'The Best Cook in the World' is Rick Bragg's tribute to his mother and her somewhat exotic culinary skills
Rick Bragg is no cook, but that doesn鈥檛 matter a bit when he writes his mother鈥檚 recipes. In his new book, The Best Cook In The World, the Pulitzer-prize-winning author is plenty of other things: a leisurely, soulful storyteller, a reporter with a poet鈥檚 eye, and an appreciative diner. Most of all 鈥� here, as with earlier family memoirs 鈥� he鈥檚 a ferociously devoted son.
Some would say Bragg grew up dirt poor, but food provides a clearer measurement of class where he was raised in the rural South. Markers include poke salad, the foraged green that Bragg says identifies status 鈥渓ike a brand,鈥� as the toxic leaves require such effort to eat safely. 鈥淧eople with money would never fool with it in the first place; they would never take the time.鈥� Even a feast of Southern fried chicken takes on a different cast when it includes killing and plucking the bird 鈥� and feeling the good fortune of having that bird to kill.
The book includes 75 recipes, which read like oral tradition even though they鈥檙e written down (one ingredient list includes both lard and luck.) The stories surrounding each meal are just as rich.
The title refers to Bragg鈥檚 mother, Margaret, although she disagreed with his assessment of her skills. He describes the debate with typical flair: 鈥淚 wasn鈥檛 even the best cook that lived on our road,鈥� she said. 鈥淵our aunt Edna was a fine cook. Our momma was a fine cook.鈥� I told her we couldn鈥檛 call it 'The Third-Best Cook on the Roy Webb Road,' because that just didn鈥檛 sing.鈥�
Bragg is determined to save Margaret鈥檚 recipes as she ages, knowing that 鈥淓very time the old woman stepped from her workshop of steel spoons, iron skillets, and blackened pots, all she knew about the food left with her, in the way, when a bird flies off a wire, it leaves only a black line on the sky.鈥�
Bragg, who resigned from The New York Times in 2003 after a controversy about properly attributing a freelancer's work, has written a handful of non-fiction books about the South and his family, as well as biographies of Jerry Lee Lewis and soldier Jessica Lynch.
Some characters here are familiar from Bragg鈥檚 earlier non-fiction, including his wrenching memoir, 鈥淎ll Over But The Shouting,鈥� and 鈥淎va鈥檚 Man.鈥� A significant chunk deals with the same Ava, his grandmother, who had married his grandfather, Charlie, when she was barely 16. In Bragg鈥檚 hands it鈥檚 now a fable told in food: Their partnership was sealed when he bought a box supper from her at a barn dance, 鈥渙nly to learn that the delicious fried chicken, potato salad, and slab of pie had been prepared by her older sisters, to get her married off and out of the house.鈥�
Charlie rides off to find his own father, a bleak and 鈥渨rathful鈥� old man who had abandoned his family, living as a fugitive across state lines after a bloody battle. 鈥淲hat do you want of me, boy?鈥� his father asked. 鈥淵ou have to come with me,鈥� the young man said, 鈥� 鈥榗ause I鈥檝e married a pretty and hardheaded woman who can鈥檛 cook a lick, and I do believe that I am a-starvin鈥� to death.鈥�
Bragg has a bone-deep empathy for people who endure hard times, and leverages that understanding to share even second-hand stories. He takes four luxurious pages to describe a man he鈥檇 never met making a single breakfast, pouring on details so thick you鈥檇 swear he鈥檇 been interviewing the cook in the kitchen.
By turns grim and funny, he can describe the flavors of raccoon, possum, bear, even squirrel brains (cook them with scrambled eggs, 鈥渢o cut down on that metal taste,鈥� his mother advises), making it clear that they鈥檙e desperation meals for people with no better options. He also recognizes how 鈥渂lue-collar Southern cooks鈥� use time and skill to transform humble ingredients into rapturous feasts.听 Most of the book鈥檚 recipes are gloriously tempting examples from that canon 鈥� hand-mixed biscuits swimming in sweet cinnamon-scented milk, ham and redeye gravy, pecan pie, cracklin鈥� cornbread, even creamed onions that sound simple but are harder than they look to cook to perfection. 鈥淚 have been trying it for only forty-seven years, but with clean living I may have time to get it just right before my people sing me into the sky,鈥� Bragg wrote.
Once Ava has learned to cook and, oddly, once the title character is born, the book rambles less purposefully, feeling more like an assortment of stories than the flowing narrative of Bragg鈥檚 earlier memoirs. That鈥檚 fair in a book subtitled 鈥淭ales from My Momma鈥檚 Table.鈥� And the characters remain indelible, as when Bragg writes how he sometimes sees an old woman tottering along the roadside, stuffing poke salad greens into a burlap bag. He slows the car to make sure it鈥檚 not his mother. At times, it is.
鈥淚t is as if she continues to eat it, in better times, out of some kind of fealty,鈥� he writes. And then, 鈥� 'Naw,' my momma said. 'That ain鈥檛 it. I eat it 鈥榗ause it tastes good.' 鈥�
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