SEASONED IN APPALACHIA: Delicious Recipes from the Mountains and Hollers, flavorful, simple, and really beautiful

SEASONED IN APPALACHIA: Delicious Recipes from the Mountains and Hollers
JIMMY PROFFITT
Rock Point (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$28.00 any edition, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Journey to the heart of Appalachia through soul-satisfying recipes, charming personal stories, and stunning images of its natural beauty.

Inspired by home-cooked family meals, Seasoned in Appalachia delivers authentic, flavorful dishes paired with charming anecdotes about family traditions and the magic of the Appalachian region. Author and IACP member Jimmy Proffitt, who grew up and learned to cook at an early age in the Shenandoah Valley, presents an authoritative collection of Appalachian cooking featuring heartwarming recipes for 75 delicious dishes, including:

Apple Cinnamon Biscuits

Green Tomato Pie

Country Ham

Sloppy Joes

Brown Butter Cornbread

Cranberry Orange Pound Cake

Belsnickel Cookies

Snow Cream

and more!

Featuring beautiful photographs of the recipes and mountain scenes, this easy-to-use cookbook is your guide to the distinctive cuisine of the Appalachian region.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'm a fan of home cooking and baking books that're for HOME COOKS, not aspiring pâtissières just as much as I am of the lah-dee-dah piss-elegant ones. Like pretty boys who're great in the sack, the elegant ones start lookin' messy, trashed up, wrinkled, old if they're good enough to use, and if they're not they're not interesting after a month at most.

Solid, useful, nice-lookin', these're the qualities that wear well.

In food as well, as we're all old enough to know. The recipes on these pages are very direct, you'll have 90% of the ingredients on the counter or in the front of the pantry already, and if you need something to make a recipe, Walmart will have it.

the most reassuringly familiar lineup of yumminess on this Contents page

We start out with an Introduction followed by a kind of statement of purpose, a why-we're-here essay:

It's another warm, personal touch like many to come. Finding out the why of the book really does explain why-bother.

From here, there are some special sections:

canning and preserving...very lightly touched on

...before we're into the main subjects and recipes:

comfort foods; biscuits; fancy apple ones the English call "scones"

Your need for some Southern hygge now satisfied, here comes the meat:

meat chapter open; country ham; fancy chicken wings with cilantro; fish and hushpuppies

And then it's time for dessert!

if you don't like carrot cake, why are you even taking up space and using oxygen?

I've had a version of every one of these dishes. I think you most likely have to, even if you're not from the US. What I hope is you'll remember a good version, a good time, a good day that ended well with this kind of food...and join me on the memory train to the stove to do it again using Proffitt's pretty book.