Mama Dip's Kitchen
by Mildred Council

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Book Reviews of Mama Dip's Kitchen

Book Review: A Good Base for Southern Soul Cooking
Summary: 4 Stars

A transplanted Midwesterner in California, I bough this book to expand my cooking skills to include southern cooking / soul food. The recipes are all pretty simple, suspiciously simple suggesting a few trade secrets have been left out. Ms. Council admits as much, encouraging the reader to experiment and play around with her recipes. That's nice, and I respect Mama Dip's need to hold family/trade secrets, but I would have preferred more insight into how to experiment, to guide the reader. (A good example is Paul Kirk's Championship BBQ Sauces, where the secrets are not revealed, but plenty of insight is given for the reader to develop their own secret sauce.) Thankfully, there are cooking tips here and there, often given out in a folksy manner. Certainly one of the best things about this book is that with so many simple recipes, everyone will benefit from it.

Some of the recipes were surprisingly good in their simplicity. The Creole Shrimp, Fried Okra, and Fried Catfish turned out great. (Per Mama Dip's encouragement, I added a couple of my own ingredients to the mix.) The Baked Beans had a muddy taste, without much character to it. A couple others turned out a little bland. I have some philosophical differences with Mama Dip's Pecan Pie recipe. For the record, I think it needs brown sugar and perhaps some other ingredients for a richer, deeper flavor. Using light Karo syrup, butter, sugar, eggs, and pecans, and nothing else, I think Mama Dip's pecan pie tastes too light. (Of course, nobody is asking me to make my Pecan Pie on the Today Show as Ms Dip has, but that's what I think.)

The fact that this book has resonated so well with Southern reviewers certainly means a lot, but I can't give a book five stars that seems to give out a number of incomplete recipes, and gives the reader little insight on how to round them out. And not everything turned out great. But don't get me wrong, I loved reading this book, and it's been a good tool to expand my cooking skills to include Southern Cooking/Soul Food.

U.S. Regional Books

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