A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That: Cooking with Paumanok Preserves is a cookbook that encourages cooks, from neophyte to accomplished, to expand their horizons, to think ‘outside the box.’ Paumanok Preserves products can be the “secret ingredients” that boost a menu from the conventional to the sublime. All the recipes in this book were once basic fare. With the addition of a spoonful of jam or marmalade, a quarter cup of fruit butter or wine jelly, a cup of chili sauce, a dab of mustard “mizzle”, or a dash of pepper jelly, Joan Bernstein elevates ordinary kitchen fare to gourmet significance. Her entertaining anecdotes about growing up in a family of cooks add to the fun.
A ‘born and bred’ Long Islander, Joan Bernstein’s early focus on poet Walt Whitman’s exaltation of “Paumanok” (the American Indian name for Long Island) contributed to her appreciation of the Island’s bounty. Bernstein has been an artist, teacher, food writer, journalist, hobby cat breeder, and pet-facilitated therapist. She has traveled extensively, always sampling local and regional foods. She writes local library newsletter book reviews, contributes regularly to Edible East End Magazine and teaches “Jamming” classes at the Ross School in East Hampton, L.I. Paumanok Preserves is Bernstein’s first professional food venture. Contact her via her website.
www.paumanokpreserves.com
or at jbernstein@paumanokpreserves.com
In my family, food isn’t just an art or a science. Food is sustenance for body and spirit. Food is love. Whether we’re sitting down at the table with family or friends, providing for complete strangers or cooking for ourselves, the bottom line is a meal that makes someone happy, including the compliments to the cooks! First and foremost, that means the food had better taste good.
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I’m not a trained professional chef. In fact, I’m not a chef at all. I’m a home cook I never expect to do a “Throwdown” with Bobby Flay, challenge an Iron Chef or be a judge/panelist on a Food Channel show (unless it has to do with preserves, of course)
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To my mind, jam isn’t just a spread for toast. It’s a potential ingredient for every meal I cook. This is the way my whole family cooks. Give any one of us a recipe, and we’ll use it for a flight of fancy. What comes to the table will resemble the original, but will bear our own signature. Imagination is the key to “Cooking with Paumanok Preserves.”