Product Description

Home is "everything you could hope for in a quintessentially cozy Greenwich Village restaurant" (Food & Wine). With its "surprisingly fresh interpretations of Middle American dishes" (Christian Science Monitor), this "dreamy little all-American place" (New York) is, in fact, a home away from home. New Yorkers line up outside for meals that have the power to rekindle food memories from childhood. Of course, with the deft hand of chef David Page, they now taste rather grown up. Tater Tots become cornmeal-crusted garlic potato cakes; picnic coleslaw made with celery and celery root accompanies spiced pork chops; blue cheese and apple transform a grilled cheese sandwich; and the ketchup is always homemade. In this unabashed ode to American home cooking, you'll also find recipes for scalloped potatoes, macaroni and cheese, roast chicken, homemade pickles, chocolate pudding, and cookies "that would make anyone's front porch a neighborhood Mecca" (Gourmet).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1053563 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 448 pages

From Amazon.com
In Recipes from Home, husband-and-wife cooking team David Page and Barbara Shinn invite readers to take a seat at their family table for a heaping serving of the reinterpreted American comfort food they've been popularizing at their tiny Greenwich Village restaurant, Home, since 1993. Taking a cue from the legendary James Beard's pronouncement that "American food is anything you eat at home," Page and Shinn pack their book with over 250 recipes for all-American family favorites that conjure up the nostalgia of Sunday dinners, holiday gatherings, Fourth of July picnics, county fairs, and weekends at the beach.

Chapters reach from "The Pantry" (where you'll discover the recipe for their signature Famous Tomato Ketchup) to "The Canning Shelf" (with recipes for Green Tomato-Apple Chutney, Pickled Peppers, and Raspberry Jam). Their Simply Roasted Chicken and Grilled Blue Cheese and Apple Sandwiches will have you running to the kitchen, and Steamer Clams with Local Ale and Lobster Rolls are destined to make an appearance at your next summer shindig. "Something Sweet" wraps things up with Frozen Lemon Icebox Cake with Strawberry Sauce, Chocolate Pudding, and their irresistible Peanut Butter Cookies.

Recipes from Home is sure to become a favorite on many kitchen bookshelves, and even armchair cooks will delight in wasting away a Saturday afternoon thumbing through the anecdotal recipe introductions and generation-spanning black-and-white family photographs featured throughout the book (they've even included a family tree). By the time you get to the recipe for Mom Page's Scalloped Potatoes, you'll feel like you're part of the family. Home sweet home, indeed. --Brad Thomas Parsons

From Publishers Weekly
In the spirit of James Beard, M.F.K. Fisher and Edna Lewis, this inspired work is at once a compendium of 255 recipes (including ancestral family recipes, accompanied by warm duotone family photos throughout) from the notebooks of Page, a major chef, and a lucid appeal for an American cooking tradition based on local products and the harvest calendar. Since opening their eponymous New York City restaurant in 1993, Page and Shinn have sought to give expression to Beard's famous pronouncement: "American food is anything you eat at home." Their cookbook abounds with beautifully simple, unpretentious dishes such as Sunflower Seed Pesto, Spring Mushroom and Sweet Pea Hash, and Toasted Angel Food Cake. Readers weary of recipes so elaborate they seem to require a sous-chef or conversely, tired supper-type cooking will appreciate Page's inventive yet straightforward approach. Although the chapters are arranged thematically, with sections devoted to such "basic" condiments as Apricot Ketchup and Maple-Bourbon Butter, they could just as well have been divided up by region. Tracing a path from their Midwestern childhood homes, where they were born into families of gifted amateur cooks, to the Bay Area kitchens of California and, finally, to their farm and vineyard on the North Fork of Long Island, the authors weave memories, thoughts on food and cooking, hints on technique and, of course, the recipes themselves into a seamless whole underscoring the point that superior home cooking calls for an awareness of the seasons and a relationship to the land. (May) Forecast: If Page and Shinn are as warm and appealing as their cookbook, their 13-city tour will inspire significant sales among home cooks looking to add a little zing to their meals.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Self-conscious midwesterners seeking validation of their native cuisine by sophisticated New Yorkers can find it in Recipes from Home David Page and Barbara Shinn, from Wisconsin and Ohio respectively, have established a reputation for solid American cooking at their Greenwich Village restaurant. There they entice jaded New Yorkers with scalloped potatoes and macaroni and cheese from their parents' and grandparents' recipes. Although their grandmothers probably didn't employ the plethora of fresh herbs that the authors call for, the humble origins of many of these dishes are evident. Nevertheless, lamb sausage with mint and mustard, appetizing as it may appear, is something few midwestern kitchens ever dreamed of turning out. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

The best cookbook I have seen in YEARS!!!
Home was my favorite restaurant when I lived in Manhattan--I was one of their earliest customers. I recently stumbled across this book, and was so pleasantly surprised to find recipes for some of the greatest dishes I have ever had: excellent simple roasted chicken, cumin crusted pork chops, lemony blueberry muffins--so many good things to eat!. I have made at least 10 things from this book--each better than the last, and none of them too difficult.

And the desserts! The chocolate pudding is TO DIE FOR!!! It alone is worth the price of admission if you ask me (or my newly addicted friend, Harry). And I think my whole family agreed that the apple pie from Home was the hit of our Thanksgiving this year, with the honey pumpkin coming in a close second. These recipes are just fabulous.

Further, this book is also a plain old good read. Brings back childhood memories of learning the ropes from my mother and grandmother and makes me want to get in the kitchen and start cooking! This book would be a great gift for anyone who loves to cook and who has love and respect for doing things right in the kitchen.

a big load of cholesterol
Does "homey comfort food" have to mean big doses of animal fat? I don't think so. If you like to cook, you know there are so MANY other books that have great, lower-fat (and easier) recipes than this book. Try some Italian, Moroccan, southern French, Japanese "home cooking" books instead.

Big Disappointment!
I was extremely disappointed with this book. While it was a nostaligic and somewhat interesting read, the book itself is very difficult to hold open while reading and the format is totally impractical as a cookbook.

The book is 10 1/2 inches tall by 5 3/4 inches wide by 1 3/4 inches thick. The printing runs so close to the inside margins that you have to break the spine of the book in order to pry it open far enough to read all the words. Holding the book open that wide is a challenge and a definite strain on the hands.

To use this book in the kitchen, you have to place a brick on it to keep the book open to the right page and prevent it from closing. Even then, the pages do not stay open wide enough to be able to read all of the ingredient measurements and instructions that are hidden in the center crease. Not to mention having to shift the brick to see the other half of the recipe.

The recipes are primarily down-home comfort foods with lots of butter, cream and other high-fat ingredients -- not for anyone concerned about their fat and cholesteral intake -- and the instructions make some recipes more complicated than they need to be.

In the back of the book is a section on home canning with a dozen or so basic and unusual recipes, which seem to have been added almost as an afterthought. This section is pretty rudimentary and the recipes leave a lot to be desired. If you're looking for a good source for recipes and canning information, this definitely is not it. Instead, you would be much better off with a cookbook like 'Blue Ribbon Preserves', which has an extensive selection of award-winning recipes and clear, detailed, up-to-date instructions.

While the storytelling and family history sections in 'Recipes From Home' have some entertainment value, they alone are not worth the price of the book. Unless you really thrive on frustrating cooking and reading challenges, pass on this book.