Judith Fertig's Heartland: The Cookbook is big and beautiful, filled with lovely farm photos (like the one on its cover) and cozy stories from cities and towns across the Midwest. It's the kind of book that anyone with an interest in farm-to-table food in the Midwest would be happy to give -- or get -- as a gift. Just having it on my kitchen counter makes me feel good.
Heartland's terrific photos and engaging stories would make it a perfect coffee table book, if it were just that. But at its core Heartland is a cookbook, and an excellent one at that.
The recipes in Heartland are basic, and many of them use just a few ingredients; Fertig provides modern twists on traditional recipes, especially twists that save time and make things easy. Her recipe for "Roasted Lake Fish with Dill Pickle Remoulade and Frizzled Tomatoes" is a great example. While the recipe sounds like a mouthful, the preparation is incredibly simple. Remoulade may be a fancy French word -- and you can find recipes like this one from Emeril Lagasse to make it with 14 or more ingredients -- but Fertig has us make it by mixing mayonnaise, mustard, and dill pickle relish. And "frizzled tomatoes"? You can make those with a bit of olive oil and just about any herbs you choose.
Not everything in the book is this simple, but Fertig sticks to her modern-take-on-traditional-foods philosophy throughout. These recipes are familiar enough to please my wife's distant relatives from South Dakota and modern enough to please my own family from New York. As Fertig points out in the book's introduction (which discusses the proliferation of artisan foods, microbreweries, and heritage breeds in the Midwest in recent years), starting with locally grown, delicious, in-season ingredients is key.
Along these lines, the book's first chapter, Praise and Plenty: The Heartland Pantry, is dedicated to preserved foods, or those you might find in the idealized Midwestern pantry. In this chapter you'll find recipes for Farmhouse Butter, Home-Rendered Lard, Smoked Goat Cheese, Crisp Refrigerator Dill Pickles, Bacon-Infused Vodka (just the essentials, you know), and more. The recipes are uniformly simple, with very few ingredients. Before this book arrived in the mail, I'd never considered making my own butter (heavy cream, wooden spoon); now I can imagine why I wouldn't. I came home one day to find my wife making fresh Farmhouse Egg Pasta (flour, salt, eggs, rolling pin). It was among the best tasting pasta I've ever had.
Another thing that makes this cookbook stand out are the stories the author tells. Fertig is a Midwesterner herself, and it shows. In addition to the longer introductions that start each chapter, there are all sorts of tasty tidbits throughout the book, from the benefits of milk from grass-fed cows, to the origin of the honeycrisp apple, to the variety of sausages you can find in "Heartland butcher shops." Fertig names names throughout Heartland, like George Blacksmith the hickory nut enthusiast from Delafield, Wisconsin, and the tasty Silver Butter Knife Steak at Murray's in Minneapolis. These names and stories provide context for Fertig's recipes and give the book a warm feeling.
Heartland: The Cookbook is excellent -- substantial enough to give, accessible enough to want, and practical enough to use.
Special Offer: Cooks of Crocus Hill will be welcoming author Judith Fertig to their St. Paul location for a cooking class on May 20, and their offering a special deal to our readers. Call 651.228.1333 to register for the class and receive 15% off (when you call, tell the folks at Cooks that you saw it here).
Other Heartland Events:
May 20, 6-9 pm
Cooks of Crocus Hill
Cooking class
888 Grand Ave.
St. Paul, MN 55105
651 228 1333
May 21, time TBA
Cooks of Crocus Hill
Book signing
3925 W. 50th St.
Edina, MN 55424
May 21, 2 pm
Alfresco Casual Living
321 S Main St.
Stillwater, MN 55082
651-439-0814
Alfrescocasualliving.com
Lee Zukor is the founder of Simple, Good, and Tasty. Email him at lee@simplegoodandtasty.com.
