A Cook's Tour of Minnesota

Ann burckhardt, the former food editor at the Minneapolis Star "Tribune, has traveled thousands of miles across the state to visit the places that have shaped Minnesota's food heritage and to meet the people who grow, cook, market, and serve our state's favorite foods. With 40 memorable essays, 160 recipes, and over 100 delightful photos, Burckhardt takes us on a culinary tour of Minnesota as she attends small-town festivals, tours landmark institutions, and interviews well-known chefs. Burckhardt, a veteran food journalist, takes us behind the scenes of the most famous cooking contest ever, the Pillsbury Bake-Off, where she was judge for a number of years. She visits a miner's home on the Iron Range, the kitchen of a turn-of-the century lumber camp, a patch of "North Blues" on a blueberry farm, and the sacred arena at a Native American powwow. She samples fajitas at Cinco de Mayo, sweet potato pie at Rondo Days, and riskrem at St. Olaf's Christmas Festival. She meets the people behind Mennesota's famous food companies--Watkins, Land O'Lakes, Hormel, and others. And she profiles famous food personalities including cookbook author and radio host Lynne Rossetto Kasper; Father Bernard Reiser, whose flock runs a popular State Faire dinner; hotelier and television chef John Schumacher; and Scandinavian food authority and cookbook author Beatrice "Peaches" Ojakangas. Organized into four sections--Celebrations and Festivals, Savory Specialties, Memorable Places, and North Star Cooks--these forty essays include interviews, historical background, food trivia, cook's tips, and kitchen-tested recipes that will appeal to food lovers of all backgrounds and interests. Adventurous cooks will delightin preparing a variety of Minnesota foods to be shared in many settings: soups for busy family dinners, quick breads for mornings up at the lake, prizewinning deserts for holiday potlucks, The book also includes an up-to-date appendix with tourist and Web site information.