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

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.)