The Minnesota Homegrown Cookbook

Book excerpt: This photography rich book is a love song for local food. Through narrating the stories of 31 Minnesota chefs and restaurants, the Minnesota Homegrown Cookbook offers 100 recipes that celebrate cooking with local, sustainably grown food. The passion of these chefs, and the farmers they work with, sings throughout the pages. This cookbook combines rich traditions and delightful innovations. The mouth-watering fare of world-class bed-and-breakfasts is here, alongside the saucy mix of cultural cuisines from kitchens at the Twin Cities’ Café Brenda, Spoon River, Lucia’s, Heartland, and the delectable slow cooking of eateries like the New Scenic Café in Two Harbors and Minwanjige Café in Strawberry Lake. Mixing the familiar comfort food of Minnesota’s roots in the culture of Northern Europe with the fine new flavors of world cuisine, these recipes comprise a travel guide through Minnesota, with illustrated profiles of chefs and farmers, of food and farms. The Minnesota Homegrown Cookbook is the newest release from Renewing the Countryside (RTC), a Minnesota-based non-profit organization that champions the positive stories of rural revitalization. In additional to developing books, RTC produces educational programming around local foods and sustainable agriculture including the Local Food Hero radio show, the Healthy Local Foods exhibit at the State Fair’s EcoExperience and Green Routes, a sustainable tourism initiative.