As satisfying and unpretentious as the best home cooking, Marjorie Standish's classic Cooking Down East is a wealth of Maine recipes—and Maine lore. As a longtime food columnist for the Maine Sunday Telegram, Standish compiled some of the best recipes from cooks around the state, including the secrets for such classic comfort foods as New England boiled dinner, fish chowder, and baked beans. She shares her hints for preparing these timeless dishes in a lively, clear style, and also imparts detailed information on some of the state's more unusual delicacies, such as fiddleheads, dandelion greens, venison, and partridge.
Standish's simple, time-tested recipes made this book a staple of New England kitchens for decades, as essential as salt and pepper. More than 100,000 copies of Cooking Down East have been sold since it was first published a generation ago—and its sensible, back-to-basics dishes are still perfect for the busy cooks of today. From breads to desserts, from wild game to seafood, from preserves to stews and chowders—every conceivable type of food is covered, and it's all served up with a hearty, authentic Maine flavor passed down through generations of cooks. "An old Maine recipes," as the author writes, "is just as much of an heirloom as a lovely antique."