Heirloom Cooking with the Brass Sisters: Recipes You Remember and Love

Heirloom cooking is just another way of saying comfort food, so say the Brass Sisters and even if you only give this book a quick glance you'll know this is a book chock full of comfort food. These are recipes your grandmother might have used. The Brass Sisters have scoured the country, eating here and there, sampling recipe after recipe, saving the best and here they are. If you've ever wanted to be the cook your grandmother was, this book will help you achieve that goal. Call them farschpais, antipasto, hors d'oeuvre or simply appetizers, they are how you start a good Heirloom meal and some brilliant recipes for them start out this book, then the Brass Sisters move you to Salads and from there onto Side Dishes, then the Soup of the Day. And they don't forget the Staff of Life, breads are important to Heirloom cooking. Of course Home Plates or the main dish is the heart of the meal and here you have some to die for, but will you be too full for the Sweet Finale or dessert. Boy oh boy there is some good cooking to be had if only you had this wonderful cookbook.

If, like me, you love old cookbooks, particularly ones from churches, women's clubs and the like, this cookbook will probably appeal to you. There's nothing here that requires pink peppercorns or a panini press. Rather it's a book filled with the sort of recipe your mom or grandmother would turn to when searching for a good, filling meal that would bring the family together over the dinner table. There are hearty, warming soups, filling casseroles, and a collection of entrees which include three sorts of meatloaf and several pot pies. There are good, honest desserts like red velvet cake, and even the ubiquitous jello salad. The recipes are beautifully illustrated, and look fairly straightforward. After all, how homey can a recipe be if it requires hours of work and a hundred ingredients? The essence of comfort food is, after all, simplicity and honesty. Food that is a pleasure to prepare and to eat, filled with flavor. I can't help but feel that this would be a wonderful gift, particularly for the holiday season, and especially for that person on your list who always seems to feed the soul as well as the body.

If you collect those regional cookbooks with spiral bindings and hand-typed recipes inside, looking for that "secret family recipe", the Brass Sisters may have written just the book for you. Instead of guessing what "Billionaire's Mac 'n Cheese" or "Mock Chicken Salad" or "Salmon Squares" looks like, you get a handsome large volume lavishly illustrated with pictures and some stories. But mainly, this book is about the food, straight-up American style comfort food. While I was thrilled to have what looks like the ultimate in mac 'n cheese (Billionaire's) I was actually really drawn to the side dish section, with stuffed baked onions, "church" cauliflower bake, baked butternut squash, caramellized potatoes from a German recipe and a zucchini cheese casserole. How many times am I looking for that covered side dish for a party or to enhance a simple meal of baked chicken? These look tremendous. The soups were less appealing to me, in fact one, tomato peanut butter soup really put me off but I am sure someone out there would probably adore it. There are a lot of good breads, including Baps, those soft Scottish rolls as well as bagels, crackers and a farm rye bread. I plan to be trying quite a few of these. By far, my favorite chapter, however, is "Home Plates" which are those dishes beloved by men especially (corned beef hash, Shepherd's Pie, Swedish Meatballs, and stuffed cabbage.) Since our household loves traditional American cuisine, this cookbook looks like a roster of champions, waiting to hit home runs in the kitchen. Big (flour-dusted) thumbs up here.