Ten years ago, former New York Times food columnist Molly O’Neill embarked on a transcontinental road trip to investigate reports that Americans had stopped cooking at home. As she traveled highways, dirt roads, bayous, and coastlines gathering stories and recipes, it was immediately apparent that dire predictions about the end of American cuisine were vastly overstated. From Park Avenue to trailer parks, from tidy suburbs to isolated outposts, home cooks were channeling their family histories as well as their tastes and personal ambitions into delicious meals. One decade and over 300,000 miles later, One Big Table is a celebration of these cooks, a mouthwatering portrait of the nation at the table.
Meticulously selected from more than 20,000 contributions, the cookbook’s 600 recipes are a definitive portrait of what we eat and why. In this lavish volume—illustrated throughout with historic photographs, folk art, vintage advertisements, and family snapshots—O’Neill celebrates heirloom recipes like the Doughty family’s old-fashioned black duck and dumplings that originated on a long-vanished island off Virginia’s Eastern Shore, the Pueblo tamales that Norma Naranjo makes in her horno in New Mexico, as well as modern riffs such as a Boston teenager’s recipe for asparagus soup scented with nigella seeds and truffle oil. Many recipes offer a bridge between first-generation immigrants and their progeny—the bucatini with dandelion greens and spring garlic that an Italian immigrant and his grandson forage for in the Vermont woods—while others are contemporary variations that embody each generation’s restless obsession with distinguishing itself from its predecessors. O’Neill cooks with artists, writers, doctors, truck drivers, food bloggers, scallop divers, horse trainers, potluckers, and gourmet club members.
In a world where takeout is just a phone call away, One Big Table reminds us of the importance of remaining connected to the food we put on our tables. As this brilliantly edited collection shows on every page, the glories of a home-cooked meal prove how every generation has enriched and expanded our idea of American food. Every recipe in this book is a testament to the way our memories—historical, cultural, and personal—are bound up in our favorite and best family dishes.
As O’Neill writes, "Most Americans cook from the heart as well as from a distinctly American yearning, something I could feel but couldn’t describe until thousands of miles of highway helped me identify it in myself: hometown appetite. This book is a journey through hundreds of ‘hometowns’ that fuel the American appetite, recipe by recipe, bite by bite."
Review
Molly O'Neill on Christmas Cookies
People ask me which all-American dish I got the most recipes for in the decade that I traveled across the United States gathering recipes and food stories for One Big Table: A Portrait of American Cooking. Meatloaf? Fried chicken? Macaroni and cheese? Nope. In fact, if I gathered all the recipes for all other American icons together in a single pile, it wouldn’t be half as high as the stack of Christmas cookie recipes that I was given.
There were, of course, dozens of variations on butter cookies and cookie press cookies, dozens of secrets to the making and baking of perfect ginger bread people, candy canes, trees and wreathes. But the majority of Christmas cookie recipes are simply special cookies, cookies that take time and a certain touch, cookies whose recipe is passed from generation to generation, cookies that express all that we wish we brought to the holiday kitchen--warmth, generosity and enough white picket fence fantasy to stretch from sea-to-shining-sea.
My mother’s French almond cookies are perfect example. There is no reason NOT to make the perfectly crisp almond cookies any time of the year. But my mother who, like many Christmas cookie maniacs, began baking a different batch of cookies the day after Thanksgiving and continued until she ran of storage room in the cold attic, baked these cookies only once a year. They keep well, so were always her first batch. To her six children and 14 grandchildren and great-grandchild, the smells of these confections is as much of the season as Frankincense, pine and myrrh.
When it comes to cookies, Christmas means "special," and "family" and "eat it while you can!" --Molly O'Neill
Featured Recipe: Virginia’s French Almond Cookies (Columbus, Ohio) from Molly O'Neill’s One Big Table
Virginia O’Neill began making Christmas cookies the day after Thanksgiving and continued making a batch a day until the twentieth of December. "I’d grown up as a single child, raised by a wealthy aunt and uncle who were older and quiet. They had cooks and servants and everything was always perfect. I distinguished myself by preparing dinner on the cook’s night off and by baking cookies and pies. I started collecting Christmas cookie recipes in grade school, and even after I married into a different life—my husband was a dashing working man and I had six children—my aunt and uncle expected me to bake. I used to love doing it. Hundreds of intricate, delicate cookies. It was a way of reconciling where I’d come from and what I’d become, I guess. Always use a little less butter than is called for, that is the secret. The French Almond cookies last for a month, if you store them in a tin, with wax paper between the layers."
Ingredients
1/2 pound (2 sticks) lightly salted butter, cut into chunks
1 1/4 cups packed light brown sugar
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
1 tablespoon honey
2 large eggs, well beaten
2 cups ground almonds
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup slivered almonds
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Cream the butter and sugars until smooth. Stir in the honey, eggs, and ground almonds. Combine the flour and baking soda, then add to the butter mixture. Mix well.
Pinch off a piece of dough the size of a walnut (about 2 tablespoons). Roll it between your palms to form a cigar shape. Place on the baking sheet.
Repeat, placing the cookies 2 inches apart. Push a slivered almond into the center of each cookie.
Bake until golden brown, about 10 minutes.
Immediately transfer to a wire rack to cool. Let the baking sheet cool and reline with parchment before shaping and baking more cookies.
Makes about 11 dozen cookies
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Featured Recipe: LaVerne’s Black Raspberry Bars (Arlington, Virginia) from Molly O'Neill’s One Big Table LaVerne Yost has always been an obsessed home cook, but since retiring, she has had more time to cook, talk about cooking, and eat other people’s cooking. She figures that she has traveled about fifty thousand miles in pursuit of fabulous food in the past decade and, sounding a little like Dorothy in Oz, she said that she has yet to find a sweet that can compete with these simple bars that her sister taught her to make "many, many years ago." They are delicious by themselves, or served warm with vanilla ice cream, Greek-style strained yogurt, whipped cream, or custard.
Ingredients
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 1/2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats (not instant)
One 12-ounce jar seedless black raspberry preserves
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Grease a 9 X 13-inch baking pan.
In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar with a fork. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt and add to the butter mixture. Stir in the rolled oats.
Press half the batter into the prepared pan. Spread the preserves on top. Crumble the other half of the flour-and-butter mixture over the preserves and bake for 25 minutes.
Allow to cool slightly, then cut into bars.
Makes about 24 bars
From One Big Table by Molly O’Neill. Copyright © 2010 by Molly O’Neill. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc, NY
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. O'Neill, former New York Times Magazine food writer and author (New York Cookbook), has compiled an informative and heartwarming refutation of the demise of American home cooking. Ten years and many miles in the making, this collection celebrates the nation's culinary diversity, both ethnically and agriculturally, and offers a uniquely intimate look at what home cooking in America is truly like today. O'Neill crossed the country, interviewing home cooks and spending time in the kitchens of recent immigrants. The results are enticing recipes that intertwine family stories, personal histories, and food. From stuffed Danish pancakes in Utah to tamales in Santa Fe and Vietnamese shrimp pancakes in Mississippi, this eclectic collection showcases the best this country has to offer. O'Neill also includes old-style American fare, including black-eyed pea and mustard greens soup, corn chowder, campfire trout, and bluegrass bass with Kentucky caviar. Sidebars abound on everything from black sea bass to Johnny Appleseed, Elvis to shrimp. As engaging in the armchair as it is in the kitchen, this book is an enduring testament to our historic traditions and the new culinary forays being made by American home cooks. (Nov.) (c)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* This is One Big Book, filled to the brim with anecdotes, references, information, memorabilia, and 800 recipes that are truly representative of all U.S. cultures and ethnicities. O’Neill, former New York Times Magazine food columnist, respected author (New York Cookbook, 1992), and TV host, has outdone herself. It’s difficult not to stop and savor every page, from the gee-whiz type of historical illustration and mouthwatering food photography to the stories of new and well-honed cooks. In fact, the documented recipes often seem like footnotes, even if they’re preserved lemons, borscht, cioppino, or feijoada (Brazilian black-bean stew), simply because of the powerful stories. Take a minute to meet painter-waterman Bobby Bridges, living on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, who imparts the secrets of his clam clouds (aka clam fritters), or Chicago’s Mark Reitman, a self-made expert on hot dogs as well as the founder of the Hot Dog University. Read more about Michigan celery, a subtle variety called Golden Hue. Flip to the pages celebrating the soul and food (barbecued chicken) or Gee’s Bend, Alabama, natives, a community made famous by its quilts displayed at New York’s Whitney Museum of Art. Perhaps no better and more humble quote summarizes O’Neill’s attempt to capture the spirit of our eating past and present than these comments from Alabamian Mary Lee Bendolph: “Old clothes have a spirit in them. I see that scrap of apron in a quilt and I remember the woman who wore that apron thin. Cooking is like that, too. I make my cornbread to remember all the cornbread that was made for me.” --Barbara Jacobs
Review
"A remarkable collection of recipes and life stories that is utterly unlike the usual all-in-one cookbook. One Big Table is a glorious hodgepodge of classic American dishes--lobster rolls, zucchini casserole and Boston baked beans--and newer additions to the country's repertoire such as Vietnamese pho, Lebanese date cookies, tzatziki and curried crab."—The Washington Post
“Overwhelming and yet completely absorbing, a cookbook to dip into for years.”—The New York Times
"Ms. O'Neill profiles landmark culinary moments and the people behind today's artisanal foods. In the hands of a lesser writer, it could all be hard going, but Ms. O'Neill renders it as sweet and light as apple crisp."—The Wall Street Journal
“In this thick, lavishly illustrated doorstop of a book, the armchair gastronome can embrace the full breadth of the contemporary American culinary scene.”—The Los Angeles Times
"One Big Table by Molly O'Neill (Simon & Schuster) is the cookbook everybody should (and will) be talking about. Part cookbook and part documentary, One Big Table paints a picture of America's vibrant culinary traditions. As everybody knows, the soul of a place is best encapsulated by what is found on the table. One Big Table does more than just show us what we like to eat—it reminds us who we are."—Christian Science Monitor
"A sprawling portrait of American cooking today."—The New York Post
“A profound reflection of America’s delicious diversity…O’Neill’s language is something to savor.”—Saveur
"O’Neill, former New York Times Magazine food writer and author, has compiled an informative and heartwarming refutation of the demise of American home cooking. Ten years and many miles in the making, this collection celebrates the nation’s culinary diversity, both ethnically and agriculturally, and offers a uniquely intimate look at what home cooking in America is truly like today...As engaging in the armchair as it is in the kitchen, this book is an enduring testament to our historic traditions and the new culinary forays being made by American home cooks."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"This is One Big Book, filled to the brim with anecdotes, references, information, memorabilia, and recipes that are truly representative of all U.S. cultures and ethnicities. O’Neill, former New York Times
Magazine food columnist, respected author (New York Cookbook) and TV host, has outdone herself. It’s
difficult not to stop and savor every page, from the gee-whiz type of historical illustration and
mouthwatering food photography to the stories of new and well-honed cooks."—Barbara Jacobs, Booklist (starred review)
"Part cookbook, part ethnography, part cultural history, this volume contains all that it advertises in its subtitle. . . . This survey of American home cooking from the ground level is wide-ranging, attractive, and just plain huge."—Library Journal
About the Author
For a decade, Molly O'Neill was the food columnist for The New York Times Magazine and the host of the PBS series Great Food. Her work has appeared in many national magazines, and she is the author of three cookbooks, including the award-winning The New York Cookbook. She lives in New York City.
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