I picked this cookbook up about a year ago and I haven’t used it much since. So this will be a two-week tryout with a real desire to put it to the test.
What’s made it hard to use? I’m not entirely certain why I pick it up, leaf through it, and think the better of it, but I’m aware of two problems. The first is that it is complicatedly seasonal without being organized as such. I approve of seasonal cooking, and I think that whether I approve of it or not, it’s a good thing for all home cooks to adapt to, because I really don’t think the global-scale supply chains for food that have been a common part of our lives for the last twenty years are going to last.
In this case, though, it means I read through the book, get interested in a recipe, and then realize it’s built around a seasonal ingredient like ramps and I think better of it. Sure, I can think of substitutes sometimes, but that leads to the second and more substantial issue I end up having with the book. Brock is very into his vision of authenticity and personal distinctiveness. There are a lot of recipes that make a strong argument for a particular form or type of an ingredient and for doing the dish just so. This is not one of those books that is introducing the cook-reader into a general culinary style but leaving some space for adaptation. There’s a significant whiff of defamiliarization throughout the book, to say “Southern cuisine is not what you already know”. It reads like Brock is trying to be the Anti-Deen.
Which is an objective I enthusiastically support! But it does mean that I come up against a fair number of recipes in the book where I’d either have to special-order more than one ingredient or follow a fairly demanding technique to do it the way Brock clearly wants it done. It’s not that hard to find Anson Mills around here, but on the other hand, genuine country ham is not to be had in most grocery stores, not even in some of the speciality food stores around Philadelphia. I may have hit my limit in trying to keep a multi-cuisine pantry stocked—it means I have a lot of jars and packets and containers with food that I only use once a month or so.
Part of my reaction to this kind of cookbook might not be pragmatic. I just tend to find this kind of tightly curated food a bit off-putting. It’s more annoying to me when the curator is not even from the region or place that he or she is representing, as in the case of Diana Kennedy. But even when it’s someone who really knows the place from deep personal experience, I think there’s a point where being too precise or specific about foodways and what they should be becomes a barrier to other cooks who want to learn. Or at least to me.
Anyway, today I’m going to try a recipe for black sea bass with corn dodgers that I thought seemed appealing. It calls for dehydrating some oysters, which I got started on a bit late this morning but I think should come out ok by the time I cook tonight. I don’t use my dehydrator as often as I ought to so in this case I’m glad for the call to a specialized technique.
I might also make a recipe from the book for buttermilk pie, but that depends a bit on whether I have the energy to make a good pie crust this afternoon.