About The Book
Mark F. Sohn’s classic book, Mountain Country Cooking, was a James Beard Award nominee in 1997. In Appalachian Home Cooking, Sohn expands and improves upon his earlier work by using his extensive knowledge of cooking to uncover the romantic secrets of Appalachian food, both within and beyond the kitchen. Shedding new light on Appalachia’s food, history, and culture, Sohn offers over eighty classic recipes, as well as photographs, poetry, mail-order sources, information on Appalachian food festivals, a glossary of Appalachian and cooking terms, menus for holidays and seasons, and lists of the top Appalachian foods. Appalachian Home Cooking celebrates mountain food at its best.
My Thoughts
I own a lot of cookbooks . Some of them live on shelves in my office. Some live in boxes in storage. And a few of them live in my kitchen, to be dipped into for inspiration, solace, or just idle perusing while waiting for water to boil. This is one of the latter.
Some cookbooks are mere compendiums of recipes on a theme (crockpots, corn, easy weeknight meals). Some cookbooks are much more than that. They are proper ethnographies, showing not just what people eat in a place, but how they live, what they value, and how they express themselves. And as such, this book is a masterful overview of a place I grew up in, learned to cook in, and paid enough attention to to a harsh critic of the representations of it. So I can say unreservedly that if you are interested in a book about the actual food of southern Appalachia (as opposed to lazy or stereotyped depictions from a press and an entertainment media that has always made money on making fun of those of us from the region), this is one of the best places to start.
And as for the recipes, I could not agree more completely with the author, who writes
To keep Appalachia’s culinary tradition alive, the region’s foods have to be cooked, and while the following recipes could easily be used in the context of living history reenactments, their new life starts in the modern home kitchen, where fresh ingredients and healthy foods are paramount.
These are not historical curiosities, they are living breathing recipes you would find today in homes across Appalachia. They remain a vital part of the region, and perhaps a new part of your repertoire as well.