In Pursuit of Flavor (Virginia Bookshelf) [Paperback]

Edna Lewis (Author)

Book Description

Series: Virginia Bookshelf | Publication Date: March 22, 2000

Perhaps no other cook has played such a central role in the renaissance of traditional southern cooking as Edna Lewis. When asked who has influenced them most, chefs from New York to Little Washington to Charleston cite Ms. Lewis and her classic collection of recipes, In Pursuit of Flavor, first published in 1988.

Edna Lewis learned to cook by watching her mother prepare food in their kitchen in a small farming community in Virginia. Because she was raised at a time when the vegetables came from the garden, fruit from the orchard, pickles, relishes, chutney, and jellies from quick canning, and meat from the smokehouse, Edna Lewis knows how food should taste. Every recipe included in her cookbook, both old friends and new discoveries, reflects her memory of and continuing search for good flavor.

In chapters devoted to fruits and vegetables, meat and fowl, fish, herbs and spices, bread, and other baked goods, Ms. Lewis shares her secrets for getting the best out of food: combining tomatoes with cymling squash, pumpkins with onion and bacon, cooking sweet potatoes with lemon, and boiling corn in its husk. She always keeps a bit of country ham around to perk up greens, cooks fish fillets or chicken breasts in parchment, and braises meat in a clay pot to keep it moist. Her baking recipes, for the griddle and the oven, include tips on the right flour to use, how to make your own baking powder (to avoid the chemical taste), how to listen for signs that a cake is done, and when to use frozen butter in a pie crust and when to use pure leaf lard.

In Pursuit of Flavor brings generations of cooking wisdom to today's kitchen.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Here Lewis forages into the past for the beloved foods of her Virginia childhood, cooked indoors with produce grown in the family garden"a pampered piece of soil outside the kitchen window." Good food, the author argues, must be "honestly cooked": made from produce in season that was raised organically, and prepared simply, with one's feet on the ground. Her repertoire includes distinctly Southern dishes, such as cooked greens and catfish stew, as well as many with a rural accent, requiring squirrels, she-crabs or rabbits. The down-home emphasis is occasionally varied by Nigerian and Ethiopian fare. However, Lewis's best recipes stay close to home (Vidalia onion pickles, Brunswick stew, potato cakes, peach cobber with nutmeg sauce). Admittedly fond of heavy cream, lard and other animal fats, she suggests low-fat alternatives for those who aren't. Though some of the author's deliciously old-fashioned assertions"good cooks always put up their own food"are impractical, anyone pining for food that tastes of farm and family will not be left hungry. BOMC Cooking and Crafts Club main selection.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Well-known caterer, chef, restaurant consultant, teacher, and cookbook author Lewis has developed her own style of cooking, based on Southern country dishes but influenced by her curiosity about all sorts of foods. Above all, a dish should taste good and be true to its ingredients. Many of her recipes are for old-fashioned, traditional favorites such as Chicken Soup with Dumplings; some are for unfairly forgotten dishes like Brunswick Stew. Others are African and Caribbean in origin; and manysuch as Eels and Scallopsare purely her own invention. For all collections. BOMC Main selection. JS
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 323 pages
• Publisher: University of Virginia Press (March 22, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813919894
• ISBN-13: 978-0813919898
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #372,868 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In Pursuit of Excellence, September 22, 2003

By 

H. F. Corbin "Foster Corbin" (ATLANTA, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: In Pursuit of Flavor (Virginia Bookshelf) (Paperback)

It is safe to say that this cookbook is like no other you will find unless it is another by this giant of a chef/instructor. The book is filled with information: how to purchase fish and duck, how to freeze berries-- there are two pages of information on Virginia hams; and, yes, there are recipes too exotic for my simple tastes. For example, I doubt that I'll ever prepare rabbit pate or roast and stuff a suckling pig. Miss Lewis' whiskey cake recipe is from another world, however. The cake is made in a tube pan and has a cup of bourbon in it--and tastes as if it does. (Miss Lewis says that you should never cook with any alcohol you wouldn't drink.) The cake comes out of the oven a beautiful pale yellow color, almost like salt-fired pottery. Dense and moist, it slices like a thick piece of fine cheese. I didn't believe the author when she says that you can listen to the sounds of a cake to know when it's done. I can testify that she is quite right about that. This is a really fine cake. There are lots of other breads and desserts I want to try.

44 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Very Colorful Cookbook, June 1, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: In Pursuit of Flavor (Virginia Bookshelf) (Paperback)

I had heard of Edna Lewis for many years, so was anxious to see what all the fuss was about. And I was only mildly disappointed. Like M.F.K. Fisher, she has an uncommon appreciation for food and a keen sensitivity to subtleties in flavor. Throughout her cookbook she speaks of preserving flavor, complementing it,& getting the best out of it; and stresses the importance of fresh, organic, high-quality food. In her introduction she says, "I feel fortunate to have been raised at a time when the vegetables from the garden, the fruit from the orchard, and the meat from the smokehouse were all good and pure, unadulterated by chemicals and long-life packaging. As a result, I believe I know how food should taste." And so naturally, by extension, she has alot of particularities and preferences for how she likes things: she prefers Madagascar vanilla to Tahitian, cinnamon from Ceylon, the fall crop of raspberries to the early summer crop, the basil plants with tiny leaves, home-made baking powder to store-bought (she includes the recipe), and she waxes rhapsodic on wild berries: "...but wild things never fail us. They always taste good, which is why if you see only a handful of wild nuts or a cupful of berries, you should pick them. They have a flavor nothing else has. If you transplant a wild plant to the garden it will never taste the same." Etc.,etc. Quite a few recipes are designed for specific, possibly obscure, types of fruits or vegetables-- green gage plums, explorer potatoes, cymling squash, lady apples, Keiffer pears, etc. In the case of the Damsom plum, wild persimmon, and wild strawberry recipes, she allows for substitution with the regular and cultivated versions, but warns that the results will taste different and not as good. She offers a diverse range of hints along the way-- from how to buy a good coconut, to how to learn to listen for the signs when a cake is done.

Edna Lewis is an old Virginian, raised in Freetown, a small farm community founded by her grandfather shortly after his emancipation from slavery. The narratives introducing each food chapter, and the comments that accompany each recipe, are reminiscences from her childhood and insights into southern sensibility, and they are delightful: " Summertime is just nothing without boiled corn on the cob. When I was younger, for dinner, corn would be a separate course, which we would eat after the main part of the meal when the dishes were cleared away. After all, you really can't eat anything else if you are concentrating on corn", and "In the South there's a big stir about how chess pie got its name. Some say it's because when a guest would say 'My, this a good pie, what is it called?' the answer would be 'jes pie'."

The disappointment for me, a near-vegetarian, was not only in the relative paucity of vegetable recipes, but in seeing how heavily she relies on meat in general-- not just as a course in itself, but as a means of deriving flavor in other dishes. She says,"I still use pork shoulder, country ham, bacon, and streak-of-lean to flavor many dishes", and," I wouldn't feel my kitchen was well-stocked if I did not have ham on hand to flavor dishes." A full third of the cookbook is devoted to meat, fish and game. And much of that is not necessarily your ordinary fare-- there are more recipes for rabbit, for instance, than for beef. And quite a bit of quail, pheasant, duck, guinea hen, etc. There's even head cheese, eel (including how to skin them), and squirrel. The squeamish may want to skip this section altogether. She also obtains flavor from the liberal use of fat. I was surprised by how many recipes, even vegetable ones, call for a stick of butter or a cup of heavy cream.

Still and all, this cookbook is a unique treat-- informative, inspiring, and just a pleasure to read. The tomato soup with basil, crispy cornsticks, creamed scallions, and summer berry pudding are all excellent. Of the latter she says, "When I made this for the James Beard Tribute Dinner in New York one year, Mayor Koch had five helpings." Next to try is the chocolate souffle, "one of the recipes for which I am best known."

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A cookbook that reads like an autobiography, January 26, 2008

By 

Elizabeth C. Jones (Wilmington, NC United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: In Pursuit of Flavor (Virginia Bookshelf) (Paperback)

Edna Lewis passed away at the age of 89 in 2006, and it doesn't appear she took too many cooking secrets with her. Except for finding Greengage plums! As far as I can tell, only a mock version is available in the U.S. The original trees are long gone. And her Greengage Plum Ice Cream sounds **so** good.

Lewis wrote other books, but this one has the most appeal for me. I guess that's because of its style. This is one I read for pleasure, although I do not eat much meat or use it for seasoning, either, as another reader mentioned. I have not made many of the dishes in "In Pursuit of Flavor," but can recommend her recipe for mayonnaise. It never fails. The Summer Hot Vegetable dish is just wonderful. So is the Okra Whipped with Cornmeal. And she's right! You can tell a cake is done by listening to it.

Those little sidebars and chapter introductions are loaded with her opinions and advice. Even if you disagree with her you won't stay mad long; Ms. Lewis gave advice gently; she was a confident, experienced teacher and chef, and must have been a delightful dinner companion.

Edna Lewis is to be praised for attempting to restore natural flavors and goodness from the over-processed and over-priced foods we buy today. Simply because particular fruits and vegetables are available year 'round doesn't mean they are any good except in their regular growing seasons. She knew that, but the supermarkets don't (or don't care). We are far better off seeking out fishmongers, open air farmers markets, good old-fashioned butchers and baking our own bread. Unfortunately, most people don't have time to hunt and gather the the ingredients for a full meal, much less sit down and enjoy it.

Within the pages of this lovingly written and beautifully illustrated book, you'll find over 200 reasons why you should do some of your cooking the way Edna Lewis recommends, if only for special occasions.