American Cooking: New England [antikvár]

^e Qorner of the Qontinent Where American Qooking ^egan T J. he map outlines the territory of this book: from well-tailored Connecticut all the way up to rough-cut Newfoundland and Labrador. Columbus never got within 1,200 miles of here, and as a thoroughly Mediterranean man, he probably would have disliked on sight this side of the New World, rockier, chillier, and more rugged than the balmy Bahamian one he found. This is the corner of the continent where the French, a generation after Columbus, and the English, a century after that, made their tentative beachheads in America. If the winds had blown the Smta Maria up to Plymouth and the Mayflower down to San Salvador —heaven knows how history might have been changed. Including culinary history : for ( with all respect to the cuisine of New Spain ) it was here in New England and in New France that the main tradition of American cooking got its start. Here the northern colonizers of the continent had to learn how to adapt their old-world kitchen traditions to such strange, new raw materials as wild turkey and corn, beans and clams, cranberries and pumpkins. They adapted well and we are all the beneficiaries of it. The foods that were developed in this part of America became and still are a principal basis of today's transcontinental fare. New England does not have the sensuous avocado, the pineapple and plantain, the tacos and tortillas that have brightened the cuisine of the southern and tropical regions of North America. Nutmegs never grew in the Nutmeg State; limes never ripened in Old Lyme, and wine grapes never thrived on Martha's Vineyard. But New England and New France offered the quahog and the sugar maple, the lobster and the crab, the bean and the cod—and the English and the French made an entirely new cuisine out of them. The author of this book, Jonathan Leonard, writes with authority about the area and its cooking. He comes from this part of America, he understands it, loves it and knows a great deal about its food. The book is full of his delights and his prejudices—and while you may not always agree with him, he is such an expert witness that you cannot afford to disregard his opinions. His testimony also gives evidence to what is perhaps most American about the American cuisine; it speaks eloquently of corn planted in desperation and harvested in joy, or of a feast shared by Indians and Pilgrims. As for the recipes, even their titles roll delightfully on the tongue: blueberry grunt, buche de Noël, Johnston spanks, Solomon Gundy, Joe Booker stew. Best of all, their personality is every bit as pleasant to the palate. —The Editors