Dean Faulkner Wells - The New Great American Writers Cookbook

THE New GREAT AMERICAN WRITERS COOKBOOK

Alas, I have no real interest in cookingonly eating.

RICHARD FORD

Edited by Dean Faulkner Wells

Foreword by Julia Reed

www.upress.state.ms.us

Designed by Todd Lape

The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of American University Presses.

Copyright 2003 by Dean Faulkner Wells
Sardinas de Lata (Sardines from the Can), copyright 2002 by Rudolfo Anaya

All rights reserved, except for the following previously copyrighted recipes reprinted herein by permission of the author and/or publisher: Baked Camel, by T. C. Boyle, excerpted from Water Music (Little, Brown & Co.); Grits and Fried Ham with Red-Eye Gravy, by Fannie Flagg, excerpted from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Caf (Random House/Ballantine Books); Grandpa Corderos Famous Tacos, by Sandra Cisneros, originally published in Sports Illustrated, Fall 1996, reprinted by permission of Susan Bergholz Literary Services, New York, NY; Miami-Style Chili with Beer, by Patricia Cornwell, excerpted from the Dr. Kay Scarpetta series (Scribners); Huguenot Torte and Ozark Pudding, by John Egerton, excerpted from Side Orders: Small Helpings of Southern Cookery and Culture (Peachtree Publishers); Elis Kosher Grits, by Eli Evans, excerpted from The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South (Free Press and Simon and Schuster).

Manufactured in the United States of America

11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The new great American writers cookbook / edited by

Dean Faulkner Wells.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 1-57806-589-5

1. Cookery. 2. Authors, American20th centuryAnecdotes. I. Wells, Dean Faulkner.

TX715.N5217 2003

641.5dc21

2003006647

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

by Julia Reed

Years ago, I flew to Michigans Upper Peninsula to interview the novelist and poet Jim Harrison for a profile in Vogue. It is not an easy trek from Manhattanrequiring on this occasion a big plane, two little planes, and a rental carbut it turned out to be worth it. Harrison is a great interview, he became a friend, and perhaps best of all, he gave me a really, really good dinner.

That last part was a surpriseHarrison had only just begun writing the food pieces that would be collected in The Raw and the Cooked. A vague tip-off had come in the form of a message left with my assistant that I should bring some decent winebut I didnt know if he needed enough to last him through the remainder of the winter, or just enough for our visit. So I compromised with all that I could carry on the plane, about eight bottles, and Im pretty sure we drank them all. Fortunately, before we were well into it, he had cooked: thick pork chops that were brined first and then slowly grilled over charcoal, and a stir-fry of young asparagus, morels, and green onions he dubbed Asparagus Julia. To kill the next days hangover, there was a robust venison chili and some much-needed strong coffee.

Writers are well known for that business about drinking all the wine; their connection to cooking is not as, say, fundamental. They do cook though, and some do it really wellhence, the existence of this fine volume pulled together by Dean Faulkner Wells. Harrison, one of the Great American Writers included in this volume, says he cooks because he has lived most of his life in the geography of the interior (Michigan and, more recently, Arizona and Montana) and he is simply trying to replicate the great restaurant meals he has enjoyed and would otherwise be mostly deprived of. Harrisons friend Philip Caputo says he turned to cooking after his divorce out of necessity and kept at it because it turned out to be such a useful diversion: It demanded so much concentration that I couldnt think of anything elsethings like writers block, royalty statements, deadlines, and bad reviews.

Diversions are important. Writing is such a solitary enterprise that, at the end of the day, making and/or breaking bread with others is often necessary to keep from going crazy. In The Artists and Writers Cookbook, a predecessor of sorts to this book, published in 1961, John Keats (the Canadian writer, not the English poet) supplies a lengthy breakfast menu, including sausage cooked in wine with lentils, French bread toasted with garlic butter, and cauliflower flavored with ciderenough, that is, to enable people who work like dogs all day to do it, so that when theyre through theyll be able to enjoy a civilized dinner, complete with the necessary wit (rather than humor) and companionship. Work then, on a full gut, Keats writes. This is life. And at evensong, a time for repose and reward. In a word dinner. I strongly suggest that one should breakfast like a peasant, and dine like a viscount.

Writers are, by nature, full of such pronouncements. We have an irritating tendency to think we know everything about everything, including, of course, food. Lillian Hellman supplied a recipe for shrimp creole to The Artists and Writers Cookbook, along with a single observation: Deveining shrimp is nonsense. (When I am simply cooking, I wholeheartedly agree with her. But when I am writingor, more precisely, when I am on a deadline and, therefore, not writingdeveining shrimp is precisely the kind of task I would take up with great enthusiasm.) Anyway, in the same volume William Styron explains, at great length, how to properly create southern fried chicken, that most put-upon, abused and generally misunderstood of all indigenous American culinary triumphs, and correctly asserts that to deep-fryto immerse rather than properly to fryis not to fry at all, it is to pickle. Jonathan Franzen feels equally strongly about the Pasta with Kale he has contributed to these pages, declaring that the addition of grated cheese would amount to nothing short of a desecration.

Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Steins companion and the author of a wonderful cookbook/memoir (The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook), wrote in the introduction to The Artistsand Writers Cookbook that the Writers write like they write, and the painters write like they paint. The writers on these pages are similarly true to their styles. Elmore Leonards instructions for making his Southron Breakfast Treats are as devoid of bullshit as his superlative prose: Now open a can of Underwood Deviled Ham. Dave Barrys instructions for making Toast with Peanut Butter is full of his usual hilarious exaggerations and words in screaming capital letters; Clifton Taulberts Southern Peach Cobbler is not so much a recipe as another of his moving memoirs of growing up in the Mississippi Deltaits ingredients include courage and desire and a radio with the ability to still play the sounds of Ruth Brown and Hank Snow. And of course the author of a novel entitled Slow Poison, Sheila Bosworth, would provide this caveat with her recipe for Crevettes Dsir (otherwise known in her native New Orleans as barbecued shrimp): Never feed [it] to anyone in whose dreams, for good or ill, you are unwilling to remain forever.

Like Taulbert and Bosworth, most writers, while cooking at least, stay true to their roots as well. Only a Southerner would offer up dishes whose key ingredients are carbonated beverages (Mark Childresss classic Coca-Cola Cake and John Edges fabulous-sounding Blenheim-Spiked Sweet Potatoes). The Southerners are also big on pies (Mississippian Gloria Norris supplies the recipes for Lemon Icebox and Buttermilk; North Carolinian Lee Smith gives one for Bourbon Chocolate Pecan), while Texans Anne Rapp and Jim Lehrer are partial to chili. Louise Erdrich, who currently lives in Minnesota and whose novels often center on the lives of Native Americans, tells us how to cook Wild Rice for a Lot of People with rice cultivated by the Obijway.