Enjoy the summer flavors of New England from anywhere in the country with Scott-Goodman's sensational recipes.
|
| JILL CORNFELD has been a passionate cook and baker since the age of 8, when she learned the difference between t and T in a recipe, and the snickerdoodles had to be thrown away.
|
|
July 2005
|
|
The Beach House Cookbook
By Barbara Scott-Goodman
Are there any new recipes in the world? When you skim through a book like The Beach House Cookbook you think, no, everyone’s just making the same old tomato-based clam sauce for linguine or spaghetti with an occasional variation: fresh basil or hot pepper flakes or saffron. But really different dishes? Those are hard to find.
You won’t find many of them here. But this is a pleasant book with plenty of color photographs of the dishes—photogenic boiled lobster, grilled peaches with red wine sauce. And you can drink in the scenes of summer: dog at the ocean’s edge, a pot of blooming geraniums.
Eighty recipes may not seem like a lot, but many of them are “withs”: with mango salsa, with pineapple relish and so on, which creates quite a few more dishes, mostly in the form of well-seasoned dressings and salsas.
Summer’s highlights, wonderful produce and outdoor grilling, are definitely the stars of The Beach House Cookbook, with recipes such as Farmers Market Vegetable Soup with Pesto Sauce, Lemon-Glazed Pound Cake with Fresh Cherries, Fresh Corn Fritters, Cherry Tomato and Corn Salsa, and Grilled Herbed Sirloin Steak. Beach House Burgers are finished with a slice of melted mozzarella and a spoonful of chopped tomatoes and basil. I wanted desperately to make the Thai Barbecued Chicken but felt that the indoor broiler would not give it the chance it deserves.
Barbara Scott-Goodman has a firm grasp on building a good chowder, and her variations—Shellfish Chowder, Lobster and Corn Chowder, and a blended Clam Chowder that’s served cool—are an agreeable lead-in to the other seafood dishes. If you can find the smaller Italian clams, Spaghetti with Vongole Clam Sauce is well worth your time. In season, try Cornmeal-Crusted Soft-Shell Crabs with Red Pepper Tartar Sauce.
Entertaining is a part of most summer spots, and the summer cook will find a decent repertoire of appetizers and attractive desserts, including Smoked Salmon Tartare with Dill Sauce, Low-Country Pickled Shrimp, Grilled Caponata, Mini Crab Cakes and Summer Cheesecake with Blueberry Sauce, an easy variation that uses just a pound of cream cheese and has a deeply satisfying and beautiful fruit sauce on top. Party-givers will like the chapter on beach house drinks.
*Prices and product availability are verified at publication but are subject to change.
|
