Cooking from the Heart: 100 Great American Chefs Share Recipes They Cherish - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

MICHAEL J. ROSEN is the author or editor of some fifty books for adults and children, several of which have benefited Share Our Strength, on whose Board of Directors he has served for a dozen years. His other books include poetry, picture books, the humor biennial Mirth of a Nation, and the cookbook Midnight Snacks. He lives in central Ohio.

A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book will benefit SHARE OUR STRENGTH, one of the nation’s preeminent antihunger agencies. Its programs include Taste of the Nation® and the Great American Bake Sale®, a nationwide fund-raising event that targets childhood hunger. Since 1984, Share Our Strength has distributed more than $68 million to fight hunger worldwide. For more information, visit www.strength.org.
RICHARD RUSSO, who contributed the Foreword, is the best-selling author of Empire Falls, The Whore’s Child, Nobody’s Fool, Straight Man, and other fiction.

Aus dem Klappentext

America s best-known chefs in a stellar gathering recall the dishes that warm their hearts in a collection benefiting one of the nation s leading antihunger organizations.

Cooking from the Heart features one hundred of the country s most beloved and well-known chefs, who each contribute not only a superb dish whether a holiday tradition, comfort food, cross-cultural innovation, or family classic but also the story of why that dish means the world to them. The chefs speak as parents, children, partners, neighbors, husbands, wives, and friends. Cooking from the Heart is a joyous collection of recipes in which love is always the first ingredient. Here are Ming Tsai and his family wrapping potstickers on the Ping-Pong table in his grandmother s house; Gale Gand and her son making pie crusts with a rolling pin that s been in their family for five generations; Seth Bixby Daugherty improvising a mulberry crisp on a cross-country peace march; Marcel Desaulnier recounting the Christmas his mother sent him her chocolates and cookies while he was serving in Vietnam; and Lidia Bastianich crushing herbs under her infant grandchildren s noses to awaken their senses to rich aromas. From Jean-Georges Vongerichten s grandmother s Alsatian Lamb Stew to Rick Bayless s hometown Orchard Peach Cobbler, from Sara Moulton's Grilled Fish discovered on a magical trip to Greece to Emeril Lagasse s favorite Bolognese Sauce for Sundays with friends, Cooking from the Heart presents an inexhaustible range of recipes you ll want to make your own. These are stories to cherish; they will remind you of and even inspire your own family s mealtimes and traditions.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Allen Susser LOBSTER AND MANGO SUMMER ROLLS

I grew up in Brooklyn, where mango meant one of the tropical flavors in the fruit salad. Not exactly an earth-shattering encounter. So nothing prepared me for the experience of mangoes that greeted me in South Miami, where I came to live and work: the whole neighborhood possesses a deep ambrosia when the mango trees bloom, and the varieties of mangoes exceed anything I could have imagined. We have 150 kinds just in this region. In India, where mangoes have been cultivated for four thousand years, there are more than four hundred varieties. Bar none, the mango is the most popular fruit in the world, and every tropical culture uses its native fruit in distinct ways. Cubans love the Toledo mango, the Vianado. In Jamaica they prize the Julie or East Indian mango. The Edward, or the Zill, is popular in South Florida.

Since moving here, I have been on a quest to sample as many kinds of mango as I can. Even on my travels I seek out new varieties; I think I'm up to 250 types. Some mangoes have peach and pineapple flavors, a tropical cinnamon aroma, and an aftertaste like pine or dried fruit or lemon. The Preacho, a Cuban mango, has a deep floral aroma with a distinct scent of candied orange peel. The Neillium is an Indian mango with clove and cinnamon aromas and red-berry, plum, and apricot flavors. The Madame Francis from Haiti has hints of anise, cinnamon, caramel, and fig.

The mango's spectrum of colors is just as astonishing: green, pink, red, orange, red-orange, yellow, canary yellow, crimson, and ruby. And their size can range from the peach-size Cuban mangoes to the cantaloupe-size Mexican Oro mangoes.


LOBSTER AND MANGO SUMMER ROLLS Serves 4


1 tablespoon coarse salt

One 1 1/2-pound live Maine lobster

1 tablespoon fish sauce

1 teaspoon sugar

3 tablespoons fresh lime juice

1 small Thai chile, seeded and minced

12 large Thai basil leaves, chopped

2 fresh cilantro sprigs, chopped

1 cup shredded arugula

1 large ripe mango, peeled, pitted, and julienned

4 rice paper wrappers, 8 inches in diameter


1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil, add the salt, and plunge the lobster into the pot. Cover the pot and boil for 10 minutes. Remove the lobster from the water and transfer it to a platter to cool slightly. Crack the shell and remove the meat from the tail and claws. Freeze or discard the shells. Slice the meat and set aside. (The lobster can be prepared and refrigerated 1 day in advance.)

2. Combine the fish sauce, sugar, lime juice, and chile. Mix in the basil, cilantro, and arugula. Add the mango and toss gently.

3. Fill a shallow dish or pan with warm tap water and spread a cotton cloth on the work surface. Submerge a wrapper in the water for 10 to 30 seconds. Remove it from the water just as it turns limp and carefully spread the soggy wrapper flat onto the cotton cloth. Repeat with each wrapper.

4. Carefully retoss the salad and place a mound of the mixture in the middle of each wrapper. Divide the lobster meat evenly, placing the slices on top of each mound of salad.

5. To make the wrap, roll the bottom of the rice wrapper toward the middle, fold in both sides, and continue to roll toward the free edge. (If the wrapper cracks or doesn't roll easily, use a new wrapper and soak it longer.)

X Cut the rolls on a diagonal and place the pieces on small plates, garnished with the remaining salad.


When I first opened my restaurant, I placed a little 2 X 1-inch ad in the local Topical News--"I trade dinner for mangoes. Bring me your backyard fruit"--and it listed my phone number. I've done this every year since, and during the summer I almost have more fruit than I can use.

Here's a typical story: A mango tree blooms in December or January, and as the months go on, the fruit forms so that by May or June the mangoes are a pretty good size. Sometime in June the family has its first ripe fruit. Everyone is thrilled. Then, during the next week of ripening fruit, a couple dear friends and relatives receive a perfect mango from the family's very own tree. Then the ripe mangoes fill a basket or a shopping bag that someone takes to work to share. And then two weeks pass, and suddenly they're asking everyone, "Did I give you some of our mangoes yet? Please, take." Then the following week--it's mid-July now--mangoes are dropping from their tree every hour, squirrels are taking bites from them, and their yard's a sticky, rotting mess. That's when they bring us a wheelbarrow full of mangoes. It's a wonderful community connection, and people are so proud to be sharing their fruit with "Chef Allen."

Then, in exchange, we create a full-course dinner for each couple that brings us mangoes, and we include some of their own fruit in the dishes we serve them. For many of our neighbors this is their first truly grand dining experience.

We use the fruit in every possible way: I make mango martinis, mango mojo, mango upside-down cake, mango tarte tatin with ginger, mango chutneys, mango ketchup. I stew them, grate them when they're still green and unripened, grill them, use them in curries and salsas and ice creams. I simply can't exhaust the possibilities.

This particular recipe is a refreshing appetizer that brings mango together with lobster, another resource that's especially sweet and bountiful in summer. I suppose if my restaurant were in Maine, I'd be trading dinners for lobsters. The rice paper makes a simple envelope, transparent enough to let the arugula, cilantro, and chopped chiles brighten the flavors of the meat and the mango.



The New York Times called chef Allen Susser "the Ponce de Leon of Florida cooking." His cuisine is a fusion of the world's tropical cultures in a sweet, spicy, and aromatic harmony. Chef Allen's is Miami's premier restaurant, rated number one for food in the 2002 Zagat Survey. Allen is the author of The Great Citrus Book, The Great Mango Book, and Allen Susser's New World Cuisine and Cookery.




Ming Tsai PORK AND APPLE POTSTICKERS WITH DIM SUM DIPPER

Being Chinese, I've probably made and eaten more dumplings than any other food. Steamed, boiled, panfried, deep-fried: dumplings have filled my life. I have very distinct memories of sitting with my grandmother and my mother to roll dumpling skins at a large table and help fold them around the fillings. We'd have whole meals based on dumplings: the traditional pork filling (with garlic, ginger, and shaoxing wine) and then a filling of gyou tsai (garlic chives).

We had a Ping-Pong table in the basement of our home in Dayton, Ohio. Every five years or so my father's three brothers and their families would visit over the Christmas holidays. We'd be ten cousins and four sets of parents talking for hours as we made potstickers around that long green table.

At my grandfather's house we'd have special dumpling nights where I would attempt to outeat my grandfather. I was in third or fourth grade, and I'd manage twenty dumplings. I'd also try to eat more sambal or hot sauce than him. It was something of an honor to outdo my grandfather. For Chinese people food is culture.

Admittedly, with only two thousand people of Chinese descent in Dayton, we weren't offered much in the way of Asian groceries. Whenever we traveled, we'd fit in a side trip to some city's Chinatown. Toronto's was our favorite. We'd pack our station wagon with cooking tools, Chinese pastries, spices, black bean sauces--everything we missed. I'm sure we looked like smugglers coming back across the border.

My other grandparents moved to Taipei after the Cultural Revolution, and I'd visit them every summer. Along with improving my Chinese speaking and learning more about our culture, I'd get to eat...