Customer Reviews

The New American Cooking

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Joan Nathan has delivered a soon-to-be classic with her new cookbook, _The New American Cooking_. The cookbook is beautifully designed, with easy to read step-by-step recipes, beautiful pictures, and fun anecdotes.

Nathan visited forty-six states in the preparation of this cookbook, and presents recipes from American cuisines old and new - from Appalachian Griddle Corn bread (which includes mayonnaise in the recipe for moistness) to fusion recipes such as Union Square Cafe's Tuna Burger with Ginger-Wasabi Mayonnaise. Her recipes come from chefs, farmers, restaraunteers and locals.

I love Nathan's approach. In researching this book she spent time with immigrant communities old and new - she includes recipes from the descendants of Croatian immigrants who came to Minnesota at the turn of the nineteenth century to work in the Iron Mines [The Potica - Iron Range Walnut Coffee Cake looks delicious, though I haven't had the chance to make it yet.] to Cambodian Chicken Soup from Hmong immigrants who came to the states in the 1970's. These recipes make available the diverse cuisines of the U.S. today. She also includes recipes from White House chefs and celebrity chefs like Alice Waters of Chez Panisse and Jean-Georges Vongrichten (whose Molten Chocolate cake recipe, given in the desserts section, is DEE-LICIOUS.)

The cookbook givess eleven chapters of recipes, listed here:

Breakfast and Brunch [Try the Baked French Toast with Caramelized Fruit - I made it for a holiday brunch and it was amazing.]

Bread (Includes Pizzas, Foccacia, Dosas, Crepes, sandwiches and tacos as well, and some spreads and chutneys to serve with - 26 recipes total.)

Starters and Small Plates - Dips and Spreads and finger food. Some interesting Guacamole recipes - including one with broccoli and peas.

Soups - An amazingly diverse chapter; includes three very different (from each other) chicken soup recipes. Like most chapters in the book, the difficulty ranges from simple (Cambodian Chicken Soup from Massachusetts' Pioneer Valley) to complex (Jean-Louis Palladin's Corn Soup with Lobster).

Salads - In my mind, the most boring chapter in the book (though the Lobster Salad with Avocado adn Preserved LEmon looks amazing [and like it would take 8 hours to make]). If you've subscribed to Gourmet or Bon Appetit, or another Cooking magazine you probably have some vesion of all of the recipes in this chapter.

Pasta and Grains - Great Pasta chapter. Includes several Asian Noodle Recipes, and modern classics like Zingerman's Macaroni and Cheese.

Vegetables and Vegetarian Dishes - Another Great chapter with 29 recipes with origins from West AFrica to Brazil. The Abobrinha - Brazilian Sauteed Zucchini with Tomato, Peppers, adn Lime looks delicious, as do the vegetarian stews from teh West Indies.

Fish and Shellfish - This is a short chapter, and suffers on two points: There are two recipes involving salmon and goats cheese, but only three salmon recipes total - in other words, the recipes lack the diversity of the other chapters. The second is that if you don't live near a coast, the chances that you will be able to find fresh fish to make these recipes is slim. Another point I might add is that Nathan states in her introduction the importance of sustainable farming and fishing, and yet offers no recipes for fish that are bred sustainably - like tilapia. Other than that, there are some great looking recipes here - can't wait to try the Tunisian-American Fish Couscous with Striped Bass and Flounder (though living in Michigan, I may have to substitute for the fish).

Poultry - Proves that there are about a million ways to roast a chicken. These are great recipes, and most of them require ingredients that you would probably have on hand. I can't wiat to try the Sweet-and-Sour Pomegranate, Walnut and Chicken Stew.

Meat - The majority of this chapter is dedicated to stews and barbeque, and I can't wait until the foot of snow melts off of my grill and I can try some of these recipes.

Desserts - An excellent dessert selection with everything from classics like Pineapple upside down cake to exotic cookies like Cocadas - a brazilian coconut cookie. The Molten Chocolate cake was outstanding.

I am going to use this cookbook VERY often, I can tell. A few notes of caution - the cookbook is beautifully desgned iwth bright colors and wonderful photographs, but if you are the type of person who likes pictures, there are no photographs of the completed dishes with any of the recipes. If there is a picture of the dish, it is in the introduction to the chapter. Nathan gives good instructions for plating dishes, though.

A few of the recipes are redundant, and versions of them appear in many recent cookbooks. Nathan's challah recipe, though it is her own recipe that she makes every week for the Sabbath, differs very little than the recipes that are given in a few of my other cookbooks, including Art Smith's _Back to the Table_ and Julia Child's _Baking with Julia_. Smith's Huevos Rancheros recipe was quite similar to Nathan's, as well, and a few of the desserts can be found in other cookbooks too. And then there is Zingerman's Macaroni recipe, which not only was in the Zingerman's cookbook published a few years ago, but also appeared in Saveur magazine earlier this year. However, Nathan did set out to write a contemporary American cookbook, and including these recipes would only be proper.

This is a beautiful book. Of the handful of recipes that I have made, all have turned otu perfectly. It is easy to follow in the kitchen, and really fun to cook from. Highly recommended.

I received this cookbook for Christmas and I love it. First of all, the concept is great. I enjoy the food of all different cultures and it is fun to have them in one cookbook. The recipes are easy and for the more unusual ingredients, there is often a substitute written which I find helpful. Finally and most importantly, everything I have made from this cookbook has been delicious and I have tried many recipes.
I own many cookbooks and this book has become one of the first ones I look in when trying to find a new recipe. I have found myself frequently telling people about this book because I have enjoyed it so much.
I would highly recommend this cookbook to anyone who enjoys food and cooking.

If you want a snapshot of contemporary American food (in all its tasty, healthy, multiethnic glory) go out and buy this book. From hoisin roast chicken, to potica, and grilled pizza The New American Cooking literally has it all. It's a cookbook that reads like a novel and every dish I have tried has come out perfectly.

Nathan's THE NEW AMERICAN COOKING, is the third of what I personally consider the ultimate in gastro-documentation. She has the uncanny knack of pulling history, cultural and personal narratives, and neo-traditional recipes into what can only be called family albums of food. What she did for Jewish cooking in America and Israel, she has done for American cooking's newest food revolution. Her subjects are always living cookbooks themselves, whose palatable and lovingly familiar recipes and traditions draw you in and make you want to become part of the hundreds of edible worlds she introduces you to. The recipes have been well tested, well written and make for enthusiastic eating. No kitchen or cookbook library can afford to miss out on what I consider to be a historic and insightful snapshot of our contemporary global-yet-local tastebuds. Joan Nathan has set the table for a national banquet.

`The New American Cooking' by Jewish / American cookbook specialist, Joan Nathan is a very nice sized cookbook based on two big ironies. The first, unashamedly proclaimed by the subtitle on the cover, is that many of these 280 `new American' recipes are imported from influences all around the world. The second is that one of the most important directions of `new American' cooking is to revert to the kind of ingredients available to our local forefathers, before the industrialization of our food supply as documented by Eric Schlosser in `Fast Food Nation' and more recently by Michael Pollen in `The Omnivore's Dilemma' Piling irony on irony is the fact that this second movement can be traced, as Ms. Nathan does, directly to the alternate culture movement started in the 1960's. My overall reaction to this development is to stand up and shout `The Whole Earth Catalogue Lives!!!'

What this means for people who may wish to purchase this book is that it comes off as a world food greatest hits, as selected by American foodies. While I am certain that the popularity of the Food Network and the great increase in published cookbooks means that a lot more Americans are taking cooking seriously, I don't think it means a movement anywhere close to the popularity of some recent cultural interests such as the Internet, cellular phones, iPods, or NASCAR.

So what is it about this book which may peek the interest of foodies and less fanatic people who simply like to cook. This probably depends a lot on how many cookbooks you already have, and what they are. If your entire culinary library consists of `The Joy of Cooking' and the `Good Housekeeping' loose leafed binder, then this is the book for you. If you also happen to own `The New York Times Cookbook' and `The New York Times International Cookbook', you will start to encounter some overlap. If you are an avid cookbook collector, with a healthy number of European, South American, East Indian, Southeast Asian, Chinese, Japanese, and Philippine cookbooks, this book will start to look very redundant. This is especially true if you have one or two of Deborah Madison's excellent cookbooks, since the only major `native' culinary movement represented in this book is the move to vegetarian cooking.

Of course, after reading the descriptions of modern factory food production from Messers Schlosser and Pollen, I'm ready to grab any port in the storm that offers an alternative to our culinary-industrial complex.

Surveying the chicken recipes has a sampling of the kind of recipes, which includes:

Chicken Marbella, braised with dried plums (prunes to us unreconstituted hippies).
Chicken Breasts with Spinach and Tomato, AKA Chicken Florentine from Italy.
Chicken Meat Loaf, or comfort food without quite as much animal fat.
Vietnamese Chicken-Stuffed Tomatoes
Lemon-Stuffed Roast Chicken with Herbs (actually a very common dish per Food Network presenters)
Hoisin Roasted Chicken, or Chicken Chinese
Guatemala-Inspired Fried Chicken (based on a Guatemalan fast food chain!)
Chicken with Barbecue Sauce (new?)
Chicken Yasa, from Gambia in Africa
Vietnamese Grilled Cornish Hens, another Southeast Asian import.
Grilled Cornish Hens, where the fowl is what's new.
Grilled Thai Chicken, or Bobby Flay does lemongrass.
Indian Tandoori Chicken, or grilled chicken with fenugreek and other south Asian spices
Khoreshteh Fesenjan, or chicken done Iranian style, with pomegranates, walnuts, and sugar
Tallarin con Pollo, or Ecuadorian chicken.
Hmong Chicken Curry, from our former Vietnam war allies in the bush.
Jamaican Jerk chicken, new from the Caribbean
Arroz con Polo, not so new recipe from Spain. I've been doing James Beard's version for years.
Bread Crumb baked chicken, Fried chicken done in the oven.
Pollo alla Cacciatora, Italian chicken with mushrooms.

I don't hink this is a perfect selection, otherwise, it would have included the Filipino dish, chicken adobo, the purported national dish of the Philippines, done by both Sara Moulton and Emeril Lagasse. But then, this is not really a `best of', just a sampler. My hunch is that it is a collection of Ms. Nathan's articles for various publications, plus material from other columnists such as Marian Borros and Sheila Lukins, but that doesn't detract from the quality of the book. It's a darn good read and a very nice omnibus cookbook, but not one I would want if space or money is tight. If you like the idea of this kind of book, check out Mark Bittman's 'The Best Recipes in the World' for comparison before buying this one.

Great variety of recipes many of which have been influenced by international flavors. Also, great background stories that accompany each recipe.

This book is a beautiful collection of the most heart-warming stories to accompany the most delicious recipes. Ms. Nathan has successfully captured the hodgepodge that is America today, with recipes from Moo Shu to Apple Pie. I can personally vouch for the deliciousness of the Apple Torte featured on the cover, as well as the incredible Stuffed Grape Leaves. This is a cookbook that you'll find yourself coming back to again and again. For the novice as well as the expert, this book has fabulous recipes for entertaining as well as those 'homey' ones that you'll find yourself making over and over again. My copy is less than one month old and already the pages are dog-earred and stained -- the sign of a GREAT cookbook!

I bought this book sight unseen based on my experiences with Joan Nathan's "Foods of Israel Today".

Like the aforementioned book "New American Cooking" is filled with lots of photos of the food, the places and the people who made the dishes. The books is lavish with anecdotes very much in design along the lines of the excellent "Arthur Schwartz's New York City Food". The added bonus is this is about American food ... all over America.

Examples:
Acme Bread Company's Rustic French Baguette
El Nopalito's Kentucky Guacamole
Chef Wong's Seafood Chow Mein
Stuffed Peppers with Gorgonzola Cheese, Polenta & Pesto
Mango Ice Cream Cake

There are lots of sidebars and lots of anecdotes ... and, best of all, terrific photographs throughout.

I am very pleased with this selection.