It's rare that I put a cookbook aside to seek other books the author wrote, but that is what happened with The Cracker Kitchen. I found My Brother Michael at the public library and had to finish it before I felt up to reading through Cracker Kitchen--that on top of having a 6 month old baby keeping me busy. Pat Conroy's introduction should have clued me into Owens's fabulous writing. But it didn't, although he described it so:
Janis Owens's cookbook is a love letter written to celebrate the poor white people of the American South who were my mother's people and my own.
Owens says it a bit better though:
We are the working-class back that colonial American was built upon, the children of its earliest pioneers, who have lately tired of hiding our light under a bushel, and have said to hell with subterfuge.
It's written colloquially. If you've read that Paula Deen biography that came out a few years ago, then you know what I mean: the style is easy and the plate is greasy. Often she goes into asides in parentheses by hypothesizing one of the Tarleton Twins's--of GWTW--reaction to being served Baked Armadillo.
Owens limns her Cracker credentials by providing colorful family history within the context of all that Cracker symbolizes. The fabulous piece here, is that Crackers are inbred cousins to the Hillbilly, my people. And so, naturally, I am at once at ease with Owens's festive and engaging storytelling. Crackers are notorious for telling yarns; the men, especially.
Her goal is admirable: To introduce readers to all things Cracker despite the diaspora that drove them out of Florida. Economy got you down? Yeah, it's always a fact of life for the working class/rural folk. She calls them Crackerlings, makes them sound good enough to eat; crunchy, crackly, and good with dip. And the three pillars of Cracker life, you ask? Food and laughter and food.
Recipes are ordered according to season. The glorious Cracker spring is first up. She talks about her childhood for a spell. Every menu and recipe includes a good deal of context. Then she offers a menu fit for spring including Crab Bisque, Easter Ham, Potatoes au Gratin, Green Bean Bundles, Mama's Cornbread, Cracklin' Cornbread, Easter Bunny Cake, Iced Tea, and Light Lemony Iced Tea.
Spring menu does not disappoint. When I saw the Easter Ham recipe I hoped, I wondered, I grew quizzical. Will it be a coca-cola ham? It was! It is! Somehow I escaped childhood in the Mountain South, having never eaten a coca-cola ham. Leave it to a Brit to get me to try it. Nigella Lawson offers a recipe in one of her books. I've followed it several times and end up with a truly delicious bit of ham. Scoff not!
Her Mama's Cornbread recipe uses yellow cornmeal. There is great debate about cornbread in the South centering on whether to use white cornmeal or yellow. As I recall, if it's not yellow, it isn't southern. The same holds true for sugar. If it has sugar in it, it's due to some Northern intervention. Alas, I prefer cornbread made with white cornmeal and sugar and that's an anomaly I attribute to my Baltimore-born mother--due to the Great Migration/Appalachian diaspora.
Next up Owens provides recipes for bridal and baby showers. Recipes are what you'd expect: chicken salad, dill dip, candied pecans, punch. Her recipe for Cold Coconut Cake caused me to take a second look for two reasons. First, I love coconut anything. And second, she uses a cake mix. Peculiar. Very peculiar. However, the pound cake recipe following is made completely from scratch and thus has somewhat redeemed herself in my eyes. I rarely use cake mix. It's just a thing with me. You know, cake mix snob that I am.
After reviewing her Pecan Pie recipe I knew immediately that I wouldn't try it. I like my own best of all, and the problem with hers-- in my estimation--is that she doesn't cook the corn syrup, sugar, and butter together in a saucepan first or go through several other steps that make ingredients in my pecan pie coalesce, and thus, truly divine.
But come summer, you bet I'll try her Peanut Butter Pie recipe. I'm a sucker for them. I used to seek out the best Key Lime Pie recipe ever, but since I found that long ago, I'm on to PBP.
For the most part the recipes in Cracker Kitchen are what you expect to find in a Southern or Coastal cookbook. However, once the leaves turn gold and brown and fall comes to the Panhandle, hunters provide all the wild game meat a gal--or guy--could dream of. Owens has recipes for Venison Roast, Fried Rabbit, Fried Cooter, Fried Frog Legs, Baked Armadillo, Rattlesnake, Roast Possum & Sweet Potatoes, and Stewed Squirrel.
One of the problems with most cookbooks is that to find a decent game meat recipe, you must buy a very specialized book. And while Ted Nugent may be a musician and hunter, I have my doubts that Kill It and Grill It: Ted and Shemane Nugent's Guide to Preparing & Cooking Wild Game and Fish is anything other than a novelty. So pick this book instead, for it's southern standards and game meat recipes.
A last surprise was Velveeta Rocky Road Fudge. Velveeta in fudge? While it's not as shocking as Baked Armadillo, I suppose it comes as no real surprise. Inventive ingredients doesn't always trickle from the top down via those molecular gastronomists and such.
Many of Owens's recipes are standard fare that you'll find in most Southern cookbooks. She seasons her deviled eggs with dill, something I don't do and haven't tried. But I shall. Hands down that bit of dill has got to be an improvement over deviled eggs stuffed with a mixture of boiled egg yolk and 1000 Island dressing that I was instructed to make for Christmas Eve dinner. Tried it. Didn't like it at all.
You want this book for Owens's delightful stories, her impressive turns of phrase, and her edification of Cracker culture. It's a necessity for understanding the people who proudly call themselves Crackers. Say, for example, if Katie Lee Joel did something as narratively rich with her Comfort Table to uplift West Virginians, then I would have kept my copy rather than selling it to the used book store in town.
I'll be on the lookout for this one; the stories alone make it sound worthwhile.
Posted by: Keetha | Friday, 08 May 2009 at 11:47 AM