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When Yankees go home
I can't resist a slight variation on an Orwellian maxim here: All regions have regional food, but some regions are more regional than others. New England is one of these, perhaps because its cooking has remained home cooking. It hasn't gone haute or had a trendy infusion of fusion (at least, I hope that no one has added chilpotles or hoisin to clam chowder yet). |
REVIEWS BY SYBIL PRATT
Irish Oak Scones with dried cranberries
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. In the work bowl of a food processor, combine the flour, oats, 2 tablespoons of sugar, baking powder, and salt. Pulse once or twice to sift and blend the dry ingredients. Distribute the butter pieces over the flour mixture. Pulse until most of the pieces of butter are about the size of small peas. Add the cranberries and pulse once to blend. In a glass measure, lightly beat the egg with the milk. With the motor running, pour the liquid through the feed tube and process in short bursts until the dough begins to clump together. If the dough is too dry to shape, add another tablespoon of milk. Transfer the dough to an ungreased baking sheet, gather it together, and shape into a flattened 1/2-inch-high disk approximately 9 inches in diameter. Using a large knife, cut the dough into 12 pie-shaped wedges and separate the wedges so they are at least 1 inch apart on the baking sheet. Sprinkle with the remaining 2 teaspoons of sugar. Bake in the center of the preheated oven until the scones are an even golden brown, about 20 minutes. Serve the scones warm. Makes 12 small scones.
350 Recipes from Town and Country, Land and Sea, Hearth and Home By Brooke Dojny Harvard Common Press, paperback, $18.95 ISBN 155832139X
If you glanced at this title without reading the extensively explanatory sub-title, you might surmise that J.S. Bach had composed a fishy addition to his glorious keyboard creation. A closer look will reveal that The Gefilte Variations by Jayne Cohen is "200 Inspired Recreations of Classics from Jewish Kitchens, with Menus, Stories and Traditions for Holidays and Year-Round." Since the Diaspora, Jews have assimilated the cooking techniques and ingredients they encountered in their widely varied new homelands into their traditional cuisine. Ms. Cohen follows suit in a personal way, using the culinary combinations, methods and refinements that she's encountered on her gastronomic gallivanting to accent and enliven her approach to Jewish cuisine. The result is playful, but not silly, contemporary but faithful to the old world soul and spirit. Her variations divide into two themes: year-round favorites organized by menu category, and dishes designed and destined for the holiday table. Since Passover will be celebrated next month, I checked out Ms Cohen's takes on the super-traditional Seder feast. To my delight, I found Salmon Gefilte Fish with Ginger-Beet Horseradish, Lemon-Roasted Chicken with Rhubarb-Prune Tsimmes, Brisket Braised with Thirty-Six Cloves of Garlic, and a soul-satisfying, Savory Artichoke Matzoh Brie, fabulous at a Passover brunch or a mid-winter lunch. Similar innovations abound throughout all the recipes -- all kosher, all with informative intros and detailed directions. Ms. Cohen has used her love and respect for Jewish food and culture as inspiration, rather than constraint, and the end result is a joyous tribute to the twists and turns that tradition can tolerate.
By Jayne Cohen Scribner, $27.50 ISBN 0684827190
It's a wrap Nina Simonds, who served up "A Spoonful of Ginger" last year, now invites us to wrap 'n roll, to fashion fabulous finger-friendly food that is fresh, healthy, and a breeze to put together. In Asian Wraps: Deliciously Easy Hand-Held Bundles to Stuff, Wrap and Relish, with 75 recipes and full-color photos throughout, Ms. Simonds emphasizes the casual and the seasonal. The peerless packets featured in her book come in all sizes, from bitsy bites that make appealing, uncommon appetizers to substantial entree roll-ups. And thrilling fillings -- Miso Salmon, Mu Shu Shrimp, Curried Coconut Chicken, Malaysian Marinated Pork, salads swathed in savory sauces, vegetarian variations touched with meatless magic -- will tempt cooks, both timid and time-toughened, to improvise, innovate and experiment. Luckily, wraps are not only tasty, they're trendy and that makes it easy to purchase interesting, varied wrappers -- a big bonus in our time-challenged world. Asian groceries offer the widest variety, but most supermarkets now carry wonton and egg roll skins and an ever-growing array of flour tortillas -- large, small, plain, and flavored -- that, when brushed with a bit of sesame oil and steamed, take on an Asian aura. To turn over a new leaf, wrap-wise, you can enfold fillings in the broad leaves of lettuces and cabbages, conventional and otherwise. Ms. Simonds, who has lived, studied, and traveled in Southeast Asia, mingles the earthy with the exotic, making the Far East seem quite near.
Deliciously Easy Hand-Held Bundles to Stuff, Wrap and Relish By Nina Simonds Morrow, $23 ISBN 0688163009
Sybil Pratt is an avid cook.
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But, that certainly doesn't mean New England has a homogeneous, flat-fooded cuisine. There's been much progress since the pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock; wave after wave of immigrants -- Portuguese, Italians, Germans, Jews, Greeks, Scandinavians, Poles, French Canadians, and more -- have made New England their home and added new flavors and foods to what the original settlers brought from England and borrowed from the Native Americans. To celebrate the fine fare found in the Northeast, Brooke Dojny has put together The New England Cookbook: 350 Recipes from Town and Country, Land and Sea, Hearth and Home. A Connecticut Yankee, brought up digging clams and gathering beach plums, Ms. Dojny, now an accomplished food writer and cookbook author, brings her expertise and authority to this comprehensive, inviting volume. Nimbly mixing the traditional and the modern, she moves through the courses from starters, soups, salads, savory meats and poultry, finfish, shellfish, and a bevy of baked bean beauties to pickles, preserves, pies, cobblers, cakes and cookies, seasoning all with anecdotes, pertinent info and unflagging enthusiasm for the food, the people, and the land.
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