Cookoff
Recipe Fever in America
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Cookoff: Recipe Fever in America is an anecdotal and entertaining look at the amazingly extensive subculture of cooking contests in America. Such contests range in importance from Spam contests at county fairs to the granddaddy of them all, the Pillsbury Bake-Off in San Francisco, where the grand prize is a cool million. In between are contests local and national, sponsored by agricultural groups, corporations, and neighborhoods. Competing in these contests are not only casual entrants, but “contesters”—mostly women—for whom the recipe contest is a way of life.
Journalist Amy Sutherland follows a small group of such contesters through a year on the contest circuit, beginning with the National Chicken Cook-off and culminating in the Pillsbury Bake-Off. Along the way, we’ll be introduced to well-known cook-off luminaries as well as to some of the most bizarre cooks, and the recipes concocted for their national contests.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this engrossing look at the competitive cooking circuit, journalist Sutherland follows the trail of competitions and a small group of regular participants. These often fanatical competitors, complete with their own Web sites and chat rooms, square off against the amateur one-time-only contenders at local and national levels across the country. With a healthy dose of humor, Sutherland conveys the inside stories and nail-biting moments as the regulars face off. From developing recipes to matching serving wear to outfits, the bravado of the male players and the disasters and pitfalls that can ensue for both regular and amateur alike, this work takes a long, thorough look at this American phenomenon. From chili contests that are more like frat parties to the National Chicken and National Beef competitions, Sutherland crisscrosses the country and along the way conveys her growing enthusiasm for and fascination with why one recipe or dish wins and another loses. She intersperses winning recipes with the account of her own growing delight, which leads her to enter a competition herself. Doing for cookoffs what Anthony Bourdain did for the restaurant business with Kitchen Confidential, Sutherland delivers a wonderful portrait of a true slice of Americana that should have readers reaching for their recipe files and saying, "I can do that."
