Dishing Up® Virginia: 145 Recipes That Celebrate Colonial Traditions and Contemporary Flavors

This unassuming little paper back is a wonderful sleeper! The paper is thick and glossy - making splashes less likely to adhere. The quality of the photography and print exceeds any paperback I have seen. Really a shame it is not a hardback. Now the contents - jam packed with historical culinary information organized from the Eastern Shore westward. Traditional and modern recipes are interspersed with richly evocative vignettes about places and people, both past and here now. Oh, and the recipes - right out of my culinary heritage - from the seafood (clams, crabs, shrimp, shad roe, ray), peanuts, sweet potatoes and corn of the coast to the beef, lamb and apples of western reaches, this book is full of recipes ranging from colonial classics (in their original form and modernized) to modern selections from modern chefs - all easily made in a modern home kitchen. Eastern Shore Oyster Stew, Old School Crab Cakes with Cocktail Sauce (with its 8 buttery crackers), Corn Pudding and Brunswick Stew (with the inclusion of okra but no oddities like ketchup or BBQ sauce) are all exactly a my family has always made. Hayman Sweet Potato Bisque using the heirloom Eastern Shore Hayman white sweet potato (and suggesting the more readily available O'Henry) is a mainstay for big batch cooking and freezing in our home - we use the O'Henry sweet potatoes). Some of the modern recipes at first read seem a bit twee (Shad Roe with Lump Backfin Crabmeat - our roe was always pan fried in bacon grease and served with bacon, scrambled eggs and fresh biscuits)), but give them a chance, they are doable and impressive. Many of the modern recipes hail from distant places but that reflects waves of immigrants coming to Virginia. All in all, this book is far more than I expected and I recommend it heartily for personal use as well as gifting for people with a love of the great state of Virginia.

What I desire most when I purchase or collect a cookbook, is not only what it may have in the way of unusual or fun recipes, but most often I will buy it for how it will give me the zeitgeist of a particular region, or for what it tells me about the history of a community, or it's people. How does a particular collection of recipes or reviews of a region's best restaurants, or businesses, represent any given place? How did they learn to cook, or how had they resource their foods. What treatment of a favorite recipe was carried on through a family, or best represents it's past. In Patrick Evans-Hylton's cookbook, I find the best of both worlds, a great read, with new and old but all great recipes. The book is lovely, well researched, beautifully photographed. A compendium of people, places and delicious - "I'm going try that" recipes, all written in a casual and easy manner, like a friend giving you their favorite family recipe. Having lived in many of the various regions of Virginia, in this cookbook, I took particular enjoyment in seeing so many, of what I deemed my most favorite spots, or favorite people with whom I have enjoyed sharing their produce, or their talented kitchens. I now plan to use this cookbook as a sort of foodie road trip guide, I will use it to seek out many places yet to discover. It makes me very proud to live in such a beautiful state, and anyone who may wish to visit with our unique farmers, chefs, and businesses will find that this cookbook proves invaluable. And as Mr. Hylton states we understand it is exactly right that Virginia is where our American food culture and earliest food histories began.LeeAnne Tetrault, Powhatan, Virginia

This kindlebook that is Dishing Up Virginia: 145 Recipes That Celebrate Colonial Traditions and Contemporary Flavors by Patrick Evans Hylton (author)Marcel A Desaulniers (foreword) and Edwin Remsberg (photographer) has a prolific listing of recipes from multiple Virginia regions that include: Hampton Roads and the Chesapeake Bay Region listed in the kindlebook to be one of America’s first foodie regions with recipes listed to include Rockfish Hampton Roads, Crab Norfolk, Sweet Potato Biscuits with Country Ham and Poppy-Mustard Butter, Williamsburg Lodge Goat Cheese Cheesecake, Williamsburg Inn Crabmeat Randolph, Poached Rockfish with Dill-Caper Sauce, Grilled Croaker with orange cilantro compound butter, Chesapeake Bay Ray Teriyaki with Pineapple Chutney, carrot pudding, a section on Northern Virginia, and much more.

I liked the history behind the recipes

At first glance, I was struck by the connections Patrick Evans-Hylton made from the Tidewater Region's seafood cuisine, through the Piedmont's produce, to the Blue Ridge Mountain's wine country. I'm a multi-generational Virginian, but a thouroughly modern cook, I immediately appreciated the connections historically and regionally. I have all the old "receipts" and I'm always looking for new recipes to create and make my own. So now reading it from cover to cover, this book, so beautifully photographed, gives a tour of my friends and neighbors gardens, restaurants I love, and many more I now want to try. Proudly pleased with with the old traditions, this well researched roadtrip through Virginia's foodways is one for the road and for my own kitchen.

Dishing Up Virginia does much more than simply bringing deliciousness to the dinner table--it tells the story of the very important history of food to the commonwealth of Virginia. The stories of the farmers and foodways, history and traditions meld perfectly with the beautiful photography and well-written recipes. Knowing the history behind the foods prevalent in each region (the refreshing and savvy way the book is broken up) makes preparing them and bringing them to the table even more special. Evans-Hylton does such a fine job proving the point that food is so much more than sustenance--it comfort, memories and more. If is life--and Virginia does it well.