Culinaria: The United States: A Culinary Discovery (Culinaria)

Rating:
Summary: Phenomenal Gastronomic Tour of the United States
Review: This is my favorite book in the always-worthwhile "Culinaria" series, and I own four of them! It is not easy to do justice to cuisine in a country as large and varied as the United States. This book is up to the task: it takes you through the US region by region and explores the food unique to each. The photographs are gorgeous and give you the feel not just of the food common to that area, but the land and culture itself. The text is fascinating, with separate articles on different facets of cooking. The book provides a good sampling of recipes for each region as well.

Because of the size and scope of the country, however, the book simply cannot provide a complete set of recipes of American cooking (it is already of phenomenal size and scope -- there is a good reason why Amazon charges extra to ship it.) Thus, while it has recipes for each region, it is really more a culinary guide than a cookbook. The book may inspire you to learn more about different American regional cuisines. If after reading it, you wish to focus in on a specific region, may I suggest you try, for New England, "The New England Cookbook," by Brooke Dojny. Marcia Adams has written several excellent cookbooks of Midwestern cooking; my personal favorite is "Heartland," which you may be able to get second-hand.

Overall, a phenomenal gastronomic tour of the United States. Beautiful enough to put on your coffee table, intelligent enough to provide engrossing lessons in American cuisine. A real tour de force!

Rating:
Summary: culinarily one of the outstanding books of it's type
Review: This is one of the finer books to be published for our consumption in too many year. The authors are thorough and inclusive. They cover the nation and tell it the way it has been these past many years. They not only give historical data -- they share specific recipes and local "color" dealing with the times and the food involved. Execellent and well done. One problem - the book is extremely heavy because of the quality of paper used and the printing involved.