Cornbread Nation 2: The United States of Barbecue

Obligatory reading for anyone who's a food geek, especially if you are a barbecue wonk. If you've spent a whole day (or night) cooking a 10 pound pork shoulder or obsessed about which combination of 15 spices will taste best on a chicken thigh (and really, who hasn't?) then this book is for you. About three quarters of the book is dedicated to barbecue - the rest is dedicated to southern cooking and food, including a chapter on a geophagy, something I never heard of... the eating of dirt. Who knew that mudpies were a nutritional staple in some parts of the world!!?? Overall, it is very good writing on a specific topic - you'd better like barbecue enough to read story after story about it - which makes it not for everyone, but great read for those looking for it.

The Southern Foodways Alliance was founded to celebrate, teach, preserve, and promote the food cultures of the American South. Cornbread Nation 2: The United States of Barbecue is a collection of stories, poems, and essays about the foodways of the mountain South. It is one of a continuing series which includes Cornbread Nation 1: The Best of Southern Food Writing, Cornbread Nation 3: Foods of the Mountain South and Cornbread Nation 4: The Best of Southern Food Writing. Lolis Eric Elie writes in the introduction: "Other foods cover the geographic expanse of this nation, just as barbecue does. You can find fried chicken, hamburgers, hot dogs, and pizza from coast to coast. But none of these foods enjoy the great regional variation that barbecue does. None of them exemplify the competing themes of American unity and diversity as barbecue does. You don't hear heated arguments about the fundamental differences between the hamburgers in Albuquerque and those in Altoona. Hamburgers just ain't that deep. As John Shelton Reed reminds us in "Barbecue Sociology: The Meat of the Matter," "Southern barbecue is the closest thing we have in the U.S. to Europe's wines or cheeses; drive a hundred miles and the barbecue changes." While there are a few non-barbecue pieces in this second edition of the series devoted to southern foods, barbeque is the name of the game. It points out that getting together for barbecues was popular before the Revolutionary War. George Washington hosted barbecues including one at Accotinck in May 1773 and buying flour "for barbecue" [for biscuits?] in August. "Barbecue" is an amalgam from the Haitian "barbacoa" and "babracot," believed to be from Guianian Indians, according to the "Oxford English Dictionary." Fish or meat were cooked over a fire on a wooden grill of sticks set on posts. There is still intense debate over whether the best barbecue is pork, beef, chicken, fish or lamb. As Elie points out: "Though the various versions of barbecue differ from each other as much as cows differ from sheep, or as much as tomatoes differ from mustard seeds, the common themes of wood and smoke, meat and sauce, family and fellowship transcend regional rivalries and recipe differences." This edition is padded out with a few non- barbecue pieces which are well worth enjoying. Pat Conroy teaches us that food and funerals go together in "Love, Death, and Macaroni." John Martin Taylor is eloquent on boiled peanuts. Susan Allport's "Women Who Eat Dirt" describes a practice common in the south, and even now in Harlem grocery stores there are enormous offerings of starch, not for starching shirts but to meet the need for "clean" earth, awfully hard to come by in New York City. At one time, New York City was considered a barbecue wasteland, like Paris, London and L.A. But there is a new smoker technology that the Department of Health has approved, and a number of topflight barbecue restaurants have opened here. If you find your mouth watering afte

This is a welcome addition to a promising series, although it is slightly misleading, due probably to the nature of the series. It is only about half to two-thirds about barbecue, although within that are some really terrific and far-ranging essays. The balance is about other Southern foodways, including boiled peanuts (as a previous reviewer noted)and boudin, although any book on any subject is enhanced by Calvin Trillin's contribution. He HAS written on barbecue (indeed, his piece on Arthur Bryant's is a landmark), but the Cornbread Nation does not promise to be inclusive. It sho' nuff makes one hungry though!

Cornbread Nation 2 should have been printed using waterproof paper! Reading the varied writings contained between its covers will have anyone who appreciates barbecue drooling like Pavlov's dogs. Elie has done a masterful job of assembling some of the most vivid food writing-on barbecue-imaginable. The depth of subject matter is both stunning and satisfying in what it brings to the table. It is my opinion that including Smith's Rhetoric of Barbecue treatise is alone worth the investment in this book. Often quoted as snippets in other books,here it is in it's entirety for the very first time. Quite simply, this is a book to be treasured by anyone who loves barbecue, southern culture or U.S. history. I can safely bet that once you begin reading Cornbread Nation 2, you'll find yourself becoming ravenous for some good slow cooked barbecue!