Richman - Straight up tasty : meals, memories, and mouthfuls from my travels

ALSO BY ADAM RICHMAN

America the Edible: A Hungry History, from Sea to Dining Sea

Copyright 2015 by Adam Richman
Principle photography copyright 2015 by Evan Sung

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.clarksonpotter.com

CLARKSON POTTER is a trademark and POTTER with colophon is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 9780385344487
eBook ISBN 9780385344494

Jacket design by Michael Nagin
Jacket and endpaper photography by Evan Sung

Megan Fawn Schlow: (Spinach Pie).

: Louella938/Shutterstock (shaker).

v3.1

So that guy you know for eating the greatestand craziestdishes from around the world, he has a cookbook now?

Yup.

Hes not eating the food, hes actually making the food?

Yup.

But that guy isnt a chef, right?

Nope.

And that guy doesnt even have a restaurant, right?

Nope.

But he can cook and came up with these recipes himself?

Uh-huh.

And theyre good?

You bet your bottom dollar they are.

Okay, now that weve gotten the obvious questions out of the way, lets get down to brass tacks: Why did I write a cookbook, and why is this one different and special and unlike others you may come across?

Well, youll find the first answer right in the rhetorical questions above. Im not a chef, and I dont have a restaurant. I am better known for eating than I am for cooking, and Im more like the folks watching my shows than I am like the cooks I feature. But thats actually the point.

These are recipes I make, that my family makes, that my friends have made. They reflect the flavor combinations, techniques, and ingredients Ive picked up on my travels these past few years and all the wonderful and weird meals I have tried, from street food in Ciudad Lans outside Buenos Aires, to upscale soups at New Orleans hottest restaurants. Ive been inspired by all kinds of cooks, too, from Berber tribes in the middle of the desert to good ol boys making barbecue in Georgia, Arkansas, and North Carolina. And youll see all these influences in the recipes that follow.

This isnt a bible, and it isnt a manualits a road map to great eating. In addition to the recipes, youll discover some fun facts and learn about some great places and amazing dishes to check out when youre on the road yourself. Above all, though, remember this: as with any great road map, detours from the planned route sometimes yield the greatest treasures. If you like a recipe but want to try your own spin or add a super-special ingredient or something from your hometown or personal historygo for it!

Recipes are ever shifting, ever changing, and ever evolving. When choosing the dishes to include in this book, sometimes I reimagined an existing dish; sometimes I just gave you my version of a classic. Some of these recipes Ive been making for my family for years and have never changed one iota; others were mere figments of my foodie imagination until I started testing recipes for this book. Some are super easy and comprised entirely of readily available ingredients. With these, the emphasis is on technique and timing. Other recipes are more about flavor nuance and finesse instead of add stuff to bowl and stir and may require a little more effort. I humbly submit that the extra work will be worth your while.

Either way, the focus in Straight Up Tasty is on one thing only: flavor . Not on American cooking, seasonal cooking, regional cooking, farm to table, or some other arbitrary umbrella used to group food into categories for the ease of librarians and the unimaginative. I believe the best dishes, whether simple or complex, are flavor explosions that make you rethink the edible world we live in, and thats exactly what Ive tried to provide here.

While filming around the globe, Ill often turn to the crew that has been with me across many miles and over many months and say, The pork from this North Carolina barbecue place would be amazing with the tortillas we had in Tampa, the salsa from San Diego, and the pickled onions from Albuquerque. Someone else will say, Nothis pork, the Cuban bread in Tampa, the queso from Santa Barbara, and the homemade pickles from New York, with the sweet potato tots from Charlotte. And on and on it goes.

And, really, why should culture and distance prevent these flavors from combining? Why shouldnt initiative, imagination, and a bit of effort spent on shopping for ingredients yield the flavor wallop we want to give our taste buds? No reason at all! Like the great hip-hop DJs Ive always admired, Im a mix master, creating your mash-up mouthfuls and robust meal remixes. Im on the ones and twos, the wheels of steel, the pots and pans, the meat and fish.

In this book we are gonna follow rules. We are gonna break rules. Youre gonna see a bunch of recipes that are easier than you could have imagined and others that may prompt you to say, I have to do that, too ? But no matter what, I promise you this: you will love these dishes. If you have a tongue to taste with, a mind open for exploration, and a spirit that wants to hurl itself out into the flavor void to see whats out there, you are in for one delicious journey. This is food that we all can make, all can love, and all can appreciate. Getting our nom nom nom to the break-a, break-a dawn.

No gimmicks, no fancy equipment or chemicals, and no attitude. Just fun. Just flavor. Just straight up tasty, yall.