Book report for Oct. 15, 2009

• By CHERAMIE SONNIER
• Advocate Food writer
• Published: Oct 15, 2009

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“The American Lighthouse Cookbook: The Best Recipes and Stories From America’s Shorelines” by Becky Epstein and Ed Jackson (Sourcebooks, September 2009, $26.99, hardcover) offers a unique regional concept for a cookbook.

Epstein, a food writer, and Jackson, a Culinary Institute

of America-trained chef who runs a catering business in Boston, focus on 47 light-

houses, including the Tchefuncte River Lighthouse at Madisonville, the Sabine Pass Lighthouse and the Biloxi, Miss., lighthouse.

Jackson developed most of the book’s collection of nearly 300 recipes with definite regional styles. A few were contributed by lighthouse bed-and-breakfasts’ operators.

“Some of the dishes are traditional, some are ethnically derived, and some have fusion elements appropriate to their location,” the authors say.

The 295-page cookbook is arranged geographically by eight regions: the Northeast, the Mid-Atlantic, the Southeast Atlantic, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, the Gulf Coast, California and Hawaii, the Northwest, and the Great Lakes.

Each chapter opens with a history of a lighthouse, along with a drawing of the lighthouse by Abe Goolsby. Each chapter includes a menu appropriate to that particular lighthouse’s location and to a particular season or event. For example, for Bass River Lighthouse at West Dennis, Mass., the authors offer a menu for a 1930s-style breakfast-lunch: Cranberry Nut Bread, Shirred Eggs, Oyster Fritters, Cornmeal Griddle Cakes With Maple Syrup, Popovers With a Selection of Local Jams, Sage and Dried Apple Pork Sausages, and Chicken Livers and Bacon.

The Lunchtime Feast menu for the lighthouse at Madisonville features Oysters Rockefeller, Okra Soup, Eggplant Napoleon, Shrimp Etouffee, Oven-Fried Catfish and Bananas Foster.

It’s too bad that the cookbook doesn’t include any photographs of the completed dishes. Regardless, this is a well thought-out cookbook that anyone interested in coastal cooking or lighthouse buffs will enjoy.

At right is a recipe from the book that prepares black-eyed peas in a novel manner, more like Boston baked beans. While the recipe works (although I thought it could use more liquid), neither my husband nor I cared for it. Perhaps that is because we just couldn’t get past having sweet-tasting black-eyed peas. We think the dish would be better either without the molasses or with navy beans.