Old-Time Mountain Country (Appalachian) Cookery Updated

Naturally, a defender of the traditional kitchen would be drawn to a book titled “Mountain Country Cooking.” It’s the work of Mark F. Sohn. He has written a couple of books on Appalachian and Southern cooking. This book has been kind of scarce for a while but copies do turn up on Amazon and, no doubt, many other book outlets.

 
It is my habit, when I run across an interesting cookbook, to order it whether it is old or new. Sometimes the older ones are by far the most interesting.

   Now that I’m done reading the book I’d have to say there’s some good and some bad to it. That’s fairly typical of cookbooks of course; isn’t that one reason we keep buying them, looking for that Mother of All Cookbooks?

   Might as well start with some good. The most positive thing I can say is that, armed with this book you are well prepared to do some genuine down-home cooking. It’s chocked full of old favorite traditional recipes – more than 300 – brought up to date for preparation in the modern kitchen. Kind of new, old recipes.

                             The Author’s Credentials

   Sohn got kicked around a bit by critics because he writes like a born-and-bred Appalachian but is actually from Oregon. Well, he taught Appalachian studies for many years, lived in the region for over 30 years, and has done a heck of a lot of academic and on-the-ground research. And sometimes it is an outsider gets the best view of a region, so much being new and interesting to him that is just same-o same-o to those that were hatched there.

   Come to think of it, the Appalachian folks who weren’t native American were once outsiders, mostly immigrants from the British Isles and northern Europe.

   Thank goodness he doesn’t go all Li’l Abner hillbilly on us -- but he does get artificially folksy now and then, going overboard with cornball jokes and aw-shucks chatter. And he gets kind of imaginative with attributions and “facts.” By that I mean, for instance, times when he gives a geographic name to a recipe and you can almost see him throwing a dart at a wall-map of Appalachia, “okay, here we have Harlan County Potato Salad.”

   I don’t know why he got fixated on geography when he could have just called it “Church Supper Potato Salad” or “Aunt Nellie’s…”

   But, then again, he provides info you may not find elsewhere, such as a mail order source for turtle meat. That would come in handy for the Fried Turtle Baked with Rice.    Unfortunately his listings are pre-Internet so you’ll have to search out a web site if that’s what you want. I looked up Millard’s turtle farm in Iowa and can’t tell if they’re still in business or not, it would require a phone call. But a search engine look for “sources of turtle meat” brings up several possibilities.

   I can’t copy out Sohn’s recipes without going through a lot of rigmarole about permissions, so here are a few good turtle recipes from another source if you’re curious. 

                             Cheese Grits Casserole

   You’ll run up on many old-time recipes modernized with reduced fat or reduced sugar alternatives. Is that really mountain cookery? Maybe so, these days. Personally, I preferred his harking back to the days when breakfasts looked like dinners – pork chops and fried eggs, potatoes and biscuits, or “the staff of life,” cornbread. Need I add grits, an essential? (That was before that religious zealot John Harvey Kellogg came along in the 1890s, re-inventing breakfast with his goody-goody healthy corn flakes).

   I was pleased to find a recipe for one of my longtime favorites, Cheese Grits Casserole. I’ve fixed that one for people who are far too uptown to be caught eating grits; they dug in with some enthusiasm and likely never did know they’d been wallowing in poor folk’s food.

   If you want to try Cheese Grits Casserole, a good place to start would be Southern Living magazine. 

                             Velveeta? Really?

   Speaking of casseroles, Sohn says his Fancy Potato Casserole is “far better” than James Beard’s potatoes au gratin, and proceeds to offer a recipe featuring Velveeta “cheese.”    Seriously, Velveeta cheese? Thing is, Velveeta is so processed it can’t even legally be called real cheese. But do they sell a lot of it in mountain country? I’d reckon so.

Sohn’s succotash recipe is simple, summed up: “Combine corn, (lima or butter) beans, butter, salt, and pepper. Heat them … until hot. Serve.” But he goes to lengths to describe variations and additions.

   I liked the looks of the Pinto Bean Chili with optional beef. Unfortunately, like I said earlier, I can’t just copy out Sohn’s recipe so here’s something similar that’s probably as good or better. 

   Sohn goes on a bit about pork and lard, advising the reader that lard is “basic to our cooking” and is available in 20 lb. buckets. As for pork, he claims to serve pig’s feet pickled, boiled, broiled, or in salad, backing that up with recipes such as Jellied Pig’s Feet Salad and Fried Pig’s Feet with Cornmeal Gravy.

   Grave Digger’s Stew, anyone? Actually it’s just a chicken stew, fed to hard-working volunteers after a grave had been dug by hand. The author goes on to offer quite a few suggestions for Funeral Menus and mentions that he usually takes Jam Cake to the home for the post-funeral buffet.

   If you’re up for chicken stew, here’s a collection of 20recipes to choose from. 

                             RC Cola and Moon Pie

   Chicken gets its due with page after page of recipes. But I've got my copy of "365 Ways to Cook Chicken" handy, so I flipped on through to Country Fried Steak (Chicken-Fried Steak and Steak and Gravy). That brought back memories of the café I used to visit in bachelor days down on the Arkansas/Louisiana border. Nothing like that chicken fried steak, though I doubt it would fit into anyone’s diet plan.

   Sohn claims that baked potatoes are more popular in the mountains than apple pie or hot dogs. I don’t know where he got that one. In my experience baked potato was a restaurant thing. Potatoes at home came some other way, likely boiled or roasted, sometimes fried. Well, at least he didn’t say baked potato is more popular than RC Cola and Moon Pie, that might have stirred up a ruckus with the home folks. (I’m kidding. My grandmother would’ve no more been caught with an RC Cola and Moon Pie than she’d have been caught with whiskey or tobacco).

   I don’t care much for Sohn’s Coleslaw recipe, basically cabbage and dressing. But he acknowledges that there are many, many variations. His Sauerkraut gives this favorite dish its due but he calls for using a food processor … I, for one, have never owned such a thing.

   He offers an interesting collection of vegetable plate suggestions, noting that roadside diners, cafes and restaurants in the mountains likely include Jello and French fries among choices of vegetables.

   There’s a good section on wild greens and herbs but no illustrations to aid in gathering.

You’ll find an entry on Hard-Times Coffee with recipes for bran, dandelion and chicory coffees. Such things were helpful during the Civil War and Great Depression, and for a few years now the pundits have predicted a serious coffee shortage so maybe they’ll get popular again. Though at the moment chicory coffee is (ridiculously) as expensive or more expensive than regular.

   The book concludes with a good glossary and list of mail order sources, though since the book is long out of print the mail order sources (as I mentioned in discussing turtle meat) may not still be available. You can check them out easily these days on the Internet.

One measure of whether you’ve got a good country-style cookbook in hand is to check the listings for gravy. This one scores well with chicken chocolate, cornmeal, brown pecan, potato, rabbit, red-eye, sausage, squirrel, tomato and white sausage.

   The book was published at $26.95 and seems to have held its own in the marketplace, still fetching around $20 and more on Amazon. If you’re a collector or very curious, it may be just what you want.

   On the other hand, if you’re just looking for some good traditional recipes, how about The Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook with over 1250 recipes and lots of tips, around $15 in very good condition on Amazon. (While looking that up I stumbled on Southern Living’s Heirloom Recipe cookbook. I’ll let you know about that one in the not too distant future).