Introduction

America, you have so much good food to offer.

From Key lime pie in Florida to Indian pudding in New England, broiled Kumamoto oysters with garlic-butter breadcrumbs in the Pacific Northwest, and Baja fish tacos in California, the four corners of this country are full of great food. But it’s not just the coasts. It’s smoky corn fritters from the Midwest; green chile breakfast pie from New Mexico; Philly cheesesteaks; gumbo from New Orleans; pecan pie; almond dim sum cookies; hot and sour soup; huckleberry pancakes from Montana; Kentucky hot browns; fried green tomatoes; and macadamia-encrusted mahi mahi from Hawaii. This country contains such a bounty of fresh produce, wild game, and ingredients from around the world that became standard American fare with the immigration of people across our borders, and a resilience that creates goodness from necessary change.

American food culture has received a bad rap for the past 75 years. With the rise of packaged and processed foods, and the way we’ve been persuaded by advertisers that our meals should be convenient and fast rather than homemade, so much of American food has come out of a box since the 1950s. But if you look at regional specialties and recipes that have been passed down from grandmother to uncle to someone cooking in an American kitchen in 2015, you’ll see a spirit of making something good out of what is already in the pantry. You’ll see beloved dishes like buttermilk chess pie and hush puppies and johnnycakes that have a history, a resonance from the 1800s to today, a story of what America used to be, still alive in this age. We are far more than the bill of goods we have been sold and the preservative-laden “food” we’ve been eating out of boxes. We can do better. We have before. We can do it again.

The America we see in popular media often seems divisive—full of arguments about politics and religion—or trivial—with endless conversations about celebrity gossip and sports—and sometimes annoying. But drive across this country, stopping in small family restaurants or people’s homes or farmers’ markets, and you’ll find good people full of kindness and open minds around the table. Setting food down on the table opens the door to great conversations.

In the summer of 2003, I drove across America, from New York to Oregon, with my best friend, Sharon. We were perfect traveling companions, having been best friends since 1982. We never failed for conversations on country roads where the radio reception faded. We stayed in tiny hotels every night, exhausted after traveling all day and laughing. We sang ABBA songs deep into the evening as we crossed Minnesota under starry skies. And mostly, we ate. Sharon and I ate everything that came our way. In New York, we shared two last slices of thin pizza at Sal and Carmine’s, across the street from the apartment building we were leaving. In Indiana, we drove 60 miles off the highway to have chicken and noodles at an Amish restaurant, passing black carriages to reach the place. In Chicago, we ate great hot dogs after a run along Lake Michigan and deep-dish pizza in a restaurant where the walls were so festooned with signatures we could no longer see the white walls. The next day we ate Italian beef sandwiches at Al’s #1 Italian Beef, the juices dripping onto the trunk of our white car. There were sandwiches alongside lakes, waffles for breakfast, and Indian fry bread in South Dakota. In Wyoming, Sharon turned the car around when she saw a tiny café selling homemade peach pie, even though we had already eaten a huge breakfast and lunch that day, plus snacks. We ended our trip in Ashland, Oregon, with a big breakfast of yogurt and hazelnut granola. After I flew home, I discovered that somehow I had lost eight pounds after that trip. We did try to go for walks and runs every day, but mostly I think it was the happiness and laughter. My metabolism seemed to have increased from joy. I have never been so in love with the country where I live as I was on that trip.

A few years later, however, I was deathly sick and no one could figure out why for months. By the time I was diagnosed with celiac sprue, the autoimmune disorder that causes the body to attack itself upon ingestion of gluten, I was thrilled to hear it. I didn’t have cancer or anything fatal. And the only cure was removing gluten from my diet. Give me the disease where the cure is not chemotherapy or drugs or surgery, but eating really great food instead. Within weeks of giving up gluten entirely, I started to heal. Within a year of letting go of gluten, I had a popular food blog, a book deal, and my husband, who was a chef. Together, Danny and I started creating food that nourished us both, and then our daughter, along with the people who bought our cookbooks. Our first instinct is always to create food that is naturally gluten-free, foods everyone can share: fresh vegetables, succulent meat dishes, roasted potatoes or quinoa fritters, smoked salmon, big salads, soups full of flavor, and simple sweets made with honey and maple syrup. Most of the time, we’re eating food that people don’t think of as gluten-free. We just love good food.

But over time, and after the publication of our second cookbook, Danny and I began thinking of all the eating adventures in our lives. He grew up in Colorado, cooked in Seattle and New York, helped open a restaurant in Oklahoma, and loved his brief time in New Orleans. In each of those places, it was food that began the memories he shared with me. I grew up outside Los Angeles, moved to Seattle, lived in New York City (for a brief time, Danny and I lived twelve blocks from each other and never met), traveled fairly extensively, and even lived in London twice, giving me the chance to look at my country from the outside. Of course I remember the Huntington Library, orca whales off ferry rides, Central Park, and the Tate Gallery. But memories of those places wouldn’t be complete without corn dogs at Disneyland, blackberry pie, knishes from Zabar’s, and the time I grew excited to see a frozen Mexican TV dinner at Harrods when I was particularly homesick. And we talked continuously about the letters we received from people who read our site, letters asking how to convert their grandmother’s Texas sheet cake recipe into gluten-free, or how to make a great pie dough for cherry pie in July, or how to make cream of mushroom soup for much-loved Midwestern casseroles. As much as we love kale and sausage breakfasts, noodles made of zucchini, and ribs right off the grill, we both understood the desire for foods that originally contained gluten.

Every Sunday, for the four years I lived in New York, I walked with my best friend, Sharon, up Broadway to Absolute Bagels. We always ordered the same: one plain bagel with cream cheese and lox, one sesame bagel with lox cream cheese. (The second one was cheaper.) We walked home, talking, the bagels calling to us from the bag. But we waited until we reached our apartment, made a pot of tea, spread the Sunday New York Times before us, and sat down at the kitchen table together. We spent all morning and well into the afternoon there, slowly eating our chewy bagels, the best in New York City, happy to be together. I find, often, when I miss a food with gluten, it’s not the actual food I miss. It’s the experience of sharing it with someone else.

Danny and I wanted to create food that resonates with you, bringing memories of Sunday morning breakfasts with family or cakes on special occasions or a decadent dessert for birthdays. But we also wanted to make food that is great on its own. We never aim for food that will make people say, “Hey, I can’t even tell there’s no gluten in there.” We both smile widely if people say, “Man, that’s good. Can I have some more?” You don’t need gluten to make great food.

We both love a challenge. Danny’s decades of chef experiences means he approaches recipes with enthusiasm and a deep curiosity to play with the food, rather than fear that it will never work. I am full of the geekery required to play with gluten-free flours, combine them, and see which ones work best for a pizza dough. (There were many failed attempts before we created the recipe you will find in this cookbook.) We decided to tackle this project: the most-requested American comfort foods, great without gluten.

We asked questions of everyone we met. For months, we asked fans of our website what they wanted to eat. If you are from the South, what do you miss? From the Rocky Mountain states? From New England? From the Southwest? What can we make for you? There was no shortage of opinions. We compiled long lists of everything people said—the hundreds and hundreds of fervent requests—and began compiling a recipe list. We researched online—thank you to everyone who has written down a much-loved recipe from relatives before you—and cracked open the battered covers of old cookbooks from Junior Leagues and PTAs and Fannie Farmer and all the regional cookbooks that we could find. We have a huge cookbook collection, but it grew enormously over the past two years. Some readers sent us their family recipes to adapt. Others just urged us on, sending good wishes and inspiration.

The best research we did happened on the road. Danny and Lucy and I climbed into a rented minivan one September and drove from New York City to Amish country, up to Vermont and over to Maine, through Rhode Island, and to the Berkshires, driving back to New York City full of stories and good food. Everywhere we went, we attended potlucks thrown by locals (we spent months arranging these, along with the companies who make good gluten-free foods who sponsored the trips for us), and ate great food, gluten-free. We ate in church basements and a beautiful barn in the Green Mountains of Vermont, in people’s homes and restaurants, at picnics in the park and tiny community halls. We visited farms every day, everywhere we went, because nothing would end up on our plates without the work of farmers. And we listened to the stories of all the people we met. Listening to other people’s food stories is one of my favorite activities in the world. Later, we drove again, from Sacramento to San Francisco to the fertile area outside of Fresno to the coast of California, all the way down to Los Angeles. We were astonished again by the hard work of farmers, the stories of families gathered together over food, and the new memories we helped people make at every potluck. These visits were just as joyful as the trip across the country in a rented car with Sharon had been, but this time there was no gluten. I ate equally well on all those trips. (We planned a potluck trip through the Midwest and another one in the South, but our darling son, Desmond, arrived, after three years of trying to adopt, so that put the kibosh on long road trips for a while. We’re hoping we can come see you with the publication of this book.)

And then we returned home to cook and bake. We made three or four dishes a day, writing it all down, playing, discussing, tweaking, and eating. Luckily, we have a lot of friends who want to eat our food, or we would have been swimming in casseroles and pie. We crossed some recipes off the list after we made them—I’m sorry, but funnel cake with or without gluten is too greasy-gross for my taste—and added others. In each chapter we planned, we gave ourselves a little space to play, making up a new dish based on the flavors of an area, rather than merely re-creating a dish. I think you’ll like the Reuben Sandwich Soup and the California Roll Sushi Salad especially well.

We liked sharing the process along the way with folks on the Internet. This is the new America, after all. Whenever we posted a photograph of a first draft of sourdough bread or the Cuban pork sandwiches on Instagram, there were loud cries of excitement and want. (“Recipe, please?!”) We felt bad about making you wait for so long to hold this book in your hands. But after more than two years of researching, writing, traveling, testing, tweaking, writing some more, feeding people, editing, photographing, pondering, and mostly eating a lot of really great food, we’re ready to share with you.

Here it is, finally. American Classics Reinvented.