Product Description

American food is no longer just steak, potatoes, and apple pie. Over the past 50 years, dishes that were once exotic have become essential parts of the American menu. Here, for the first time, David Rosengarten has created a definitive cookbook of truly American favorites, ranging from coast to coast, back into the past, and into the cuisines that have merged with the American mainstream in recent decades. Rosengarten places authentic Cajun recipes alongside the sizzling Cuban specialties of Miami. He unveils the mystery behind Philly cheesesteak sandwiches and Maryland crab cakes. He retrieves American classics like chicken pot pie and tuna melt from Junior League cookbooks and restores them to their glory. From breakfast, where he gives the secrets for perfect scrambled eggs, bacon, and hash browns, to an array of indulgent late night desserts, David Rosengarten has written an unpretentious and accessible adoration of the American kitchen. This celebration of our nation's wonderfully varied cuisine belongs on every home cook's bookshelf.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #146920 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 512 pages

Amazon.com Review
"This is a book about what we eat in America," says David Rosengarten in his cookbook It's All American Food. For Rosengarten, author of The Dean & Deluca Cookbook among others, this means ethnic specialties like Eggplant Parmigiana and Shrimp Egg Foo Young; regional dishes, such as Philly Cheesesteak, plus barbecue, including Carolina Pulled Pork Shoulder with Two Sauces; and classic American fare like his Best Buttermilk Pancakes and The Ultimatre BLT, which transcends cultural boundaries. Offering more than 400 recipes for coast-to-coast favorites, Rosengarten is at pains to show that our cuisine is endlessly (and admirably) elastic, embracing and transforming traditional, sometimes exotic fare into something distinctly American for which we need not apologize. If he labors this point, Rosengarten has nonetheless done readers a great service in collecting so many characteristic recipes, which have often lacked the thoughtful treatment supplied here. This can mean tweaking more dubious (or degraded) recipes, lightening, for example, General Tso's chicken, or simply finding model formulas, like those for his cobb salad and macaroni and cheese (his recipes sometimes call for convenience ingredients, like banana pudding mix, that signify authentic versions). His section on regional favorites is a mini-guide to the best local dishes from New England to Hawaii, while his ethnic explorations present the food of virtually every group to have settled here--dishes that have gained acceptance, usually, through restaurant interpretations. Rosengarten has, of course, also eyed sweets, and treats such as tiramisu and New York cheesecake are also accounted for. With useful technical illustrations, ingredient notes like Spanish Paprika, and informative asides such as The Perfect Spatezel Method. --Arthur Boehm

From Publishers Weekly
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 Cheesesteak. This titanic homage to our nation's wildly varied culinary roots values comfort over refinement, but fortunately comforts are in plentiful supply. Rosengarten can find something to love even in an unreconstructed Shrimp Egg Foo Yung, and harkens back fondly to the 1950s, that much-maligned golden era when immigrant cooking found its way to the American palate. Flavor comes first here-garlic by the half cup; the ringing phrase: "2 pounds lard." There are deep-fry favorites (Calamari, Falafel, Scrapple), long-cooked ones (Boston Baked Beans, Flanken) and classics like Shrimp Cocktail, The Ultimate BLT and, of course, Apple Pie. Every major hyphenated-American cuisine-Italian, Chinese, Thai, Indian, Mexican-has a place, as well as several less-established ones (e.g., Argentinean, Russian). Because of his respect for all traditions, no matter how strangely altered or distanced from their roots, Rosengarten manages to avoid snobbery-both traditional and reverse-altogether. His slightly goofy prose ("Call me Ishmael, but I'm convinced that the great informing influence of New England cuisine is the sea") is a perfect match for this gut-rumbling, mouth-watering, heartfelt tribute.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"...David Rosengarten has done this job exceedingly well...fascinating, well researched, and full of delicious recipes is an added plus." -- Daniel Boulud, author of Letters to a Young Chef

"David gives us the best possible versions of regional, classic, and ethnic specialties..." -- Jacques Pepin, PBS-TV personality, cookbook author, and cooking teacher

Customer Reviews

Good writing, reliable recipes
David Rosengarten is one of those cookbook authors whose books I'll buy sight unseen. I have the Dean and DeLuca Cookbook and Taste which are both excellent, and by excellent I mean that following the recipes yields predictably excellent results; a cookbook with unreliable and irreproducible recipes is useful only as a doorstop or something to be catapaulted into the raucous party next door at 3am.

This particular book is a bonafide good read as well as a treasure trove of recipes brought by the immigrants to this country that gradually became assimilated into existing cultures. Rather than an exhaustive compendium of every ethnicity's signature dish, he zeroes in on a handful of recipes from many, which allows for the book's wideness of scope. He also similarly addresses America's regional cuisine in a fashion that highlights the regions' local ingredients.

Another plus: Rosengarten takes pains to try to limit ingredients to what can be found at a well-stocked supermarket, which makes it pretty easy to cook on a whim.

Outstanding.
An earlier poster sums it up perfectly. "Ask your friends their favorite dish from childhood, pick up this book...and make a better version". I have tried almost every recipe in this book and every recipe truly is consistantly BETTER, whether it's chicken and dumplings, a lowly corn dog or vanilla ice cream. I have over 200 cookbooks, all by professional chefs/authors. All top notch books, but only 3 come off the shelf every week because you just can't find a losing recipe in any of them. The other two favorits are Chef Paul Prudhomme's Seasoned America and Jamison & Jamison's American Home Cooking (which is really an anthology of great American recipes).

Kitchen necessity
If you like international food and regional food you will love this book! There is a great range of recipes, each is clearly and entertainingly written, and they taste GOOD.
I cook a lot but I only have two cookbooks, the Joy of Cooking and It's All American food. Joy takes care of the basics but when you get tired of "traditional" American food like Ham Loaf and the disparaging comments about hush puppies-- turn to It's All American Food!
When I first got this book I felt like the recipes often called for more ingredients than I wanted to buy. But since then I've relaxed a little and if I don't have shallots, onions seem to work fine (for example). On the other hand if you want to fully enjoy using all the authentic ingredients this book is perfect.