For the past ten years, food writer Molly O’Neill has been traveling the country gathering recipes and oral histories to create a portrait of America at the table. Her new book contains over 600 recipes and 700 color photographs that tell the story of American cooking then and now.
With recipes selected from over 20,000 submissions, it’s a wisely curated collection from some of the nation’s finest (and most passionate) home cooks, ranging from recent immigrants to Mayflower descendants; from street vendors to four-star cooks—everyone from sea to shining sea: Vietnamese Dancing Shrimp from a fisherman in Biloxi, Mississippi; Black Duck with Dumplings from the descendent of a Jamestown settler; Thomas Keller’s mother’s spaghetti; Mario Batali’s mother’s cacciatore; the nation’s best fajitas from the border town of their birth; Iranian meatball soup from an émigré in Beverly Hills; Jeni’s Splendid Caramel Sundae with Salty Almond Sauce from Columbus, Ohio; Nora Ephron’s famous chocolate cream pie. These and more are served up in One Big Table. And so are classic images from the Library of Congress, extraordinary contemporary photography, and illustrations from the venerable Thornton Dial, father of African-American visionary art.
One Big Table will be published by Simon and Schuster in November 2010. You can pre-order it now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell’s Books, or your favorite local bookseller.
What People Are Saying About One Big Table
“One Big Table—what a beautiful way to talk about the richness and diversity of American food! It brings us all to an important, soulful place.” —Alice Waters, author of In the Green Kitchen and The Art of Simple Food
“Only a writer with O’Neill’s energy, smarts and big Midwestern heart could locate and present, recipe by recipe, the soul of American cuisine and provide this rich, varied, and indispensable resource.” —Ethan Becker, co-author of Joy of Cooking with Marion Becker and Irma Rombauer
“Recipe by recipe, Molly O’Neill has assembled a portrait of America at the table, and the best part is, we’re all invited to pull up a chair. One Big Table is an exuberant, generous book, a celebration of the foods we love to eat, from Debby Morse’s Ranch Dressing to Marya and Otis Baron’s Dilly Beans with Thai Chiles, Mrs. Sun’s Braised New Year’s Sea Bass, and Ed Behr’s Baked Maple Custard. I’ll take one of everything.” —Molly Wizenberg, author of A Homemade Life
“Part-cookbook, part-documentary, Molly O’Neill’s One Big Table is an accurate snapshot of America and highlights the unforgettable threads that make its culinary tapestry complete. While Molly opens a window to our past, she also offers undeniable proof that our definition of “American Cuisine” is constantly evolving.” —Thomas Keller, chef, the French Laundry, and author of The French Laundry Cookbook and Ad Hoc at Home.
