Free Cookbook from GREAT PERFORMANCES-A Collaborative Project of Quarantine Cooking

The newest entry in the roster of Covid-19 quarantine driven cookbooks stands out from the pack by being free and a culinary travelogue with recipes representing the cuisines of 20 countries on five continents. Quarantine Cookbook, A Community Collaborative Cookbook 2020-2021 is a collection of recipes from 100 friends and family of New York City's premier catering, events and hospitality company Great Performances. Many of its 110 recipes are accompanied by intriguing personal stories from contributors about their provenance, memories associated with them, the mothers and grandmothers who passed them along and / or how they figured into the quarantine cooking experience. The colorful work just became available to browse read, download, print or share - at no charge - on Great Performances' website at https://www.greatperformances.com/great-performances-collaborative-community-cookbook/.

The new book, Great Performances (GP) first foray into the cookbook arena, presents tempting breakfast, sauce and dressing, salad, soup, entrée, side and dessert dishes, including a number of vegetarian and gluten-free options. They range from easy familiar favorites to the sophisticated and even exotic. Witness Franks & Beans and Three Bean Salad to Swedish Cardamom Bread, West African Peanut Soup with Chicken, Okonomiyaki (fried Japanese pancakes), Apricot Frangipane Galette and an example of extreme American cuisine, Rochester, NY's Garbage Plate.

As for the 20 countries that can claim recipes in the Quarantine Cookbook, they are: Argentina; Belgium; Bolivia; Canada; Chad; Chile; China; France; Germany; Greece; India; Ireland; Italy; Japan; Nepal; Portugal; Russia; Sweden; United States; and Uruguay. Italian being America's best-loved ethnic cuisine is born out by Quarantine Cookbook, A Community Collaborative Cookbook 2020-2021 with more representative recipes than any other country after the US.

One of the more interesting entries in terms of its back story is Toowoomba Pasta, a fettucine, shrimp, mushroom and cream dish, that is hugely popular in South Korea, but credited to Outback Steakhouse, Toowoomba being the name of a small Australian city. Its contributor, a South Korean native who came to the U.S. to study at the Culinary Institute of America, has fond memories of it as an annual Christmas dinner dish and laments that it has disappeared from Outback Steakhouse locations in this country.

The idea for the book came to GP Founder and Chair Liz Neumark the day before Thanksgiving 2020 when she was at client Rockefeller University helping distribute festive meals on behalf of university leadership to those who were going to be stuck on campus for the holiday. As she spoke to dozens of students, it became clear they were all exploring what they could produce in the kitchen, daily. The amount of cooking that was taking place made a big impression on her and it was then the idea of creating a community cookbook was hatched. And she invited GP staff and clients to submit recipes along with any associated stories.

Whatever the origin of its offerings, the Quarantine Cookbook is rooted in the singularly common experience of quarantine cooking, which Neumark describes in the forward: "As our cities shut down, sending us to work from home and share our spaces with family and loved ones, something different started to happen. We reconnected to the kitchen and home cooking in unexpected ways. The power of the family meal, the detail of preparing a solitary meal, the hunt for ingredients, the discovery of new flavors, the conversations about cooking methods, the innovation, the zillions of Instagramable moments - the refuge of the kitchen as a creative and delicious sanctuary - nourished our bodies and spirits."

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Great Performances