October 2019 Cookbook Reviews

Southern Baked: celebrating life with pie by Amanda Wilbanks

I fully expected this cookbook to just be recipes of pies and desserts based on the title, so I was pleasantly surprised to see it covered a lot more. Wilbanks talks about how she learned to cook and make pie and how her business, Southern Baked Pie Company, was born. But, in this cookbook she breaks the recipes down into meal ideas based on the month of year and any holidays or special occasions in that month. This makes for a very well-rounded cookbook with TONS of recipes (both sweet and savory) that I want to try. I also like that in the first section of the cookbook she gives her basic pie dough recipe and lots of tips for making pie and different ways to use the dough. Overall, a great cookbook with much more than pie recipes.

Heritage by Sean Brock

Sean Brock is a pioneering Southern chef who wants to help bring back heritage Southern food. This cookbook is interspersed with stories from Brock and about people and farms that he sources food for his restaurants from. His focus on local, seasonal food is great and I try to do the same. Even though he says some of the recipes are more simple and designed for home cooks, I thought most of the recipes seemed pretty complicated and I'm not an inexperienced cook. But, I still found several recipes I want to try and I'm excited to check out his newest cookbook South.

Rustic Joyful Food: my heart's table by Danielle Kartes

This cookbook is so full of simple, yet nourishing and comforting recipes that I will probably end up buying it. In the introduction Danielle Kartes talks about her love of cooking and how that led her to work in restaurants and eventually open her own. When she had to close down her restaurant it took a few years before she was ready to start creating again, but when she was she had the idea to write a cookbook. This cookbook is just full of wonderful recipes and there were SO MANY I want to try! Kartes encourages cooking from scratch, which is my thing too, so she gives several "pantry staples" recipes for stocking homemade basics. Overall, definitely a great cookbook and I will be watching for more from Danielle Kartes.

Heirloom: time-honored techniques, nourishing traditions, and modern recipes by Sarah Owens

After reading the Introduction and Part One Preserving Traditions I was super excited about this book. The author talks about the importance of heirloom, not just what you might think of heirloom vegetables, but heirloom as a way of preparing food based on time-honored traditional ways. In Part One she covers various ways to preserve food - fermentation, pickling, freezing, dehydrating, etc. and gives several recipes for stocks, vinegars, etc. But, once she got into the actual recipes there just weren't that many I wanted to try. She encourages using heirloom grains, which could be hard to source and would take time to learn to use, and not everyone can do that. I really thought that this cookbook would be right up my alley and that I would find lots of recipes I wanted to try, but there just weren't that many I want to try. The cookbook is beautiful and I agree with her food philosophy, but just wasn't as excited about it after reading through it.