Two Words, One Answer.
Sauerkraut
 Sauerkraut's Incredible Fascinations: Astonishingly impressive Sauerkraut recipes with an astounding taste!!! $15.95 With "Sauerkraut's Incredible Fascinations," you will see that sauerkraut is used in many more delicious ways other than just with pork or hotdog toppings. This book presents a uniquely diverse, yet great tasting combinations of sauerkraut in everything from sauerkraut meatloaf to chocolate sauerkraut cake. Don't knock it until you try it! For you traditionalists, there are also recipes ranging from the all-famous Reuben sandwich to pork roast and sauerkraut. Now you can prepare dishes using sauerkraut, that most people never though of, yet are remarkable tasty and fulfilling. After you prepare and partake of these sauerkraut recipes, you will be totally astounded by the flavor and satisfaction that each recipe gives. Whether you just want a snack, a lunch with soup and/or salad, or an elegant dinner, "Sauerkraut's Incredible Fascinations: has recipes that cover all phases of eating. The most fascinating feature of this cookbook is that every recipe uses sauerkraut as one of its ingredients. When you prepare these recipes for you, your family, and/or your guests, they will be totally captured with a delightful awe of pure pleasure with each bite grasping your senses with a feeling of sauerkraut lovers' paradise. Highlights Over 150 great tasting sauerkraut recipes, old and new, plus: How to make sauerkraut How to can sauerkraut How to freeze sauerkraut  Sauerkraut Yankees: Pennsylvania Dutch Foods & Foodways (The Islands series) $19.95 `Sauerkraut Yankees' by Pennsylvania Food Historian, William Woys Weaver is a treatise and concordance based on a Pennsylvania Dutch cookbook published in Harrisburg in 1848. Titled `Die Geschickte Hausfrau' (The Handy Housewife) and written in `Pennsylvania High German', it was a collection of traditional German and New World recipes done by a printer who acquired many of the recipes by simple plagiarism from many different American and German sources. While this book is based on the 160-year-old volume, the author contributes an enormous editorial labor to make the material accessible to the modern cook and scholar. And scholarly indeed is this exposition of Pennsylvania Dutch cooking in general. I am from a Pennsylvania Dutch background and have lived on the fringes of this world for all my life and I found things about this group that I have never heard before. And, after having read dozens of books on the nature of French, Italian, Italian regional, Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, Philippine, Greek, Lebanese, Moroccan, Turkish, and Thai cuisines, I have to say that this book gives as good or better treatment of the nature of its subject than any others I have read! It is important that what I mean here is not the culinary virtues of the recipes but the illuminating value of the scholarship. In fact, I would NOT recommend this book if what you want is a good book of Pennsylvania Dutch recipes. For that, you should go to any number of books by Betty Groff, Phyllis Good, or Mary Showalter. The latter's book `Pennsylvania Dutch Cooking' is especially good, larger collection of recipes. To that litany of world cuisines, I should add that I have not seen as good an exposition of either `Southern' or `Tex-Mex' cuisines, the two other most clearly defined `home grown' cuisines. While there are dozens of excellent books on `Southern' cooking, not one of them fully characterizes the essence of what distinguishes this cuisine from its European antecedents. Although I must say that southerner James Villas and New Englander John Thorne have both done excellent essays on important aspects of Southern cooking. Appropriate to the year in which Weaver's source text was first published, it was aimed at the original wave of south German immigrants to Pennsylvania. These are the Mennonites, Amish, Lutherans, and Moravians who came seeking religious freedom in William Penn's colony before the Revolutionary War. And, just as Italian cuisines were transformed by the greater wealth of food available in the New World, so the German's were able to indulge to the hilt all their culinary inclinations. Unlike the Italians who were virtual vegetarians due to the cost of meat in their native Italy, the South Germans tended to have a very high preference for meat over vegetables. The meat of choice, of course, was pork, as pigs were much easier to raise in Pennsylvania. Sheep did not do well in the Lancaster County summer, and lamb meat simply didn't work well in transposed pork recipes. And, in spite of the great reputation of the Italians for making full use of the porkers, it is the Germans who actually have the widest variety of cured sausages. And, there are the famous scrapples and pig's stomach dishes. No wonder Emeril Lagasse loves Pennsylvania Dutch cooking (`Pork fat rules'). The most distinctive combination of flavors in this cuisine is represented by the famous dish `Schnitz un Gnepp' which may be considered the Pennsylvania German's version of cassoulet. It combines acid from dried apples, starch from dumplings, and sweet and salty flavors from the braising liquid. It's interesting that many of the dishes commonly associated with the Pennsylvania Dutch such as shoo fly pie are actually late arrivals. And, beef becomes a more important component of Pennsylvania Dutch cooking when the beef ranching in the Midwest and the southwest, plus the railroads for carting them to Chicago and the East make it impractical for Lancaster county small farms to compete in the Baltimore and Philadelphia markets with beef prices. So, they started eating the beef themselves. This book is oddly reminiscent of the better presentations of Medieval and Renaissance recipes and cookbooks. As in those cases, the original authors gave few exact measurements of ingredients and did not spell out methods in great detail. All of this was assumed since the original authors were writing for people who either learned to cook over many years at their mother's side or as an apprentice to a cook in a royal court or wealthy household. Thus, the author gives us an English translation of the original `High Pennsylvania German' text and follows this with an exposition of both culinary details the recipe may be assuming and the historical context for each recipe. Each recipe is also presented with an English name, the name in the book (high Pennsylvania German) and a Pennsylvania Dutch dialect (`Pennsylfanisch') name. The commentary also translates, where necessary, the cooking method from open hearth to modern oven or stovetop. The book does not give the recipes in the same order as in the original. It rearranges them to fit modern cookbook topics with chapters on: Meats and Hearthside Savories What the Dutch Call Gefliggel (Poultry) Fish and Shellfish A Karrich of Vittles and Herbs (Vegetable Side Dishes) Soups, Broths, and Stews Puddings, Pies, and Other Sweets Siesses and Sauieres (Fermenting, Canning, and Preserves) Heady Punches and Small Beers The chapter on pies and sweets is an ample confirmation of Wayne Harley Brachman's (`American Desserts') description of the Pennsylvania Dutch as `dessert central' for the United States. The chapter on canning explains why the leading producer of catsup (H. J. Heinz) is a Pennsylvania company! This is clearly a book for people who love to read about food. If you simply want a good chicken potpie recipe, get James Beard's book on poultry. But, if you love connecting the dots between foods at different times and different places, this is a book for you! |
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