From Food Network to Our Farms

“I’ve eaten more pink pork than anybody. My mom used to just fry up bacon as a snack, instead of popcorn.”

The family she references the most often (besides her grandmother) is her cousins who own “the most famous little meat market and smokehouse in Minnesota.” She promises they have a cult-like following.

I’m exposing and writing and talking about the traditions that are already here. Hunting, fishing, foraging, gathering. Midwesterners don’t broadcast it; it’s just what people do.”

From her cabin on a 150-acre piece of wilderness, Amy has become an emissary of rural American cuisine — but not through deconstructing, rarefying or reinventing it. She simply is the public face for a cultural movement that’s seeing people return to the country lifestyle — and the country kitchen. “You move to the country so you can have the time to make dinner,” she summarizes.

If she has been part of elevating the status of traditional food, she says it’s by raising awareness of the great ingredients grown here that hadn’t previously been reflected in the greater food culture.

“I compare Midwestern eating to Italian food in that it’s simple and unadorned. Simple ingredients in peak season, cooked and served when they’re dead ripe. But like Italian ingredients, ours don’t always translate; you can’t really move them elsewhere.”

While every American city and town has their own “Italian fine dining restaurant” and a couple casual pizza places, Amy’s training in famous New York kitchens taught her how complex and difficult it is to get the kind of gorgeous produce that’s grown in Italian or French farm country—unless you grow it yourself. (Not sure I get that last sentence: maybe omit?)

She explains that a meticulous level of detail in raising and harvesting and cooking each and every ingredient is a very Midwestern trait. And it’s those details that elevate a food from good to great. So, instead of using great local products to make displaced European food, she uses them to revamp and elevate the most recognizable and iconic Midwestern recipes.

“I feel like food cost is the white elephant in the room, and acknowledging it is a food writer’s social responsibility. Cost does matter. I buy things in a value-conscious way, and I also grow a lot of food and do a lot of canning.”

In most American towns and cities, if you want authentic homemade preserves, you buy them at a farmers market or gourmet grocery, paying top dollar for a tiny mason jar. But if you do it yourself, it’s not just a cost saver but a way to exercise control over the taste and the quality.

Once you get into canning and preserving, she cautions, it does become a habit, and every harvest season comes with guilt that you have to do it or you’re squandering. But in the long term, it’s more fulfilling than having fruit trees that don’t bear fruit at all because you don’t have time to tend the trees.