****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
This book has honest to goodness recipes that actually taste like the traditional "fancy Dutch" food I grew up with in Berks County PA in the late 1940s and 1950s. I am not talking about a few stereotypical dishes, or non-authentic bland fare foisted on tourists. Instead, Weaver delves into the recipes and the history of the cuisine and uncovers both its European and American components.The book opens with a background chapter on the origins and cultural history of the PA Dutch. The emphasis is not solely on the Amish, but instead features the broader culture(s) and cuisine(s) of all of the immigrants from German speaking lands, who started arriving in PA during the colonial period. It was from these roots, along with borrowings from surrounding cultures, that a German/Swiss/Alsatian influenced regional style of cooking evolved on American soil, using locally available ingredients.The book is organized by types of recipes e.g., soups and noodles, breads, pork, fowl and holiday foods. The recipes not only give ingredients and proportions, but also frequently provide additional history, cultural information and variations. A more comprehensive detailed index is given at the end by food category, and local sources of harder to find ingredients are given. Recipes are given English and traditional dialect names. There is a dictionary of dialect culinary terms at the end of the book.Recipes cover not only well known one-pot meals, sometimes with interesting variations, but also more elegant and exotic dishes, using ingredients such as venison, oysters, pheasant, turkey, eel, rabbit and goose eggs. There are also many recipes for PA Dutch style condiments, such as flavored vinegars.As mentioned by others, the photography is beautiful. I became home-sick just looking at the picture on the dust jacket. The recipes and cultural information are well researched. Weaver has PA Dutch ancestors and is a well known expert on regional foods and heirloom gardening. He knows what he is talking about. If you are only familiar with a few iconic dishes, or have fallen for the faux tourist version of the cuisine, you may be very surprised and the wide range of known recipes and cooking styles that Weaver has researches and presented in this wonderful book.For those interested in regional/ethnic cuisine, and for those of PA Dutch origins wanting to get in touch with something more authentic than the misinformation that abounds about all things PA Dutch (German), this is a great place to start.
