Okra Picks, Nostalgia and Summer’s Bookish Bounty

I am loving summer’s bounty: blueberries, melons, peaches, corn, tomatoes – and okra. Not just to eat but to read. Let me explain.

Every season, the Southeast Independent Booksellers Alliance announces its dozen “Okra Picks: Good Southern Books Fresh Off the Vine.’’ Two recent selections, both with a local flavor, drew me in.

Man Martin’s Paradise Dogs (St. Martin’s Press) shouts “retro’’ with its cover, a neon title riding in the sky above an aqua car, a roadside diner and a pink(!) alligator. We’re boarding the Wayback Machine to Central Florida in the 1960s, B.D. (Before Disney).

“Interstate 4 had come through,’’ Martin writes early in the book, “but the region still fairly trembled in anticipation of the next big thing, the thing that would lift it from being a largely rural cracker town into something like modern glory as had happened in Palm Springs and Miami.’’

His protagonist, Adam Newman, is a homely real estate agent/dreamer with lots of charm, great expectations and a talent for reinventing himself at any given moment. As he gases up his car at the “Sinclair on Eola,” he ponders his plan to win back his ex-wife, Evelyn, with whom he once ran a restaurant that served only hot dogs. But what of his clingy young fiancée, Lily?

Complications ensue as Adam tries to return to the Floridian Eden of yesteryear. Martin’s allegorically named characters get up to all sorts of mischief, and the resulting comedy of errors borders on high farce and tomfoolery. Martin – who grew up in Florida and now lives in Georgia – has a deft hand with local color and shows true affection for his goofy hero. A major plot point, which includes mysterious land purchases, will come as no surprise to Central Floridians familiar with a certain omnipresent mouse.
 

Paradise Dogs may not be what old-timers call an “E-ticket,’’ yet it’s still an agreeable ride back to an orange-blossom-scented past not yet paved with theme parks.

The cover of A Southerly Course: Recipes and Stories from Close to Home by Martha Hall Foose (Crown) offers a mouth-watering picture of peaches tumbled together in an apron. Ah, my favorite food. But I still would have read this beautiful book because Mississippi chef Foose wrote Screen Doors and Sweet Tea: Recipes and Tales from a Southern Cook, a James Beard Award-winning take on traditional Southern fare. Sweet Tea Pie, anyone?

My family tends to forget that just because I don’t cook much anymore doesn’t mean I don’t know how. But even if I don’t spend time in the kitchen, I spend lots of time reading about food, especially Southern food. Recipes remind me of family tales told around the table, and the kitchen is where so many stories start.

Foose knows that, too, and how the mythology of the South – “its patent qualities of deep involvement with family, observance of ritual, and celebration of eccentricity’’ – plays out around its food. And so she pairs her recipes with entertaining anecdotes, essays and explanations. Such good “table talk.’’

She recalls how her grandmother, an avid mystery reader, fancied herself an armchair detective and “was thrilled when a neighbor was murdered. Wait – that might lend the wrong impression. She was saddened by the loss of life, certainly, but elated at the chance to do some sleuthing and speculating.’’ Now she sits in her grandmother’s favorite wingback and reads Sherlock Holmes, sustained by “Elsie’s Welsh Rarebit.’’ The instructions for making the cheese, egg and bread dish follows.

Recipes calling for venison, rabbit and duck accompany stories on hunting, but Foose also visits Eudora Welty’s kitchen in Jackson and thumbs through the Southern writer’s own little black book of handwritten family recipes and offers “Custard Pie.’’

While likening different congealed salads to beauty-pageant contestants, Foose reminds us that dumping fruit cocktail in gelatin does not a congealed salad make. Ingredients must be folded in for the salad to set properly. Never use fresh pineapple unless you want gelatinous soup.

Again, Foose surprises with recipes humble (Homemade Soda Crackers) and more highfalutin’ (Burgundy Duck). Fig Pecan Fondue sounds delicious, as does Peanut Chicken. You might be surprised to find Korean Grilled Onions in a Southern cookbook, but the recipe was inspired by the wife of a cousin. After all, food equals family in these parts.
 

Nancy Pate is an author of southern-themed mysteries and a long-time book reviewer, including nearly two decades for the Orlando Sentinel. Her column appears courtesy of her books blog, “On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever,” located online at patebooks.wordpress.com.