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Review by Sybil Pratt
Sheila Lukins last took us on a gourmet globe trot with her "All Around the World Cookbook." Now, in the "U.S.A. Cookbook," Lukins has come home to explore the bounty of American cooking from sea to shining sea, from breakfast bonanzas, midday munchies and cocktail hour crunchies to a full complement of dinnertime delights and their just desserts.
Over 600 recipes are included in this hefty red, white and blue celebration of our geographic diversity, melting pot heritage and native ingenuity. Lukins' easy, chatty style has made all her cookbooks irresistibly inviting and genuinely user friendly, and this all-American oeuvre is no exception. The author refers to herself as a "home cook" (if every home had such a cook, the restaurant business would be in big trouble) and that seems to translate into recipes that are doable without a kitchen cadre of sous chefs.
Lukins hit the road big time for this book, sampling the local fare in diners, luncheonettes, inns, fine restaurants and food festivals. She started at the annual Lima Bean Festival on the New Jersey shore, ate her way up through New England, down through the South to the Louisiana bayous, continued on to our vast heartland from cheese-churning Wisconsin to Arthur Bryant's famed barbecued ribs in Kansas City, into the Southwest and chili country, then California, the cradle of many modern culinary giants, and wound up this round-up in Hawaii.
Every single recipe is garnished with a personal note; there may be extra advice on preparation, ingredient alternatives, serving suggestions or notes on provenance. Generous servings of informative sidebars gild the lily or, in this case, ice the cake. In fact, I think that Lukins might be dubbed the "Empress of the Aside." These asides edify -- the real role of a roux, the ultimate chocolate syrup for an authentic "egg cream," how to roast a bell pepper, French a rack of lamb, peel and seed tomatoes, shuck oysters and prevent soggy pie crusts. And they shed light on longstanding culinary mysteries -- the definition of a "blue plate special," the difference between hash browns and home fries, yams and sweet potatoes, Cajun and Creole cuisine.
Sheila Lukins has given us a cookbook that's as American as the Fourth of July and as tasty as Mom's apple pie.
Sybil Pratt is an avid cook in New York.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.
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