Regular marked price: $32.50Discount Price: $24.70
Cost Savings: $7.80 (24%)Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: In stock soon. Order now to get in line. First come, very first served.
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.575
EAN num: 9780312242015
ISBN number: 0312242018
Label: St. Martin's Press
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 304
Printing Date: November 01, 2004
Publishing house: St. Martin's Press
Release Date: November 04, 2004
Sale Popularity Level: 757980
Studio: St. Martin's Press
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
- Sweet and Spicy Alaska Spot Prawns
- Autumn Pear Salad with Gorgonzola and Spiced Pecans
- Chicken Breast Stuffed with Wild Mushrooms and Smoked Gouda
- Bread Pudding with Butter Bourbon Sauce
Is this a menu from one of North America's great restaurants? Yes and no. It's actually a menu from four of North America's great restaurants, some of which whisk you along at speeds upward of eighty miles per hour. This enticing meal, just right for crisp fall weather and featuring the great foods of North America, comes straight from the dining car menus of four of the greatest trains traveling the rails today: The Midnight Sun Express, which travels through Alaska between Anchorage and Fairbanks (the prawns); The Belle Vista, which often takes diners through the Montana Rockies (the pear salad); The Spirit of Washington Dinner Train, which gives diners views of the Seattle skyline (the chicken breast); and My Old Kentucky Dinner Train, which travels the old Bardstown line and passes by the Jim Beam distillery (the bread pudding).
All across America, as trains speed through mountain passes, wend their way along the shores of crystal-clear lakes, and roll across blistering deserts, riders are enjoying some of the best that the North American table has to offer. Complete with serious wine lists, crisp table linens, heavy silverware, fine china, gleaming crystal, and impeccable service, these dining cars bring the age-old romance of dining well on a train into the twenty-first century.
Riders on the Napa Valley Wine Train can feast on California crab stacks, smoked Sonoma range chicken, and crème brulee, sip the local vintage and watch while small towns like Yountville roll by. Those waking up on the luxurious American Orient Express can watch everything from the autumn foliage of New England to the sun-basted Pacific Ocean surf pass by while enjoying fluffy omelets, freshly brewed coffee, pastries, and fruit juice.
James D. Porterfield, author of the now-classic Dining by Rail, takes readers into the kitchens and dining rooms of the great trains and rail cars, both public and private, to discover the secrets of the great railroad chefs. He talks to them about how they prepare meals that would be the envy of a conventional restaurant while working in a kitchen one-half or one-third the size.
Featuring more than two hundred recipes and just as many behind-the-scenes stories, James D. Porterfield's From the Dining Car brings the food of the great trains from the dining car to your dining room table. All aboard!
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
Thought it was a well put together book, learning what people cook and eat on trains.
Rated by buyers 
-
`From the Dining Car' is the second railway dining book from railway historian and culinary writer, James D. Porterfield, who is a regular contributor to the magazine of railroad faves, `Railfan and Railroad'.
Looking into this book confirms my suspicions that it is more a book for railway groupies than it is for foodies, although both groups will find much to interest them. The very best thing about the book is that it deals with modern railway cooking and dining rather than the cuisine of bygone days on the rails. One may guess that the author's very first book, `Dining By Rail' covered this material.
For those of you who have never eaten in a railway dining car, I strongly encourage you to shake any analogies to airline food from your minds. This is an entirely different animal indeed. It has much more in common with ocean liner and cruise ship dining, which, in turn, is very similar to some of the best resort dining. And, as someone who has dined both on the grand old dames of the Cunard line and on the Orient Express (yes, the real one from Vienna to Paris, the one James Bond rode in `From Russia With Love'), I can assure you that you enter a whole new realm of dining experience on trains and large ships. It is almost like taking the pleasure of travelling and squareing it by multiplying it with the luxury of a ready at hand gourmet dining room.
One big surprise is that this experience still exists in the United States. A second surprise is that the primary venues for eating by rail are not on the Amtrak tourist lines (as seen in `Silver Streak'), but in four other genres of eating by rail.
The very first alternative is private luxury trains which are the landlocked equivalent of cruise ships.
The second is privately chartered rail cars, the railroad version of the chartered bus trip, which happens to bring its own restaurant along for the ride.
The third are `dinner trains' which may the the railroad version of restaurants on the top of tall buildings, placed their primarily for the view.
The fourth is trains owned by businesses. The most logical of these are owned by railroads in order that company executives can inspect their lines and stations while actually using those facilities.
The author does a yearly column in `Railfan and Railroad' on railroad dining, but there is no mention that this material is taken from those columns. Rather, most of the material was provided by modern railroad chefs in recipes sent to the author, who then worked them over so that they would be doable by a home cook. The author does say that the confines of a railroad kitchen bring to mind similarities with a home kitchen, but after reading Bill Buford's `Heat' on Mario Batalli's kitchen in Babbo, I strongly suspect that the railroad kitchen is still much more similar to the stationary restaurant kitchen than it is to your Pullman kitchen at home.
The primary appeal of the book for both railheads and foodies seems to be the opportunity the book gives to entertain with the railroad theme whereby you can certify that all your dishes came from authentic `meals on rails'. The book provides two approaches. All recipes are organized in the text itself by source. Thus, all recipes from Railcruise America, operating out of St. Louis are in one chpater. Alternately, there is an excellent cross reference at the back of the book which lists all dishes by type or principle ingredient, in categories such as Breakfast Items, Appetizers, Soups and Stews, Salads and Salad Dressings, Beef, Game (only one recipe), Poultry, Lamb, Pork, Sandwiches, Vegetables, Sauces, and Desserts.
While this book has a great special interest, it may not be a perfect replacement for a very first class general cookbook such as Mark Bittman's `How to Cook Everything' or James Beard's `American Cookery'. Some of the very early recipes, for example, include ingredients which are either expensive or difficult to find such as foie gras, lobster, caviar, and crème fraiche (and that's all in one recipe). There are, however, perfectly simple recipes such as Amtrak's grilled cheese sandwich, proving the author's point that the railroad culinary team had to be ready for anything.
This is a really nice special interest book. I missed seeing a good diagram of the insides of a railroad kitchen, but there are plenty of reasonably good pics of same for you to get the idea. And, a great idea source for a really different kind of vacation.
Find other books like this one:
