SALTIE: A Cookbook (2012)
Saltie is an eatery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn that was created and is run by three pioneers of the Brooklyn food scene. The shop boasts a devoted following of diners who love their magnificent sandwiches, soups, egg bowls, drinks, and sweets. This cookbook features 75 recipes for all of these favorite foods, plus more than 50 color photographs and 10 humorous drawings by Elizabeth Schula that capture the sense of commitment, locality, and belonging countless devoted foodies feel for this famed eatery. Full of surprising visuals, great recipes and colorful storytelling, Saltie is at once a unique cookbook and a guide to good eating.
"It's hard to talk about Saltie. Too easy to dismiss it as merely a sandwich shop. In a time when broad, white plates smeared with science and dotted with masculine, dildoic bravado are considered high art, Saltie makes the heroic plea for serving the common man an elemental, delicious food borne out of decades in the best kitchens in New York. I can't think of a more unintentional subversive act or a more profound work of love than the pleasure of a Saltie sandwich. You're my heart. I love you."—Tom Mylan, The Meat Hook, Brooklyn NY
'Caroline Fidanza and crew have done something special at Saltie: taken a small mountain of finely-tuned, well-tested and well-loved recipes that would put any restaurant on the map - as they did when Ms. Fidanza ran Diner - and distilled out frip and finery. What she and her partners offer between these covers (and at Saltie) is a roster of dishes so much more generous, more delicious, and more intelligent than any other "sandwich cookbook" that it feels almost cheap to call it that. But that's what it is, and its modest, welcoming and inspiring approachability help it stand out in the chef's cookbook crowd. The stories are good reading, the kitchen wisdom is actually wise, and the recipes scream "COOK ME."—Peter Meehan, co-editor Lucky Peach magazine
Rights: Chronicle, World