SOUTHERN FROM SCRATCH (Roost Books, 2018, 248 pages, ISBN 978-1-61180-331-0 $35 USD hardbound) is by Ashley English who has authored a number of cookbooks dealing with canning, keeping chickens, keeping bees, home dairy, pies, and picnics. Here she deals with basic pantry essentials and "down-home" recipes from the American Deep South. She's got 50 essential recipes for the larder, and then 100 more for traditional Southern food. The range covers pickles, relishes, jams, spreads, sauces, vinegars – for the likes of fruits and veggies, fats and meats, and dry goods. There is also a hefty amount of bio-memoir scattered throughout the book. The basic pantry starts with country ham, cornmeal, grits, pickling salt, smoked sea salt, sorghum syrup, and sumac. The book could have been improved if it also used metric in the recipes, or at least had a metric conversion chart. It would sell Southern US cuisine to the rest of the world which uses metric.
Audience and level of use: aficionados of southern cooking.
Some interesting or unusual recipes/facts: Pies include buttermilk cherry pie, sweet potato pie, and sorghum bourbon orange pecan pie. Country ham dishes include cheese crisps with green tomato pickles, grit cakes with country ham and applesauce, ham biscuit with mustard compound butter, peaches and cream tartines, southern benedict and southern reuben. Sorghum recipes include BBQ sauces, Bourbon bacon jam, fried dill pickles with sorghum mayo.
The downside to this book: I really wanted more such as Chess Pie!!!
The upside to this book: there is a resources list.
Quality/Price Rating: 90.
Chimo! www.deantudor.com
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