in an easily accessible book format since as much as I enjoy cooking shows, it is much easier to create things from printed recipes. Tasting History: Explore the Past through 4,000 years of Recipes is broken up into sections including the Ancient World, British Isles, Continental Europe, Near & Far East, and the New World and then organized by date of the recipes. A glossary at the end is helpful for finding both recipe and historic information. My family tried three of the delicious Roman dishes, as well as the Rouen Duck with Shallots, Douce Ame (chicken in Milk and Honey) and Transylvanian beef with Harvester sauce and parsnips. The Harvester sauce was an egg, garlic, and vinegar sauce that was very delicious; the vinegar cut through the richness of the eggs with a great garlicky flavor and the Douce Ame was also good with a subtle sweetness and a unique flavor from the hyssop. The duck sauce was mild with the orange bringing a bit of brightness but not overpowering the duck itself. The book has several other dishes that I’m excited to try such as a Onion Soup with milk, an early form of French Onion Soup. Others like Parmesan ice cream and hardtack, I’m less likely to make, but still enjoyed hearing about the history of the recipe and the events occurring leading up to its creation. The original historic recipes are featured along with modernized versions with alternatives to hard to find ingredients. This work will be of interest both to adventurous foodies, looking to try something unusual, as well as history buffs. For those looking for more historic dishes you can check out my previous blog post for some suggestions.

Written by:
Aimee Harris
Information and Digital Services Manager

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