Cookbook Love

What's the first cookbook you ever fell in love with? Oh, sure, everyone has their favorite utility infielders -- the cookbooks you go to when you need a bit of sensible advice -- but I'm not asking about those kinds. I'm asking about the kind of cookbook that you curl up with like a good novel.

I had two first loves: Edna Lewis' The Taste of Southern Cooking and Ronni Lundy's Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest Fried Chicken. Now, these two cookbooks are both about Southern cooking but the trait they share most strikingly is that they tell good stories about good times. And I'm quite sure you read this blog because you are also of the view that good times always involve good cooking. Miss Lewis' food memories from Freetown convey the bounty that her family and community pulled from the land around them, and each menu is described in rich prose. A simple "Cool-Evening Supper" is composed of Summer Vegetable Soup, Store Soda Crackers, Ham Biscuits, Cucumber Pickles, Tyler Pie, and Coffee. Now, when I read this, I had no idea what a Tyler Pie was, but I sure wanted to eat one. And, atheist though I am, I would happily sit through a day's worth of preaching to get to the Sunday Revival Dinner: Baked Virginia Ham, Southern Fried Chicken, Braised Leg of Mutton, Sweet Potato Casserole, Corn Pudding, Green Beans with Pork, Platter of Sliced Tomatoes with Special Dressing, Spiced Seckel Pears, Cucumber Pickles, Yeast Rolls, Biscuits, Sweet Potato Pie, Summer Apple Pie, Tyler Pie, Caramel Layer Cake, Lemonade, and Iced Tea.

I first discovered Miss Lewis' cooking in San Francisco in 1988. A good friend of mine -- also from Tennessee -- had a dog-eared copy of The Taste of Southern Cooking in a book rack over her refrigerator. We pored over the recipes and schemed how to find seckel pears, for example, or "a really good chicken." We doubted the pasty-looking birds at the local Safeway qualified as edible, much less "really good." We did manage, however, to try our hands at some pickling and biscuit-making. I tried hard to find my own copy of Miss Lewis' book, as no one in San Francisco seemed to know of her food, or care that they were missing something delicious. Thank goodness for Scott Peacock, who cherished Miss Lewis in her later years and carried her legacy forward, and thank goodness I can now find seckel pears and really good chicken.

If I regard Miss Lewis with a more sainted type of love, I love Ronni Lundy's Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest Fried Chicken with an earthy abandon. Ms. Lundy writes with an air of certainty that inspires confidence in even the most timid of cooks. Introducing her recipe for Honest Fried Chicken, Ms. Lundy writes: "I was born in the state of Kentucky and Colonel Harland D. Sanders was not, so you can believe me when I say that I, not the Colonel, know the secret to making honest fried chicken." As I've mentioned before, Ms. Lundy inspired me to first put pork shoulder to smoke, enabling me to enjoy one of the richest treats from my childhood -- a hickory-smoked chopped pork sandwich on a mushy white bun, lots of outside meat, please, and don't forget that slaw and pickles have to go on top of the sandwich. The premise of Shuck Beans is that Ms. Lundy collects recipes, memories, tall tales, and good stories from various country music stars (real country music stars like Emmylou Harris and John Prine - but don't let's go down that road) and their relatives.

Ms. Lundy also includes plenty of good advice for beginning cooks, including my favorite tip for mastering mashed potatoes:

"You're likely to encounter two kinds of potato mashers in most kitchen stores. The first has a masher that is a firm, zigzagged metal rod across the bottom. My mama told me not to fool with that kind because no matter how long you mash it's going to leave your potatoes with lumps. The masher that you want has a round, open waffle grid across its bottom that the potatoes are pressed through."

Mindful of her mother's dictum to ' be careful when you buy one, because they make a lot out of flimsy metal that are just not worth a hoot,' Ms. Lundy advises: "To make sure the masher isn't one of those hootless, flimsy kinds, pick it up by its handle in one hand and then press real hard against its masher with the other. If you feel any give, it's not worth your money. But if it stands firm and looks well made and sturdy, buy it, because, like my mama told me, a good masher is hard to find."

Sigh. I love a woman who can riff on Flannery O'Connor. I guess you never get over any of your first loves.