Lobster Rolls and Blueberry Pie or How It All Vegan

Lobster Rolls and Blueberry Pie: Three Generations of Recipes and Stories from Summers on the Coast of Maine

Author: Rebecca Charles

Escape to the Maine seashore, an exquisite summer sanctuary where vacations stretch out forever during long, golden days and food is the stuff from which memories are made.

The summers that acclaimed chef Rebecca Charles and her family spent swimming in the Atlantic, scouring the beach for shells, and eating shore dinners inspired her to open the famed Greenwich Village restaurant Pearl Oyster Bar. In this heartwarming memoir, Rebecca combines more than seventy of her favorite recipes with captivating family stories.

Rebecca's adventurous granduncle Sam Goldsmith first took the family from the sweltering summer streets of Brooklyn to the exclusive seaside resort of Kennebunkport. But it was his sister–in–law Pearle Goldsmith, Pearl Oyster Bar's namesake and an opera singer with the Metropolitan and New York City operas, who fell in love with the rugged coast of Maine. Pearle passed this love on to her daughter, Eleanor, and her granddaughter, Rebecca.

Rebecca recounts her family's three–generation love affair with the small Yankee fishing village and shares the recipes that have New Yorkers waiting in line for hours to taste what food writer Ed Levine described as "the best lobster roll I have ever eaten."

Rebecca breathes new life into classic beach food. Whether re–creating an old–time clambake or grilling a whole pompano, she imparts the expertise that has made her one of the foremost seafood chefs in the country.

The New York Times

Charles's tiny Greenwich Village restaurant, Pearl Oyster Bar, may be one of the best -- it's certainly one of the most charming -- dining spots in Manhattan, and here she shares a selection of her first-rate seafood recipes, from chowders and oyster pan roasts to shrimp cocktails and lobster pot pie. Worth the price of admission is her recipe for lobster roll, a mayonnaisey dream on a buttery toasted bun. Charles is a pleasure to read when she's talking about food. — Dwight Garner

Publishers Weekly

Half seafood cookbook and half family history, this volume's greatest strength is in the recipes for over 70 dishes that define New England summers-corn on the cob, salt-crusted shrimp, and lots of lobster-reproduced here in honor of Charles's family's summertime trips to Maine. Charles, owner and head chef of the widely hailed Pearl Oyster Bar in Manhattan, offers her hard-drinking, quick-learning adventures in the restaurant business in the memoir portion of the book, and though they will be nothing new to Kitchen Confidential fans, they make for a piquant prelude to her recipes. The book gets a little bogged down, however, in the chapters that detail early family trips to Maine. Although Charles's desire to tell her family's story is heartfelt, she often leaves out important details, such as dates and introductions to the characters, that would make the narrative easier to follow. The story alternates from intriguing family explorations (how did the author's family locate the one hotel in the Kennebunk region of Maine that accepted Jews in the 1920's?) to textbook historical notes that don't quite mesh with the personal tone. Readers will wonder, too, about such asides as when she mentions her one-time estrangement from both parents ("I discovered my father's death in the late 1980s quite by accident"). Still, when the focus is on the food that Charles loves, the book is an accessible and authoritative guide to seafood preparation, as Charles offers not only divine recipes, from Pearl Oyster Bar Cocktail Sauce to Blueberry Crumble Pie, but tips on selecting (never buy wet scallops), cleaning (leverage is the key to shucking oysters) and preparing (don't marinate fish much more than 30 minutes) all types of seafood. B&w and color photos. (Apr.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Table of Contents:

	Foreword	ix
	Introduction	xi
Part I	Kennebunkport Bound
	It Happened One Night	3
	Brooklyn, 1919	7
Part II	My Grandmother
	A Scottish-Jewish Suffragette	19
	The Jazz Age	27
	Objectionable Strangers	45
	The Forest Hill House	53
	A Summer Table	73
	The Darling of the Gods	81
	Low Tea at High Tide	99
	Twilight Time	115
Part III	My Mother and Me
	The 1950s	129
	Pearle's Gift	141
	Smackmen and Lobster Gangs	159
	Red Dogs and Whoopie Pies	177
	Pearle and Pearl	195
	Back to Gooch's Beach	217
	Acknowledgments	223
	Index	225

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How It All Vegan

Author: Tanya Barnard

Vegan food is fabulous food, full of flavor and all the nutrients you need. With fun illustrations and a cool, punky sensibility, How It All Vegan! will tempt you to join the Vegan Empire. "Written with sass, style, and a sense of humor. More than just a cookbook. . . ."-BUST