Today’s New York Times food pages featured Appalachian cooking, citing such culinary stars as Sean Brock, the southern chef, cookbook author and restaurateur (Husk in Charleston, SC) and his plans for his new restaurants in Nashville that will feature Appalachian cooking.

As a fan of southern cooking—my library has at last 100 books on various facets of southern cuisine—I’ve recently focused on Appalachia for culinary inspiration.  The most famous champion  is cookbook author Ronni Lundi (“Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes & Honest Fried Chicken” and “Butterbeans to Blackberries”) whose latest book, published about a year ago, is “Victuals,” which covers Appalachian cooking thoroughly.

How is the cooking of Appalachia, different from say Low Country cooking?  It’s hard to say other than the most forthright recipes focus on pure and simple ingredients, culled from one’s own farm fields or whatever is grown locally in its vast region.  You cook what’s available farm fresh.  This means that you have buttermilk that’s unadulterated or bacon grease to glaze your buttermilk biscuits or cooking your corn kernels in the fat that lend an inimitable flavor. The ramps that grow wild in Appalachian woods are world-class as are other vittles, like  Perigords, the truffles of France,  that proliferate in the region.

Left to right, Southern Appalachia Farm Cooking;, Victuals and Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread & Scuppernong Wine

Of course there’s more to the cooking than bacon fat or buttermilk, if not truffles.  And it’s anything foodstuff that comes directly from the farm, a practice that as Mainers we have great access to.

Two recent cookbooks that I’ve found compelling  are “Southern Appalachian Farm Cooking” by Robert G Netherland and “Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread and Scuppernong Wine” by Joseph E. Dabney.

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