Customer Reviews

Cross Creek Cookery

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As the other reviewer has mentioned, this is a collection of recipes, filled with anecdotes of central Florida life in the 1930s and 1940s. The recipes are fantastic and one wants to try all of them (although it may be difficult to prepare alligator-tail steak). And, what a pleasure it is to read a cookbook written by an accomplished author. You just keep picking it up.

It is evident from her cookbook that Marjorie tasted of nearly everything and learned to make delicious dishes out of some very odd things: Poke Weed (on toast), Pot Roast of Bear, Smother-Fried Squirrel, Gopher Stew, Coot Surprise, Jugged Rabbit, a host of Pilaus, and an infamous blackbird pie. Of course this book is not simply a culinary freak-show. There are dozens of recipes for desserts, seafood, meats-found-at-the-A&P, jams, and soups, featuring ingredients of which we are all familiar and unafraid. She was proud to share them and claimed each recipe was nothing short of first-rate. Included among these is her piece de resistance, Crab A La Newburg, and the best Strawberry Shortcake ever. Accompanied by anecdotes of Florida rural living in the 1930s and 1940s, this book is a delight and an excursion from a mundane kitchen

I've been a fan of Rawlings since I first read her as a teenager. Reading her biography many years ago, I learned of her pride in her cooking. I didn't even know she'd issued a cookbook until I came across this edition!

Upon reading the book I was immediately reminded of the "Alice B. Toklas" cookbook. The structure and literary emphasis are much the same. Thus, for the same reason, it's a joy to read even if one doesn't cook!

However, like "Toklas", the recipes are also a treasure. Many of the recipes contain ingredients too exotic for the average cook, but many more are easily prepared. This can also be a pleasurable and valuable resource for those, like me, who enjoy reading and preparing recipes from old cookbooks. Our eating styles have changed enormously in the nearly sixty years since Rawlings wrote this book.

If you are a fan of Rawlings, buy the book whether you ever plan to cook any of its recipes. Its reasonable cost is a further bonus!

A big fan of MKR, I stumbled over this little book at a booksale several years ago----it's paperback and coming apart from use, and the pure pleasure of reading Ms. Rawlings' commentary and recollections of living at Cross Creek. Her biscuit and hoe-cake recipes are worth the price, as they evoked memories of my grandmothers kitchen where it wasn't a meal without fresh, hot bread.
Highly recommended---even if you're not a cook!

A great read... both for the recipes and for a large dose of Marjorie Rawlings' folksy humor. Loved it from cover to cover.

CULINARY FREAK SHOW!!!!!!!!! Shame on your black yankee heart. I have regularly eaten with gusto most of the recipies that earlier reviwer vilifies. I am a 1947 vintage son of a South Carolina good ol' boy who managed to marry a wonderful New Yawker (actually from the city so nice they named it twice, NY, NY) and convince her to move to the farm in the coastal Low Country which is very similar to central Florida. My Ma couldn't stand the culture shock too long and my parents carried me and my three sisters off to a dairy farm on Long Island in 1956 where I grew up in exile and loss, pining away for swamp country though I still had walking distance access to frequent fishing expeditions at a very nearby beach. My Ma cooked very little game since we did not hunt once we moved north but she was an excellent cook with a German heritage slant to her cooking repertoire. I was raised up there on a more refined cooking style which I have always appreciated but still missed the game dishes of my earlier days. I read this book and others by Rawlings in high school and was prepped with recipies when I headed south after my release from Uncle Sam's SE Asia branch of the School of Hard Knocks. Coming to rest on wild, remote family land in SC (hey, I might be white but I never was particularly poor and I'm surely not trash) I pumped my Aunts for ways to cook fish and game and frequently broke out my copy of this book to supplement my own experimentation with food that had never heard of a grocery store.
The host of pilaus refer to a bunch of pilau (pronounced PER-low here in SC but perhaps more palatable to some when called Pilaf by the ridiculous, effete French) or rice and meat recipies since there are dozens of types of meat (game and grocery store varieties) that are excellent cooked with the rice. I still relish memories of my Aunt Helen's pig tail pilau and her peppery shrimp pilau when I was a child but I could never quite be comfortable with the one she loved which featured CHICKEN FEET in all their scary yellow splendor.
Gopher stew would be a stew made from the now seriously endangered Gopher Tortoise (near extinct in SC) which provided half of the 19th century central Florida survival staple of gophers 'n' grits. I never was wanton enough to kill a Gopher but I have eaten many a snapper, soft shell, cooter or slider turtle as excellent substitutes. Again, these all have excellent (but different) flavor but would probably be readily consumed if served as Terrapin Stew in some trendy eatery.
I've never eaten blackbird pie but have happily consumed countless grackles and redwings in most any other way they could be cooked. My favorite blackbird meal is red wing breasts pot roasted and served with a light brown gravy, rice, mustard greens and lots of hot jalapenos. I've eaten many doves and quail also and I honestly do not find them as succulent as blackbirds gathered from the migratory flocks that feed on the spillage left by the combine in a recently harvested feed corn field when the first cold snap settles in. Man, you couldn't afford to fatten quail or even chickens in a pen with such copious amounts of feed. Yum! You might not have any ethical considerations to killing resident, breeding blackbirds in the warm weather but I've grown up around large stock (remember the dairy farm) and you might question where they get their grain meals in the summer when the fields aren't open and covered with plentiful scattered wasted seed and I would suggest you investigate that source before you enpot a few. Here's a hint, its NOT backyard feeders.
Poke weed (poke salat or poke salad) is Ok but sometimes gives me the runs. I like the super abundant (think weeds) wild mustard better, especially mixed with turnip or collard greens which need to be cultivated or bought. Wild asparagus is small compared to cultivated varieties but a much better flavor and in the right areas (especially the midwest) is not only extraordinarily plentiful but the price is right too. In the north, dandelion leaves provide a tasty potherb.
Never cooked a bear cause they're no longer here on the coast and I have to admit to avoiding coot since I never really enjoyed the other dabblers I ever tried to cook. I couldn't count the squirrels I have eaten and enjoyed after a long afternoon in the woods with my dog and a .22 rifle which made a fun start and tasty end to a great day. I've eaten lots of deer meat but after being in the service, Bambi was a little too high a life form for me to be comfortable hunting (hey, I'm a complex kinda good ol' boy) though smaller and more abundant critters like birds, squirrels, raccoons, turtles and even snakes were never a problem for me to dispatch in pursuit of a meal and fish, crabs and shrimp are seasonally abundant here and made a major part of the diet.
BOTTOM LINE: now that I have you thinking about how good and how different this stuff tastes, hurry up and buy this wonderful book to read while you're trying your hand at cooking Rawling's teriffic recipies and I'll bet the stories and anecdotes will keep you reading while you eat if you have enough hands left to turn the pages.

This cookbook is evocative of North Florida history. Lots of old time recipes and generally neat anecdotes.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings wrote a book of love, Southern cookery, and humor. It opens with the quote, "To preserve discipline in our armed forces, I demand CROSS CREEK be banned in or near any encampment." (Apparently, the description of fabulous foods was destroying morale.) The book closes with the quote, "Better a dinner of herbs where love is." What comes between is a broad variety of dishes and stories that delight the palate and the soul.

The recipe for watermelon cake is missing several letters/words/instructions. (Any Floridian will tell you of books and papers lost to the appetites of our sacred palmetto bugs.) The instructions on turtle eggs include proper collection to conserve the species. (Collection is now banned due to people abusing this harvest.) And the mystery of Minorcan Gopher Stew is answered by a preceding historical account and the hint that one must cut away the shell of the gopher. (Gopher tortoise is a threatened species.)

It is not just a cookbook; it is a wonderfully written window on a world not so long ago in years, but ages ago in tradition.

My wife had an original hardback version of this book many years ago. She loved getting this copy. Same stories and recipes. I have also enjoyed re-reading this book. Very pleased. Will recommend to all our friends

Cross Creek Cookery is a wonderful book full of delicious recipes that really work. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings wrote about her own life and kitchen where she produced meals for friends from all over the world using food from her own yard. I've served several of her simple dishes to family and friends and relished reading about the others. She wrote the book in response to requests from World War II GI's, who missed the home cooking on their own farms. No need to miss it; you can make it, too.