One Big Table: 800 Recipes from the Nation’s Best Home Cooks, Farmers, Pit-Masters and Chefs
Molly O’Neill. Simon & Schuster, $50 (864p) ISBN 978-0-743-23270-8
O’Neill, former New York Times Magazine food writer and author (New York Cookbook), has compiled an informative and heartwarming refutation of the demise of American home cooking. Ten years and many miles in the making, this collection celebrates the nation’s culinary diversity, both ethnically and agriculturally, and offers a uniquely intimate look at what home cooking in America is truly like today. O’Neill crossed the country, interviewing home cooks and spending time in the kitchens of recent immigrants. The results are enticing recipes that intertwine family stories, personal histories, and food. From stuffed Danish pancakes in Utah to tamales in Santa Fe and Vietnamese shrimp pancakes in Mississippi, this eclectic collection showcases the best this country has to offer. O’Neill also includes old-style American fare, including black-eyed pea and mustard greens soup, corn chowder, campfire trout, and bluegrass bass with Kentucky caviar. Sidebars abound on everything from black sea bass to Johnny Appleseed, Elvis to shrimp. As engaging in the armchair as it is in the kitchen, this book is an enduring testament to our historic traditions and the new culinary forays being made by American home cooks. (Nov.)
Advance Review—Uncorrected Proof
Issue: October 15, 2010
One Big Table: A Portrait of American Cooking.
O’Neill, Molly (Author)
Nov 2010. 864 p. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, $50.00. (9780743232708). 641.
This is One Big Book, filled to the brim with anecdotes, references, information, memorabilia, and 800 recipes that are truly representative of all U.S. cultures and ethnicities. O’Neill, former New York Times Magazine food columnist, respected author (New York Cookbook, 1992) and TV host, has outdone herself. It’s difficult not to stop and savor every page, from the gee-whiz type of historical illustration and mouthwatering food photography to the stories of new and well-honed cooks. In fact, the documented recipes often seem like footnotes, even if they’re preserved lemons, borscht, cioppino, or feijoada (Brazilian black-bean stew), simply because of the powerful stories. Take a minute to meet painter-waterman Bobby Bridges, living on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, who imparts the secrets of his clam clouds (aka clam fritters), or Chicago’s Mark Reitman, a self-made expert on hot dogs as well as the founder of the Hot Dog University. Read more about Michigan celery, a subtle variety called Golden Hue. Flip to the pages celebrating the soul and food (barbecued chicken) or Gee’s Bend, Alabama, natives, a community made famous by its quilts displayed at New York’s Whitney Museum of Art. Perhaps no better and more humble quote summarizes O’Neill’s attempt to capture the spirit of our eating past and present than these comments from Alabamian Mary Lee Bendolph: “Old clothes have a spirit in them. I see that scrap of apron in a quilt and I remember the woman who wore that apron thin. Cooking is like that, too. I make my cornbread to remember all the cornbread that was made for me.” —Barbara Jacobs
