White Trash Cooking is a tell-all of the country kitchen– kind o’ like a Hee Haw version of Foxfire… Or what might’ve issued forth from Anthony Bourdain had he grown up in a Florida swamp or Georgia trailer park. I assure you that it is not a joke. Some of my regular, everyday recipes come from this book– and more than a few special occasion dishes and desserts as well.
First published in 1986, the spiral-bound pages are filled with decidedly simple and deceptively elegant instructions on how to prepare anything from biscuits to possum, collards to cooter. Author Ernie Mickler’s sense of humor is as thick as his Southern accent throughout– and if you run across something that looks like it can’t possibly be good then that’s the recipe you should try next!
White Trash Cooking makes an excellent gift (I’ve given out several as it is back in print), and one of my favorite things is to do is take a dish from this tome to higher-class gatherings. I don’t care where you went to college– if you can’t get in on some deer slum-gullion then you can’t tell me nothin’!
Sadly, Ernie Mickler passed away in 1988, but his legacy lives on in every buttermilk pie I bake and every squirrel I fry.