New book tells how to take food from garden to table
LINCOLN — Food and cooking writer Andrea Chesman will present her latest book and demonstrate skills on how best to preserve your harvest in an appearance at Lincoln Library this Wednesday evening.
“The Backyard Homestead Book Of Kitchen Know-How: Field-To-Table Cooking Skills” shows readers how to bridge the gap between what they harvest in the garden or fields (whether it’s from one’s own homestead or local growers) and what they set on their dinner table. It covers everything from curing meats and making sausage to canning fruits and vegetables, milling flour, working with sourdough, baking no-knead breads, making braises and stews that can be adapted to different cuts of meat, rendering lard and tallow, pickling, making butter and cheese, making yogurt, blanching vegetables for the freezer, making jams and jellies, drying produce, and much more.
The book provides all the techniques needed to get the most from fresh foods, along with dozens of simple and delicious recipes, most of which can be easily adapted to use whatever you have available.
In a talk set to begin at 7 p.m., Chesman will talk about jam making and working with sourdough. The talk will also include tasting her sourdough pancakes.
Anyone who buys a copy of her new book will receive some sourdough starter, which has a pedigree Chesman can trace to the Yukon Gold Rush of 1896.