cover image Food Trucks: Recipes and Stories from America's Best Kitchens on Wheels

Food Trucks: Recipes and Stories from America's Best Kitchens on Wheels

Heather Shouse. Ten Speed, $20 (208p) ISBN 978-1-58008-351-5

In this excellent cookbook on roving foods, Shouse, the food and drink editor for Time Out Chicago, interviews 50 proprietors of various taco carts, ice cream trucks, crepe trailers, and kebob-mobiles across 18 major U.S. cities (cooking in a truck is still illegal in the Windy City). Along the way, she creates a fascinating landscape of cultural diversity%E2%80%94folks from all walks of life who have dedicated themselves to cranking out quick, cheap, nomadic snacks. In New York, there is the classically trained bassoonist who has become a local hero with his Big Gay Ice Cream Truck. In Seattle, a woman who is part Korean and part Hawaiian teams with a Chinese-Filipino to serve up Spam sliders. And in New Orleans, a Katrina victim who attended culinary schools in London and Sydney makes brisket in a refrigerator that has been turned into a giant smoker. Along the way, Shouse provides recipes for crowd favorites like the buttermilk fried chicken found in Oahu, and a Sloppy Jose in Miami. Some ingredients, it turns out, travel more intriguingly than others. Bacon, for instance, shows up as a mac & cheese garnish in New Hampshire, arrives as a doughnut topping in Austin, Tex., and beds down in an ice cream sandwich in Manhattan. (Apr.)