Basics to Brilliant Y'all.

I don't cheer on too many teams. My days of watching and supporting professional sports have faded into the misty fanaticism of my youth (a certain cross country Winnebago trip to feed the Washington Redskins ribs as they prepared for the Super Bowl fixed that). These days my cheerleading is reserved for the health and well being for our country as a whole. GO USA. However there is one team that I am wholeheartedly on the Winnebago for. That's Team Willis. It's pretty easy to figure out why. Whether getting quoted in the NY Times about wistfully hoping for gay marriage rights in Georgia, coming to terms with being "a big gal", pulling the curtain back on making of a cookbook or sharing her love of all things seafood, Virginia is a kindred spirit that I love seeing success rain down on her self described offensive lineman's shoulders.

Photo by Angie Mosier

If you've followed this blog at all you know I've been casually cooking my way through Virginia's most excellent first cookbook, Bon Appetit Y'all. It's not just beautiful and graphically amazing, I have not yet found a bad recipe. But you just knew that Virginia had more than one delicious cookbook's worth of recipes tucked away in the nooks and crannies of her chef's jacket. Now comes Basic to Brilliant Y'all, her second stunning offering.

Right off the bat I have one minor issue. Really, just a little one. It's this recipe right here....

Photo by Helene Dujardin

...and the fall release date of this book. You see, to prepare a dish the best way you sometimes have to cook seasonally. This recipe of grilled soft shell crabs with lemon gremolata really only should be prepared with fresh soft shell crabs. Which for yours truly, will not be available until the next spring. Let's just say it's going to be a long, cold winter before I can satisfy my hunger for that particular tidbit. But that's OK because when digging into a new cookbook, I like to make the very first recipe the author lists and since the theme of this cookbook is basics, it's only appropriate that we start with chicken stock (and participate in Virginia's Virtual Potluck). Now again, if you readers have been following along you also know I jibe pretty closely with the Cook's Illustrated and America's Test Kitchen crowd. I've been using their basic chicken stock recipe and have not been disappointed in the flavor. But then again, they don't use chicken feet.

That's right, Virginia suggests that two pounds of well washed chicken feet would make an excellent chicken stock. I just happen to frequent a grocery store that has a well stocked meat counter with big piles of chicken feet. Which brings us to the weirdness factor of your basic American cook. Why am I a little skeeved out handling chicken feet? I know why.....the fact that we (mostly) are generations removed from killing and butchering our own meat. My grandmother made a mean fried chicken but that meant starting the process of the meal by chopping the head off a chicken. Attending yearly hog butcherings at an early age keeps you from being squeamish about meat but still, chicken feet are skeevy. Of course that didn't stop me from making the stock.

Liquid gold, baby. I'll probably make Virginia's Meme's Chicken and Rice.

You will be sad because you won't be able to just drop in to see what I'm cooking.