If one of your New Year’s resolutions was to learn to cook, do we have a book for you! Southern Living Home Cooking Basics: A Complete Illustrated Guide to Southern Cooking carries the byline “great food made simple” and it tries to live up to the billing. Lavish illustrations start you off right with pictures of basic equipment with tips on what to look for when buying, then the book moves on to pictures of herbs, basic techniques such as the proper way to chop a vegetable to the names of the different cuts of meat. Step by step instructions with photos of the process as well as the finished product make this book a real winner for new cooks or anyone wanting to improve on his or her cooking techniques.
Martha Pullen may be best known for heirloom sewing techniques, but there’s more to life than smocking and quilting. Food, for instance! In Martha Pullen’s Southern Family Cookbook, she collects her family recipes along with memories to make a personal cookbook. She also encourages readers to do the same thing to preserve their favorite recipes and memories for future generations. Some photos are included, as are Bible verses. The book is divided up in the usual way (Breads; Soups, Salads, and Sides; Beef & Pork, etc.) and the layout is clean and easily read.
On the other hand, if you’d rather know where to eat than how to cook, you might try Chefs of the Mountains by John E. Batchelor. This book is a combination of profile, recipes, and travel guide to Western North Carolina. Batchelor isn’t a chef, but enjoys good food and likes finding out the stories behind some of his favorite restaurants and the folk who do the cooking. The book is divided up by location and includes Asheville, Banner Elk, Blowing Rock and Boone. There are some recipes included from each chef but the book is more about people and where they work. I found their stories to be very interesting; some knew from the start that they wanted to go into the culinary arts, while others stumbled into their careers. For example, one "Deadhead" followed his love of rock climbing to NC and ended up a chef, though his first food job was at Pizza Hut. Another has degrees in biomedical engineering and chemical engineering, but she was drawing to cooking after living in Paris. This would be a terrific book to take with you on your next NC visit!
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