Fried Walleye and Cherry Pie: Midwestern Writers on Food (At Table) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 080323645X ISBN 13: 9780803236455

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 2013

Synopsis

With its corn by the acre, beef on the hoof, Quaker Oats, and Kraft Mac n’ Cheese, the Midwest eats pretty well and feeds the nation on the side. But there’s more to the midwestern kitchen and palate than the farm food and sizable portions the region is best known for beyond its borders. It is to these heartland specialties, from the heartwarming to the downright weird, that Fried Walleye and Cherry Pie invites the reader. 

The volume brings to the table an illustrious gathering of thirty midwestern writers with something to say about the gustatory pleasures and peculiarities of the region. In a meditation on comfort food, Elizabeth Berg recalls her aunt’s meatloaf. Stuart Dybek takes us on a school field trip to a slaughtering house, while Peter Sagal grapples with the ethics of paté. Parsing Cincinnati five-way chili, Robert Olmstead digresses into questions of Aztec culture. Harry Mark Petrakis reflects on owning a South Side Chicago lunchroom, while Bonnie Jo Campbell nurses a sweet tooth through a fudge recipe in the Joy of Cooking and Lorna Landvik nibbles her way through the Minnesota State Fair. These are just a sampling of what makes Fried Walleye and Cherry Pie—with its generous helpings of laughter, culinary confession, and information—an irresistible literary feast.

About this title

About the Author

 Peggy Wolff has written on food and food culture for publications including the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Hartford Courant, and Orlando Sentinel. She is the food editor for REALIZE Magazine.
 

Reviews

Food writer Wolff, who grew up in the Midwest and still resides there, has amassed a brilliant collection of Heartland food stories. The contents of the book range from essays by novelists (Elizabeth Berg, Jaquelyn Mitchard, and others) to works by newspaper columnists, cookbook authors, and chefs. Some are humorous; others are nostalgic, or are filled with fascinating historical facts and tidbits. The collection is organized into four major parts: Midwestern Staples (including an in-depth look at Chicago's Italian beef sandwiches by Michael Stern and an ode to the fried pork tenderloin sandwich by Jon Yates); Distant Cultures, in which Minnesotan Anne Dimock and others examine the foods that arrived with various immigrants (in her case, rhubarb, a German-Scandinavian dessert essential for pie, kuchen, and kram); Holidays, Fairs, and Events (readers will be amply sated by Lorna Landvik's culinary tour of the Minnesota State Fair); A Full Belly (including Douglas Bauer's view of his mother's hard work in her Iowa farm kitchen) and The Midwestern Sweet Tooth (Bundt cakes, fudge, and beyond, as in When a Pie Is More Than a Pie by cookbook writer Jeremy Jackson). The 30 essays and 14 recipes (a portion of which are reprints) bring the flavors of the Midwest vividly to life; but, more importantly, they dig deeply into the universal connections between food, family, time, and place. (Nov.)

With its acres upon acres of cornfields and orchards, the Midwest ought to have some of the country’s best foods. In summer, that’s often true. But as with the rest of America, midwesterners have too often turned their backs on their most flavorful foods in favor of an easy drive-through at a fast-food outlet. This anthology of essays on the Midwest’s best and most unpretentious foods should go a long way toward regaining the respect the heartland’s cuisine ought to enjoy. Jacquelyn Mitchard celebrates the area’s most typical summer fare, sweet corn, especially its marvelous new variety, Mirai. Donna Pierce reminds us that midwestern cuisine owes much to the black migration. Lorna Landvik reveals that the institution of state fairs both enshrined local foodways and introduced novel traditions. The national reach of midwestern culinary art emerges in professional chef Gale Gand’s feature on a Hoosier cheese maker. For regional collections. --Mark Knoblauch

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 080323645X
• ISBN 13: 9780803236455
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 280
• Editor: Wolff Peggy