Amanda Hesser - The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century ()

ALSO BY AMANDA HESSER

Eat, Memory (editor)

Cooking for Mr. Latte

The Cook and the Gardener

Compilation copyright 2010 by The New York Times Company and Amanda Hesser

Recipes and reprinted text copyright 2010 by The New York Times Company

Original text copyright 2010 by Amanda Hesser

All rights reserved

First Edition

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Book design by Iris Weinstein

Production manager: Julia Druskin

Digital production manager: Sue Carlson

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Hesser, Amanda.

The essential New York Times cook book : classic recipes for a new century / Amanda Hesser.1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-393-06103-1 (hardcover)

1. Cookbooks. I. New York times. II. Title.

TX714.H476 2010

641.5dc22

2010033311

ISBN 978-0-393-24767-1 (e-book)

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

www.wwnorton.com

W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.

Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT

FOR TAD, WALKER, AND ADDIE

W hen I set out to write this cookbook, I had no idea how massive the Times 150-year-old food archive was or the fortitude I would need to navigate it. And I certainly didnt plan to test anything like 1,400 recipes.

I couldnt have done any of it without the help of Merrill Stubbs, whose research and cooking skills are limitless, and who has become like a sisterone with a happily complementary set of enthusiasms. She doesnt like making pastry dough; I love it. I hate chopping parsley; she finds it a gratifying challenge. When I was pregnant with twins and unable to stand, Merrill would set up a cutting board at my dining room table and bring me vegetables to chop. Once my twins were born, wed take turns stirring pots and swinging the babies in their bouncy seats. We spent hundreds of weekends and evenings testing recipes, eating triumphant and failed dinners, and doing dishes late into the night.

My husband, Tad, a reluctant foodie, had the taxing job of tasting everything. He would like it to be made clear that he lobbied for the Mocha Cheesecake , and that the biscotti recipes, a cookie he despises for its unfriendly crunch, were included over his objections. There is no way in one short paragraph that I can amply thank him for all of his helphis laser-like editing, his tolerance for dinners consisting entirely of four kinds of crab cakes, his patience with my hare-brained scheme to take on this project while I had a full-time job, his heroic dishwashing, his willingness to cook dinner during the months (well, years) when I was actually writing the book, his infinite support and sweetness.

This was a true family affair. Our children, Walker and Addie, were raised on the recipes in this book: they got them first as purees, later as solids. They ate roast pigeon cut into tiny bits, spaghetti with sea urchin sauce, and le flottante before the age of two. Theyll probably grow up to subsist entirely on junk food. My father-in-law, Dorie Friend, a long-time Times reader, worked on title ideas; Mary French, his girlfriend, helped perfect the Stewed Corn ; our babysitter, Lorna Lambert, kept the trains running; and the entire Friend family served as open-minded and enthusiastic tasters.

As she has with my previous books, my sister, Rhonda Thomson, played a vital role in whipping this one into shape. She tested (and retested and retested) recipes for me, read proofs, andusing ). All great!

Any institution as old as the New York Times can seem like a crazy family filled with eccentric characters (the disguise-flaunting food critic Ruth Reichl; the peerless bon vivant R. W. Apple Jr.) and hidebound, idiosyncratic rules (its style book insists on calling a lychee a lychee nut), but I am grateful to have worked at such a remarkable place and to have had a chance to capture some of its history in this book. Among the dozens of people who helped me in ways small and large were Susan Chira, Alex Ward, Tomi Murata, Nancy Lee, Gerry Marzorati, Bill Keller, Jeff Roth, Linda Amster, Pat Gurosky, Nick Fox, Anne-Marie Schiro, Rick Flaste, Trish Hall, Andy Port, Michalene Busico, Mike Levitas, Joanna Milter, Phyllis Collazo, Michael Ryan Murphy, and Kathi Gilmore-Barnes.

This kind of project doesnt take a village, it takes a metropolis teeming with smart young recent college graduates. Among the many whom I will probably end up working for someday are Emily McKenna (who tested 150 recipes in a month, created the source list, and assisted in countless other valuable and thoughtful ways), Helen Johnston (who helped with recipe pairings, recipe categories, and menus), Jacqueline Barba (who proofread every recipe), Nicole Tourtelot, Alison Liss, Johanna Smith, Lauren Shockey, Tabitha Schick, Adrienne Davich, Francesca Gilberti, and James Malloy.

Countless food writers, specialists, and historians contributed to my research. I am particularly grateful to Andy Smith, a professor at The New School in New York City; Anne Mendelson, the writer and food historian; and the Association for the Study of Food and Society, whose Listserv members have been extraordinarily generous with their time over the years.

I found many wonderful old cookbooks, including my copy of Craig Claibornes New York Times Cookbook , at Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks in Manhattan. One splendid new book that is especially thoughtful about the changes in American food and food journalism is David Kamps United States of Arugula .

No cookbook should be published without a lot of friends and opinionated cooks weighing in. Early on, Nora Ephron suggested I write the book from a personal point of view rather than that of an arms-length editor. My friends Esther Fein and Jennifer Steinhauer made sure this WASP included all the right Jewish foods; Jennifer also read proofs and kept on me like an army sergeant to finish the manuscript. Elizabeth Beier came up with the chronological recipe structure within chapters. And every time I saw Aleksandra Crapanzano, shed whisper a new favorite Times recipe into my ear. I am also filled with appreciation for the dozens of friends, family, and neighbors who recommended recipes and tasted the various dishes that I forced upon them. And I am grateful to the hundreds of people (some of whom I know, most of whom I dont) on Twitter and Facebook, who readily answered questions about recipes like carne asada (), and about the material used for the book cover, and who contributed a huge number of excellent ideas for the food timeline in the introduction.

Thanks to Heather Schroder, my agent and a great cook herself, who didnt press the mute button every time I called to complain about ten-step recipes and sinks full of dishes. W. W. Nortons Starling Lawrence, Jeannie Luciano, and Jill Bialosky had a great vision for this book and an understanding of the time it would take. Julia Druskin came up with the clean, timeless design and worked tirelessly to find an ingredient font that was both compact and vivid. Bill Rusin and Ingsu Liu came up with a cover that pleased everyone (not an easy task!). And Judith Sutton copyedited this manuscript with such precision and deftness I think her next job should be inspecting the Large Hadron Collider. She surely wanted to egg my house for the number of times I misspelled chiles. Or is it chilis?