Potlikkery

cauliflower broccoli casserole

It's like this: I'm tired of relying on cream of mushroom/celery/chicken soup as a base for any casserole that I make. That's where my thoughts automatically veer, simply because of my training in casserole construction and steeping in the tradition of southern cookery and cookbooks. Almost every casserole I've ever made starts with one of those soups as its base. So while that's not so much a bad thing. Um, maybe it is. But I'd like to get away from that cream soup base.

First thing that came to my mind as a substitute was a roux. Enter google. I found an Emeril Lagasse's recipe online that I used, almost exactly in the making of my insanely popular cauliflower broccoli casserole that I brought to the Stokes family Thanksgiving gathering (along with pies).

The only thing I didn't add was his "Essence." Nor did I follow his suggestions for the amount of cauliflower and broccoli. At least, as far as I know I did not. I used a head of cauliflower and two head of broccoli. Plus, I've finally learned how to spell broccoli properly after all these years of stumbling along with one "c" and two "ls". 

My roux was abundant. It runneth over. I probably used half to two-thirds of the roux that the instructions in the recipe below made. Perhaps I should have picked a larger casserole dish. But the upside was I had enough roux to whip up a nice dish of baked mac n cheese. What could be nicer than that? No need to let a good roux go to waste.

If you haven't guessed, roux is probably my most favorite creation. I love to say it. I love to whip them up. Gravy, too, since it's the same principle and technique. Crikey, I've forgotten the name of the white cheddar cheese I used for both dishes. It was about a buck an ounce, but good stuff that Earth Fare had on sale the day I stopped in and chatted up the cheesemonger about a good cheddar for casseroles. Started with a B, I think.

Here's the recipe:

1 stick plus 2 teaspoons unsalted butter
3 pounds cauliflower, trimmed and cut into large florets
1 1/2 pounds broccoli, trimmed and cut into large florets
2 teaspoons salt, plus more as needed
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
6 cups whole milk
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
8 ounces grated cheddar cheese, about 3 cups
1 cup fine dry bread crumbs
2 teaspoons Essence, recipe follows
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Grease a 3-quart casserole dish with 2 teaspoons of butter and set aside.

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Add the cauliflower and cook until tender but still firm, 8 to 10 minutes. Transfer with a slotted spoon to a colander, rinse under cold running water, and drain well. Return the water to a boil, add the broccoli and cook until tender but still firm, about 5 minutes. Drain in a colander, refresh under cold running water, and drain again. Place the cauliflower in the prepared pan and top with the broccoli.

In a medium heavy saucepan, melt the remaining stick of butter over medium heat. Stir in the flour, whisking constantly over medium heat until thickened into a blond roux, about 4 minutes. Add the remaining 2 teaspoons salt and the cayenne, stir, and gradually add the cold milk, whisking constantly until the mixture thickens, about 4 minutes.

Bring to a simmer and add the cheese, whisking constantly until the cheese is melted. Remove from the heat. Pour the cheese sauce over the vegetables, gently rapping the casserole dish on the counter top to dispel air bubbles. In a bowl, mix together the bread crumbs, oil, and Essence and evenly distribute over the top of the vegetables. Bake until golden brown, about 30 minutes. Serve hot.

Essence (Emeril's Creole Seasoning):

2 1/2 tablespoons paprika
2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons garlic powder
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon dried leaf oregano
1 tablespoon dried thyme

Combine all ingredients thoroughly and store in an airtight jar or container.
Yield: about 2/3 cup

Recipe from "New New Orleans Cooking", by Emeril Lagasse and Jessie Tirsch. Published by William and Morrow, 1993.

The end product, ahem, the leftovers aren't fancy or styled, but I'm not always about that. I'm about being real. Real life leftovers, for a real life audience. Certainly I need to work on presentation, lighting, and styling of my food for photos accompanying this blog. It ain't good, but it ain't as bad as others I've seen. And, I was more interested in sharing the meat of the post with you rather than the finished product. It's all eaten up, anyway.

Roux is the magic word. Let is roux, let it roux, let it roux!

local doughnuts

If you spent any time at my Farmer's Market this summer you saw the long lines at one particular booth. I stood in line for doughnuts at least two or three times. Possible thirty minutes? Well, they're really that good. 

They're made by a Mennonite family, so that air of exoticism their clothes, speech, and mannerisms lent the affair made it more akin to a carnival sideshow than a typical day at the Farmer's Market.

The story is that the fella was a roofer or carpenter of some type and when his work dried up completely he and his family decided to make doughnuts.

The doughnuts are huge. They're cut out, deep fried, and glazed at the Market. And standing in line for twenty or thirty minutes let me watch their process, so that was great, too. They usually had enough dough on hand for 1,000 doughnuts. They charged $1.50 each doughnut. 

What held up the line was the greedy folk who wanted one or two dozen at a time.

Earlier this week I discovered the doughnut maker's new location. Our FM closes at the end of October, so they've set up their operation in a woodworking businesses parking lot. 

While the doughnuts are awesome, they only stay fresh one day. No additives, no preservatives, no shelf life.

pecannery row

For Thanksgiving I made two pecan pies. One to keep and one to take. I love pie making and baking. I'm a baker at heart.

Pies, cakes, sometimes cookies. Casseroles, veggies. I like them all baked rather than fried.There's something about an oven that floats my boat. Perhaps it's that whole "return to the womb" thing that psychologists natter on about as the basis of our compulsions and neuroses. 

My recipe follows. I'm specific about brands because those are what I use and why my pecan pies are to die for. Your results may not be so to-die-for if you use other ingredients. I normally use Dixie Crystals sugar, but my Thanksgiving pies were made with Domino because that's what my grocer had in stock the day I shopped for sugar ages ago.

• One and one-fourths sup of white sugar
• A half cup of Karo light corn syrup
• A half stick of unsalted butter (Land o Lakes)
• Three large brown eggs
• Two cups (or eight ounces) of whole pecans (Terri Lynn)
• Two tablespoons of  Madagascar bourbon pure vanilla extract (Nielsen-Massey)
• One nine -inch pie crust (Pillsbury in the red box in the dairy case)
• A pinch of all-purpose flour 

Set your oven at 350 degrees fahrenheit.

Evenly distribute/sprinkle pinch of flour inside pie pan. This helps your crust not stick to the pan and eases removal and serving of pie. Then unroll pie crust, place it evenly into pie tin, and then crimp the crust's edges. 

Slightly beat three eggs in a medium bowl. Set aside.

Combine sugar, corn syrup, and butter in a two quart saucepan. Stir as the ingredients melt. Bring to a boil over high heat until the butter has melted. Remove from heat and add this mixture to the eggs, whisking the eggs as you add the hot mixture. 

Add vanilla.

Add pecans and stir them in the bowl so they are coated with the bowl's contents. Let this cool  to warm; usually about 20 minutes.

Pour into pie crust and bake forty to forty-five minutes. Cool ninety minutes before serving. A scoop of vanilla ice cream is recommended to cut the sweet, gooey richness and allow people to finish eating their slice of pecan pie.

 

As I've written here previously, I never liked pecan pie until I made this recipe. And actually, mine is typically the only pecan pie I eat. I've studied pecan pie recipes. The ingredients are usually the same. My theory is that melting the butter, sugar, and corn syrup together first, and then whisking that together with the eggs makes all the difference in the world when it comes to pecan pie flavor and structural integrity.

nuts glorious nuts

Last year I failed to order nuts from my source and I ran out of pecans. My pecan pies were so so. I bought pecans in bulk from Sam's. My pecan pies didn't taste the same. I blamed the nuts. Sam's bulk pecans aren't as big, fleshy, or tasty as the premium pecans I get from Terri Lynn.

My source sells them as a fundraising project for her church. Consider my pecans divinely connected and then you learn the real reason they make the best pies.

Or not.

Maybe they're simply good.

Terri Lynn has been selling pecans since 1936. They're based in Elgin, Illinois, not the south, like you might think. After all, pecans are a product of the south and most pecan-based recipes like pralines and pecan pie cannot be separated from their regional origins. However, they own a pecan shelling facility in Cordele, Georgia where they can process 20 million pounds of raw material each year.

Interestingly, they shell pecans by variety and size. Who knew? I assumed everything was thrown into one big machine, processed, packaged, and spit out.

The things one learns.

you want review copies for your blog, right?

Lately I think about what value this blog offers to its readers. I rarely share recipes. I don't review restaurants. My "off-the-radar" location is not on a top ten list of places people are dying to see. Nor do I offer any particular "experience," either. Must work on that.

What I have are my stories, my opinions, occasional decent photography, possibly a small bit of wisdom, and then there's my knowledge of publishers and how their publicity and marketing arms function. In my day job as a librarian I'm the book review editor of my state library journal. At least weekly I contact university presses, and both national and regional publishers to obtain review copies for my reviewers, and then I edit their reviews.

The review copy solicitation process, I thought, was common knowledge. Actually, bluestockings gives five tips and there's Linda Formichelli's review copy helper, and info at the book publicity blog. So it's not rare information, but perhaps I can fill a niche. I love books. I love reading and reviewing them. And I encourage other bloggers to do so as well. Five reviews of the same book offer different perspectives, oftentimes perspectives in need of airing.

So on to the good stuff. 

I wrote a bit about getting review copies of books last year after the FTC belched out some mumbo jumbo about bloggers having to reveal whether they were compensated monetarily or in the form of comped meals, vacations, products, or whatnot. But, I haven't developed clear guidelines about what I'll review, or what to expect from my book reviews. Defining your review agenda is the best place to start because then you'll know which titles and publishers to target. This will make it easier when publicists contact you out of the blue about whether you'd like a review 50 Ways to Stuff a Tomato. 

First, find a book that you want to review. Go to a bookstore and browse their cookbook section. Note the publishers whose books make you drool. Powells or Amazon are likely places, too. Amazon lets you search for forthcoming publications for 2011, 2010, etc. Visit publisher's websites and look through their catalogs.  Your best bet is contacting a publicist well-before the book's publication date. Publicists like to coordinate blog posts with traditional media coverage when a book is launched to create the largest buzz.

There is no standardization of publisher's websites, so you'll need to browse several areas. First, look for a FAQ. Usually they'll have a Q about review copies. Read it. Follow it's directions.

If there are no directions about review copies in the FAQ, look for information in the "About us" or "Contact us" sections of the website. Find the publicity or marketing departments. Note the names, emails, or fax numbers. Sometimes it's as general as info@albatrossgroup.com, or it may be a specific person.

Review copy requests are directed to a generic email address because there's a high turnover in lower-level jobs at publishing houses (this is why I caution you about using Formichelli's resource; it could contain outdated information). If you contact the director or manager, they'll likely forward your request to a lower-level person such as an intern or administrative assistant. I contact the person with the lowest title first. But do what works for you. 

Some publishers are specific about the information they want from you. Like, your request on your organization's letterhead. But you have no letterhead? Simple: Copy and paste your blog banner/header into your word processing software, then add your mailing address, phone number, blog url, etc below and you have instant letterhead. They may want to know, if you're a traditional print journal (HA!), what your circulation numbers are. Instead of this, I provide my blog traffic stats (see italicized example below).

Other publishers only take email requests. Be sure your email signature includes your mailing address, phone numbers, blog url, etc. Or they only take fax requests. I use faxzero to send free faxes online since I don't own a fax machine. Faxzero allows you to send one or two freebies a day, and they make you pay for additional faxes. But, certainly, there are other online faxing services. 

When you communicate with the publicity or marketing department follow these steps:

1. Introduce yourself and your blog
2. Mention how their book matches your areas of interest, expertise
3. Include the book's title, author, and ISBN
4. Offer information about your blog traffic
5. Mention other publicists with whom you've had contact
6. Thank them

So this is the template I use for requesting review copies of books from publishers:

I'd love a review copy of your forthcoming publication Stories from the Cellar Floor by Jane B. Doe  (ISBN 8675309123) for my blog Potlikkery which I established in 2004. When I'm not writing food anecdotes or sharing recipes or my food photography, I review books about culinary history, food memoirs, and cookbooks.

They are available via this link: http://potlikker.typepad.com/potlikker/books/ 

My visitor stats are here: http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s15potlikker  

In a nutshell, my blog receives about 205 page views each week. Jenny Jones at Shuckey & Swofford and Darrell Williams of Albatross Group send me review copies of their culinary publications every few weeks, and I thought you might add me to your distribution list of upcoming culinary titles. I look forward to your response.

All best,

 

That was my standard email. I mix it up though. If you have a connection with the author, whether you know him or her or not, mention that. Throw in a sentence like:

Jane B. Joe and I belong to the same generation and possibly shared many of the same childhood food experiences and popular culture references. Our commonalities lend themselves to making me an effective reviewer of this title.

Give the publisher some reason to trust you, to trust that your opinion about their book and your expertise in the topic will generate interest and sales for them which translates into royalties for the writers. Throw in a bit of your personality and voice because that may get you the review copy rather than them giving it to a blogger who wrote a generic request.

I don't know the availability of review copies at each publisher, so it they might scarce resources. Make yourself the worthy one. And, you don't need to sound as hoity-toity as my italicized sentence above. I lapse into this ultra-formal language when communicating with publishers. 

Let me know if this works for you. Or if it didn't. It isn't foolproof. I don't always receive each book I request. That's a bummer.  And sometimes the fax fails to send, so I don't always follow up on those. Sometimes a publicist sends additional forthcoming titles. Once they know your interests and expertise, and they get a taste for the type of reviews you write, they may keep your mailbox flush with packages. And that folks, is what it's all about: Building relationships.

I keep 99% of the books I receive for my personal library. But there are other options. Darren Rowse recommends devoting a spreadsheet to your requests so that you can track publishers who help you out and those who ignore you. All the better to channel your requests, my dears.

best in show, part two

Thanks for hanging in there while I finished reading Best Food Writing 2010 and jelling my thoughts for this review.

Salma Abdelnour rocks. Her approach to wines, as documented and described in "Wines for Drinking Not Overthinking" won me over from the beginning. She conducts an experiment and asks wine authorities questions like "what's the White Castle burger of wine?" "what's the bacon of wine?" and "what's the coffee of wine?" which informs her understanding of wines and helps her deal with wine anxiety. When I doubt I order merlot, and that's what Abdelnour revealed as the most popular bacon pick. I can't share all her secrets, so buy the book and read her article.

And Robert Dickinson's adventures with Moxie are so charming to read that he inspired me to think about bartering in a new manner. I've recently bartered my research, bibliography, and desktop publish skills for a reduced rate on a photography workshop, so who knows where else bartering may lead me?

The fifth section is "Home Cooking" and it's inaugural essay featured Sam Sifton creating a meatloaf to take to a potluck at Nora Ephron's. The first one was inadvertently cooked with plastic and so he plunged onward in his task. I loved how he dealt with adversity and problem-solved. Including failure in the chronicle of your recipe attempts illustrates the life lessons we learn from cooking.

Sixth is "Recipe File" and Adam Gopnik's analysis of the role of cookbooks in modern culture overflowed with intelligent observation and connection of dots. I wish I wrote that well and was so astute. His examination of the evolution of cookbooks and what they mean now, and what that means for us as humans, as cooks, as readers made me so very glad I read this book.

I liked Diane Roberts' "People of the Cake" for several reasons. First it featured cake. It was social history of the role cake played in her family's life. And her reminiscences were sweet. But mostly I liked what she said about pound cake. It's probably my favorite cake.

Roberts wrote:

In the meantime, there's pound cake. Don't scoff. It may seem like  a plain Jane amongst cakes; no fillings, no icing, no cup of cognac, no grating or chopping. But once you bite into a piece of good pound cake, it's like when the librarian unpins her chingnon and whips off her glasses. Oh my God! She's a total babe!

So yeah, I liked the paean to pound cake and the round-about compliment for librarians despite its reliance upon tired stereotypes. Although Roberts' use of chingnon rather than bun indicates a slightly elevated stereotype of librarian hairstyles. Recipe included.

 And last and seventh is "Personal Tastes." Articles included Novella Carpenter's quest to eat only from her garden for the month of July, the travails of a gluten-free transition by Jess Thomson, and Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl's challenges of feeding a picky-picky toddler, which particularly resonated with me. She can't get him to eat anything until he becomes obsessed with doughnuts. And then, rather than eat the good doughnuts she buys for him, he eats ones made at big box stores. Oh, the humanity. 

It seemed like the essays in this edition of Best Food Writing got better as I worked through the book. Perhaps I liked the last section best of all. Roy Ahn's essay about growing up Korean in America made me consider my own adolescence, which lacked anything as spicy or interesting as Korean fare. And Kim Severson's story about encountering Dooky Chase three weeks after Katrina hit was... wow. Then, Marisa Robertson-Textor's ode to Gourmet concluded the book. How bittersweet.

All in all, I reveled in the 2010 edition of Best Food Writing. Hughes' selections were excellent. I don't now how she does it, really. I can't imagine it. But already, I look forward to next year's edition. In her introduction she points out the irony of Gourmet folding as the same time that food journalism "has never been more widely read" (xi). She suggests that the rumors of food writing's death have been greatly exaggerated.

best in show

Every year Holly Hughes reads hundreds, probably thousands of essays, articles, blog posts, and the like as part of her job as the editor of the annual Best Food Writing series published by Da Capo Press since 2000. I have the 2005 edition, and I know I didn't read it in its entirety and wonder, now, whether I've cracked its spine at all. 

Best Food Writing 2010 offers a snapshot of the issues and trends affecting eaters, cooks, and anyone involved in or interested in food. Hughes selected a great crop of writes to include in this edition. Names that those who study the subject would recognize: Molly O'Neill, John T. Edge, and many more. 

Organizationally Hughes started readers in the middle of a fight. "Food Fights" offers the best selection of writing on the issue that divides foodies quicker than a razor-edged cleaver: to eat meat or not, to eat locally or not, to review online or not. Admittedly, I got a bit heated up when I was immersed in writing that didn't exactly represent my point of view on food and eating. Certainly, it's only logical to read the opposition's arguments. They are good.

Jonathan Safran Foer writes about why he raises his children as vegetarians. I completely agree with his points. Vegetarianism is smart, it's better for the body, the environment, the animals. But it's a difficult choice unless you live in an urban environment whose diversity of products and eateries make it an easy lifestyle choice.

Rachel Hutton's piece on online reviews and how they affect eateries in Minnesota outlines the problems, universal problems, really, facing restaurants in the age of the online review. And Tim Carman's informative, and persuasively anti-Zagat piece, demonstrates Zagat's lack of relevance in light of services like Yelp, Urbanspoon and OpenTable. It's all about transparency, you see. Zagat keeps their ranking methodology secret whereas social networking website for foodies let anyone see the reviews and scores.

Personally, I rely on both. Zagat has never let me down, but the only two I've bought were for the same area, Miami & South Florida, 2007 and 2010 respectively. In fact, the 2010 tipped me off to an excellent Salvadoran restaurant El Tamarindo in Ft. Lauderdale. But services like Yelp are invaluable when I'm in the car in a foreign-to-me place and I want to locate an above-average meal within a mile or less, of my location.

"Dining Around" is the second section and it includes pieces written about specific dining experiences. I loved Patricia Sharpe's article "New Zion Barbecue." She lays out the history of a Baptist church in Hunstville, Texas that sells barbecue on the side. Sharpe's piece was probably my favorite of that bunch and reflects what I like to read about: Just folks serving just folks. Other pieces in the section focused on Tokyo, L.A., and sommeliers.

And while those articles were informative, descriptive, evocative, even, most failed to resonate with me and my experience. Frank Bruni wrote about egging on the sommelier at Le Bernardin's and threw around figures like $150 and $75 bottles of white Burgundy. Those bottles, those tastes in the mouth, are not something that the hoi polli would experience, me included. Just maybe it's fun to catch a glimpse of those fleeting moments of the grandiose lifestyle. For some people. 

Todd Killman's "The Perfect Chef" was first in the third section, "Someone's in the Kitchen." I loved it. Killman chronicled his obsession with Peter Chang, a Chinese chef whose wanderlust, or something, kept him hopping from restaurants all over the mid-Atlantic and southeast. Killman's descriptions of  Chang's food infected me, made me a believer, and I'd love to sample a few of those intoxicating, spicy dishes like the fried fish rubbed with cumin.

Reading Jeff Koehler's "Sardines!" reminded me of how I loved eating the tinned fish when I was a child. His quest for fresh sardines anywhere, everywhere he traveled convinced me that I, too, must eat fresh sardines. In the meantime, I'll browse my grocer's shelves and settle for canned sardines.

In that same section, "Stocking the Pantry" Molly O'Neill's profile of Frank Reese, Jr., who once modeled as the Marlboro Man, made me really consider the turkey. Reese breeds heirloom turkeys. His crusade to revive poultry breeds resounded with me and lit a spark of appreciation for his work on behalf of America's poultry viability.

I also loved reading Mike Sula's piece on "The Charcuterie Underground" which described Chicago's E & P Meats, a local company that makes bacon, sausage, and other meats in the owner's homes. It perfectly illustrates how USDA regulations work for big business, but don't address the special issues of the small, local, agricultural businesses. It reminded me of the excitement I felt when Ian brought home twenty pounds of locally-made sausage a few years ago. Sure, we get moonshine all the time, but sausage is something else. Also, my father is a meat cutter by day (preacher by night). And so I love reading about his industry.

Since we've reached the mid-way point in the book, and I'm still reading it, I'll end with that today and finish up my review with part two, tomorrow. I'm really loving this book. It makes me think. It makes me salivate. It inspires me, and I hope that once you read it, you experience the same effect.

Stay tuned.

bacon the only crunchy meat

For a short time Ian and I worried that our baby was switched at the hospital. Elsa wouldn't eat bacon. But then she came around. She loves it as much as we do. Yay! The family who eats bacon together, stays together. Unless, of course, you're a vegan or vegetarian family. But that's not the focus of this blog, or my problem, really. 

There is a new cookbook called I Love Bacon! and I have a copy of it. The photos of bacon are to die for, naturally. The photographer is the awesome Ben Fink whose work I admired in Cider Beans, Wild Greens, and Dandelion Jelly. 

It seems a little bit wrong for a book called I Love Bacon! to be written/published by an author who lives north of the Mason-Dixon line. But, oh well. What can you do? Surely they love bacon up there as much as we do in the middle and lower halves of the country.

It's a smallish book with a glossy cover that features a pile of bacon. Its recipes, much like the aforementioned Cider Beans, were gathered by Jayne Rockmill from folks she contacted such as Christopher Rendell, Chris Cosentino, Ellen Burke Van Slyke, Monica Byrne, etc. 

As expected, the dishes feature bacon as an ingredient or topping. Yet there is no full-on (full frontal!?) bacon dish. Bacon is paired with other things and never eaten alone. So the savory bacon bread pudding looked like a winner to me. As did the bacon-wrapped mango chutney and manchego-stuffed dates.

Now wait. Maybe that isn't just right. Bacon is the focus in first few recipes in I Love Bacon! There's classic cured bacon which takes you through the steps of rolling the pork belly in brown sugar, kosher salt, pink salt, and pepper. Then you seal this in a container, pop it in the fridge and take it out in a week. Next, there's spicy braised bacon and soy-ginger braised bacon and those require one pound or two pounds (slabs!!) of bacon. Next comes the pork belly. There's crispy pork belly and Chinese-style pork belly. Just hope you can choose between the two.

Bacony desserts (and drinks as well) like chocolate-dipped smoked almond-bacon brittle reinterpret the favorite peanut brittle. Chocolate bacon cupcakes? Meh. Maybe? I looked for a surprise in this one, like, perhaps bacon in the batter, but that was not to be. The bacon is used to sprinkle atop the icing. And the icing was made with bacon fat. Imagine that. For the maple bacon ice cream, you stir in three ounces of minced bacon as you're making the ice cream in your maker or churn.

Nevertheless, all the recipes looked fabulous. There's not one that I wouldn't try. Okay, probably won't do the oysters or any of the seafood dishes because Tennessee is not a coastal state. Fingers crossed, though. What with global warming and rising ocean waters, we can hope that we have an ocean an hour's drive away someday.

Probably not in my lifetime, either. But life is filled with a load of probability.

the cookbook experience

I can't pinpoint when marketers and customer service gurus started talking up the client's experience as the latest buzzword to focus efforts on. Maybe it has to do with the emphasis on Millennials who seem to drive corporate efforts. Or it could be the Gen Xers who like nesting and nostalgia. Nevertheless, we talk about how the client experiences the brand or experience design. And if the client's experience doesn't disappoint her, then she'll be back. She'll tell her friends, etc. 

What about the cookbook experience? Do publishers concern themselves about the reader's experience? The cook's experience? Decisions like which font to use, the recipe's positioning/layout on the page, the type of paper chosen for the book, and the photography--including the food styling, culminate in an experience for the reader/cook.

Some books are merely pretty with their layout and font. Some are functional with their Times New Roman and spiral bound spine. And many don't feature photos. The ones that do...well, they vary, right? 

In the end, it's not so much the list of ingredients that motivates me to try a recipe. It's the photo. Food styling and photography are the most important elements of designing a cookbook experience for me.

Is it for you? Or do you want a surface that's easy to make notes on as you tweak the recipe to suit you? Or for the book to lie flat while you're measuring ingredients? It's a shame to stain and warp glossy cookbook pages when they're heavily used. Forget the cookbook holder; those rarely work for me.

Perhaps you noticed that in the last few posts I've mentioned the photographer. Anymore, that's what I'm attuned to. Sure, there are average food photographers. Some publishers may not believe food photography is an important aspect of the book and they aren't mindful about the photographer they hire for the job.

But publishers attuned to aesthetics, perhaps the ones with spot on art directors, consistently produce eye-candy cookbooks with lust-worthy food photography. Of late, I've noticed the work of Deborah Whitlaw Llewellyn and Ben Fink, two photographers whose expertise shooting southern food jumps off the cookbook's page.

take me to your bell cow

Though Joan E. Aller wasn't born on a mountaintop in Tennessee like Davy Crockett, she lives on a mountaintop in Tennessee. As newcomer from Fresno, California she witnessed the changes that development brought to the Tennessee mountains. She didn't like them. Cider Beans, Wild Greens, and Dandelion Jelly: Recipes from Southern Appalachia represents her journey to capture the region's landscapes in photos and collect recipes representative of the region.

Cider Beans celebrates the region's food in full color. Landscape photos were shot by Aller, yet the food photos are by Ben Fink. Bed and breakfast inn owners shared their recipes, stories, and perspectives on the region with Aller, and that comprises Cider Beans' contents. Other recipes were provided by her friend John C. Rivers. Each recipe contains a few sentences about the bed and breakfast from which it originated, or sometimes a lengthy paragraph tracing a recipe's history if it's not affiliated with a bed and breakfast.

The first chapter introduces reader to the region by offering bits about its geography, history, and culture, and those morsels continue throughout as sidebars.Most natives can skip the introduction, but my sense is that the book was written to educate a different audience: strangers to the region. 

Aller's presentation of the region reflects no ugliness, no evidence of poverty or undernourishment, no evidence of strip-mined mountain tops. No dawgs. No hollers. Cider Beans presents a bucolic, romantic vision of Southern Appalachia. I like it. It's lovely to see and I wish the other stuff, like reality, was so easily omitted from reality.

Cider Beans follows standard cookbook organization: breakfast, appetizers, soups & salads, vegetables & beans, breads, meats, desserts, and beverages. After beverages is the country store section which offers recipes for pickles, relishes, marmalades, jellies, and syrups. The breakfast recipes represent offerings from bed and breakfasts, not dishes that real Southern Appalachian people might eat on a daily basis. If you think about it, who stays in bed and breakfasts? Not locals.

Okay, once I stayed at a local bed and breakfast, but it was a hardship case. About a dozen years ago I selected my wedding date without any thought  to regional events and how they might affect me or my wedding guests. There are two huge races in Bristol, Tennessee. One in March, one in August. Accommodations during those races are booked at least a year in advance.  I didn't want to stay at my apartment on our wedding night, so my mom booked a room for my husband and me at the Blair Moore House in Jonesborough (it's much nicer in person than how their website depicts them). 

But back to the review: The meals reflect their origins and their eaters, not so much the region. And yet, all these ingredients can be had, fairly easily, from most grocery stores and that makes the recipes accessible to a large number of cooks and eaters.

Don't get me wrong, Southern Appalachian staples appear throughout Cider Beans. What is a book about Southern Appalachian cookery without grits & redeye gravy, ramps with bacon, corn pone, burgoo, country ham, barbecue, and stack cake?

But who eats granola, breakfast pizza, brie with apricot, or trout cakes everyday? Tourists, the recently relocated, locals turned on to gourmet and organic food. Most definitely the upper middle class. Salmon patties made from canned salmon, rather than trout cakes, is a traditional meat dish here. 

Consider the sidebars: An early one translates common phrases such as "Which one of them is the bell cow?" : Which one, in the group of ladies, is the leader? And the rest cover the gamut of topics including the Appalachian Trail, a recipe for 'warshing' clothes, okra, hogs, etc. The sidebars impart information about the unique qualities that combine to form that which is Southern Appalachia. 

Yes, I have mixed feelings about Cider Beans. The photos are lovely, the recipes reflect health consciousness, the information about the region is correct. And though it celebrates the region, it doesn't represent our distinct flavor.