American Cooking: Southern Style/Recipes [antikvár]

^Ti^iscmry ofthe ?outh w While this book was in preparation I flew to Rome to talk with the author, Eugene Walter. I called on him at his apartment on the Corso Vit-torio Emanuele, and we spent some hours going over our plans for the book. Then he took me out on the terrace to show me his garden. As we stepped into the bright sunlight, Eugene pointed up the street and said, "That's the church of Sant' Andrea della Valle, where the first act of Tosca takes place." Then he turned and pointed in the opposite direction. "That's the church of Jesus," he said. "There's a legend that the devil and the wind came around the corner down there one day, and the devil said, "You stay here. I'll be right back.' Then he went into the church and he never did come out. The wind has been waiting there ever since. It's the windiest corner in Rome—sometimes it blows so hard it knocks my flowerpots over." On the terrace above the busy street, there were green things growing everywhere: passion fruit, Oswego tea, miniature red tomatoes, onions, chives, ribbon chervil, wormwood ("I don't make absinthe, but I could," Eugene said), rue, green bay, pomegranates, rosemary, sweet marjoram and an avocado whose blossoms had been scattered by the wind blowing up from the corner down the street. Eugene showed me a pair of strawberry plants and apologized for their condition. "I'm sorry I can't show you some strawberries," he said; "we had 10 ripe ones today, but I ate them all for lunch." He pointed out a pot of the familiar dark green mint used in juleps in the South, and he pinched off a leaf of a variegated white-edged mint from another plant and held it out for me to sniff. "It's too strong for juleps," he explained. "I use it to decorate the trays that I serve juleps on." Eugene Walter has the greenest thumb I have ever seen, and he is also uniquely qualified to write this book. He was born and raised in the deepest part of the South—Mobile, Alabama. Although he left home not long after World War II to study and work in Europe, his enthusiasm for Southern food has never diminished. He is, in fact, so fond of it that he regularly prepares and serves Southern dishes in Rome. "I like rice, or grits, or spoon bread every day," he told me. "I just feel better if I have had one of them." Along with his zest for Southern food, Eugene brings another special qualification to this book; in a sense, he is a Southern Rip van Winkle. When he traveled through the South to gather his research, it was the first time in more than 20 years that he had been in that region. His trip was a journey of rediscovery and the result is an informative, affectionate, highly entertaining report. —William K. Goolrick Associate Editor