When Cornelia Street was a bit of an attenuated alley back in 1993 - you really only went through it on the way somewhere
else - David Page and Barbara Shinn opened a restaurant called Home. One of Home's first claims to fame was its homemade
ketchup - which one greeted with suspicion - after all, what was wrong with Heinz - until the first taste.
"Recipes From Home" is a charming compilation of both Page and Shinn's family recipes as well as those they serve at Home. The book has family snapshots and is full of anecdotes about Uncle Gene and Granda McCall. These recipes differ from Mrs' Wilkes' in that they tend to make their own condiments, mayonnaises of different colors and flavors, ketchup(s), and of course, canned soup isn't welcome here. But in the landscape - that horizon where food and desire meet, on a more visceral level these cookbooks are soulmates. The best cookbooks make you hungry, and eager to run into the kitchen and start cooking. "Recipes From Home" is one such cookbook. The Famous Tomato Ketchup really is all that, I assure you. And there are a multitude of recipes which I eagerly anticipate cooking.
But...the recipe that evoked my mother - who for me, was home - the one that made me feel as though some things remembered were in fact better than you'd thought - well, that recipe was the Butterscotch Pudding. I know from my recipe testing days that a truly excellent Butterscotch Pudding is ultimately far more complex than you'd think it could be.
But this was falling asleep in the sun, the first sip of honeysuckle nectar in the summer, the comforting creaminess of ice cream without the cold - it was - and is - the ne plus ultra of butterscotch. If you buy this book for no other reason (and there are plenty of other reasons) buy it for this recipe. And bring a little of Home, home.
By Sukey Pett
