Page 82 - South Mississippi Living - August, 2015

DINING hey, good lookin’ cAookin’ WHATCHA
Deep South Dish:
Homestyle Southern Recipes
Available at the Biloxi Visitors Center, Maritime and Seafood Industry Museum, and Poppy’s in Ocean Springs
story and photos by Julian Brunt and courtesy of Mary Foreman
AUTHOR Mary Foreman
fter having her job taken away by Hurricane Katrina, Mary Foreman used her you-can’t-keep- me-down attitude, Southern roots, and love of cooking to start a successful blog which led to a Southern cookbook
with coastal flair.
Most of the Southern style cookbooks I use as reference
material are pretty old. How many times do you need to describe how cornbread is made? Every once in a while a celebrity chef comes out with a new cookbook purporting to be Southern, but it’s most often just another step in empire building, trying to get the prerequisite number of publications under their belts, maybe some fancy studio photography, and, in all likelihood, the hand of the super chef never touched any of it.
I am a bit hard bitten in these matters so when asked to review Mary Foreman’s work, it was not with any great expectations. As I thumbed through it for the first time I thought, deviled ham salad; check. Purple hull peas and okra; check, and fried chicken, ditto.
But then I saw the recipe for stuffed bell peppers and thought I might like to make that one, and the white bean and sausage looks good too. The coleslaw recipe looks a lot like mine, but she added horseradish and pickle juice. I like that! Now wait a minute, the creamed style corn looks suspiciously like the one my mother made. I began to realize that something pretty interesting was going on here.
This is a very Southern cookbook with just the right amount of gumbo and jambalaya charm. It is full of basics; sometimes just as you would expect, sometimes with a bit more to it. I do like the simple and straight forward format. The instructions are simple and easy to follow.
There’s lots of old school in this cookbook and there’s nothing wrong with that. In this age of chefs who’ve gone molecular, Foreman has the courage to hang in there with the Velveeta cheese and bacon grease. If you are charmed with Southern cooking and don’t want the Gulf Coast to be left out, this is a cookbook that needs to be in your collection.
GOT
82 SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living • August 2015
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