Customer Reviews

It's All American Food: The Best Recipes for More Than 400 New American Classics

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David Rosengarten is the best friend of American food. Viewers of the Food Network will remember him from his show - Taste, where he glorified simple gastronomic pleasures. Regaling viewers with the perfect tuna fish sandwich was the type of no-fuss presentations in which he excelled. "It's All American Food" continues and builds on this excellent tradition. Specifically, Rosengarten makes a compelling argument for the uniqueness and importance of American food; the cookbook is a love note to America and her food. Don't feel inferior to the French and their fancy sauces, he seems to implore of the reader. But what about the recipes? Well, the cookbook is chockablock with over 400, divided into three main sections.

In Part 1, Rosengarten considers different ethnic-American cuisines. For example, he discusses how immigrants adapted the recipes from the old country to use the ingredients and techniques available in America. He focuses on how the American tradition gradually shaped the original recipes. So the Italian pasta sauce recipe isn't a trendy Southern Italian concoction with pine nuts and capers, but "Classic Brooklyn-Italian Meat Sauce." In other words, it's the kind of Italian food that your mother fixed or that you eat at the cheap bistro in the strip mall down the street. In addition to Italian-American food, sections cover Greek, Mexican, Chinese, Cuban, Moroccan, Indian, and numerous other ethnic traditions.

In Part 2, Rosengarten ponders regional American food. Moving westward from New England, he covers numerous American food traditions, including Pennsylvania Dutch, Cajun, Southwest, and Hawaiian. Some of the sections include only a couple of recipes but enough to provide the reader with an idea of the region and its food. In section 3, Rosengarten discusses a variety of classic American dishes that can't be categorized into ethnic or regional foods, such as meatloaf, cole slaw, and macaroni and cheese. All the comfort foods you ate and loved as a child and continue to crave are in this section.

With the proliferation of cookbooks in the last decade, a cookbook has to be truly original to stand out in the crowd. This cookbook is one of those rare finds to be treasured. "It's All American" should be savored like a good novel, not just stuck on a dusty shelf and pulled down to make an occasional recipe. Most highly recommended.

German food isn't like German-American food. Italian food isn't -- or at least wasn't, while many of us were growing up -- very much like Italian-American food. And the Chinese food that we experienced when we were children, the Pu-Pu Platters that we thought were so wonderful, is nothing like the food that Chinese people eat in China.

But that sure doesn't mean it's bad.

The disadvantage to Americans' increased food sophistication is that we look down upon the non-authentic versions of ethnic food. Yet, when our immigrant ancestors got here, they discovered that they couldn't get many of the ingredients they needed; they made do, and often those dishes became traditions in their own right. In this book, Rosengarten celebrates the "new American" foods, many of which have evolved from their genesis in some other land. But that's only part of the book.

There's three sections: Ethnic America, Regional America, and Classic America. The first covers what are arguably the best (or at least best-known) of 18 different areas, such as Italian, Russian, Indian. That's about half the book. Regional America tells you how to make the food popular in different areas, such as New England Clam Chowder or Collard Greens with Ham Hocks. The final section has recipes for our general "traditional American" recipes, such as mac-and-cheese or the ultimate BLT.

It's a good premise for a cookbook, sure. But what makes it superb is that these are Rosengarten's recipes. I have several of his cookbooks, and I'm a devoted fan. His explanations actually *explain.* He tells you what you need to know, but never becomes pedantic.

And man, can he cook. These aren't pale, tepid imitations of the bad spaghetti-and-meatballs you got from a steam-table buffet. They're the foods you recall with great fondness from your childhood. I just finished making a quick lunch for four, from his Chinese-American choices: broccoli in oyster sauce, plus kung pao chicken. His Kung Pao uses several kinds of pepper: black pepper, chili paste with garlic, and dried red peppers. (Not to mention hoisin, 8 cloves of garlic, and other tasty stuff.) The layers of heat make a real difference... and this may be one of the best kung pao chicken dishes I've ever eaten.

This is an inexpensive book, and I like it a lot. It has no photos or illustrations, which I realize is a downside to some people. I don't find that to be a problem since these are foods that I'm familiar with, at least in their restaurant incarnations.

I'm sure I'll be turning to this cookbook often. Recommended.

I cook a great deal, and have cooked many of the dishes included in David Rosengarten's latest. However, David (and his collaborators) have developed wonderful interpretations and versions of these classic dishes. I read the book through in two sittings; now I'm beginning to try the dishes. Superb! You won't be disappointed by this classic of regional and ethnic American dishes.

This is my favorite cookbook in the world. Just ask your friends their favorite dish from childhood, pick up this book and make an incredible version better than anything your mother or the local Chinese restaurant ever saw. Egg Foo Yung, Shrimp with Lobster Sauce, Chicken and Dumplings, tacos you name it. Yumm.

I'm a chef and I used David Rosengarten's great culinary ride through the USA as a valuable tool in teaching American Regional Cuisine at the local community college. He did his homework! Since I've lived all over this country, it was a stroll down memory lane and such fun to see how he zeroed in on some of the eccentric but really tasty dishes that make American cuisine so unique. Sure we all eat hamburgers, hot dogs and pot roast, but if you go to Cincinnati, you have to try the five way chili; or headed for Chicago; don't miss the deep dish pizza. Mr. Rosengarten's recipes are right on the mark

I am a big fan of David, so I am biased, I loved the book. I did not like this book as much as Taste, I read that cookbook front to back every couple of years. I don't think I am going to read this one very often; I know, I know, who the heck reads cookbooks. Well, I don't much either, but I do with Taste.

I also had the pleasure of taking a cooking class with David in Austin, where he explained the "hook" of the book, "It's ALL American Food", I am not sure how many people are going to understand what that means from the title...but to David it means that in the USA, you can't get Italian, Indian, or French cuisine, you get the American version of that cuisine, and it just may be better than the original, so try it, make it yourself, and enjoy the difference.

David is a great writer - the recipes are great, but the book is also just fun to read. You'll discover new things as well as things you haven't thought of in in years (but are all of a sudden dying to make). I've made about 20 recipes from the book, all are keepers so far.

This is an amazing book. All the Amercan classics are here. Ethnic, regional, country to city. I really enjoyed the Chinese section. It featured the best version of a Potsticker/Pan fried dumpling recipe I've ever made! The recipes are straight forward and easy to folow. I intend to make every one as soon as possible. A can't miss holiday gift for any cook.

An earlier poster sums it up perfectly. "Ask your friends their favorite dish from childhood, pick up this book...and make a better version". I have tried almost every recipe in this book and every recipe truly is consistantly BETTER, whether it's chicken and dumplings, a lowly corn dog or vanilla ice cream. I have over 200 cookbooks, all by professional chefs/authors. All top notch books, but only 3 come off the shelf every week because you just can't find a losing recipe in any of them. The other two favorits are Chef Paul Prudhomme's Seasoned America and Jamison & Jamison's American Home Cooking (which is really an anthology of great American recipes).

David Rosengarten is one of those cookbook authors whose books I'll buy sight unseen. I have the Dean and DeLuca Cookbook and Taste which are both excellent, and by excellent I mean that following the recipes yields predictably excellent results; a cookbook with unreliable and irreproducible recipes is useful only as a doorstop or something to be catapaulted into the raucous party next door at 3am.

This particular book is a bonafide good read as well as a treasure trove of recipes brought by the immigrants to this country that gradually became assimilated into existing cultures. Rather than an exhaustive compendium of every ethnicity's signature dish, he zeroes in on a handful of recipes from many, which allows for the book's wideness of scope. He also similarly addresses America's regional cuisine in a fashion that highlights the regions' local ingredients.

Another plus: Rosengarten takes pains to try to limit ingredients to what can be found at a well-stocked supermarket, which makes it pretty easy to cook on a whim.