Beth Dooley

Explore mouth-watering recipes from the most vibrant and diverse culinary traditions of the hottest and driest places on earth – including the aromatic dishes and arid-adapted traditions from Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and the deserts shared by the US and Mexico. Chile, Clove, and Cardamom is a celebration of the fragrances and flavours of sun-drenched cuisines. Throughout this book, coauthors Beth Dooley and Gary Paul Nabhan reveal surprising patterns and principles among varied foods of traditional desert cultures, bringing to life the places, dishes and recipes that have been shaped by heat and drought and infused with bold flavours. Gary Paul Nabhan, world-renowned ethnobotanist, desert ecologist and literary naturalist, has written extensively about foods from the Middle East to the American Southwest. Joined by James Beard Award–winning food writer Beth Dooley, who has explored both Indigenous and perennial foods, the two have created a unique, stunning collection of over 90 recipes to honour the amazing cuisines that have influenced how all of humanity eats today. Steeped in history and memory, Chile, Clove, and Cardamom is also a beautifully photographed, in-depth guide to the essential spice blends that will help you build your own aromatic pantry, drawing on easy-to-follow cooking methods for planning your own desert meals. Inside, you’ll find: Main Dishes: Sticky Lamb Ribs, Spicy Orange Chicken, Roast Chicken with Tarragon and Capers, Stuffed Mexican Peppers in Yogurt Walnut Sauce, and Lamb Kebabs with Moroccan Spices and Pomegranate Molasses Glaze. Light Fare and Small Plates: Squash Blossom Fritters, Sonoran Flat Enchiladas, and Eggplant Fries with Desert Syrup. Dips and Sauces: Sonoran Tepary Dip, Fire Roasted Eggplant Tahini Dip, Aromatic Red Pepper Sauce, and Fig and Pomegranate Jam. Breads: Pocket Flat Breads, Pan de Semita, and Blue Corn Bread. Soups and Stews: Tunisian Chickpea Stew, White Bean Chili, and Watermelon and Cactus Fruit Gazpacho. Salads: Desert Succotash, Za’atar-Roasted Cauliflower, and Tangerine and Radish Salad. Drinks and Desserts: Pineapple Sotol Margarita, Canary Islands Pastries, and Phyllo Nut Pinwheels. As hotter and drier conditions become more familiar to people beyond the places where these Indigenous and Nomadic cultural cuisines originated, these water-conserving dishes and energy-saving techniques become timely for many of us. Each recipe introduces us to the gastronomic legacies that connect these cuisines, offering tips for understanding and sourcing high-quality ingredients as well as how to use them in a changing world.

Personal and simple, earthy and warm-recipes and stories from the Steger Wilderness Center in Minnesota’s north woods The Steger Homestead Kitchen is an inspiring and down-to-earth collection of meals and memories gathered at the Homestead, the home of the Arctic explorer and environmental activist Will Steger, located in the north woods near Ely, Minnesota. Founded in 1988, the Steger Wilderness Center was established to model viable carbon-neutral solutions, teach ecological stewardship, and address climate change. In her role as the Homestead’s chef, Will’s niece Rita Mae creates delicious and hearty meals that become a cornerstone experience for visitors from all over the world, nourishing them as they learn and share their visions for a healthy and abundant future. Now, with this new book, home chefs can make Rita Mae’s simple, hearty meals to share around their own homestead tables. Interwoven with dozens of mouth-watering recipes-for generous breakfasts (Almond Berry Griddlecakes), warming lunches (Northwoods Mushroom Wild Rice Soup), elegant dinners (Spatchcock Chicken with Blueberry Maple Glaze), desserts (Very Carrot Cake), and snacks (Steger Wilderness Bars)-are Will Steger’s exhilarating stories of epic adventures exploring the Earth’s most remote and endangered regions. The Steger Homestead Kitchen opens up the Wilderness Center’s hospitality, its heart and hearth, providing the practical advice and inspiration to cook up a good life in harmony with nature.

Recipes and resources connect thoughtfully grown, gathered, and prepared ingredients to a healthy future-for food, farming, and humankind Knowing how and where food is grown can add depth and richness to a dish, whether a meal of slow-roasted short ribs on creamy polenta, a steaming bowl of spicy Hmong soup, or a triple ginger rye cake, kissed with maple sugar, honey, and sorghum. Here James Beard Award–winning author Beth Dooley provides the context of food’s origins, along with delicious recipes, nutrition information, and tips for smart sourcing. More than a farm-to-table cookbook, The Perennial Kitchen expands the definition of “local food” to embrace regenerative agriculture, the method of growing small and large crops with ecological services. These farming methods, grounded in a land ethic, remediate the environmental damage caused by the monocropping of corn and soybeans. In this thoughtful collection the home cook will find both recipes and insights into artisan grains, nuts, fruits, and vegetables that are delicious and healthy-and also help retain topsoil, sequester carbon, and return nutrients to the soil. Here are crops that enhance our soil, nurture pollinators and song birds, rebuild rural economies, protect our water, and grow plentifully without toxic chemicals. These ingredients are as good for the planet as they are on our plates. Dooley explains how to stock the pantry with artisan grains, heritage dry beans, fresh flour, healthy oils, and natural sweeteners. She offers pointers on working with grass-fed beef and pastured pork and describes how to turn leftovers into tempting soups and stews. She makes the most of each season’s bounty, from fresh garlic scape pesto to roasted root vegetable hummus. Here we learn how best to use nature’s “fast foods,” the quick-cooking egg and ever-reliable chicken; how to work with alternative flours, as in gingerbread with rye or focaccia with Kernza®; and how to make plant-forward, nutritious vegan and vegetarian fare. Among other sweet pleasures, Dooley shares the closely held secret recipe from the University of Minnesota’s student association for the best apple pie. Woven throughout the recipes is the most recent research on nutrition, along with a guide to sources and information that cuts through the noise and confusion of today’s food labels and trends. Beth Dooley looks back into ingredients’ healthy beginnings and forward to the healthy future they promise. At the center of it all is the cook, linking into the regenerative and resilient food chain with every carefully sourced, thoughtfully prepared, and delectable dish.

A beautiful, delicious celebration of two natural sweeteners in irresistible recipesHoney and maple syrup might be better for you than sugar. They might be better for the environment. But even better, and sweet as anything, is how these natural ingredients taste and the wonders they do for a dish. James Beard Award–winning cookbook author Beth Dooley and gifted photographer Mette Nielsen make the most of these flavors in this celebration of honey and maple syrup in traditional kitchens as well as cutting-edge food culture. Full of easy ideas that include honey and maple syrup in foods both savory and sweet, this book features a wide range of irresistible recipes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, for snacks and salads, condiments and vegetables, entrées and desserts, syrups, cocktails, and elixirs. Sweeten your table with rosemary honey butter, green tomato chutney, curry marinated herring, brown butter honey popcorn, savory maple black pepper biscotti, oven-roasted chicken thighs with pomegranate molasses, honey-glazed salmon salad, maple vanilla half-pound cake, elderberry throat coat, bourbon maple smash, and more. With its innovative recipes, practical tips, conversion charts, historical and scientific facts, information on nutritional value, suggestions for storage and sourcing, and above all Mette Nielsen’s remarkable photographs, Sweet Nature invites us to fully enjoy these two iconic ingredients from nature’s pantry.

“Let’s dispense with the usual old notions of preserving,” Beth Dooley suggests, leading us into Mette Nielsen’s kitchen, where old-world Danish traditions meld with the freshest ideas and latest techniques to fill the pantry with the best of the season, all year long. Because those seasons can prove especially challenging in the northern heartland, Nielsen’s Nordic heritage is handy as she and Dooley show cooks, first-time and experienced canners alike, how to make the most of a short growing season. Their approach combines the brightness and bold flavors of the Nordic cuisines with an emphasis on the local, the practical, and the freshest ingredients to turn each season’s produce into a bounty of condiments. From corn salsa to carrot lemon marmalade with ginger and cardamom, crispy pickled red onions to garlic scape pesto with lemon thyme, and caramel apple butter with lemongrass to puttanesca sauce to “Fit for a Queen Jam”-these recipes bring the best of the sweet and the savory to every menu. Low tech, simple, and fast, they eschew hot-water-bath methods in favor of chilling and freezing, keeping flavors and colors bold and bright; and they ease up on sugar to make way for the true savory sweetness of nature’s finest food. Savory Sweet is not your grandmother’s canning cookbook-but it is likely to be your grandchildren’s.

Beth Dooley arrived in Minnesota from her native New Jersey with preconceptions about the Midwestern food scene. Having learned to cook in her grandmother's kitchen, shopping at farm stands, and making preserves, she couldn't help but wonder, "Do people here really eat swampy broccoli, iceberg lettuce, and fried chicken for lunch everyday?" These assumptions quickly faded as she began to explore farmers markets and the burgeoning co-op scene in the Twin Cities and eventually discovered a local food movement strong enough to survive the toughest winter. From the husband and wife who run one of the largest organic farms in the region to Native Americans harvesting wild rice, and from award-winning cheesemakers to Hmong immigrant farmers growing the best sweet potatoes in the country, a rich ecosystem of farmers, artisanal producers, and restaurateurs comes richly to life in this fascinating book, demonstrating that even in a place with a short growing season, food grown locally and organically can be healthy, community-based, environmentally conscious, and -- most of all -- delicious.

The explosive growth of the local food movement is hardly news: Michael Pollan's books sell millions and the spread of farm-to-table restaurants is practically viral. But calls for a "food revolution" come most often from a region where the temperature rarely varies more than a few degrees. In the national conversation about developing a sustainable and equitable food tradition, the huge portion of our population who live where the soil freezes hard for months of the year feel like they're left out in the cold. In Winter's Kitchen reveals how a food movement with deep roots in the Heartland--our first food co-ops, most productive farmland, and the most storied agricultural scientists hail from the region--isn't only thriving, it's presenting solutions that could feed a country, rather than just a smattering of neighborhoods and restaurants. Using the story of one thanksgiving meal, Dooley discovers that a locally-sourced winter diet is more than a possibility: it can be delicious.

Creating a better world starts at home-in the kitchen-and for twenty years the Birchwood Cafe has guided diners to live and eat sustainably and joyfully. Now you can sample Birchwood’s recipes-adapted for home cooks-and fill your own table with some of the irresistible fare that has made the cafe one of the region’s best-loved restaurants. In these pages, find Birchwood’s light-hearted, innovative menu: hearty hand pies and multigrain salads, decadent pastries, and award-winning desserts. Organized by eight seasons, these dishes are inspired by the way weather affects our appetites and determines what comes from our land. With Spring, we celebrate beginnings, tossing up fragrant herbs, tender greens, and tart rhubarb. Come Summer, we fire up the grill and get outside; when Scorch hits and those dog days dampen appetites, we whip up cool soups and refreshing salads. Then Autumn, with its collision of apples, pears, pumpkins, and kale; and as Dusk falls, we get cozy with bowls of savory soup. Frost tempts us back to the stove with nourishing roots. Ready for Winter, we gather close with friends near the hearth, ladling up warming stews. Come Thaw, look to the first food of the season as the maple syrup runs and we anticipate a new year. The pantry chapter features Chef Marshall Paulsen’s condiments-chutney, jam, preserves, and vinaigrettes-which can transform the simplest dish into a spectacular plate. Owner Tracy Singleton and Chef Marshall share Birchwood stories and memories, plus practical tips and insights. Just as Birchwood Cafe is more than a restaurant, this is more than a cookbook. The Birchwood Cafe Cookbook shows you what it takes to make a sustainable kitchen and a joyful table, to prepare “good real food” that really does more than a little good.

The moment you step into a farmers market you are enveloped in a swirl of colors, aromas, and sounds-brilliant orange squash, vibrant green beans, glossy eggplant, crimson crab apples, the spicy bouquet of hot and sweet peppers, ripe muskmelons. Tables are bursting with sunflowers, honey, and eggs. To your right, freshly fried doughnuts and steaming coffee; to your left, acoustic guitar and beautiful flowers. But the local market is not just a place to immerse the senses-it is where communities come together and engage in an exchange as old as civilization. Minnesota’s Bounty is a user’s guide to shopping and cooking from your local farmers market, and it applies a practical, easy approach to creating a truly seasonal kitchen. Organized alphabetically by type of food, it encourages readers to scrap predetermined recipes and forget the long lists. Instead, shop with an eye for what looks best and what you are hungry for. With more than twenty-five years of firsthand experience and a deep knowledge of Minnesota farmers markets, seasoned cook and food writer Beth Dooley has suggestions and recipes that inspire simple, modern, and healthy meals following an ingredients-first philosophy, helping readers to be more confident and spontaneous both at the market and in the kitchen. Including a fascinating history of Minnesota farmers markets-with particular focus on the downtown St. Paul and Minneapolis markets-Dooley presents an extraordinary introduction to our markets and the region’s sustainably grown fresh foods. From a warming Coconut Curry Winter Squash Soup and Heartland Brisket to a summer’s meal of Minted Double Pea Soup, Lamb Burgers with Tzatziki, and Blueberry Lemon Ginger Sorbet, the guiding tenet of Minnesota’s Bounty is splendidly uncomplicated: take this book to the market, buy the market’s best offerings that day, then come home, cook, and enjoy.

The Northern Heartland is governed by the seasons. The long and cold winter, bright and warm summer, and crisp and refreshing spring and fall shape our physical and emotional landscape. Shouldn’t the seasons and their harvests also shape the way we eat? Beth Dooley’s The Northern Heartland Kitchen presents delicious and practical solutions to the challenge of eating locally in the upper Midwest. Celebrating the region’s chefs, farmers, ranchers, gardeners, and home cooks, this is the essential guide to eating with the year’s local rhythms. Recipes are organized by season: fall and winter inspire Chestnut Soup and Venison Medallions with Juniper and Gin, while summer harvests contribute the ingredients for Watermelon Gazpacho and Grilled Trout with Warm Tomato Vinaigrette. Other chapters provide instructions on pickling and preserving food, as well as tips on growing your own food and getting the most out of your CSA or farmers’ market. There are also profiles of local farmers, butchers, and chefs who are using new technologies-as well as rediscovering heritage practices-to enrich regional selections. Dooley shows that far from being a sacrifice, eating in season and locally is a tribute to the year’s changing riches-encouraging an appreciation for the unmatched flavor of a juicy July tomato or a crisp October apple with garden salads, soups and stews, free-range meats and poultry, fish and game, farmstead cheeses, wholesome breads, pastries and fruit pies. The Northern Heartland Kitchen presents delicious recipes alongside the stories and compelling research that illustrate how eating well and eating locally are truly one and the same.

200 recipes blending bold, new flavors with the traditional foods of the Upper Midwest-now in paperback! Embracing the traditional cooking of the diverse peoples of the Upper Midwest-from the Ojibwe and Dakota to the immigrant communities of Norwegians, Swedes, Germans, Italians, and Hmong-Beth Dooley and Lucia Watson present more than two hundred recipes for the modern kitchen, many with seasonal variations to take advantage of the freshest fruits and vegetables available. With this inspiring array of recipes, you can start with Radish and Cucumber Salad, feast on Grilled Coho Salmon with Lemon-Ginger Marinade, and then top it off with the Best Sugar Cookies. Along the way, Savoring the Seasons of the Northern Heartland is sprinkled with historical photographs and the lively stories behind recipes handed down for generations.