Edible Brooklyn: The Cookbook
by Rachel Wharton
Sterling Publishing
October 2011
$18.95/Hardcover
Color Photographs
ISBN-13: 978-1402785542

Contact: Blanca Oliviery
646.688.2548
boliviery@sterlingpublishing.com

How do we begin to tell the story of Brooklyn Food? Through our eaters, naturally. Brooklynites know food and seek out the best. And, like the borough’s eclectic population—which includes Italian, Asian, Polish, Mexican, Russian, you name it—Edible Brooklyn: The Cookbook is a crowd-sourced collective that captures the diverse, delicious, and dynamic culinary vibe of Brooklyn, New York. It chronicles and pays tribute to those who feed and sustain their community with fascinating profiles of the people, places, and foods that make Brooklyn so Brooklyn.

Brimming with tempting photographs, by Edible Communities co-founder, Carole Topalian, the delightful and unpretentious recipes in this book are culled from the kitchens and pantries of a farmstead cheesemonger, rooftop gardeners, a musician who writes ditties for summer ice cream trucks, the founder of one of the nation’s largest craft breweries, and many others who are among today’s thriving Brooklyn food and drink community.

It features more than 100 mouthwatering recipes and invaluable tips, techniques, and ideas, including Backyard Egg Tacos with Oven-Roasted Salsa Verde, Pickled Herring and Potato Salad with Crème Fraîche and Dill, Sheepshead Bay Fried Bluefish with Tartar Sauce, Fox’s U-Bet Egg Cream, and Tony’s Tiramisu. This is a cookbook with an opinion, one that advocates for preserving food traditions, savoring food experiences, and pulling back the curtain on where Brooklyn’s food comes from and how it gets here.

Part travel guide, part recipe collection, part great read, this volume is the first in a series of four Edible cookbooks, all from the Edible Communities family of magazines–and it offers a deliciously up close and personal view of one of American’s most exciting food fests.

About Edible Communities

Co-founded in 2004 by Tracey Ryder and Carole Topalian, Edible Communities is a network of 70 award-winning magazines published in distinct culinary regions across the United States and Canada. Edible Communities is the world’s leading publisher of information about local foods movement and was the recipient of the 2011 Publication of the Year Award from the James Beard Foundation.

About the Author

Rachel Wharton has been the Deputy Editor of both Edible Brooklyn and Edible Manhattan magazines since 2009. She won a 2010 James Beard Foundation journalism award for her columns on iconic restaurants in Edible Brooklyn. Wharton holds a master’s degree in Food Studies from New York University, where she focused her research on sustainable agriculture and food culture. She has lived in Brooklyn for eleven years.

Sample Recipes

Sausage and Pepper Grinders with Hot Pepper Jelly

From Cathy Erway, author of NotEatingOutinNY.com.

In the summer of 2010, author, food blogger,cook, and gardener Cathy Erway—she’s one of the bigger boosters of thecity’s local and sustainable foods scene—helped Brooklyn’s Sixpoint Brewery put in a rooftop farm and then started making the brewers lunch from the harvests (complete with eggs from chickens fed arich diet of spent grain). “This was a reallyeasy, make-your-own-sandwich lunch thatI served at the brewhouse,” she says ofher “tummy-filling and crowd-pleasing”creation, which borrows its yin and yangof warm, fatty sausages and crispy, cooling vegetables from the Vietnamese sandwich called a banh mi. While her beer brats and hot pepper jelly are from nearby farmers, the cukes, baby lettuces, and shallots are all roof-raised in Brooklyn—and her coarse-grain mustard was even made with Sixpoint brews.

Makes 6 Sandwiches

For the pickled shallots
1 TSP sugar
1 TSP salt
½ cup red wine vinegar
2 TBSP warm water
1 shallot, thinly sliced

For the sandwiches
3 fresh bratwursts
3–4 small cucumbers, such as Persian or Kirby
6 hoagie rolls, split
Baby lettuces, for topping
Hot pepper jelly, for serving
Coarse-grain mustard, for serving (optional)

Make the pickled shallots:
In a large Mason jar, stir together the sugar and salt with the vinegarand water until dissolved. Add the shallot slices, cover, and chill toquick-pickle while you prepare the rest of the ingredients. (Pickledshallots will last up to one week refrigerated.)

To make the sandwiches:
Place a heavy-bottomed, preferably cast-iron pan over medium heatand brown the bratwursts, turning occasionally, until fully cookedand firm, about 5 minutes (depending on the width of the sausages). Remove from pan and let cool a few minutes. Slice on the bias into1- or 1½-inch pieces.

Trim the stems from the cucumbers and cut on the bias into1 or 1½-inch pieces. Assemble the grinders by placing alternating pieces of sausage and cucumber on the hoagie rolls and top with the pickled shallots, lettuces, hot pepper jelly, and mustard.

Fox’s U-Bet Egg Cream

From Kelly Fox, executive vice president of H. Fox & Co., Inc.,makers of U-bet chocolate syrup.

There is little in the disputed history of the egg cream—New York’s iconic drink that contains no egg and no cream—that locals agree on. But one thing is for certain: an authentic drink must be madewith Brooklyn’s very own Fox’s U-bet chocolate syrup, made for five generations at H. Fox & Co., the family-run flavoring company. “The first time I ever made one was at a restaurant with my grandparents,”says Kelly Fox, who now runs the century old company.

Makes 1 egg cream

U-bet chocolate syrup
Whole milk
Seltzer

Spoon 1 inch of U-bet chocolate syrup into a tall, straight-sided 8-ounce glass. Add 1 inch of whole milk.

Pour in seltzer to just below the top of the glass. Stir gently, drink,and enjoy.

These recipes may be reproduced with the following credit:

Excerpted fromEdible Brooklyn: The Cookbook by Rachel Wharton. Sterling Publishing. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.