Why hello there, and welcome to Catastrophic Cookbook Reviews, where we review cookbooks. That’s it. Look, as Sigmund Freud never said, “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”. Anywho, today we’re tackling both of Vivian Howard’s cookbooks. Why? Because I need to consult the ancient scrolls for the coming wisdom of which new dish will be popular. Also because I think there’s some interesting and kind of cool contrasts and similarities between the two. So it’s time for a not-so-deep-dive on Deep Run, as we dig into Deep Run Roots and This Will Make it Taste Good.

These Roots Don’t Run

Vivian Howard’s first coobook is…it’s frustrating for me to write about, because it is, in many ways, damn near the platonic IDEAL of what you’d want the kind of cookbook it is to be.

Brown?

Like, it is HUGE, and it serves as a kind of Eastern North Carolina Culinary Encyclopedia. And that specificity in location is intentional: as the introduction lays out, part of Chef Vivian’s goal in highlighting the ingredients and recipes she does is to focus on the cuisine of her home, to illustrate by example that “Southern food” is no more monolithic a cuisine than “Italian”: the dishes of eastern North Carolina have as little to do with the dishes of Dallas Texas as the Milanese polenta and gorgonzola do with the grilled swordfish and Arabic influences of Sicily.

The book is seemingly exhaustive, presenting dishes of escalating involvement/refinement for a given ingredient, offering tips and details for the ingredient borne from Vivian’s years of working with it, and each section bears a opening detailing Vivian’s personal history with the ingredient, how her family relates to it, how it’s used in the region, etc. For example, we’re introduced to Oysters as an ingredient by Vivian explaining how, while she’s come to love and crave them as an adult, as a child, she hated oysters. Not because she was forced to eat them, but because when oyster season arrived, her parents would stop going to her preferred restaurant, where she got as many Shirley Temples as she liked, and instead would go to the rushed oyster bar, where her dad wouldn’t spring for a soda.

Which, to be fair: oysters are expensive, so if he needed to save money, I understand.

It gives the reader a sense of understanding of the region, of the Howard family, of Deep Run, and it includes a great many interesting recipes. However, and this is a weird thing to frame…it feels “too” good. There’s an element of antiquity to it: a sense that is a RECORD of things, not a guide. Further, there’s another element to it: it feels... like it’s counting steps.  Or that it ‘did all the reading’. By which I’m drawing on two very different references. The first is from acting: there is a notable difference between an actor/performer who is in the role/song, and one who is still counting the steps in their head. I know this, because it is often one of my flaws as an actor in musicals: I don’t do them frequently, so I get out of practice, so if you give me more than 3 dances to learn, I’ll learn them...but not smoothly. I can be hitting all the steps…I’m just also a little too precise, a little unnaturally sharp/stiff. It’s clear that I’m not comfortable. For the second reference, it’s one that I feel hits a little closer to what I suspect to be the real problem/reason. And it comes from Hansard, a British play I have not seen, but that the national theatre has shown me a couple ads for. In it, a British politician is arguing with his wife, and they get on the topic of Margaret Thatcher (the play is set in 1988, so it’s not just a sudden throw-back.). And the husband argues that “there was nothing special about her, in Oxford. She didn’t have any sort of intellectual flair. [She] just worked harder than everybody else.  Went to every lecture, read every book on the reading list. That’s who Margaret Thatcher is.” And his wife points out that A: how dare you make her defend Margaret Thatcher, and B: what an egotistical shit-show of an argument. Holy crap, there was nothing special about her, she just WORKED HARD? Newsflash, asshole: Women have to do that shit just to be taken seriously, and now you’re using that as an argument for why she wasn’t special?  Jesus, men will find ANYTHING to tear a woman down, won’t they? (I’m paraphrasing, of course…but not by much.)

That’s the vibe I get from the book, and in turn the vibe I worry about projecting: It feels like there’s still a bit of defensiveness, with Vivian trying to be as thorough as possible, as authentic, as regional, in order to assert to the grand-high muckamucks of the food world that this is a cuisine worth investigating, and that she is a chef to be taken seriously.  Or perhaps it’s more of a nervousness, a struggling to impart just the correct amount of reverence for the traditions of her hometown, a need to be ‘twice as good’ speaking for a smaller community on a national scale. Or it could be a more direct kind of fiscal nervousness: A sense of “If this book doesn’t do well, I might not write another, so let’s get it ALL OUT NOW.”

This is two pages of just TIPS for stuff to do with oysters, before a chapter of recipes, and it’s one of TWENTY FOUR chapters.

And that kind of takes me back to the dance metaphor: in trying to get so much in, I feel that lack of comfort. She’s hitting all the steps, but it feels like she’s counting them. And maybe I’m over-reading a little: maybe it’s purely a matter of inexperience in this specific medium. This is, after all, her first cookbook. She had a TV show, she’s run a restaurant, but those are not necessarily the same skills. Maybe there’s just a slight stiffness, a little “over-explaining”, because it’s a first book.  

Which especially feels plausible for two reasons: the first is that I think there’s more of a approachable/interesting vibe in the little intro blurbs for each recipe, where she can be more playful. “Kitchen Sink Mayo”, a condiment for fried oysters both “uses everything but the kitchen sink” (Not too great an exaggeration: horseradish, anchovies, garlic confit, Worcestershire, fresh garlic, hot sauce, soy sauce and honey are all flavoring agents) and “tastes great on everything but the kitchen sink”. There’s a multi-page story on how she developed her Blueberry BBQ Chicken, how it helped her find her voice as a chef, and win over some of the locals…and then she brings up in the blurb that the BBQ sauce you make for the dish can also be thinned with some seltzer and drunk as a tart and refreshing beverage. Which is perhaps the cleanest and least aggressive way I’ve heard a chef say “my sauce is so good you could drink it.”

Slight spoilers for the rest of the post: I used the flash to avoid the shadow on the books, and that created a bit of glare. It’s better in some pictures than others. I just want you to understand why the top of this chicken is vaguely glowing.

The SECOND reason is because I don’t get that same vibe from the second cookbook.

Making Things Good

“This Will Make It Taste Good” is like, half the size of Deep Run Roots, if not 1/3rd, and the contrasts between the two leap out at you from the very covers.

She’s about to kick us! RUN! SAVE YOURSELVES.

Deep Run Roots (‘s cover) centers Vivian in the region, surrounded by greenery in a picture awash with earth tones, with lush growth around her and a weathered table under her. The light frames her, anointing her hair. Her smile is almost Mona Lisa-esque. She’s dressed in a wool coat, jeans, and slightly flashy boots.

The Vivian of TWMITG’s cover is BEAMING, and seems to glow, centered in a more vibrant kitchen set-up that she’s actively busting out of, her head and feet jutting into the negative space of the cover. Her sleeves are rolled up, her glasses in hand, with red flats and what appears to be a kind of fashionable all-denim jumpsuit. Why did I describe two scenes I already showed you? For illustrative language, of course. And to kill a little time.

Caramelizing onions takes a while, damn it, and I need to entertain myself.

In the introduction, Vivian herself acknowledges that Deep Run Roots is as much ‘historical document’ as cookbook, and that now, with the second book, she’s moving to what she makes in her own kitchen. She’s making it more personal, putting herself on more comfortable ground, even when the topics themselves aren’t particularly comfortable: She talks about how messy and difficult her life had become, and the very real pain she had in letting go of the parts that weren’t working, even when dragged into what would seem to be the perfect solution: how, with COVID forced shut-downs, she was able to sit back and finally admit that her town couldn’t support BOTH of the restaurants they were running in it, and chose to permanently close their oyster bar…but that it was still hard, because it cost people who relied on her their jobs.  That’s obviously not something “comfortable” to talk about, but it’s also not something you’re trying to make ‘historically accurate’. It allows for a more genuine tone, and it’s something you can talk about a little more easily.

Anywho, from there, and indeed, branching off of the story of the struggles COVID caused, we dive into the theme/structure of the book: each chapter will be based around a “flavor hero”, a ‘second-stage ingredient’ as I call them, meaning that it’s something you make not to be consumed on its own, but as a tool for making/improving other recipes. The Nuoc Cham or V’s Nuts in Tuesday’s post, for instance.  This flavor hero will then get a one-page highlight of “no brainer” uses, and then a series of ‘real’ recipes using it. For instance, the Spiced Nuts from Monday’s no-Brainers are things like “just eat them straight” or “chop and toss on salads/ice cream/other things you would put nuts on”,  “put into cookie dough”, etc. The Quirky Furky from August gets sprinkled on vegetables, or popcorn, or worked into salad dressing, etc.

Is “put on cotton candy” a “no-brainer” use for Fish-and-seaweed rice topping? Hey, I’m not the chef.

One thing I find interesting is that some of the ‘flavor heroes’ fall into camps I can’t really cleanly describe. Some of them are very easy: glazed nuts, TRULY caramelized onions (ie, “cooked for an hour, completely brown”), Sauerkraut, preserved lemons, etc. Others are more complicated: the Herbdacious, which I described as a kind of pesto-meets-garlic-confit; the Little Green Dress, a kind of mixture between an olive tapenade and a vinaigrette creating a sort of olive salad dressing; or the Red Weapons, a process of pickling tomatoes and jalapeños in a way that produces FOUR usable ingredients: the tomatoes, the jalapeños, the pickling liquid, and a seasoned oil. 

And in discussing all of these, I feel like there’s a continuing vibe of “genuinity” (I know the proper form is genuineness, but I hate it.): like, in discussing the caramelized onions, Vivian calls out that no less than 25 times in Deep Run Roots does she tell you to “caramelize” onions for a length of time SHE KNOWS cannot truly caramelize them. Or she brings up how she, like many others, would prefer to start every morning with a hot everything bagel with cream cheese, or a chedder-biscuit, but she knows the carb crash isn’t worth it, so instead she makes a sauerkraut and swiss cheese omelet topped with poppy seeds, giving her probiotics and protein, and hitting some of the same notes as the creamy/cheesy carbs she craves

Fun fact, which I know I’ve touched on before: A lot of cultures find it WEIRD that we let our omelets brown on the outside.

The Criteria

This part really pissed me off, because I have become convinced that at some point, I discussed potentially moving my standard Cookbook Review criteria to phrasings I thought might work better…but I can neither find nor fully remember it. Long-time readers will know my Criteria are:

Voice – What does the cookbook sound like, is it fun to read

Production Value – Is the paper nice, are the pictures good, is there a lot of attention to detail

Unity of Theme – Do the voice and production value make sense together? Does the book ‘make sense’ as a whole

Catapult Effect – Does the book inspire me to make the stuff in it/give me a sense that I CAN make the stuff in it?

And I BELIEVE, deep down, that at some point I discussed shifting “production value” and “unity of theme” to like, “Structure” and “attention to detail”,  but searching the archive claims I ‘ve never used those words in the same post, so I guess that was just like, a dream I had.  BUT, for now, here’s my takes on the 4 criteria for both books:

Deep Run Roots

Voice – Very knowledgeable, but a little stiff. Rooted in the traditions and a sense of place.

Production – Paper is more matte than gloss, book is HUGE, a lot of colorful picture.

Unity of Theme – This is a TOME of cooking. Struggles a little in trying to give enough space to be both an encyclopedia and a personal history/relationship. Some nice agreement between the production choices (the aforementioned reliance on earth tones in colors, the matte nature of the paper feeling more rustic, etc)

Catapult Effect – Hard to say. I have yet to make ONE recipe from it, but we got the book in a difficult time for me, and at least one of the recipes has continually come into my mind as “that thing I wanted to make” whenever the season for the ingredient comes around.

This Will Make it Taste Good

Voice – More honest, self-critical, and more willing to have a little fun. “Chicken WANGS!!!” is the kind of recipe title I imagine my mother shouting.

Production – Brighter: the gloss absent in DRR is here now. Each chapter is almost defined by a color of the flavor hero. A lot more white space

Unity of theme – As noted, the voice and production feel more like someone not worrying about capturing the ESSENCE of their town and its history, and more someone telling you what they do. Pictures of Vivian, playing around with accent pieces related to a topic, are more front and center, highlighting the greater personal role and presence.

Catapult Effect – I think we’ve had this book for 3-4 months, and I’ve made 4 recipes from it. Now, sure, that’s a LITTLE cheating, since every real recipe requires the flavor hero, but that’s still two more in a fairly short time than many other cookbooks.

So I really think, if you want a cookbook that feels like Vivian, go for TWMITG. If you want a cool exploration of the cuisine of Eastern North Carolina, go for Deep Run Roots. They’re both good, they’re just different. And if you want my guess from consulting these what’s going to be the next mid-weight food trend? Fruit in unexpected places.  

And THAT’s the end of this week, where, in honor of my birthday, I… made 5 recipes and reviewed 2 cookbooks, in stead of my normal 1 and 1. …Why am I the way that I am?

MONDAY: MAYBE I TRY AND USE UP THESE SPICED NUTS OR NUOC CHAM, MAYBE I MAKE SOME STEW, OR MAYBE SOME THIRD THING. I DON’T KNOW. CHEX MIX? I LIKE CHEX MIX.

THURSDAY: IF I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING MONDAY, 80% OF THE TIME THAT MEANS I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING THURSDAY.