cover image The County Fair Cookbook: Yankee Johnnycakes, Tater Pigs, Shoofly Pie and 200 More Recpies from America's Best Country Cooks

The County Fair Cookbook: Yankee Johnnycakes, Tater Pigs, Shoofly Pie and 200 More Recpies from America's Best Country Cooks

Lyn Stallworth, Rod Kennedy. Hyperion Books, $27.45 (351pp) ISBN 978-0-7868-6014-2

Stallworth and Kennedy, coauthors of The Brooklyn Cookbook , here survey rural America and Canada for unassumingly colorful regional foods associated with county fairs. That means Ethel Waddle's cream cheese pound cake is served up in Springfield, Ohio's Clark County Fair; apricot butter at the Big Fresno Fair in Fresno, Calif.; pickles in St. Paul, Minn., at the Minnesota State Fair; and, unlikely though it may sound, potato candy at Presque Isle's Northern Maine Fair. In a sense, the book doubles as a vicarious vacation trip, if you happen to be hungry for mostly small-town landscapes. Photographs (of prize-winning New England bakers, bedecked with blue ribbons) and sidebars (e.g., profiles of countrymen who once plied New Hampshire crowds with honey sandwiches) provide a jaunty look and visual breaks. The recipes vary, from the healthful (``Garrett's Carrots And Asparagus'') to the predictably stodgy (ham loaf from Wisconsin), but there's enough to choose from that most readers will soon reach for a stirring spoon. Photos not seen by PW . (Sept.)