Meals from the Mitten: Celebrating the Seasons in Michigan

In this hit-or-miss collection, Michigan native Ferwerda celebrates her home state’s bounty of produce. The recipes are certainly intriguing, but many only fleetingly take advantage of local ingredients. A Michigan Manhattan cocktails features only the juice from Michigan cherries, but asparagus, an ingredient commonly grown in the state, is shoehorned into a plethora of recipes including guacamole, pizza crust, and chicken satay with soba noodles (Ferwerda works closely with the Asparagus Advisory Board). That said, she includes recipes for the popular Detroit pizza, which is baked in a loaf pan in order to yield crispy cheesy borders, and an olive burger loved by locals. Surprisingly, there are no pasties, a classic meat and vegetable pie popular in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. There are imaginative dishes, such as a burger-based riff on a reuben, a cherry salad with maple-cayenne candied walnut and cherry-balsamic vinaigrette; apple fritter dip; and muffler meatballs, which can be cooked via an appliance affixed to a snowmobile muffler. Locals and tourists will likely find Ferwerda’s cookbook to be a welcome souvenir though probably not a kitchen workhorse. (BookLife)