Good Food, Served Right : Traditional Recipes and Food Customs from New York's North Country

Rating:
Summary: Wedding Hash, Whoopie Pies & Dandelion Wine
Review: Good Food Served Right demonstrates North Country (New York) diversity through an appeal to our taste buds. Written and researched by folklorist and home cook Lynn Ekfelt, this informative and entertaining book is part adventure travel, part ethnography, part grandmother's recipe file. It is also a great read.

"The idea of depending primarily on local products is only part of traditional cookery," Ekfelt observes in the introduction. "Another important aspect can be summed up in the old adage, 'Waste not, want not.' This guiding principle is behind the cooking of all traditions and has led to the creation of such diverse dishes as bread pudding and head cheese." The book goes beyond the recipes to explore the ways food is "so closely related to our concepts of nurturing." observing that, "food preparation and eating is an important time of apprenticeship--a time when new members of a family or community learn how to take their place as contributing members of their groups. MOre than food-related values are passed on during these sessions. They are also a time for retelling of family legends and establishing a communal response to events both within and outside the family."

Good Food Served Right is divided into three sections. "Nature's Bounty" explores the many uses of apples, cheese, fish, game, maple syrup and wild foods. "Who We Are" features favorite edibles from North Country African Americans, Amish, Armenian Americans, French Americans, Greek Americans, Homesteaders, Hungarian Americans, Italian Americans, Jews, Korean Americans, Lebanese Americans, Mennonites, Mohawks, and Yankees. "Building Community" looks at the foods traditionally served at county fairs, church suppers, fundraisers, firemen's field days and ice cream socials.

Each chapter follows a formula: a personal essay about some food-centered event or activity, tested recipes collected from local cooks, interviews with the cooks, and a history of the featured cuisine. Ekfelt sets the scene for the "Maple Syrup" chapter with: "It's a long walk from our car back into the woods to the sugar shack, and my boots get heavier with each step. Not for nothing is March known as 'mud season.' We push open the door to the shack an are met with a gust of fragrant steam." After recipes for jack wax, maple fluff frosting, maple fruit salad and more, she ends up with a transcript of her interview with the cooks and information about maple syrup, sugar maple trees and the history of the maple syrup grading system.

Lively black and white photos show us just who the cooks are in common situations at home or in their communities. The classified bibliography tells us where we can find more about our favorite topics or tastes. There is an appended "Quantities to Serve 50 People"--something I've been looking for for a long time--as well as tables on measurements, equivalents, and substitutions, and a very complete index.

Rating:
Summary: Wedding Hash, Whoopie Pies & Dandelion Wine
Review: Good Food Served Right demonstrates North Country (New York) diversity through an appeal to our taste buds. Written and researched by folklorist and home cook Lynn Ekfelt, this informative and entertaining book is part adventure travel, part ethnography, part grandmother's recipe file. It is also a great read.

"The idea of depending primarily on local products is only part of traditional cookery," Ekfelt observes in the introduction. "Another important aspect can be summed up in the old adage, 'Waste not, want not.' This guiding principle is behind the cooking of all traditions and has led to the creation of such diverse dishes as bread pudding and head cheese." The book goes beyond the recipes to explore the ways food is "so closely related to our concepts of nurturing." observing that, "food preparation and eating is an important time of apprenticeship--a time when new members of a family or community learn how to take their place as contributing members of their groups. MOre than food-related values are passed on during these sessions. They are also a time for retelling of family legends and establishing a communal response to events both within and outside the family."

Good Food Served Right is divided into three sections. "Nature's Bounty" explores the many uses of apples, cheese, fish, game, maple syrup and wild foods. "Who We Are" features favorite edibles from North Country African Americans, Amish, Armenian Americans, French Americans, Greek Americans, Homesteaders, Hungarian Americans, Italian Americans, Jews, Korean Americans, Lebanese Americans, Mennonites, Mohawks, and Yankees. "Building Community" looks at the foods traditionally served at county fairs, church suppers, fundraisers, firemen's field days and ice cream socials.

Each chapter follows a formula: a personal essay about some food-centered event or activity, tested recipes collected from local cooks, interviews with the cooks, and a history of the featured cuisine. Ekfelt sets the scene for the "Maple Syrup" chapter with: "It's a long walk from our car back into the woods to the sugar shack, and my boots get heavier with each step. Not for nothing is March known as 'mud season.' We push open the door to the shack an are met with a gust of fragrant steam." After recipes for jack wax, maple fluff frosting, maple fruit salad and more, she ends up with a transcript of her interview with the cooks and information about maple syrup, sugar maple trees and the history of the maple syrup grading system.

Lively black and white photos show us just who the cooks are in common situations at home or in their communities. The classified bibliography tells us where we can find more about our favorite topics or tastes. There is an appended "Quantities to Serve 50 People"--something I've been looking for for a long time--as well as tables on measurements, equivalents, and substitutions, and a very complete index.

Rating:
Summary: Good Food Served Right
Review: If Tabasco is involved you know it's hot. Fiction has the National Book Award, children's books have the Caldecott, community cookbooks have the Tabasco Award. First place in the Tabasco Community Cookbook Award 2000 has been awarded to Good Food Served Right: Traditional Recipes and Food Customs From New York's North Country.

Good Food Served Right is more than a collection of recipes; this book is an extensive collection of traditional recipes and food customs from that area of New York State known as the North Country. Primarily a land of dairy farming and forestry located above the Adirondacks and below the Canadian border, Northern New York is that stump of the state with an independence borne from too long, arctic gray winters and only occasional notice from the rest of the world, not always a bad thing. Good Food Served Right breaks beneath that surface and reveals a riotous, brilliant crazy quilt of ethnic diversity through its food. Italian Pasta a Ceci, Armenian Shish Kebab, Mohawk Fried Bread, Jewish Stuffed Cabbage, Korean Kimchi, Lebanese Spinach Pies, and French Yellow Pea Soup are some of the recipes that represent various groups who make their home in the North Country. There are also the local annual events such as fireman's field days, county fairs, ice cream socials, hunting clubs, and cheese making in the area. Some of the other recipes that caught my eye were Maple Johnnycake, Whoopie Pies, Deep-Fried Northern Bullhead, Crow's Nest and Hoppin' John. Each of the books 25 chapters are introduced with a well researched brief history and personal essay from the author, Lynn Case Ekfelt, a university archivist and folklorist. The project was under the auspices and support of TAUNY (Traditional Arts of Upstate New York).

In this day of cookbooks touting the latest diet, or collections of convoluted recipes photographed in far flung locations Good Food Served Right is a well-written cookbook giving us a practical manual of real recipes for the home cook and a window onto the North Country's food defined by a mix of it's history, culture, and geography.

Excerpt from Good Food Served Right, "An Amish Saturday in Rensselaer Falls":

"The house, though big enough in its own right, is dwarfed by the huge barn beside it, the unweathered, unfinished wood screaming "new". In fact, the family has just hosted a barn-raising at which they cooked for 300 people. I don't hear all of the details of the meal but I do learn that 40 chickens were involved. The house, too, has an unfinished look to my "English" eyes as we drive up - no curtains dress the windows, no flowers brighten the yard. In fact there are no touches of color anywhere except the blue of the dresses belonging to the five young women in the kitchen and the plain blue wooden cupboard against the kitchen wall. Like the room, its inhabitants are unadorned. Barefoot, they wear solid blue or brown dresses fastened by pins, no buttons or zippers. Each has an apron to protect her clothing from the rigors of house work and a cap modestly covering her hair."