Customer Reviews

B. Smith Cooks Southern-Style

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My family is from the South. I fondly remember my grandmother and aunt cooking good old fashioned family dinners that included the best of Southern cuisine when I was a child. As an adult, I thought those days were gone for good. I would find a recipe here and there, but nothing like they made in the past. I always longed for some good old fashioned Southern foods. I knew the basic (and a few not-so-basic) dishes, but nothing like what they used to whip up. I decided to give this book a try. Southern food has traditionally been high in fat and and rich ingredients. I can remember watching my grandmother nonchalantly toss an entire stick of butter or huge scoops of lard into her dishes. The author discusses this topic and reveals that she took traditional Southern dishes and attempted to modernize them by making them healthier and less fattening. She accomplishes this, for the most part. However, there are still plenty of rich dishes for those who want to go all out (cheese grits anyone?)

The dishes themselves offer a nice variety. There are the more exotic: (alligator, turtle soup, poached quail eggs), the less exotic: (chitterlings, chicken livers), and the normal: (grits, cornbread, okra, gumbo, hash, catfish, etc). Recipes are offered for brunch, appetizers, breads and dressings, soups and stews, salads, meats, poultry, seafood, side dishes, sauces and condiments, desserts, and beverages. There is a nice diverse mix of dishes to satisfy every palate. I admit, I haven't tried all of the dishes offered in this book (and doubt I will ever try some, such as the gator), but there are more than enough dishes available that remind me fondly of my roots. The author even throws in welcome little familiar touches that I had grown accustomed to, like tossing a little sugar in the cornbread mixture to make a sweeter bread. Some of my favorite dishes from the book: cheese grits, smothered chicken livers, lobster grits, buttermilk biscuits, cornbread, corn fritters, seafood gumbo, jerk spiced beef tenderloin, marinated fried chicken, chicken fried steak, bacon wrapped scallops, spiced catfish with black eyed pea gravy, southern styled collard greens, and ALL of her desserts! For good measure, a few cocktail mixes are tossed in. Both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks are offered. The recipes are clear and easy to follow. Even inexperienced cooks should have little difficulty preparing them.

The book is hardcover. The pages are mostly standard grade black and white text. There are several b/w pictures throughout and there is a 16-page full color glossy section in the middle that features some of the highlighted recipes. It's not the fanciest cookbook around, but it gets the job done.

What is true "Southern" cooking is a subjective topic. Some consider southern cooking the traditional "soul food" while others consider it a little more exotic like raccoon & gator (One of these I actually ate. Hint, it wasn't the gator). There are several dishes that I ate as a child and considered Southern cuisine that aren't included in the book. There are also some dishes that I'd never heard of prior to reading this book. The main thing I looked for were the staples: greens, cornbread, pork dishes (including chitterlings), fried chicken, grits, black eyed peas, macaroni and cheese, and catfish. All of these are present and plentiful in this book, along with many more. Mrs. Smith starts with brunch and ends with a nightcap. Regardless of whether you have your own particular feelings about what is or isn't Southern cooking, you are sure to find some cherished favorites in this book, from beginning to end.

The book is fun to page through, and has a nice mix of recipes, some challenging, others easy to make. I made the root beer pulled pork, and it was really excellent. The cupcakes and cornbread were good accompaniement, with a simple salad. An easy Saturday night meal. I know that this food is southern, with greens, catfish, and easy comfort foods, but it is the kind of food that goes well with cold beer and comfortable friends, flavor with a certain style and charm. I buy about ten cook books per year and keep three of the ten, and this one stays.

Southern cooking gets a bit of an update thanks to B. Smith. She offers a wide variety of southern recipes including some old favorites while providing updates with a healthy twist for some recipes. Her cookbook also offers a good selection of liquor recipes so you can make up an Almond Joy or Creme Brulee Martini.

Traditional recipes include Red Beans and Rice, Cornbread Oyster Dressing or Corn Fritters. Ham Steak with Red Eye Gravy has a bit of cream tossed into the gravy to help round out the flavors.

You can give alligator a try by trying Alligator Sausage Gravy or Alligator Sliders.

Lighter recipes include Fat-Free Mango Ice Cream with Mango Sauce or Low-Sugar Maple Barbecue Sauce.

I'll say up front that if you know someone who is particularly keen on southern recipes then this book might make a nice gift; however, it has some drawbacks.

There are certain features that I appreciated in this cookbook, the greatest of which are the recipes themselves. About half of these dishes will likely see frequent preparation which is a pretty good average as cookbooks go. The other half are fine but not many folks will jump in to make the Lobster Grits (page 16), the Duck Jambalaya (page 79), or the Grouper with Persimmon Salsa (page 186) -- still a few self-motivated souls will endeavor to try these more unusual dishes and such recipes do present us with some new culinary ideas.

The book lies open fairly flat and is of a manageable size (9 1/2" x 8 1/4" x 1") -- there are 326 pages, including a coherent index. Just over 200 recipes are included in the work and most of the old southern standbys are in here. A number of the dishes are featured in color photographs (multiple dishes per photo) in a center section of the book. Finally, interest in Southern Cooking is clearly broad enough to justify yet another cookbook on the topic.

I wish the publisher (Scribner) had skimped more on the just jacket and had invested the savings in the actual book cover which, in this instance, seems little better than one found on a book club edition novel. And the idea of having most of the photos in the center of the book instead of appurtenant to their respective recipes is always cumbersome.

The author has included some useful tips (e.g., how to butterfly a Cornish hen, page 156) but these techniques are not illustrated, an initiative which seems pretty basic to me. A few recipe ingredients might not be all that easy to find at local grocery stores (e.g., mango gelatin, quail eggs) but this is only of minor concern - substitutions can be made.

In summary, I thought the book lacked innovation to the degree that the recipes fail to nudge one into their kitchen. The meat and poultry recipes are all pretty solid but again, they didn't seem all that exciting. Recipes of equal quality can be found for free online and the stated retail price of this cookbook is thirty-five dollars, (an overblown figure which is always immediately cut at most outlets.)

If you aren't on fire to obtain this cookbook, I suspect that you'll be able to locate it on the "sale table" at the chain bookstores in a year or so.

When I first opened this cookbook, it opened on the recipe for Cajun Veal Stew and right away I knew this was the book for me. I'm a transplanted Canadian who loves New Orleans and one of the best things about New Orleans is eating out. So many delicious choices.

The food in even the cheapest dives always seems to be good in New Orleans and gosh darn it, I want to be able to cook like that. So I prepared the Cajun Veal Stew and I swear, I really do, that it was as good as any bill of fare you might find in any New Orleans restaurant. Another exciting, and that's the right word, because the food made from the recipes in this book really is exciting, dish is the Bacon-Wrapped Scallops with Chive Oil.

This book is full of delicious dishes which could have come out of any New Orleans restaurant, so if you want to have restaurant-style, Southern-style cooking in your very own home, look no farther than this wonderful cookbook.

B. Smith might cook, and now and then she might cook quite well, but a Southern cook B. Smith is not. Barbara herself tells us that she was born and raised in Pennsylvania - hardly the South. While her food might have some southern influence and her restaurants might be located in the South, any good Carolina girl can tell you one thing: while we can sometimes come to blows over whether or not pulled pork is served in sauce or with dip and whether ketchup belongs there or not, there is no room at all for root beer in pulled pork barbecue!

What Barbara really cooks is fusion food - Southern food with a Yankee slant. Witness the maple syrup (unknown in the South even in the fifties and sixties) that is an ingredient in several of her recipes. And one other little thing: the dessert section is so skimpy that it is almost an afterthought and it is frankly highly unoriginal. The closest that Barbara comes to originality in the dessert section is to turn the much loved Key Lime Pie into a Key Lime Brulee, a rather unfortunate transformation that might be a very nice custard but is nowhere close to the tart, luscious, cool smoothness of a Key Lime Pie.

Barbara Smith has taken all of the traditional dishes of the South from Brunswick stew to Jambalaya and tossed some version of them willy-nilly between two covers. Only a very few of them are her own food traditions. Not the worst cookbook I've come across, but not one I would seek out either. If you want Southern cooking, buy Paula Deen. Better yet, buy Charleston Receipts

If you like lots of flavor and spice... and enjoy trying adventurous cuisine- such as: alligator sliders, oyster pie, and fried frog legs- then you should try "B. Smith Cooks Southern Style" cookbook. But for a west coast mother of a picky 2 year old, I would say that many recipes I will never try.

Of the recipes I was able to make for my family, the Pumpkin Spice Mousse was a hit at Thanksgiving and will now be a new traditional dish at my house. My husband was a huge fan of the Andouille-Spiced White Bean Soup(still a little too spicy for my daughter).

Personally, I like my cookbooks to be illustrated, visual seem to make new cooking concepts a lot easier for me, so I was wishing there was more pictures to accompany this "foreign" style of food to me. The pictures included were beautifully presented-leaving me wishing for me!!

Also, being a mom I like to skim through new cookbooks and really like the convenience of having an idea of how long the total dish will take to prepare. This way I can skip through reading recipes I simply don't have time to prepare. Reading through the recipe and adding up each time increment seemed tedious for my lifestyle.

My husband and I spent four months before Katrina in New Orleans. Fortunately we left months before the hurricane and fortunately we got introduced to Southern cooking in a big way. Let me tell you and I'm telling you true, they know how to eat down south. They really do. Sometimes you just have to forget about that diet and just enjoy.

And Barbara Smith has infused her book with recipes to die for. Most of them. I have to admit I passed on the Country-Style Alligator Sausage Patties. Something about eating something that wants to eat me. So no Alligator. However, I did make the recipe with Pork Roast and it was delicious.

For Thanksgiving we decided to throw caution to the wind, fat and calorie wise and we did the Fall Holiday Turducken. Like Ms. Smith suggested, I started a week ahead of time and followed her directions. This was a bit of work for me, but oh it was good. Sinful, but good. So far we've had a dozen or so recipes from this book and every time we sit down to eat, we're reminded of the wonderful time we had in New Orleans. Ms. Smith may be from Pennsylvania, but she sure knows her Southern-Style Cooking.

Reviewed by Vesta Irene

I have long appreciated B. Smith's sense of style and was delighted to see her take on my native Southern cuisine. As one might expect, she serves up some stunning flavor combinations (stout in your tartar sauce, anyone?). I was also very glad to see that she acknowledges the growing number of vegans and vegetarians and provides a number of recipes along those lines. The Vegetarian Etouffe and Black Eyed Pea Gravy are stand-outs. However, I can only give the book 3 stars, as it is marred by some strange editing problems. For example, the Vegetarian Etoufee calls for chicken broth - definitely a non-vegetarian ingredient, with no further comment. Further, the Fat-Free Mango Ice Cream is not even remotely fat-free, as its ingredients include 2 egg yolks! There are a number of such wince-inducing moments in the book, and I hope that a second edition will eliminate them.

The format of this book is 95% text, black and white, with a short color section in the middle of the book. Mostly just straight up recipes with an occasion photo (in black & white) thrown in. The color section are "artful" photographs of some of the finished dishes. I prefer to have color, straight forward photos of the complete dishes with every recipe. As for the recipes you get all the basics covers including chapters on Appetizers, Soups & Stews, Salads, Meat, Poultry, Seafood, Sides, Sauces & Condiments, Desserts and even a chapter on Beverages. The range of food is well covered, but for myself I would have preferred more color photos of all the dishes.