Rosengarten - Its all American food: the best recipes for more than 400 new American classics

Copyright 2003 by David Rosengarten

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Little, Brown and Company

Hachette Book Group

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Originally published in hardcover by Little, Brown and Company, October 2003

First eBook Edition: May 2005

ISBN: 978-0-316-06891-8

The Little, Brown and Company name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

Delicious acclaim for David Rosengartens

Winner of the Cooking of the Americas 2004 James Beard Award One of Food & Wines five best savory cookbooks for 2003

I dont crave tiny portions of dandified food. What I like are great dishes that you actually covet: the ideal crab cake, a bubbling chicken pot pie. But they have to be perfectly made. And thats what David Rosengarten has done in this gorgeous book. Its the best of your adult palate with a sneaking wink at your inner nine-year-old.

Victoria Skurnick, Book-of-the-Month Club News

When Rosengarten says its all American food, he means it. His big-tent definition includes paella, sauerbraten, quesadillas, and falafel, not to mention Philly cheesesteak, Southern fried chicken, and, yes, mashed potatoes and pot roast.

Boston Herald

From Beef Stroganoff, gumbo, and Texas barbecued brisket to Hot Soba Noodles and Lobster Fra Divolo, this book has it all. Rosengarten rescues and reimagines all that we love about food in America, bringing the experience of real home cooking both familiar and adventurous back home.

Troy Daily News

Rosengarten wants his book to function as a sort of national recipe box, stuffed with every possible recipe hes collected from 1900s Brunswick Stew to 1950s egg foo yung to twenty-first-century Seared Shrimp Ceviche with Avocado Sauce.... His recipe directions are golden. Theyre detailed and descriptive, so that the cook knows exactly what to do and what to expect.... Even better, his recipes work.

Candy Sagon, Washington Post

A gut-rumbling, mouth-watering, heartfelt tribute.... Rosengarten may have begun his career in gourmet fashion on the Food Network, but here he revels in the recidivist pleasures of American food: everything from All-Purpose Bright Red Tomato Sauce to Chinese-Restaurant Spareribs and Philly Cheese-steak. This titanic homage to our nations wildly varied culinary roots values comfort over refinement, but fortunately comforts are in plentiful supply.

Publishers Weekly

Also by David Rosengarten

David Rosengarten Entertains

Taste

The Dean & DeLuca Cookbook

Red Wine with Fish

To Connie

Who gave me all the best things in life

S ome years ago, I had the pleasure of speaking with Alain Ducasse, arguably the best-known, most highly respected chef in France today, during one of his first visits to America. He wanted my dining recommendations for New York City. Rather than give him the address of a fancy restaurant, I decided to pick him up, drive him out to Queens, and sit him down at a dive called Pearsons Texas Barbecue before a plate of Southern barbecued ribs.

He wasnt mildly impressed; he wasnt merely being polite. He sat there beaming, licking the barbecue sauce off his fingers, muttering, Je ladore, je ladore!

This is a book about what we eat in America and everything that we remember eating. It revisits and reinvents all those foods from our grandmothers kitchens that we once found mildly embarrassing. For some time now, happily, we have been returning home, discovering not only the potency of American regional and home cooking of the past but also the unexpected foods that have arrived on our shores over the past hundred years and will be shaping the way we think about American cooking for some time to come.

I set out to write this book with the intention of discovering America all over again. To do so, I had to look at the American table in some unaccustomed ways. For the real subject of this book is not the usual cookbook fare, nor is it the idealized fantasy food of a photostylists imagination. Rather, it is the vital, almost invisible American food that is eaten every day from the bayous to Boston, from east Texas to the shore of Lake Michigan, from Biscayne Bay to San Francisco Bay. This book not only includes the panoply of traditional regional cooking, and Mamas comfort classics, but also embraces the mongrel cooking of our endlessly hyphenated romance with ethnic food. From Italian-American to Cuban-Chinese and not usually in fancy restaurants! what we eat has been enlivened by the influence of the corner deli, the corner takeout, and those who, newly arrived in America, struggled to make sense of our ingredients.

Most important, this book focuses on what Americans really like to eat which isnt often celebrated. Not too long ago, I was a judge at a chef s competition in Reykjavk, Iceland. At the start of the competition the judges followed the chefs through a large, very bright, American-style supermarket in the ingredient-gathering phase of the event. As we left the store, I noticed that another judge, Pierre Herm, had bought some groceries. Herm is justifiably considered the pastry and chocolate god of Paris.

You bought something, I said, somewhat curious.

Oui, he said.

What is it? I inquired.

Ell-manns, he said simply.

Hellmanns mayonnaise? I repeated, somewhat startled at the thought.

It is the best, said his wife.

As good as the mayonnaise you make at home? I asked.

Much, much, bett-AIR! We cannot find it in France, so we buy a lot wherever we can.

If this was a surprise to me, imagine what a shock it would be to many American foodies! I am certain that were they to host the Herms at their home, out would come the mixing bowl, the whisk, the egg yolks, the Provenal olive oil, and a half hour of vigorous beating and emulsifying would ensue. Pierre is a gentleman. You would never know how disappointed he was.

Why must we feel guilty about using crowd-pleasing convenience products? We use them in cooking for ourselves, but when company is expected, out comes the Cuisinart. Does it really make sense to jump through contorted gastronomic hoops to impart a small bit of fresh garlic flavor to a sauce when you can simply sprinkle on a little garlic powder? Let your taste buds find the difference. Imagine how your mother, and your grandmother, must have welcomed these products, how liberated and modern they felt, and if they were immigrants, how American they must have thought themselves to be! Why put yourself back into kitchen drudgery? Used properly, these ingredients are among the elements that made this countrys cooking great.

Here are just a few cheating ingredients that most foodies secretly love, that have the ability to make foods taste wonderful... and that should by all rights come out of the cupboard.

Hellmanns, or Best Foods, mayonnaise. Can you imagine a tuna salad sandwich made with homemade mayo? Im not saying itd be bad but it sure wouldnt be what most of us expect. The homemade mayo has a great place in classical European cuisines; when its used as an almost-runny sauce, to coat, say, room-temperature poached chicken breasts, Im all for it. But the stiffer American Hellmanns version, with a less-pronounced oily taste first marketed in 1912 and today called Best Foods mayonnaise west of the Rockies is much better suited for the delicious kinds of salads and sandwiches that we make in this country.