I Love New York grew out of an ongoing conversation between Daniel Humm and Will Guidara (the team behind Manhattan's famed Eleven Madison Park restaurant) as they tried to identify New York City's cuisine. Their struggle, they recount, stemmed from New York's status as an edible melting pot; with so many international options to choose from, the city often loses sight of the food available right in its backyard. Their attempt to answer the question of New York's culinary culture proves a tribute to the city's rich agricultural past--and present.
The recipes are organized alphabetically by key ingredient, a list that includes every local-to-New York ingredient one could imagine--from apples and berries to beef and venison to beer and cheese. Each chapter starts with a profile of a local New York farm before diving into recipes featuring the farm's main offerings. These recipes are simple to follow (if not always simple to execute), and there are even recommendations for how to use and store leftover components of some of the more complicated dishes. From a breakfast of baked eggs to New York Sour cocktails and beef tartare to maple sundaes for dessert, Humm and Guidara shy away from no dish. Stunning photography of farms and New York City punctuate each chapter, and the striking contrast between the rural environments that give us these ingredients and urban surroundings in which Humm and Guidara celebrate them proves a lasting tribute to oft-overlooked--but incredibly rich--local cuisine of New York City. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm