WASHINGTON — Featuring items such as Oklahoma Prairie Oysters, Georgia Possum and Taters, Montana Fried Beaver Tail, and a Los Angeles Sandwich Called a Taco, the table of contents in Mark Kurlansky’s latest book, The Food of A Younger Land, presents an intriguing menu.
At the National Book Festival on the National Mall Saturday, Kurlansky will share tastes from a collection of recipes and anecdotes originally foraged by authors involved in the Federal Writers Project, including Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty, and Nelson Algren, recruited to create a portrait of regional dining culture in the 1940s.
Yet while The Food of A Younger Land contains dozens of recipes, divided by region, it is hardly just another a cookbook.
At various meetings and celebrations held in the woods squirrel mulligan, a lineal descendent of Brunswick stew, is a popular favorite. Cooked in an iron pot over an open fire, it is among the simplest of one-dish group meals. The recipe below (provided by Bert Jacobi of Pulaski County, who is often called upon to concoct the mulligan for special occasions) is based upon four squirrels; if there are more or less squirrels the other ingredients vary accordingly.
- 4 squirrels
3 large Irish potatoes
1 medium-sized sweet potato
1 large onion
3 or 4 pods of okra
1 pod of red pepper
1 teaspoonful celery salt or 3 tablespoonfuls chopped celery
½ cup drippings or butter
3 cups diced vegetables – cabbage, turnips, carrots, corn, field peas, bell peppers, or whatever other vegetables are available.
The whole aggregation is put into the pot together, with enough water to keep it from burning, and cooked until done. If corn is used it should not be added until the other ingredients have nearly finished cooking.
Excerpted with permission from “The Food of A Younger Land”
“I almost never write about food just as food,” said Kurlansky, who has also written Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World and Salt: A World History.
“I like food as a way of examining history,” he explained.
Hearkening to the days when travelers ate at mom-and-pop diners along country roads, rather than at the ubiquitous fast-food joints that flank interstates today, The Food of A Younger Land is a testament to how our nation’s changing diet reflects the transformation of our society, culture and environment as a whole.
The section on “New York-Luncheonette Slang and Jargon” demonstrates that we have sacrificed more than our waistlines by frequenting drive-through windows. Unfortunately, terms like “nervous pudding” and “whistle berries” are no longer part of diner vernacular.
Although Kurlansky said he does not intend for readers to actually use the antiquated recipes, he affirmed that he has prepared a few of the dishes for himself, saying, “They were surprisingly good.”
Among his favorites: Indiana Persimmon Pudding, Kentucky Wilted Lettuce and Depression Cake, flavored with “pork fat and a bunch of spices.”
While ingredients like blackbird may seem peculiar to the contemporary cook, Kurlansky said, “It’s striking how many commonplace foods in these recipes are scarce today.”
For example, he noted the near disappearance of East Coast salmon and West Coast abalone. “When I was kid,” he recalled, “you would go to San Francisco to have abalone steaks.”
He pointed out that even sugar maples, traditionally tapped to make maple syrup in northern New England, are in danger because of the effects of climate change on the trees’ ability to produce sap.
He mentioned that in the book, he writes that the animals used to prepare “Squirrel Mulligan” – once a popular dish in the south – are “not the fluffy rodents of city parks,” but a species of flying squirrel that inhabited old growth forests in the Appalachian Mountains.
The clear-cutting of hardwood forests has amounted to an eviction notice for the furry gliders, once common enough to fill stew pots. “You probably don’t miss eating the squirrel,” mused Kurlansky, “but you might miss the forests.”
Kurlansky is scheduled to appear Saturday at the History and Biography Pavilion from 11:10-11:40 a.m., and will be available for a book signing from 2-3 p.m.