My Little Michigan Kitchen: Recipes and Stories from a Homemade Life Lived Well

In this uneven, though enjoyable, debut, Kitchen Joy blogger McGovern celebrates the cuisine of her home state of Michigan. She delivers on her promise of regional cooking: pasties (a popular meat pie), Detroit deep-dish pizza, hot cherry mustard for pretzel-dipping, banket (a pastry of almond paste brought by Dutch settlers to the Midwest), and Mackinac Island fudge with toffee all feature. The book, however, contains a number of recipes of familiar dishes found elsewhere in the country, such as biscuits and sausage, chicken enchiladas, roasted broccoli, grilled asparagus, and breakfast burritos (which curiously calls for mayonnaise in addition to sour cream and hot sauce). There are, however, many gems throughout: pumpkin doughnuts, chicken purses (a mash-up of crab rangoon and chicken salad that is baked and topped with a cheddar cheese sauce), venison goulash, and Mom’s Meatballs (formed from ground chuck and oats in a tomato sauce with Worcestershire sauce and brown sugar), a quirky dish that gives the book its homespun feel. Though the culinary focus occasionally strays, this is nevertheless a charming celebration of the food of Michigan. [em](BookLife) [/em]