Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Victuals
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1949
WEBSITE: http://www.ronnilundy.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronni_Lundy * http://www.southernfoodways.org/interview/ronni-lundy/ * https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/victuals-reviewed-a-love-letter-to-appalachia-with-recipes/2016/08/29/518986f4-687c-11e6-99bf-f0cf3a6449a6_story.html?utm_term=.a74570360675 * http://www.epicurious.com/expert-advice/victuals-ronni-lundy-appalachian-cookbook-article
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 91050675
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n91050675
HEADING: Lundy, Ronni
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PERSONAL
Born August 1, 1949, in Corbin, KY.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist, editor, writer. Courier-Journal, Louisville, KY, former restaurant reviewer; Louisville magazine, KY, former editor; Louisville Times, KY, former pop music editor; Zenchilada Web site, former editor.
AWARDS:Craig Claiborne Lifetime Achievement Award, Southern Foodways Alliance, 2009.
WRITINGS
Editor of Cornbread Nation 3: Foods of the Mountain South, 2005. Contributor of articles to publications, including Gourmet, Esquire, Eating Well, and Bon Appétit.
SIDELIGHTS
Ronni Lundy is a Kentucky-born journalist and cookbook author. She has been on the staff of publications including Louisville’s Courier-Journal, the Louisville Times, and Louisville magazine. She also edited the Web site Zenchilada. Lundy has written articles that have appeared in publications including Gourmet, Esquire, Eating Well, and Bon Appétit. She has released several books that focus on southern cooking and cuisine.
The Festive Table and Butter Beans to Blackberries
In her 1995 book The Festive Table: Recipes and Stories for Creating Your Own Holiday Traditions, Lundy offers recipes for a variety of occasions. She also shares quotes and information about certain ingredients.
Butter Beans to Blackberries: Recipes from the Southern Garden finds Lundy highlighting the use of vegetables traditionally grown in the South. A Publishers Weekly critic described the volume as “a captivating paean to dishes made with vegetables and fruits harvested from Kentucky to Florida.” Judith C. Sutton, writer for Library Journal, asserted that “Lundy writes well and enthusiastically.” Sutton added, “Her latest book is both thoroughly researched and delightful.” Booklist reviewer Mark Knoblauch called the book “a worthwhile addition to any modern cooking collection.”
Sorghum's Savor and Victuals
Lundy discusses a unique Southern ingredient in Sorghum’s Savor. She offers personal memories involving sorghum, such as eating it as a child and missing it when she lived in another part of the country. Lundy explains how sorghum is made and discusses its name, and she provides recipes that incorporate sorghum. Reviewing the book on the Eat Kentucky Web site, a critic remarked: “From breads and breakfasts, to salads, to cocktails, to pies and cookies (favorites of mine), Lundy has covered all the bases. Lundy is well qualified for this book, having written such highly regarded books as Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest Fried Chicken, Butter Beans to Blackberries, and In Praise of Tomatoes. She knows Kentucky cuisine as a native, and that experience well informs her discussion of sorghum.” The critic concluded: “Anyone interested in exploring both sorghum’s past and its future will find Lundy a fine guide to one of that cuisine’s true treasures.”
In Victuals: An Appalachian Journey, with Recipes, Lundy discusses the foods eaten in the areas surrounding the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States. Victuals received favorable assessments. “Lundy is a warm and charming guide with a deep-seated love and respect for the region and its approach to cuisine,” asserted a reviewer in Publishers Weekly. Jane Black, critic for the Washington Post, suggested: “To call it a cookbook seems almost unfair. This is not just a collection of recipes or, as so many cookbooks these days are, a ‘branding opportunity’ for an aspiring chef. In Victuals—which the book’s cover makes clear is pronounced ‘viddles’—Lundy has written a love letter to the foods, culture and fortitude of Appalachian people.” Black concluded that “Lundy has documented America’s own cucina povera, proving that it is a very rich tradition indeed.” A contributor to the Millers Tale Web site commented: “Victuals is the result of Lundy’s travels around the region where she was raised, a limning of history, people and place but it is not a regressive paean to times gone by although Lundy has always drawn upon the rich Appalachian heritage (and especially in a previous cookbook, Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest Fried Chicken) to explain its foodways.” The same contributor added: “James Villas posited that where farm to table is concerned, the south got there first and in her book, Lundy’s focus on seasonality and sustainability through heritage adds a decidedly contemporary twist to this philosophy. Modernity coexists happily with tradition in Appalachia and Lundy’s book smashes old and tired stereotypes of Appalachia into smithereens.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, October 15, 1995, Barbara Jacobs, review of The Festive Table: Recipes and Stories for Creating Your Own Holiday Traditions, p. 376; April 15, 1999, Mark Knoblauch, review of Butter Beans to Blackberries: Recipes from the Southern Garden, p. 1497.
Library Journal, April 15, 1999, Judith C. Sutton, review of Butter Beans to Blackberries, p. 139.
Publishers Weekly, April 5, 1999, review of Butter Beans to Blackberries, p. 235; July 4, 2016, review of Victuals: An Appalachian Journey, with Recipes, p. 58.
Washington Post, August 30, 2016, Jane Black, review of Victuals.
ONLINE
Eat Kentucky, http://www.eatkentucky.com/ (April 22, 2015), review of Sorghum’s Savor.
Epicurious, http://www.epicurious.com/ (September 6, 2016), Sam Worley, review of Victuals.
Millers Tale, https://nicmillerstales.com/ (October 25, 2016), review of Victuals.
Ronni Lundy Home Page, http://www.ronnilundy.com (March 28, 2017).
Southern Foodways Alliance Web site, http://www.southerfoodways.org/ (October 11, 2004), April Grayson, author interview
ABOUT RONNI LUNDY
Born in Corbin, Kentucky, RONNI LUNDY has long chronicled the people of the hillbilly diaspora as a journalist and cookbook author. She is the former restaurant reviewer and music critic for The Courier-Journal in Louisville, former editor of Louisville Magazine, and has contributed to many national magazines. Her book Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes and Honest Fried Chicken was recognized by Gourmet magazine as one of six essential books on Southern cooking. In 2009, Lundy received the Southern Foodways Alliance Craig Claiborne Lifetime Achievement Award. She has contributed to Eating Well, Gourmet, Bon Appétit, Esquire, and other magazines.
Ronni Lundy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ronni Lundy is an author and editor in the U.S. whose work focuses on traditional American foods and music. Her books include Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes and Honest Fried Chicken: The Heart and Soul of Southern Country Kitchens (Atlantic, 1990) and Butter Beans to Blackberries: Recipes from the Southern Garden (North Point, 1999). She was a founding member of the Southern Foodways Alliance and, in 2005, edited Cornbread Nation 3: Foods of the Mountain South, the organization's occasional anthology of the region's best food writing. She was also the editor of a short-lived online food magazine, The Zenchilada.[1]
Lundy was born in Corbin, Kentucky in 1949 and grew up in the Louisville area. Her hometown of Corbin is where the Indiana native Harland Sanders developed his recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken, but in Shuck Beans Lundy wrote: "I was born in Kentucky and Colonel Harland D. Sanders was not, so you can believe me when I say that I, not the Colonel, know the secret to making honest fried chicken." She has also lived in Albuquerque, Galisteo, Cerrillos, Madrid and Santa Fe, New Mexico and now lives in the mountains of North Carolina.
Lundy was a pop music editor at the Louisville Times and the Louisville Courier-Journal in the 1980s and early 1990s. She focused on Americana, covering the likes of John Hartford, Emmylou Harris, Sam Bush, Dwight Yoakam and Bill Monroe. She also wrote about food and became a restaurant reviewer as the Louisville restaurant scene blossomed during the early 1990s.
Lundy's first book, Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest Fried Chicken, combined her interests in music and food. It includes interviews about favorite foods with coverage of country and bluegrass performers.
Lundy has written about musicians, travel, small farms, community-supported agriculture, heirloom seeds, culinary traditions, and the "joy of eating". Her work has appeared in Esquire, Gourmet, Bon Appetit, Cooking Light, Eating Well, Sunset, and Copia. Her stories have twice been finalists for the James Beard Award, and Butter Beans was a finalist for the International Association of Culinary Professionals cookbook awards.[citation needed]
In 2009 Lundy was the recipient of the Southern Foodways Alliance's Craig Claiborne Lifetime Achievement Award. During the award ceremony, John Egerton said she and Elizabeth Sims helped build a culinary renaissance in Asheville, North Carolina,[2] but Lundy has noted that this is not accurate, her involvement in Asheville's dining scene has been insignificant.
Lundy maintains an occasional blog at ronnilundy.com and is working on a new cookbook about sorghum.
QUOTED: "Lundy is a warm and charming guide with a
deep-seated love and respect for the region and its approach to cuisine."
Victuals: An Appalachian Journey, with Recipes
Publishers Weekly.
263.27 (July 4, 2016): p58.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* Victuals: An Appalachian Journey, with Recipes
Ronni Lundy. Clarkson Potter, $32.50 (320p) ISBN 978-0-804-18674-2
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Lundy (The Festive Table), a founder of the Southern Foodways Alliance and the Appalachian Food Summit, clearly has a deep understanding
and appreciation for Southern cooking. Defining Appalachia as an area encompassing Kentucky, the Virginias, Tennessee, southern Ohio, North
Carolina, southern Ohio, and northern Georgia, she provides is an elegantly photographed and lovingly narrated appreciation of Appalachian
cuisine and the people who grow and prepare it. Drawing from family recipes, her own creations, and dishes from vintage cookbooks, Lundy
takes the reader on a virtual tour of the area, stopping to explain the difference between salad and sallet (a specific way of cooking greens),
touring regional museums, and talking shop with a handful of small, local producers. She introduces readers to simple dishes such as buttermilk
cucumber salad, skillet corn, icebox green strawberry pickles, and roasted candy roaster squash, a regional favorite. Though she has a tendency to
meander a bit (the instructions for skillet-fried chicken and milk gravy take up a page and a half), Lundy is a warm and charming guide with a
deep-seated love and respect for the region and its approach to cuisine. Fans of locally sourced foods and Southern cooking will find a lot to like
here, as Lundy does a terrific job of showcasing Appalachia's breadth and depth. (Aug.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Victuals: An Appalachian Journey, with Recipes." Publishers Weekly, 4 July 2016, p. 58. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA457302937&it=r&asid=3ab499b670db2fb9871f4d788707bfc2. Accessed 19 Mar.
2017.
3/19/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1489976338486 2/6
Gale Document Number: GALE|A457302937
---
QUOTED: "a captivating paean to dishes made with vegetables and fruits harvested from Kentucky to Florida."
3/19/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1489976338486 3/6
BUTTER BEANS TO BLACKBERRIES: Recipes from the
Southern Garden
Publishers Weekly.
246.14 (Apr. 5, 1999): p235.
COPYRIGHT 1999 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Ronni Lundy. FSG/North Point, $27.50 (432p) ISBN 0-86547-547-4
A captivating paean to dishes made with vegetables and fruits harvested from Kentucky to Florida, from Maryland to Texas, the latest by Lundy
(Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes and Honest Fried Chicken) is packed with more than 150 recipes and a string of colorful yarns that recall her threeyear,
13state effort to seek out Southern culinary customs. Yankees will encounter a roster of unfamiliar ingredients--shoepeg corn, poke,
calamondin-and Southerners will be reminded of food that has comforted generations of ancestors. Recipes are as homey as Hoppin' John and its
lesser-known relative, Limpin' Susan Edisto, which counts okra among its components, and as interpretive as Middle Eastern Ratty-Too (the
family favorite ratatouille) and New South Moussaka, made with broiled eggplant slices but without bechamel sauce. Lundy asserts that Skillet
Corn (creamed) is preferable to corn on the cob and explains how to "milk" the fresh cob to collect all the juice for that side dish; True Grits
require old-fashioned, stone-groun d white corn grits. Although bacon drippings are a feature in Real Cornbread and Fried Green Tomatoes with
Cream Gravy, Lundy doesn't go overboard with fats. This warming fare will induce a homesickness for the South-even in those who don't whistle
"Dixie." (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"BUTTER BEANS TO BLACKBERRIES: Recipes from the Southern Garden." Publishers Weekly, 5 Apr. 1999, p. 235. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA54316055&it=r&asid=b82f2befbd30f1b5e7ef3bfafc597512. Accessed 19 Mar. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A54316055
---
QUOTED: "Lundy writes well and enthusiastically."
"Her latest book is both thoroughly researched and delightful."
3/19/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1489976338486 4/6
Butter Beans to Blackberries: Recipes from the Southern
Garden
Judith C. Sutton
Library Journal.
124.7 (Apr. 15, 1999): p139.
COPYRIGHT 1999 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Lundy, Ronni. Butter Beans to Blackberries: Recipes from the Southern Garden.
North Point: Farrar. May 1999. c.432p. photogs. index. ISBN 0-86547-547-4. $27.50. COOKERY
Fried chicken and biscuits aside, the Kentucky-bred Lundy writes that what Southerners are really passionate about are their native fruits and
vegetables, from butter beans and crowder peas to peaches, scuppernongs, and those blackberries. Most of these get their own chapter here. In
addition to mouthwatering recipes from both home cooks--including many of Lundy's own family favorites--and chefs, there are dozens of boxes
about, for example, the Lee Brothers, who will ship five-pound gunnysacks of boiled peanuts to homesick Southerners and others; colorful
descriptions of farmers' markets, festivals, and events like the St. George Rolling in the Grits Contest; and "Road Notes" about the people and
places Lundy has visited on "tasting trips" throughout the South. The author of The Festive Table (LJ 9/15/95), Lundy writes well and
enthusiastically, and her latest book is both thoroughly researched and delightful. Highly recommended.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Sutton, Judith C. "Butter Beans to Blackberries: Recipes from the Southern Garden." Library Journal, 15 Apr. 1999, p. 139. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA54542879&it=r&asid=ec19ac6e305117853fd3fee5d920b8fd. Accessed 19 Mar.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A54542879
---
QUOTED: "A worthwhile addition to any modern
cooking collection."
3/19/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1489976338486 5/6
Butter Beans to Blackberries: Recipes from the Southern
Garden
Mark Knoblauch
Booklist.
95.16 (Apr. 15, 1999): p1497.
COPYRIGHT 1999 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
Lundy, Ronni. Butter Beans to Blackberries: Recipes from the Southern Garden. May 1999.432p. index, illus. Farrar/North Point, $30 (0-
8654%547-4). DDC: 641.5975.
Southern cooking enjoys a renaissance, especially among those with roots below the Mason-Dixon Line. Its emphasis on vegetables such as
beans and okra makes it seem healthy by contemporary measures, but its dependence on animal fats for flavor moves it in another direction.
Lundy mixes reminiscences about her southern upbringing with dozens of recipes that reflect the best in southern cooking traditions, updated to
make them accessible to modern cooks. Her Frogmore soup gets its richness from buttermilk rather than cream, and buttermilk's tang nicely
points up the shrimp brininess. Reading Lundy on the glories of peach ice cream makes one want to rush out and buy an ice cream freezer.
Among the rambling essays, Lundy's Arkansas encounter with author Crescent Dragonwagon stands out. A worthwhile addition to any modern
cooking collection.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Knoblauch, Mark. "Butter Beans to Blackberries: Recipes from the Southern Garden." Booklist, 15 Apr. 1999, p. 1497. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA54525865&it=r&asid=e0c9bebada80bd382d8e4459386aded1. Accessed 19 Mar.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A54525865
---
3/19/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1489976338486 6/6
The Festive Table: Stories and Recipes for Renewing
Celebrations
Barbara Jacobs
Booklist.
92.4 (Oct. 15, 1995): p376.
COPYRIGHT 1995 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
Lundy, Ronni.The Festive Table: Stories and Recipes for Renewing Celebrations. Oct. 1995. 364p. index. Farrar, $25 (0-374-24902-4).
DDC:641.5.
It would be a shame to bypass this quiet, unassuming holiday cookbook simply because it got buried in the seasonal publishing rush. Lundy
showcases 22 festivities with food as the focus of celebratory activities. Late winter, for instance, is the perfect time to hold a hot-dish doldrums
party featuring Grandma's best cream-soup casserole recipes. Like Baltimoreans, celebrate a crabby Fourth of July with steamed crabs, corn,
devilish spuds, and the like. For a Kentucky Christmas, have turkey accompanied by garlic-cheese grits, ambrosia, and pimento cheese. The
recipes are augmented by ingredient histories, religious tales, and lots of famous authors' quotes about food.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Jacobs, Barbara. "The Festive Table: Stories and Recipes for Renewing Celebrations." Booklist, 15 Oct. 1995, p. 376. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA17460860&it=r&asid=c3e518b6217dcb3689fba5f412d4d35b. Accessed 19 Mar.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A17460860
QUOTED: "to call it a cookbook seems almost unfair. This is not just a collection of recipes or, as so many cookbooks these days are, a “branding opportunity” for an aspiring chef. In “Victuals” — which the book’s cover makes clear is pronounced “viddles” — Lundy has written a love letter to the foods, culture and fortitude of Appalachian people."
"In “Victuals,” Lundy has documented America’s own cucina povera, proving that it is a very rich tradition indeed."
‘Victuals,’ reviewed: A love letter to Appalachia, with recipes
By Jane Black August 30, 2016
The Shack’s Sweet and Savory Banana Pudding. (Dixie D. Vereen/For The Washington Post)
One of my first fights with my husband was about green beans. “These are not beans,” he said, pointing disdainfully at a supermarket string bean. “They should be lumpy. They should have — beans inside!”
Brent is from West Virginia, and West Virginians, as they will be the first to tell you, know beans. I, apparently, did not.
Brent had a point (about both the beans and me). The green beans at the grocery store — almost always a variety called Blue Lake — are a pale shadow of proper green beans. They are bred to be tough, which makes it easier to use machines for harvesting. If Blue Lakes were allowed to develop a big bean inside (which, it’s important to note, is where all the protein is), they’d be too tough to eat. Today, I’ve rarely seen real green beans outside of Appalachia. It’s the last place in the country where people demand them.
[Got questions about Appalachian cooking? Join our online chat with readers at noon Wednesday at live.washingtonpost.com.]
Beans, along with classic American ingredients such as corn, sorghum and apples, are the focus of Ronni Lundy’s new cookbook, “Victuals” (Clarkson Potter, 2016). Though to call it a cookbook seems almost unfair. This is not just a collection of recipes or, as so many cookbooks these days are, a “branding opportunity” for an aspiring chef. In “Victuals” — which the book’s cover makes clear is pronounced “viddles” — Lundy has written a love letter to the foods, culture and fortitude of Appalachian people. In it, we learn to make dishes such as a pot of “mountain green beans and taters,” but we also get a deeper understanding of the role those dishes continue to play in some of America’s oldest communities. Communities, Lundy points out, that are and always have been more than the unsavory blend of “The Beverly Hillbillies,” the War on Poverty and “Deliverance” that outsiders imagine. It is a book that will live as happily in your kitchen as on your bedside table.
[Make the recipe: The Shack’s Sweet and Savory Banana Pudding]
“Victuals” takes readers on the road to explore modern Appalachia. Lundy goes to Malden, W.Va., to meet a new generation of saltmakers; to Whitesburg, Ky., where a young couple opened a cocktail bar designed to bring together the coal miners and young professionals who uneasily coexisted there; and Louisville, where a young chef is curing heritage-breed hogs for top-shelf charcuterie.
“Vittles” describes a complex region whose food is shaped by tradition while also being redefined by modern chefs, farmers and food artisans. (Johnny Autry/Clarkson Potter/Publishers/Random House)
Author Ronni Lundy introduces readers to modern Appalachia as well as to foods that have been prepared there through generations. (Pableaux Johnson/Clarkson Potter/Publishers)
But Lundy also taps into her personal history. She was born in the tiny railroad town of Corbin, Ky., but moved a few years later to Louisville, where her father went to find work. Like many who migrated to the city, Lundy’s family continued to think of Corbin as “up home,” visiting during the summer and any other time they could manage it. In Corbin, Lundy reports, food was magical. In part, that was because she ate foods she couldn’t get in the city, like honey with the comb still inside that you could “chew like gum”; in part, it was because she was allowed to help, whether by stringing beans on the porch or harvesting squash from the garden.
[The next big thing in regional cooking: Humble Appalachia]
The result is a rich and revealing portrait of a complex, heterogeneous region, one that clings to traditions while being redefined by a new generation of chefs, farmers and food artisans. The photos, by Johnny Autry, work equally hard not to trade in stereotypes, capturing real people and the natural beauty of the mountains without romanticizing them.
On the traditional side of things, Lundy provides recipes for authentic versions of weekday staples. The word “authentic” is fraught, of course. But I use it intentionally here. Her corn bread (without sugar, thank you very much), green beans stewed with potatoes and salt pork (though bacon does nicely) and salmon cakes (made from canned salmon, one of the few affordable ways to get fish in the mountains) are indistinguishable from the dishes that Brent’s grandma cooked for him and that we still eat at home.
Root and Sausage Pie. (Dixie D. Vereen/For The Washington Post)
[Make the recipe: Root and Sausage Pie]
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The book also has introduced me to other simple dishes that are fast becoming weeknight go-tos for me because a) the recipes work and b) the ingredients are ones that I (and, I imagine, most cooks) either have on hand or can easily get. Her buttermilk cucumber salad, enlivened with a little sweet onion, dill and a splash of apple cider vinegar, is a refresh of the usual picnic coleslaw. “Killed lettuce,” salad greens dressed in hot bacon dressing, is the American version of the wilted spinach salad I had to go all the way to France to learn to make and love. Root and Sausage Pie is an easy-to-make Appalachian variation on the hearty classic shepherd’s pie, with breakfast sausage and corn bread standing in for ground meat and a mashed-potato crust.
Lundy also provides plenty of ideas for what to do with ramps — the stinky wild onion revered in Appalachia that is all the rage every spring — including pickled ramps and a spring ramp pot roast. (And that’s a good thing, because in my experience, city folk mostly buy ramps because we’re tired of winter, not because we actually know what to do with them.)
Chefs’ gussied-up interpretations of the classics are even more thrilling, because they prove that neither Appalachia nor its food is trapped in time. The Shack’s Sweet and Savory Banana Pudding, from Ian Boden of the Shack in Staunton, Va., is the single best update I’ve tried of what I already think of as an ideal dessert. The cake is made with buckwheat flour for earthiness and red-miso paste that adds a salty kick, then smothered in a satiny custard. (That said, it was also the only recipe that gave me trouble: The banana bread did not bake well at the recommended 300 degrees. The directions have been adjusted here.)
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[Make the recipe: John Fleer’s Buttermilk Corn Bread Soup]
John Fleer’s Buttermilk Corn Bread Soup. (Dixie D. Vereen/For The Washington Post)
I also was a fan of the Buttermilk Corn Bread Soup contributed by John Fleer, the chef of Rhubarb in Asheville, N.C. (But then, full disclosure: I’m a fan of everything he does.) It’s distinctly unpretentious, and it also reminds me of the way my mother-in-law likes to crumble day-old corn bread into a glass of buttermilk and eat it with a spoon.
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It was, in fact, Fleer who first helped me understand how to think about Appalachian food. It is, he told me, a cuisine like those of Gascony or the Basque country: a way of eating that is anchored in the mountains and a culture of self-sufficiency. In “Victuals,” Lundy has documented America’s own cucina povera, proving that it is a very rich tradition indeed.
QUOTED: "Victuals is the result of Lundy’s travels around the region where she was raised, a limning of history, people and place but it is not a regressive paean to times gone by although Lundy has always drawn upon the rich Appalachian heritage (and especially in a previous cookbook, Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes and Honest Fried Chicken) to explain its foodways."
"James Villas posited that where farm to table is concerned, the south got there first and in her book, Lundy’s focus on seasonality and sustainability through heritage adds a decidedly contemporary twist to this philosophy. Modernity coexists happily with tradition in Appalachia and Lundy’s book smashes old and tired stereotypes of Appalachia into smithereens."
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VICTUALS BY RONNI LUNDY: A REVIEW
OCTOBER 25, 2016 | THE MILLERS TALE
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Matt & Ted Lee refer to Ronni Lundy as a ‘native daughter of Kentucky’ and Victuals, her latest cookbook kicks off with a handy lesson in dialect for those of us not to the local manor born: apparently in southern Appalachia, ‘victuals’ is pronounced ‘vidls’ and not ‘vittles’ which is how I might have pronounced it. It’s just one example of how misunderstood this part of the USA is.
Lundy has form when it comes to providing us with the tools we need to understand Appalachia. As a founding member of the Southern Foodways Alliance she has always emphasised the role that culinary genealogy plays in helping to define what actually constitutes southern food and in doing this, she has challenged some of the more common – and inaccurate- tropes that have flourished in the minds of the lazy and those who wish to erase contributions from people based upon age-old prejudices. Lundy tells us about Malinda Russell, a free black woman and native of Appalachian who fled to Michigan during the civil war, leaving the bakery she opened in East Tennessee. Whilst living in Michigan she published A Domestic Cookbook in 1866 and this compendium of recipes used by her when she ran a boarding house and pastry shop and also cooked for the first families of Tennessee may well be regarded as the first published cookbook about the Appalachian south. As Lundy adds, Russell’s recipes may or may not be reflective of the recipes common to the region at its time of writing but ‘it certainly broadens our perception of 19th century Appalachian foodways.’
Victuals is the result of Lundy’s travels around the region where she was raised, a limning of history, people and place but it is not a regressive paean to times gone by although Lundy has always drawn upon the rich Appalachian heritage (and especially in a previous cookbook, Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes and Honest Fried Chicken) to explain its foodways.
“People who come to and from these mountains want to know where they are when they eat,” writes Lundy, quoting one of the great pioneers of the contemporary mountain food scene, John Stehling. In 2011 a study headed up by ethnobotanist Gary Nabham and environmental anthropologist Jim Veteto validated Stehling’s opinion when they declared southern and central Appalachia to be the ‘most diverse foodshed in North America’. She celebrates the knowledge of the local people who are farming, brewing, producing high quality ingredients and trying to steer a course through the fiscally tricky waters of an American economy which doesn’t always seem to prize their endeavours, favouring multi-national corporations over the local and artisanal. These people are rooted in one place but they aren’t fixated upon it and have been able to help move Appalachian foodways in new and exciting directions.
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Appalachian cuisine cannot be divorced from the land and feeding local families often involves more than a stroll to the local store. And when Lundy writes that ‘food was magical also because I got to be part of the making’ we get to read recollections of her aunt Johnnie’s garden full of half-runner beans and descriptions of local cider apple orchards which have to co-exist with nearby large-scale and homogenous commercial growers. For Lundy, the apple is rooted in her love for Jo from Little Women whose own pockets were filled with windfalls as juicy and taffy-sweet as the ones she remembers as once growing freely in the mountain hollers. There’s a meditation on the art of making apple butter and a description of what to aim for; ‘dark as sable, thick as pudding and deeply fragrant,’ is more helpful and evocative than any photo could be. Developing the master-recipe further, the reader is given mini recipes for Sherri Castle’s vinegar kiss and Lundy’s own ‘splash’ with a good glug of bourbon added ‘for the grown ups biscuits’.
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There’s been a resurgence of interest in the culinary genealogy of Appalachia (something I predicted was on the cards, several years ago) and local chefs such as Sean Brock, Shelley Cooper and John Fleer are all referenced via a selection of recipes and their accompanying text. One such recipe is Fleer’s buttermilk cornbread soup which takes an old tradition (although one not exclusive to the region) and turns it into a bowl of comforting something-something that looks at home on the table of either a good restaurant or plonked in front of your kids at suppertime. Like all apparently simple meals it relies on the very best ingredients and slow, steady time at the stove (which can be a comfort especially when one is busy and over-stimulated). The value of taking twenty minutes out for stirring the pot cannot be overstated and like all rhythmic actions, it soothes. Does it sound overly romantic to say this is also what connects us all to the past? I don’t think so.
Many Appalachian recipes and techniques have been hard won over time and it’s important to grasp this if you want to take the principles behind Victuals to heart. One emblematic recipe – the apple stack cake- is as much building as it is baking and both of these require a decent investment in time and technique. In this cake, dried apples are cooked and layered onto thick hearty disks of dough which were originally cooked in cast iron skillets then sweetened with sorghum. Lundy’s aunt Johnnie would pick and dry apples in June for cakes like the stack and for fried or baked hand pies although her cake recipe comes via her great-aunt Rae who made the cake for Lundy’s father.
Maybe the stack cake began life as a wedding cake with each family contributing a layer, or maybe it didn’t, but it is at its best after sitting for a couple of days which allows the spiced apple to seep its sweetness into the layers of cake. As Lundy says, ‘it reflects the pioneer spirit of converting something totally old (the eastern European tradition of layered tortes, brought to the region by German immigrants) into something totally new with the ingredients at hand.’ Necessity was the mother of invention but although the stack cake remains pretty austere in appearance and ingredients compared to the richly adorned tortes from the old country, its flavour is anything but.
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Buttermilk pie
Victuals reminds us of the great traditions of home preserving and also includes recipes which contained ingredients which would otherwise be unavailable to a landlocked part of the USA had commercial canning not existed. Fresh-water fish and shellfish were caught and eaten regularly but seafood such as oysters would have been out of the question had it not been for the fine tradition of smoking and canning. If you grew up reading Susan Coolidge and Laura Ingalls Wilder you will be familiar with the oyster soups made with this delicacy, transported via railroads in thin flat cans and Lundy’s version of a smoked oyster stew for two is a reminder that no matter how bountiful a region is, sometimes what is longed for is what cannot be grown or caught there. Oysters, she writes, were a salty mineral-rich addition to an Appalachian miners lunchbox designed to replenish their own salt levels after a hot and sweaty shift. They were added to simple potato soups or served with saltines and packed away in a tin pail for the fishers in the family and Lundy’s more luxurious version is flavoured with the olive oil the oysters are preserved in.
Alice Waters gets the credit for the farm to table movement which champions seasonality and a locavore lifestyle and went on to place California on the gastro-map yet Appalachia and the American south in general has always lived by this creed. James Villas posited that where farm to table is concerned, the south got there first and in her book, Lundy’s focus on seasonality and sustainability through heritage adds a decidedly contemporary twist to this philosophy. Modernity coexists happily with tradition in Appalachia and Lundy’s book smashes old and tired stereotypes of Appalachia into smithereens.
Victuals is my cook and food book of 2016.
QUOTED: "From breads and breakfasts, to salads, to cocktails, to pies and cookies (favorites of mine), Lundy has covered all the bases.
Lundy is well qualified for this book, having written such highly regarded books as Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest Fried Chicken, Butterbeans to Blackberries, and In Praise of Tomatoes. She knows Kentucky cuisine as a native, and that experience well informs her discussion of sorghum."
"Anyone interested in exploring both sorghum’s past and its future will find Lundy a fine guide to one of that cuisine’s true treasures."
Book Review: Ronni Lundy Guides Us to ‘Sorghum’s Savor’
Sorghum’s Savor
by Ronni Lundy
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2015
When I was a boy in Clay County we would frequently have preachers visit as we didn’t have our own preacher at the small Pine Grove church. Often they would eat at our house, sometimes spending the night. One of the visiting preachers I liked most was “bro. Craig.” He was always friendly to me and had a good sense of humor. But there’s one thing in particular I remember about him: he would often bring sorghum syrup with him, or molasses, as we called it.
My father is a beekeeper, so the sticky sweet liquid we had readily available was honey. Sorghum was something special and remarkably different. I loved its tanginess, and it wasn’t something we had all the time. Sorghum with butter on a hot biscuit simply cannot be improved upon.
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Ronni Lundy, a native of Corbin only 40 minutes away from my native Clay County (and bro. Craig also happened to be from near Corbin), begins her new book Sorghum’s Savor with her own childhood memories of sorghum. It was a common thing back then, as Lundy notes: “Sorghum syrup was in the pantry or on the table all my early life, and for a long time I assumed that was so for everyone.”
As Lundy discovered when she left Kentucky, sorghum was a treasure to be sought and hoarded like a dragon chasing gold.
Sorghum is the South’s answer to maple syrup. Like maple syrup, it’s a reduction boiled down in the fall. But while maple syrup is harvested from mature trees, sorghum is taken from a annual crop of sorghum, a grass that resembles corn. The stalks contain a sweet liquid that is squeezed and reduced to produce what is known as sweet sorghum syrup.
As Lundy explains, the “right” name for sweet sorghum is a matter of some confusion. Sorghum cane was sometimes called “sugar cane”—which it isn’t—and the end product traditionally called “molasses”—which it isn’t. Lundy writes, “But sweet sorghum syrup isn’t technically true molasses. Molasses is a by-product of the refining process used to make sugar.”
Sorghum makers, retailers, and the cooks who use it, have made a concerted effort to consistently use the name “sorghum” rather than “molasses” to erase this confusion. But for those who have called it molasses all their lives the change can create its own confusion.
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In the mid-19th century sorghum was tried as an alternative to sugar cane, but sorghum doesn’t crystallize easily, and in the deeper South it was abandoned in favor of sugar cane. But sugar can cannot be grown in the upper South, and buying processed white sugar required hard earned cash. “In the upper South, however, sweet sorghum had a second life. In the mountain South, particularly, it became a cash crop for some middle-class planters and a source of homegrown sweetening for poorer black, white, and American Indian families of the region.” Lundy points out that sorghum provided a native sweetener for an independence-minded people.
Sorghum is not a “neutral” sweetener as we typically consider cane sugar to be. Like honey’s taste changes depending on the flowers from which it comes, sorghum’s taste will vary depending on the region and soil type, even the particular year of production. And sorghum has an earthy, rich taste that is unlike any other sweetener.
This is something that Louisville chef Edward Lee discovered through a chance encounter with sorghum, one that made him a devotee of the syrup. Lee explains in one of Lundy’s pull-out features in the book she calls “Long Sweeteners” (a term used in the mountains to refer to sorghum while “short sweetener” was cane sugar): “It has more depth and range than honey, a more complex umami. And I thought, ‘Why am I using a sweetener from a thousand miles away when this is right up the road?
“I bought a whole box filled with sorghum jars and told my cooks, throw out the honey we have and just use this.”
Lundy intersperses her history and explanation of sorghum with several of these “Long Sweetener” features with people like Midway chef Ouita Michel and Rona Roberts, author of Sweet, Sweet Sorghum: Kentucky’s Golden Wonder (read my review of Rona’s Classic Kentucky Meals). Different chefs, cooks, and sorghum producers discuss the syrup from their own angle.
Lundy’s narrative takes up the first third of Sorghum’s Savor, but the final 100 pages are filled with recipes using sorghum and also recipes for items to use with sorghum. Lundi includes such gems as Ouita Michel’s biscuit recipe–perfect for butter and sorghum–and “new classics” like sorghum and grits ice cream from Edward Lee. From breads and breakfasts, to salads, to cocktails, to pies and cookies (favorites of mine), Lundy has covered all the bases.
Lundy is well qualified for this book, having written such highly regarded books as Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest Fried Chicken, Butterbeans to Blackberries, and In Praise of Tomatoes. She knows Kentucky cuisine as a native, and that experience well informs her discussion of sorghum.
The sorghum belt is essentially the same as the ham belt, the Upper South where Southern sensibilities meet true winter. It’s a unique region with a cuisine unlike any other. Anyone interested in exploring both sorghum’s past and its future will find Lundy a fine guide to one of that cuisine’s true treasures.