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THE NEW AMERICAN COOKING  By Sheilah Kaufman
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"Forty years ago most food was tasteless and odorless."

For cookbook author Joan Nathan, food is the story of a family and its traditions (cultural and religious), and the food memories members of the family have (from family meals, holidays and special events). But what memories will your children have if their food is 'carry out'? Nathan hopes that families will hold on to their traditional foods so their children will also have these memories of them, and they won't be lost to the next generation.

THE NEW AMERICAN COOKING:280 Recipes Full of Delectable New Flavors From Around the World as Well as Fresh Ways with Old Favorites (Knopf, NY) is a "small taste of America" or a "day in the life of America" and is a vivid, almost passionate chronicle of America's diverse culinary and cultural traditions. The influence of immigrants from diverse areas of the world over the past 40 years who brought with them the culinary history of their native lands has created food that is fresh, spice, and full of flavor. The book is loaded with good recipes and their stories from farmers, famous chefs, and everyday cooks who produce and prepare our food and the many ethnic groups and immigrants that came to this country but have kept many of the "old or family recipes" they brought here. The recipes cover "dress up food", everyday food, and traditional food.

Forty years ago, American food meant meatloaf, macaroni and cheese, white bread, and Jell-o. Today in America, a burger comes in the guise of a Portobello mushroom, chick peas have become a salad staple, and kiwis are lunchbox treats. Our tables are now filled with pasta with pesto, tacos, and exotic stir-frys. This is the new American cooking, and Nathan sets out to explore the changes that have made American cooking more exciting than ever before. More than a cookbook Nathan set out to explore the changes that have made American cooking more exciting than ever before.

Recipes she discovered include pea soup with kaffir leaves, Ecuadorian shrimp ceviche, chicken yasa from Gambia, and Iraqi rice-stuffed Vidalia onions. The story behind each recipe gives us a portrait of our deliciously diverse national culinary culture.
 

BREAKFAST FRUIT SALAD WITH GINGER AND MINT

Joan traveled all around the USA collecting the recipes and stories showing how American cooking has never been as exciting as it is today. This recipe is from Prune, a tiny, homey restaurant on New York's lower East side. The fruits used can change with the season, and if you don't want to bother with ginger syrup, just sprinkle crystallized ginger over the fruit.

Ginger Syrup:

• 1 cup water
• 1/ 2 cup sugar
• one 2-inch piece of fresh gingerroot, peeled

Salad:

• 1 apple, diced
• 1 pint blueberries
• 1 cup diced honeydew melon
• 1 cup diced cantaloupe
• 1 cup red or green grapes
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint

Prepare syrup: place the water, sugar, and gingerroot in a pan , bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer uncovered to reduce the liquid by half (about 20 minutes). Set aside.
In a large bowl, toss the apples, blueberries, honeydew, cantaloupe, and grapes together . Add a few tablespoons of the syrup and sprinkle the mint on top. Serves 8.

POTICA

This is a paper-thin sweet bread filled with walnuts, honey, sugar, and butter. Croatians who came to Minnesota's Iron Range to work the mines at the turn of the century likely brought this delicacy with them, but now just about everyone in Hibbing, Minnesota serves it at numerous celebrations. This version is from Jan Latick to this area from Slovakia, he brought with his a regional variation of the same cake, and won numerous blue ribbons for it. This user friendly version uses puff pastry dough instead of strudel dough.

• 3 cups walnuts (10 oz)
• 1/ 3 cup sugar
• 1/ 4 cup light brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 large egg
• 4 tablespoons light or heavy cream
• 2 sheets prepared puff pastry dough (about 17 oz)
• 1 egg yolk

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a 9x11-inch jelly roll pan.
Place the nuts in a food processor with the steel blade, add both sugars, honey, cinnamon, egg, and 3 tablespoons of the cream, and pulse a few times until the mixture is the consistency of a chunky paste.
Flour a work surface and roll out 1 sheet of puff pastry to form a 12x 16-inch rectangle. Smear half the filling all over the dough, leaving a 1-inch border all around.
Starting at the narrow 12-inch end, roll of the pastry like a jelly roll, tightly but gently, tucking in the sides as your roll. Place on the baking pan and repeat with the second sheet and the remaining filling. Mix the yolk with the remaining cream and brush the glaze over the potica. Bake for about 45 minutes of until golden brown. Cool slightly and transfer to a serving plate. Serve warm or at room temperature. Serves 12.

SAUTÉED BABY ARTICHOKES WITH FRESH HERBS
 

I set out for Castroville, California one day in mid-March when the artichoke season was in full swing. Bright oxalis flowers carpeted the green cactus-like artichoke plants. A member of the cardoon family, each plant grows four different sizes of artichoke: jumbo, large, medium and baby. The baby artichoke was what brought me.
In the fields, I watched Mexican-American workers handpick the artichokes, tossing them into canastas, or wicker baskets, strapped to their backs. At the end of each row, a conveyer belt awaited the baskets. The artichokes were dumped into boxes, then either transferred to the cooler or loaded onto huge refrigerated trailers that came right up to the fields.
Could the Italian farmers who brought over the first root stock of red globe artichokes to San Francisco in 1921 have imagined such an industry? Three years after those farmers arrived, they migrated south to Castroville, where the temperate, foggy weather made the area more fertile for growing the tubers. In 1924 four of the original artichoke-growers formed Ocean Mists, an artichoke-growing and -distributing company that now controls 90 percent of production in America and Canada, producing hundreds of millions of artichokes each year on twenty-five thousand acres of farmland.
Baby artichokes aren't really babies; they're fully grown. What makes them special is that the stem is an extension of the heart, the most flavorful part of the vegetable.

• 8 baby artichokes
• Juice of 1 lemon
• Sea salt to taste
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped (about 3 teaspoons)
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint or fresh Italian parsley
• Sea salt to taste
• Freshly ground pepper to taste