COOKING SOUTHERN FOOD
Review by Barb & Ron Kroll
A Southerly Course - Recipes & Stories from Close to Home
(Clarkson Potter) ISBN 978-0307464286 0307464288
Mississippi cooking is a delicious style of Southern cooking. Martha Foose's cookbook provides 100 Southern recipes for Mississippi foods, interspersed with memories of cooking and eating in the Deep South.
Recipes from Mississippi
Every chapter begins with an index of Southern food recipes from Mississippi restaurants, friends, family and neighbors. Martha Hall Foose introduces each recipe with stories about the origin of the Southern dish and ingredients.
For example, in her recipe for Satsuma tart, Martha Foose talks about Satsuma mandarins that grow in Gulf Coast areas south of I-10. She explains that you can buy Satsuma mandarins from roadside stands.
Martha Hall Foose's recipe notes provide information on substitutions for Southern ingredients. She suggests that tangerines or tangelos can be substituted for Satsuma mandarins. Other notes suggest garnishes, e.g., grated citrus zest for the Satsuma tart.
More than 70 food photos by Chris Granger illustrate Mississippi cooking, Southern foods and culinary traditions.
Southern cuisine
Recipes contain notes with the history of Southern ingredients, cooking tips and serving suggestions. A note to Martha Foose's recipe for skillet-fried corn explains how to cut corn off the cob by standing the corn cob on the tube of an angel food cake pan, so the pan collects the kernels as you cut them off.
Two-page sidebars in the 256-page cookbook describe her memories of Southern cuisine in Mississippi. In the sweet corn sidebar, for example, she explains that some cafés deep-fry corn on the cob, which makes it sweeter but harder to chew. Martha Foose states that Mississippi Delta cooks use bacon fat, rather than cream, to make creamed corn.
Some of Martha Hall Foose's recipes are unique to the U. S. South. What is rum tum tiddy? The recipe for this appetizer/snack is a delicious combination of chopped pecans, cheddar cheese, egg, tomato sauce and bread crumbs, which is baked, cut into squares and sprinkled with grated Parmesan cheese.
Sample Southern recipes
Fig pecan fondue. Sweet potato wedges. Bacon crackers. Pimiento cheese soup. Honey pear salad. Peanut slaw. Glazed rutabagas. Summertime spaghetti squash. Crab and artichoke omelet. Grilled frog legs. Peanut chicken. Blackberry lamb chops. Sweet pickle braised pork shoulder. Cantaloupe mousse. Poppy seed cakes. Blackberry jam cake. Carnival funnel cakes. Chocolate honey cake. Plum cheesecake bars. Butterscotch pots de creme. Figgy pudding.
Contents
Introduction- First Course: Passed, Plated & Shared
- Second Course: Salads, Soups & Dressings
- Third Course: Vegetables & Grains
- Fourth Course: Entrees & Main Dishes
- Fifth Course: Desserts & Sweets
Author
Martha Hall Foose is a Mississippi pastry chef who was the food stylist for the movie The Help.