Product Description

Joan Nathan, the author of Jewish Cooking in America, An American Folklife Cookbook, and many other treasured cookbooks, now gives us a fabulous feast of new American recipes and the stories behind them that reflect the most innovative time in our culinary history.

The huge influx of peoples from all over Asia--Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, India--and from the Middle East and Latin America in the past forty years has brought to our kitchens new exotic flavors, little-known herbs and condiments, and novel cooking techniques that make the most of every ingredient. At the same time, health and environmental concerns have dramatically affected how and what we eat. The result: American cooking has never been as exciting as it is today. And Joan Nathan proves it on every page of this wonderfully rewarding book.

Crisscrossing the country, she talks to organic farmers, artisanal bread bakers and cheese makers, a Hmong farmer in Minnesota, a mango grower in Florida, an entrepreneur of Indian frozen foods in New Jersey, home cooks, and new-wave chefs.

Among the many enticing dishes she discovers are a breakfast huevos rancheros casserole; starters such as Ecuadorean shrimp ceviche, Szechuan dumplings, and Malaysian swordfish satays; pea soup with kaffir leaves; gazpacho with sashimi; pasta dressed with pistachio pesto; Iraqi rice-stuffed Vidalia onions; and main courses of Ecuadorean casuela, chicken yasa from Gambia, and couscous from Timbuktu (with dates and lamb). And there are desserts for every taste.

Old American favorites are featured, too, but often Nathan discovers a cook who has a new way with a dish, such as an asparagus salad with blood orange mayonnaise, pancakes made with blue cornmeal and pine nuts, a seafood chowder that includes monkfish, and a chocolate bread pudding with dried cherries.

Because every recipe has a story behind it, The New American Cooking is a book that is as much fun to read as it is to cook from--a must for every kitchen today.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #374643 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-25
• Released on: 2005-10-25
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 464 pages

Amazon.com
Surveying America's food scene, Joan Nathan, author of the much-praised Jewish Cooking in America, notes our increasing openness to exploring traditional ethnic fare as well as "new" dishes. In The New American Cooking she offers 280 recipes that reflect the growing influence of Asian, Indian, and Latin American cooking on our everyday tables, as well as providing formulas for the likes of Chicken with Barbecue Sauce and Jambalaya with Sausage and Shrimp--dishes to which we have returned, or never left behind. The menu-wide recipe range features such tantalizing fare as Turkish Cucumber Yogurt Soup, Tunisian Fish Couscous, and Grilled Thai Chicken with Lemongrass, and sweets including Wolfgang Puck's Kiwi Clafouti and Chocolate Bread Pudding with Dried Cherries and Brandied Cream Sauce. A chapter on vegetables and vegetarian dishes, with the likes of Ragout of Wild Mushrooms with Shallots and Thyme, and Sautéed Baby Artichokes with Fresh Herbs, is particularly strong. Nathan likes to tell stories, and in sidebars such as "Nova Kim, the Wild Mushroom Lady of Vermont" and "Cooking Iraqi Food in Virginia," she places the dishes within their cultural context, often introducing readers to the recipe-makers themselves, all of whom she visited. Nathan also provides information on ingredients and techniques.

Though one might question the inclusion of very familiar formulas, like the one for chocolate chip cookies, albeit in "improved" versions, the majority of recipes will be new to most readers and all are easily accomplished. With 150 color photos, the book is a delightful addition to the Nathan canon, known for blending cultural-historical investigation with recipes of superior taste. --Arthur Boehm

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. What makes a particular dish or technique uniquely American? Nathan, perhaps best known for Jewish Cooking in America, and the author of seven additional cookbooks, eschews the notion that agribusiness and fast food have commandeered the American palate. Rather, she says the influence of immigrants from diverse areas of the world has, over the past 40 years, made American food fresh, spicy and rife with flavor. Similarly, she notes that the spices and ingredients available to American home cooks are far more varied than they've ever been, as are the options on restaurant menus. In homage to the chefs, farmers, artisans and entrepreneurs who create and contribute to American food culture, Nathan traveled the country and visited the people who help ensure that "the world's food is now literally at our fingertips." The book is part cookbook, part travelogue; readers will surely be intrigued by Nathan's descriptions of a Cuban juice bar in Miami, the advent of Middle Eastern restaurants in Virginia and the Honolulu Fish Auction, where she provides fascinating food lore and a striking sense of place. Nathan covers every course, from Morning Glory Muffins for breakfast to main courses like Haitian Vegetable Stew and desserts such as Molten Chocolate Cake. She does an excellent job of balancing her own voice with that of her interview subjects, making this cookbook as readable as it is practical. 150 full-color photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Nathan has come up with a cookbook that will entice its readers straight into their kitchens. Virtually every cook from the beginner through the most sophisticated will find inspiration in this eclectic yet well--developed feast of recipes that reflect the very diverse American population at the new century's outset. Mexican, Jamaican, Indian, and Ecuadoran traditions appear. Nathan is particularly careful to include recipes from Asian immigrant groups such as Hmong and Filipino foods. She begins with breakfast ideas, noting that families who can't assemble for dinner may find breakfast a better time to gather. Both simple recipes and complex dinner showstoppers appear, culminating in an over-the-top baklava ice-cream cake with Grand Marnier sauce. There are more than a few vegetarian offerings. Ingredients specified are generally available in large supermarkets. Nathan fleshes out her recipes with sidebars on farmers, chefs, and suppliers who specialize in fresh, unique foods. The critical reader may carp that Nathan's recipe sources are relentlessly, overwhelmingly bicoastal, but a few recipes from the nation's heartland do appear. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Great cookbook
I received this cookbook for Christmas and I love it. First of all, the concept is great. I enjoy the food of all different cultures and it is fun to have them in one cookbook. The recipes are easy and for the more unusual ingredients, there is often a substitute written which I find helpful. Finally and most importantly, everything I have made from this cookbook has been delicious and I have tried many recipes.
I own many cookbooks and this book has become one of the first ones I look in when trying to find a new recipe. I have found myself frequently telling people about this book because I have enjoyed it so much.
I would highly recommend this cookbook to anyone who enjoys food and cooking.

A very nice survey of international dishes.
`The New American Cooking' by Jewish / American cookbook specialist, Joan Nathan is a very nice sized cookbook based on two big ironies. The first, unashamedly proclaimed by the subtitle on the cover, is that many of these 280 `new American' recipes are imported from influences all around the world. The second is that one of the most important directions of `new American' cooking is to revert to the kind of ingredients available to our local forefathers, before the industrialization of our food supply as documented by Eric Schlosser in `Fast Food Nation' and more recently by Michael Pollen in `The Omnivore's Dilemma' Piling irony on irony is the fact that this second movement can be traced, as Ms. Nathan does, directly to the alternate culture movement started in the 1960's. My overall reaction to this development is to stand up and shout `The Whole Earth Catalogue Lives!!!'

What this means for people who may wish to purchase this book is that it comes off as a world food greatest hits, as selected by American foodies. While I am certain that the popularity of the Food Network and the great increase in published cookbooks means that a lot more Americans are taking cooking seriously, I don't think it means a movement anywhere close to the popularity of some recent cultural interests such as the Internet, cellular phones, iPods, or NASCAR.

So what is it about this book which may peek the interest of foodies and less fanatic people who simply like to cook. This probably depends a lot on how many cookbooks you already have, and what they are. If your entire culinary library consists of `The Joy of Cooking' and the `Good Housekeeping' loose leafed binder, then this is the book for you. If you also happen to own `The New York Times Cookbook' and `The New York Times International Cookbook', you will start to encounter some overlap. If you are an avid cookbook collector, with a healthy number of European, South American, East Indian, Southeast Asian, Chinese, Japanese, and Philippine cookbooks, this book will start to look very redundant. This is especially true if you have one or two of Deborah Madison's excellent cookbooks, since the only major `native' culinary movement represented in this book is the move to vegetarian cooking.

Of course, after reading the descriptions of modern factory food production from Messers Schlosser and Pollen, I'm ready to grab any port in the storm that offers an alternative to our culinary-industrial complex.

Surveying the chicken recipes has a sampling of the kind of recipes, which includes:

Chicken Marbella, braised with dried plums (prunes to us unreconstituted hippies).
Chicken Breasts with Spinach and Tomato, AKA Chicken Florentine from Italy.
Chicken Meat Loaf, or comfort food without quite as much animal fat.
Vietnamese Chicken-Stuffed Tomatoes
Lemon-Stuffed Roast Chicken with Herbs (actually a very common dish per Food Network presenters)
Hoisin Roasted Chicken, or Chicken Chinese
Guatemala-Inspired Fried Chicken (based on a Guatemalan fast food chain!)
Chicken with Barbecue Sauce (new?)
Chicken Yasa, from Gambia in Africa
Vietnamese Grilled Cornish Hens, another Southeast Asian import.
Grilled Cornish Hens, where the fowl is what's new.
Grilled Thai Chicken, or Bobby Flay does lemongrass.
Indian Tandoori Chicken, or grilled chicken with fenugreek and other south Asian spices
Khoreshteh Fesenjan, or chicken done Iranian style, with pomegranates, walnuts, and sugar
Tallarin con Pollo, or Ecuadorian chicken.
Hmong Chicken Curry, from our former Vietnam war allies in the bush.
Jamaican Jerk chicken, new from the Caribbean
Arroz con Polo, not so new recipe from Spain. I've been doing James Beard's version for years.
Bread Crumb baked chicken, Fried chicken done in the oven.
Pollo alla Cacciatora, Italian chicken with mushrooms.

I don't hink this is a perfect selection, otherwise, it would have included the Filipino dish, chicken adobo, the purported national dish of the Philippines, done by both Sara Moulton and Emeril Lagasse. But then, this is not really a `best of', just a sampler. My hunch is that it is a collection of Ms. Nathan's articles for various publications, plus material from other columnists such as Marian Borros and Sheila Lukins, but that doesn't detract from the quality of the book. It's a darn good read and a very nice omnibus cookbook, but not one I would want if space or money is tight. If you like the idea of this kind of book, check out Mark Bittman's 'The Best Recipes in the World' for comparison before buying this one.

Excellent New Cookbook from Joan Nathan
Joan Nathan has delivered a soon-to-be classic with her new cookbook, _The New American Cooking_. The cookbook is beautifully designed, with easy to read step-by-step recipes, beautiful pictures, and fun anecdotes.

Nathan visited forty-six states in the preparation of this cookbook, and presents recipes from American cuisines old and new - from Appalachian Griddle Corn bread (which includes mayonnaise in the recipe for moistness) to fusion recipes such as Union Square Cafe's Tuna Burger with Ginger-Wasabi Mayonnaise. Her recipes come from chefs, farmers, restaraunteers and locals.

I love Nathan's approach. In researching this book she spent time with immigrant communities old and new - she includes recipes from the descendants of Croatian immigrants who came to Minnesota at the turn of the nineteenth century to work in the Iron Mines [The Potica - Iron Range Walnut Coffee Cake looks delicious, though I haven't had the chance to make it yet.] to Cambodian Chicken Soup from Hmong immigrants who came to the states in the 1970's. These recipes make available the diverse cuisines of the U.S. today. She also includes recipes from White House chefs and celebrity chefs like Alice Waters of Chez Panisse and Jean-Georges Vongrichten (whose Molten Chocolate cake recipe, given in the desserts section, is DEE-LICIOUS.)

The cookbook givess eleven chapters of recipes, listed here:

Breakfast and Brunch [Try the Baked French Toast with Caramelized Fruit - I made it for a holiday brunch and it was amazing.]

Bread (Includes Pizzas, Foccacia, Dosas, Crepes, sandwiches and tacos as well, and some spreads and chutneys to serve with - 26 recipes total.)

Starters and Small Plates - Dips and Spreads and finger food. Some interesting Guacamole recipes - including one with broccoli and peas.

Soups - An amazingly diverse chapter; includes three very different (from each other) chicken soup recipes. Like most chapters in the book, the difficulty ranges from simple (Cambodian Chicken Soup from Massachusetts' Pioneer Valley) to complex (Jean-Louis Palladin's Corn Soup with Lobster).

Salads - In my mind, the most boring chapter in the book (though the Lobster Salad with Avocado adn Preserved LEmon looks amazing [and like it would take 8 hours to make]). If you've subscribed to Gourmet or Bon Appetit, or another Cooking magazine you probably have some vesion of all of the recipes in this chapter.

Pasta and Grains - Great Pasta chapter. Includes several Asian Noodle Recipes, and modern classics like Zingerman's Macaroni and Cheese.

Vegetables and Vegetarian Dishes - Another Great chapter with 29 recipes with origins from West AFrica to Brazil. The Abobrinha - Brazilian Sauteed Zucchini with Tomato, Peppers, adn Lime looks delicious, as do the vegetarian stews from teh West Indies.

Fish and Shellfish - This is a short chapter, and suffers on two points: There are two recipes involving salmon and goats cheese, but only three salmon recipes total - in other words, the recipes lack the diversity of the other chapters. The second is that if you don't live near a coast, the chances that you will be able to find fresh fish to make these recipes is slim. Another point I might add is that Nathan states in her introduction the importance of sustainable farming and fishing, and yet offers no recipes for fish that are bred sustainably - like tilapia. Other than that, there are some great looking recipes here - can't wait to try the Tunisian-American Fish Couscous with Striped Bass and Flounder (though living in Michigan, I may have to substitute for the fish).

Poultry - Proves that there are about a million ways to roast a chicken. These are great recipes, and most of them require ingredients that you would probably have on hand. I can't wiat to try the Sweet-and-Sour Pomegranate, Walnut and Chicken Stew.

Meat - The majority of this chapter is dedicated to stews and barbeque, and I can't wait until the foot of snow melts off of my grill and I can try some of these recipes.

Desserts - An excellent dessert selection with everything from classics like Pineapple upside down cake to exotic cookies like Cocadas - a brazilian coconut cookie. The Molten Chocolate cake was outstanding.

I am going to use this cookbook VERY often, I can tell. A few notes of caution - the cookbook is beautifully desgned iwth bright colors and wonderful photographs, but if you are the type of person who likes pictures, there are no photographs of the completed dishes with any of the recipes. If there is a picture of the dish, it is in the introduction to the chapter. Nathan gives good instructions for plating dishes, though.

A few of the recipes are redundant, and versions of them appear in many recent cookbooks. Nathan's challah recipe, though it is her own recipe that she makes every week for the Sabbath, differs very little than the recipes that are given in a few of my other cookbooks, including Art Smith's _Back to the Table_ and Julia Child's _Baking with Julia_. Smith's Huevos Rancheros recipe was quite similar to Nathan's, as well, and a few of the desserts can be found in other cookbooks too. And then there is Zingerman's Macaroni recipe, which not only was in the Zingerman's cookbook published a few years ago, but also appeared in Saveur magazine earlier this year. However, Nathan did set out to write a contemporary American cookbook, and including these recipes would only be proper.

This is a beautiful book. Of the handful of recipes that I have made, all have turned otu perfectly. It is easy to follow in the kitchen, and really fun to cook from. Highly recommended.