# Review of The Glory of Southern Cooking by James Villas



## phatch (Mar 29, 2002)

I saw this book in the library a couple of weeks ago. It was new in the stacks though not really new to the market with a publication date of March 2007.

I like lots of Southern Cooking and have taken the time to read what I can find on the topic. Unfortunately, a lot of the cookbooks currently available really aren't that good. Damon Fowler takes on this issue in his cookbooks on Southern cooking. In Fowler's view, the best of Southern Cooking died out a long time ago. Products, commercialized processed food, convenience and time have taken a sad toll on the foods of the South. You can read my about that more http://www.cheftalk.com/forums/cookb...endations.html Fowlers other Southern cookbooks have also been excellent.

Villas book shares many of the views of Fowler and references Fowler a number of times. Where Fowler focused more on the home cooking, Villas' book is more about party foods. Not that they're stereotypically party foods, but the stories that accompany the food tends to revolve around parties, social events of some sort or otherwise up scale cooking.

This is borne out with the recipes on cheese spreads. He indicates he makes a few pounds of the various cheese spreads to use up over the week in impromptu teas, cocktails with friends and so on. That's a pretty high level of entertaining in my book. And the other recipes are similar in theme.

Certainly, there is still fried chicken in a number of ways, potato salad and other common classics. Plenty of seafood, some barbecue, biscuits and so on. The writing is straight forward and the recipes also. More alcohol than I'm used to seeing but that's somewhat accounted for by the social event focus of the food.

He gives good sources for some of the hard to find foods of the South from crawfish to dry cure country hams and other specialties. I always appreciate this in cookbooks on regional cuisines.

The recipes themselves didn't inspire me. They seemed largely like retreads of other similar material and he failed to imbue the discussion of the food with insight into why's and hows and history. More often was a weak discussion of the party or restaurant that inspired the dish. I don't doubt that they work. But really, another buttermilk fried chicken and biscuit recipe isn't really useful without more than just the recipe and where you ate it.

I've not read any of Villas other cookbooks, and there are a number of them. some even referenced in that thread earlier. I suspect in the end I might prefer those cookbooks to this one.

I still enjoyed this book and its love of all things Southern. There is much to preserve and value from the south and Villas is contributing to its preservation.


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## merchef (Oct 19, 2008)

thanks for the info..i spend quite a bit of time in the south..the people there don't give out recipes easly


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