The Northern Heartland Kitchen

Description

The Northern Heartland is governed by the seasons. The long and cold winter, bright and warm summer, and crisp and refreshing spring and fall shape our physical and emotional landscape. Shouldn't the seasons and their harvests also shape the way we eat? Beth Dooley's The Northern Heartland Kitchen presents delicious and practical solutions to the challenge of eating locally in the upper Midwest. Celebrating the region's chefs, farmers, ranchers, gardeners, and home cooks, this is the essential guide to eating with the year's local rhythms. Recipes are organized by season: fall and winter inspire Chestnut Soup and Venison Medallions with Juniper and Gin, while summer harvests contribute the ingredients for Watermelon Gazpacho and Grilled Trout with Warm Tomato Vinaigrette. Other chapters provide instructions on pickling and preserving food, as well as tips on growing your own food and getting the most out of your CSA or farmers' market. There are also profiles of local farmers, butchers, and chefs who are using new technologies-as well as rediscovering heritage practices-to enrich regional selections. Dooley shows that far from being a sacrifice, eating in season and locally is a tribute to the year's changing riches-encouraging an appreciation for the unmatched flavor of a juicy July tomato or a crisp October apple with garden salads, soups and stews, free-range meats and poultry, fish and game, farmstead cheeses, wholesome breads, pastries and fruit pies. The Northern Heartland Kitchen presents delicious recipes alongside the stories and compelling research that illustrate how eating well and eating locally are truly one and the same.

Beth Dooley has been covering the local food scene in the Northern Heartland for the past twenty-five years. She is a restaurant critic for the Mpls/St. Paul Magazine, writes for the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune's Taste section, and is coauthor with Lucia Watson of Savoring the Seasons of the Northern Heartland (Minnesota, 2005), which was nominated for a Beard Award. Dooley teaches cooking classes at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum and lives in Minneapolis with her husband and three sons.

"With this book Beth Dooley has squelched that old, out-of-touch snobbery that claimed, 'There's no Food there.' Food is alive and thriving here in the upper Midwest in more ways than most of us can count, and Beth has captured it all on these pages. So if you want to revel in the seasons and in the ingenuity and brilliance of local artisanship, sit back and start reading-then head for the kitchen." -Lynne Rossetto Kasper, host of public radio's national food show The Splendid Table (R) from American Public Media "The Northern Heartland Kitchen is a truly impressive book-thorough, smart, and enticing on so many levels. Beth Dooley has convinced me that there is indeed a delicious regional cuisine in the Northern Heartland, one informed by those farmers and crafters who fuel the new culinary world everywhere." -Deborah Madison, author of Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America's Farmers' Markets "Beth Dooley just the wrote the book I wish I had written. The Northern Heartland Kitchen is more than just a cookbook. It is a food literacy manual that guides the reader through the diversity of the seasons with well chosen and easy to follow recipes that draw on the very best our region has to offer. While doing so, she also educates us in many of today's most vital issues as they relate to food, nutrition, the environment, the economy and our future as omnivores in a shrinking world dominated by industrial agriculture. This book doesn't just reflect the deep seated pride of place that all of us in the Northern Heartland feel; it revels in it." -Lenny Russo, Executive Chef, Heartland