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C is for Cooking in the Adirondacks

© Gary W. Taylor

Up here in the North Country, cooking can range from very rustic uses for local game and produce, to some very "gourmet" recipes for many of those same ingredients.

The 6,000 acre Adirondack Park has many wonderful restaurants, many that specialize in what has come to be known as "Adirondack Cuisine." But what about those of us who want to recreate some of these recipes at home? Recently a great cookbook, Adirondack Cuisine by Armand C. Vanderstigchel and Robert E. Birkel, Jr., has become available. This book is a follow-up to Vanderstigchel's first book of Adirondack recipes called simply the Adirondack Cookbook.

A Google search yielded very few Adirondack cookbooks, so this one is a real find. In it, Chef Armand and Robert Birkel present true Adirondack recipes of their own creation, and many from some of the area's premiere restaurants. Several of these are favorites of ours, and many more have been added to our "restaurants to try" list!

The authors define Adirondack cuisine as ranging from "gourmet to simple down-home cooking" with ingredients that include "produce and fruits, pure maple syrup, wild honey, fresh morel mushrooms, succulent native berries, various fish, game, and fowl, great wines for the neighboring Finger Lakes Region (another story - our amazement at discovering the number of vineyards that the Finger Lakes region of New York contains!), and the exciting, authentic cooking of its restaurant chefs and home cooks alike..." Yummm.....

The cookbook is arranged into recipes grouped by season - a very novel way to present our wonderful cuisine, because what we cook and eat does vary from season to season. Along with recipes using local ingredients, each section includes complete menus for some of our wonderful local events. The fall section, for example, includes three mouth watering meals to serve during the Adirondack Balloon Festival held annually in September. There are recipe suggestions for holiday meals, the Saranac Ice Festival in winter, a day at the Saratoga Race Course in summer, and a 4th of July barbecue.

There is also a chapter that features favorite recipes from Adirondack Bed and Breakfasts, and Hotel and Resort recipes. Recipes from the Boathouse on Lake George, Friend's Lake Inn in Chestertown, and The Copperfield Inn in North Creek, several of our favorite restaurants, are ones we'll surely try. Specialties from many other fine Adirondack establishments are also included in the 239 page book.

There's even a "recipe" for Jack Wax (Sugar on Snow) that has these ingredients: "2 cups of Grade AA Adirondack Light Amber maple syrup poured over pristine fresh snow." This specialty of Toad Hill Maple Farm in Athol is enjoyed each spring at Thurman's Maple Festival, and at many other places around the Northeast, I'd guess!