Lisa Messinger's
Cookbook Corner

Blue Plate Specials & Blue Ribbon Chefs
The Heart and Soul of America's Great Roadside Restaurants

By Jane Stern and Michael Stern (Lebhar-Friedman)

If hitching a ride were still fashionable, your thumb could be put to no better use than helping you get a seat in the jalopy of prolific Americana cookbook authors Jane and Michael Stern. Oh sure, it's possible they actually may have a brand-new, sleek sports car but, if you are familiar with their other excellent books—including Eat Your Way Across the U.S.A., Trucker: A Portrait of the Last American Cowboy, Goodfood and Roadfood—as well as their website chronicling their cross-country restaurant finds, you almost can't help but picture the married couple barreling down old back highways in a well-used jalopy.

One thing's for certain, after reading their appreciative takes on what, in this world of fast-food chains and cookie-cutter chain coffee shops, some believe to be a dying art form, you probably will want to jump in your own jalopy (or pack up the kids in the SUV) and head off to emulate their adventures. The pros make it more than possible, though, to pretty much do that without leaving your kitchen. Like an attentive relative who has collected the treasured comfort-food recipes of family elders, in Blue Plate Specials & Blue Ribbon Chefs: The Heart and Soul of America's Great Roadside Restaurants the Sterns once again breathlessly give not only a valuable travelogue, but the recipes to back up their gushing words. And that includes lots of culinary secrets.

"When we tell you that Emmy's buns are big—hot, yeasty swirls veined with cinnamon sugar and dripping white-sugar glaze—please try to imagine them, then quadruple the size you have imagined," write the Sterns of the cinnamon buns made a local legend by Emmy Bengston at the Anchor Inn in Farragut, Iowa. "Mrs. Bengston told us her secret: 'Potato water with all those nice potato goodies from the bottom of the pot.' Potato water—water in which you have boiled potatoes—rather than ordinary warm water, gives Emmy's buns a softness and flavor that make them, in our cinnamon-bun-eating experience, the best in Iowa—a state where cinnamon buns reign as the supreme bakery treat."

Each of the 55 chapters of the book is about a delectable spot like the Anchor Inn. Charmingly, this may be everywhere from Katz's—the Manhattan delicatessen in "When Harry Met Sally" where the famous moaning scene takes place—to the Woolworth's lunch counter in Santa Fe, New Mexico, from which they teach you to make an authentic Fritos pie blanketed with meat-and-bean red chili, a mountain of shredded cheese, chopped onions and jalapenos. Needless to say, this book is one of those rarities—good eating and good reading.

RECIPES
—Fritos Pie
—Emmy's Big Cinnamon Buns

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