Gift shoppers with a cook, or even a non-cook who's devoutly involved in the food world have a great option that's just arrived in bookstores. One Big Table, by Molly O'Neill, is one big book with hundreds of tales and recipes from all over the United States. These are what I call heritage recipes, all with a story attached; and many come with the acknowledged tweaks that cooks perform (those near-unconscious examples of how a recipe evolves).
O'Neill, a fine writer with three previous books to her credit and, among other things, ten years writing about food for the New York Times Sunday magazine, collected more than a half-dozen recipes from folks in the St. Louis metropolitan area. The best known of them is Rosalie Fiorino Harpole, who's written two Italian cookbooks, and who offers her recipe for wedding soup as well as her father William Fiorino's steak modiga with peppermint sauce.
Other contributors?
- Daniela Sales showcases her recipe for beef-and-lamb cevapi.
- Donna Drake-Dunninger gives us her grandfather Rinaldo Campana's toasted ravioli.
- Charles Insler offers Thomas Jefferson's chicken fricassee and explains a little touch of his own.
- The Starkloff family provides Dr. Starkloff's cider-brined grilled turkey story. Yes, that's Dr. Max Starkloff for whom the old City Hospital was named. And they also tell a story about Aunt Irma, who wrote The Joy of Cooking.
- And there's Mayme Meyers' version of veal Milanese.
And plenty of other wonderfulness, much of it focused on the different kinds of food made in this country, from green chile cheeseburgers to Vietnamese curried mussels to fried chocolate pies, as well as historical notes on everything from popcorn to chocolate cake. At 880 pages, it oughta get you through those long winter nights.
One Big Table ($50 list) can be found, among other places, at Left Bank Books downtown and in the Central West End, Pudd'nHead Books in Webster Groves, and Main Street Books in St. Charles.
