Edible Brooklyn: The Cookbook

By focusing on local foods, Edible Communities has stealthily grown into a national media venture. With an array of print and online magazines, blogs and podcasts, it covers the regional eats scene from Boston to Seattle. This cookbook is the first in a series due from Sterling that aims to "celebrate those areas where Edible magazines exist." It does so here by employing crowd-sourcing, pulling in recipes not only from neighborhood chefs and restaurant owners but from the foodie neighbors who do the eating. Thus NPR radio personality John Schaefer's offering of chili con carne is nestled between a recipe for Trinidadian buljol, a ceviche-like dish from beekeeper Gemma Garcia, and a cheddar, pepperoni, and egg quesadilla sandwich, provided by John Stiers, cofounder of the Brooklyn Winery. This is surely not your grandfather's Brooklyn. In this new frontier of culinary hipsters surrounded by food co-ops and green markets galore, there is not a meatball to be found, and when the talk turns to pizza, the shining example is not Grimaldi's but Franny's, a small farm-sourced restaurant in the Prospect Heights sections of the borough. Wharton does go old school briefly, in presenting six variations of the Brooklyn cocktail that span the years 1883 to 1945%E2%80%94though trend setters might prefer the white Manhattan, which calls for moonshine produced at one of three micro-distilleries currently operating in Williamsburg. (Oct.)