Cookbook review: America the Cookbook: A Culinary Road Trip Though the 50 States by Gabrielle Langholtz

 

As an avid cookbook fan, I have a handful of favorites that I use constantly, and a whole bunch of cookbooks I bought because they looked great but ultimately didn't add a lot to my culinary repertoire. Gabrielle Langholtz's America the Cookbook: A Culinary Trip Through the 50 States is an essential cookbook for my collection that I will spend months exploring.  Gift this book to newlyweds, new homeowners, foodies, folks who travel or who have moved a lot, or simply people you really like. It could be a foundational cookbook for many collections.

Langholtz is a widely-travelled food writer who has collected recipes and food histories from chefs, farmers, and food industry professionals from around America in an effort to celebrate American cuisine. The list of contributors is a who's who of America's culinary elite, including James Beard and Pulitzer Prize winners. Langholtz proposes that American food took almost 500 years to be recognized as its own, distinctive cuisine.  When explorers and settlers came to the New World, they brought their own techniques and methods from Europe.  This book celebrates American cuisine coming into its own.

America the Cookbook celebrates the food from across America, what you'll find in upscale restaurants, roadside diners, and on the dinner tables of Americans of all shapes, sizes, and ethnic backgrounds.  There are recipes that celebrate the native ingredients of the American landscape, including recipes for proteins not often highlighted elsewhere, like rabbit, quail, goat, venison, elk, antelope, and bison. This cookbook is massive: 768 pages and nearly five pounds. It includes three page ribbons for bookmarking in red, white, and blue.

Sections include starters, main courses, side dishes, desserts, breakfast, bakery, pantry, and drinks (including alcoholic drinks). Each recipe is identified with a state or region, and also has helpful legends such as dairy-free, gluten-free, one-pot, vegan, vegetarian, less than 30 minutes, and less than 5 ingredients.  This is a title clearly intended for a world audience, as many recipes include translations for terms (for instance, toothpick has a parenthetical (cheese stick)), ingredient amounts are in both tablespoons / cups as well as grams / liters, and temperatures are listed in Fahrenheit, Celsius, and stove gas marks.

Some recipes have a bit of history included. For instance, I've often wondered why chicken fried steak is named that, and that question is answered along with the recipe. Another recipe in the starter section for Crispy Snoots from Missouri explains that grilled pig snouts are a favorite in St. Louis barbecue joints, and the description details its uses and where to find ingredients. This is one of a handful of recipes that have a touch of the eww factor and while they are interesting, probably won't be recipes I'll try at home. But that's at heart of the success of this cookbook; it celebrates the uniqueness of American cuisine.

Interestingly, some recipes in the starter section would be better suited to a 'sandwich' or 'lunch' section, such as Po' Boys, Maine lobster rolls, calzones, burgers, hot dogs, and pizzas.  There are occasional full-page photographs highlighting some of the food, and while all the photographs are appealing, it leaves me wanting to see more of the recipes in full color photographs. Many make me want to try a recipe simply because the photograph is so appealing, notably the Smith Island Cake from Maryland on pages 318/319.

While recipes are attributed to certain states or regions, there will inevitably be some argument about why certain things are placed in certain regions or states. Notably, on page 126 the Kansas City-style barbecued brisket and burnt ends are attributed to Mississippi, despite a note mentioning how the burnt ends are beloved in Kansas City, Missouri (and they are; perhaps it would be worth writing an in-depth blog post about great places to get them in KC).

The real soul of this cookbook comes at the end, where each state is represented by an essay and additional recipes. The essays are often literary in quality, and frequently are from chefs who left home to study French (or other) cuisine that they thought was 'real' cooking, only to discover that the food they'd left behind was where their heart was.

America the Cookbook is the rare cookbook that fits both in the kitchen and as a title you want to sit and read, thanks to the contributed literary essays. I enjoyed reading the essays; I look forward to exploring America in my kitchen over the course of the next few months and years with these recipes.