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).
Recipes from Home is an unabashed ode to American cooking--a phrase defined years ago by James Beard, the dean of American cookery, as anything you eat at home. This simple thought has guided the life and work of authors David Page and Barbara Shinnm whose long-awaited first book offers 255 home-inspired recipes and timeless memories straight out of their mothers' and grandmothers' kitchens, all deliciously reinvented for today.
Home cooking is perhaps a culinary paradox. Everyone has memories of Mom's cooking, but not everyone is eager to revisit the dry meatloaf and limp green beans of their youths. With the deft hand of David, the chef, husband, and co-owner with Barbara of Greenwich Village's beloved Home Restaurant, the food you remember from Mom has grown up. Tater Tots have evolved into cornmeal-crusted Garlic Potato Cakes. Iceberg lettuce pales when Warm Frisee Salad with Blue Cheese and Apples is brought to the table. Even crisp skillet-fried chicken gets a lift served with a garlicky olive gravy.
David and Barbara's own cooking has roots in their midwestern upbringings (he's from Wisconsin and she's from Ohio) and the wonderful extended families who shared their stories and their secrets. It stems too from the couple's travels along the backroads and into the cities, farms, and waters of America, where they dallied at fish fries and pork pulls, fireman's picnics and Fourth of July barbecues, and any festival that featured strawberries or oysters. However, nothing taught them more about cooking, they say, than the "simple bounty of the land."
Recipes such as Bay Scallop Chowder with Sweet Cream, Garlic Greens, The Simplest Tomato Salad, Baked Spring Flounder, Lemon-Orange Rice, and Smoked Duck Breasts capitalize on America's rich abundance of seasonal produce and local ingredients and celebrate the essence of real home cooking.
Dozens of treasured photographs of Thanksgiving dinners, backyard barbecues, summers at the shore--photos so recognizable that you'd think they came out of your own family's scrapbooks--accompany more American classics: scalloped potatoes, roast turkey, macaroni and cheese, chocolate pudding, and strawberry shortcake. Nor are good old-fashioned food arts forgotten. You'll find scores of slaws, relishes and pickles, jams and jellies, even homemade sausage, barbecue sauce, mustards, and their Famous Tomato Ketchup (the only kind served at Home Restaurant).
Since 1993, Home Restaurant has attracted an eclectic following of native New Yorkers and homesick out-of-towners who line up outside for meals that have the power to rekindle memories of good cooking, warmth, lively conversation. With Recipes from Home, David and Barbara, the new apostles of home cooking, invite you to come to the table and experience again the flavors and feelings of home.
