Cookbook round-up
Paul Oswell
As the candy corn-tinged mists of Halloween fade, a city turns its attention to the upcoming holiday season and the culinary tsunami heading for us all. As home gourmets sharpen their chef’s knives in anticipation, it seems like a good time to round up a few of the cookbooks that have landed here at the offices of Out All Day. If you’re looking for new recipes, then these tomes - of varying degrees of local interest - are worth a look.
Turkey And The Wolf: Flavor Trippin’ in New Orleans
Mason Hereford with JJ Goode
Turkey And The Wolf is the studiously casual sandwich shop emanating from the charismatic whimsy of chef Mason Hereford. Hereford brought a fine dining education to a restaurant that serves tricked-out versions of childhood comfort food. It’s a concept that won its creator a James Beard nomination AND the title of Bon Appetit magazine’s Best New American Restaurant, so stick that in your vintage glassware and pickle it, haters. As you might expect if you know anything about the chef and author, this isn’t your pastor’s recipe book. If an award exists for most curse words in a cookbook, then hand it out right now, and just revel in the quasi-psychedelic, esoteric and above all joyous celebration of accessible delights and New Orleans as a city of food. It’s a brash, colorful, larger-than life book with autobiographical flourishes as well as the dishes, and general advice on issues like How To Make Over Frozen Peas and, of course, The Reason We Make Sandwiches. I love T&TW’s deviled eggs and collard melts and thankfully you can recreate all of these at home now, whipped up by Hereford’s wide-eyed encouragement. It’s a boundlessly optimistic and upbeat book, and worth the money just for the wordplay of Okranomiyaki. Slap on a trucker’s cap, grab some deliciously unhealthy ingredients and go hog wild as you learn more about one man’s culinary mission than you’d expect. Also, in suitably chaotic style, the first edition of this book lies at the bottom of the ocean in a shipping container, so you’re buying into a glorious literary resurrection.
Secrets of a Tastemaker: Al Copeland, The Cookbook Recipes & Spicy Delicious Memories
Chris Rose and Kit Wohl with the Copeland Family
For a more detailed review of this book, click here!
Even Mason Hereford looks relatively introverted compared to local legend, ‘Big’ Al Copeland. The wizard behind the poultry-lined curtain of Popeye’s Chicken, Copeland was a showman of the first water, endlessly self-promoting and showering pizzazz wherever he went. There was substance behind the glitz, though, and you don’t build an empire that includes Popeye’s and Copeland’s Restaurants without a nose for business. Big Al also had uncanny tasting skills, which kept his menus obsessively populated with winning dishes. This is an encyclopedic list of all Big Al’s hits, though - and did you really think it would? - it does not reveal the secrets of Popeye’s beyond the biscuits, so you’ll still have to buy their friend chicken. Otherwise, though, everything from crawfish bread to seafood pasta to cheesecake is here for you to recreate at home. The recipes almost take a back seat to the biography, though, and it’s worth buying just for the scandals, successes and myths that followed Copeland wherever he went.
Seeking The South: Finding Inspired Regional Cuisines
Rob Newton with Jamie Feldmar
Chef Newton is currently the executive chef at the Thompson Hotel in Savannah, but has long had his finger son the pulse of southern cooking. He’s an expert in the regional distinctions, and this book criss-crosses The South, from Gulf Coast to Lowcountry to Deep South, and everywhere in between. Newton grew up with pork and beans in the Ozarks, but here delves into seafood-heavy Carolina dishes, Cajun classics, as well as some esoteric history such as the Middle Eastern spice influences at play in the Mississippi Delta. There’s familiar flavors mixed in with his contemporary takes; pork hocks with hominy, charred okra with Sichuan pepper, and blsack-eyed pea falafel. Newton presents nuanced, dynamic culinary traditions that are alive today, and invites you to think about the everyday in new ways.
Dinner In One: Exceptional & Easy One-Pan Meals
Melissa Clark
I’m in no sense a good home cook, one of the main issues being that I hate cleaning pots and dishes. Enter best-selling author and chef Melissa Clark with a book I will actually use a lot. All of these recipes, from chicken and dumplings to shrimp scampi, can be made in, you guessed it, one pot, which is my kind of workload. Clark even divides the chapters into the kinds of pots that work best - sheet pans, skillets, dutch ovens, etc, which is even handier. With 100 recipes that require minimal ingredients and kitchenware, you could eat for months without any repeats and hardly any wear and tear on your dishwasher. For workshy fops like myself, this is a genuinely useful cookbook.
Japaneasy Bowls and Bento: Simple and Satisfying Japanese Recipes for All Day, Every Day
Tim Anderson
We all love Japanese food, but making it seems like an effort-heavy process. Well, this book dispels that myth, or at least presents a bunch of recipes that you can make at home without too much work. As the author says, it’s as much of a strategy guide as it is a recipe book. By explaining the basics, Anderson opens up a world of variations that are simple to sub in - rice, pickles and soup are the foundations to a whole world of easy, delicious and authentic options. The book is beautifully designed, and has dishes as basic as green pea rice, classic ramen tips and those tasty Japanese takes on dishes such as spaghetti Napolitan. And as soon as the temperature dips, you can bet I’m firing up the cheesy curry hotpot udon.
Paul Oswell
As the candy corn-tinged mists of Halloween fade, a city turns its attention to the upcoming holiday season and the culinary tsunami heading for us all. As home gourmets sharpen their chef’s knives in anticipation, it seems like a good time to round up a few of the cookbooks that have landed here at the offices of Out All Day. If you’re looking for new recipes, then these tomes - of varying degrees of local interest - are worth a look.
Turkey And The Wolf: Flavor Trippin’ in New Orleans
Mason Hereford with JJ Goode
Turkey And The Wolf is the studiously casual sandwich shop emanating from the charismatic whimsy of chef Mason Hereford. Hereford brought a fine dining education to a restaurant that serves tricked-out versions of childhood comfort food. It’s a concept that won its creator a James Beard nomination AND the title of Bon Appetit magazine’s Best New American Restaurant, so stick that in your vintage glassware and pickle it, haters. As you might expect if you know anything about the chef and author, this isn’t your pastor’s recipe book. If an award exists for most curse words in a cookbook, then hand it out right now, and just revel in the quasi-psychedelic, esoteric and above all joyous celebration of accessible delights and New Orleans as a city of food. It’s a brash, colorful, larger-than life book with autobiographical flourishes as well as the dishes, and general advice on issues like How To Make Over Frozen Peas and, of course, The Reason We Make Sandwiches. I love T&TW’s deviled eggs and collard melts and thankfully you can recreate all of these at home now, whipped up by Hereford’s wide-eyed encouragement. It’s a boundlessly optimistic and upbeat book, and worth the money just for the wordplay of Okranomiyaki. Slap on a trucker’s cap, grab some deliciously unhealthy ingredients and go hog wild as you learn more about one man’s culinary mission than you’d expect. Also, in suitably chaotic style, the first edition of this book lies at the bottom of the ocean in a shipping container, so you’re buying into a glorious literary resurrection.
Secrets of a Tastemaker: Al Copeland, The Cookbook Recipes & Spicy Delicious Memories
Chris Rose and Kit Wohl with the Copeland Family
For a more detailed review of this book, click here!
Even Mason Hereford looks relatively introverted compared to local legend, ‘Big’ Al Copeland. The wizard behind the poultry-lined curtain of Popeye’s Chicken, Copeland was a showman of the first water, endlessly self-promoting and showering pizzazz wherever he went. There was substance behind the glitz, though, and you don’t build an empire that includes Popeye’s and Copeland’s Restaurants without a nose for business. Big Al also had uncanny tasting skills, which kept his menus obsessively populated with winning dishes. This is an encyclopedic list of all Big Al’s hits, though - and did you really think it would? - it does not reveal the secrets of Popeye’s beyond the biscuits, so you’ll still have to buy their friend chicken. Otherwise, though, everything from crawfish bread to seafood pasta to cheesecake is here for you to recreate at home. The recipes almost take a back seat to the biography, though, and it’s worth buying just for the scandals, successes and myths that followed Copeland wherever he went.
Seeking The South: Finding Inspired Regional Cuisines
Rob Newton with Jamie Feldmar
Chef Newton is currently the executive chef at the Thompson Hotel in Savannah, but has long had his finger son the pulse of southern cooking. He’s an expert in the regional distinctions, and this book criss-crosses The South, from Gulf Coast to Lowcountry to Deep South, and everywhere in between. Newton grew up with pork and beans in the Ozarks, but here delves into seafood-heavy Carolina dishes, Cajun classics, as well as some esoteric history such as the Middle Eastern spice influences at play in the Mississippi Delta. There’s familiar flavors mixed in with his contemporary takes; pork hocks with hominy, charred okra with Sichuan pepper, and blsack-eyed pea falafel. Newton presents nuanced, dynamic culinary traditions that are alive today, and invites you to think about the everyday in new ways.
Dinner In One: Exceptional & Easy One-Pan Meals
Melissa Clark
I’m in no sense a good home cook, one of the main issues being that I hate cleaning pots and dishes. Enter best-selling author and chef Melissa Clark with a book I will actually use a lot. All of these recipes, from chicken and dumplings to shrimp scampi, can be made in, you guessed it, one pot, which is my kind of workload. Clark even divides the chapters into the kinds of pots that work best - sheet pans, skillets, dutch ovens, etc, which is even handier. With 100 recipes that require minimal ingredients and kitchenware, you could eat for months without any repeats and hardly any wear and tear on your dishwasher. For workshy fops like myself, this is a genuinely useful cookbook.
Japaneasy Bowls and Bento: Simple and Satisfying Japanese Recipes for All Day, Every Day
Tim Anderson
We all love Japanese food, but making it seems like an effort-heavy process. Well, this book dispels that myth, or at least presents a bunch of recipes that you can make at home without too much work. As the author says, it’s as much of a strategy guide as it is a recipe book. By explaining the basics, Anderson opens up a world of variations that are simple to sub in - rice, pickles and soup are the foundations to a whole world of easy, delicious and authentic options. The book is beautifully designed, and has dishes as basic as green pea rice, classic ramen tips and those tasty Japanese takes on dishes such as spaghetti Napolitan. And as soon as the temperature dips, you can bet I’m firing up the cheesy curry hotpot udon.