text: Brooke Dojny's New England Cookbook: 350 Recipes from Town and Country, Land and Sea, Hearth and Home, is a stunning achievement, a magnum opus of a cookbook. Published by The Harvard Common Press, the book chronicles the cookery of New England from Maine to Connecticut, from the first Thanksgiving to the present. Dojny's approach to the region goes well beyond New England standbys like clam chowder (although she offers three tempting recipes)and spans practically all the food traditions of all the ethnic groups who ever called New England home. The eight baked bean recipes in the book include one for Cuban Black Beans and Yellow Rice and another for West Indian Peas 'n Rice. New England cookery has embraced food from all over the world -- besides Caribbean, you'll find culinary influences of Native American, English, Portuguese, Italian, Irish, German Scandinavian, Greek, French and Hungarian cooks  -- and all are represented in this book. Yet, for all its broadness of scope, this is a very personal book; Dojny's voice can be heard throughout, in the headnotes, sidebars and essays that describe the people and places associated with the recipes. The book is also a wealth of New England food history and lore, as well as tips on cooking techniques and ingredients. Bravo! (Excerpted from The Culinary Connection, the newsletter of the Connecticut Women's Culinary Alliance
  