Ms Gabrielle Langholtz celebrates the diversity of American cuisine.

Google “American food”, hit “Images” and behold this great nation’s cuisine in all its glory: lurid hotdogs dripping in luminescent sauce, greasy burgers piled a foot high and sickly sweet pancakes ready to rot your teeth. This is, of course, an unfair pastiche of what the US brings to the world’s culinary table. But these reference points are all too common.

This is a key driving force behind an exhaustive new tome (we don’t use that word lightly) pulled together by food writer Ms Gabrielle Langholtz. So much so that she begins America: The Cookbook – A Culinary Road Trip Through The 50 States by saying that she nearly omitted the burger, that iconic American staple, from her research entirely. Instead, she wanted to showcase “a continent of crab cakes and cracklins, fiddleheads and fatback, huckleberries and huevos, corn and conch, peanuts and peaches”, which, until recently, had been overshadowed by European cooking techniques deemed superior. “None foresaw the day when chefs would boast of California wine, New Jersey asparagus, Colorado lamb, or American cheese,” she says in her introduction. “I wrote this book to refute this misconception that American food means homogenised processed blandness. I come to bury the burger.”

Apart from being an American who edits food magazines, Ms Langholtz attributes the passion for her project to her parents, who would take her the length and breadth of the US as a child to experience the country’s culinary delights. “We feasted on salmon, king crab, halibut bigger than I was and mussels pulled from the frigid Pacific shore… We picked wild blueberries and fiddlehead ferns… We vacationed in Hawaii where I ate my weight in pineapple and papaya.” It’s an education that, backed up by exhaustive research, is presented comprehensively in the book, from starters to puddings, from state to state, with recipes and chef interviews throughout.

America: The Cookbook – A Culinary Road Trip Through The 50 States (Phaidon) by Ms Gabrielle Langholtz is published on 9 October. In the meantime, try whipping up these Korean pancakes, fresh from the book.

Preparation time: 10 minutes Cooking time: 40 minutes Serves: 8

Los Angeles is home to the largest Korean-American community in the country. Serve these pancakes with a soy dipping sauce, if desired.

1 cup (230g) kimchi, finely chopped 2 eggs 3 tbsp vegetable oil 1 cup (130g) all-purpose (plain) flour 1 cup (160g) rice flour ½ tsp salt 6 scallions (spring onions), thinly sliced 4 tbsp chopped fresh chives _4 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro (coriander)
_ Soy sauce, for dipping

Place the kimchi in a sieve and press to remove as much liquid as possible.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs and 1 tbsp oil until lightly beaten. Add both flours, the salt, and 1½ cups (355ml) water and whisk to combine into a smooth batter. Stir in the kimchi, scallions (spring onions), chives and cilantro (coriander).

Heat an 8in (20 cm) nonstick frying pan over a medium-high heat. Add 1 tbsp oil and swirl to coat the bottom of the pan. Add a quarter of the batter and spread to cover the entire bottom of the pan. Cook until the bottom is browned, about 5 minutes. Flip in one piece and cook for an additional 5 minutes. Repeat with the remaining batter, using the remaining 1 tbsp oil to grease the pan, as needed, between batches.

Cut the pancakes into wedges and serve.

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