It isn’t often that I devote a blog post to a cookbook, but this one is so unusual that I needed to. Everything about this cookbook, This Will Make It Taste Good, is unusual, IMHO.
So, let’s back up a bit . . . I really admire Vivian Howard. I have her first book, Deep Run Roots, which is more an homage to her unique little town, Kinston, North Carolina, than it is anything else. There are recipes, lots of beautiful photographs and plenty of down-south kind of stories about the bountiful produce and meat that come from the South. But more specifically to her locale. Kinston is a tiny, tiny town. When she and her husband (Ben, now her ex-husband) moved back to her home town they decided to open a restaurant. They did – she was the chef, and that’s the series A Chef’s Life she created for a year or two. That’s when lots of people fell in love with her witty, down-home, no-nonsense style. I had a reservation at her restaurant in 2020, and then Covid hit. No travel, no restaurant eating, nada. My trip to see one of my granddaughters graduate from Clemson got canceled. Well, we all remember – everything got canceled.
That year of mostly lock-down was so difficult. As a widow I struggled some with the loneliness. I waved to my neighbor occasionally. I saw people outside my car when I picked up online groceries and they delivered them to my car. A few times in those first months I took a drive in my car – just to get out of the house. There were hardly any cars on the road. It was eerie, like we’d just survived some gigantic earth shift or a global catastrophe. But other than that, was it a whole year we stayed at home? It was ugly. Just sayin’.
For Vivian, their Kinston restaurant closed (and has stayed closed since – I think she said somewhere that it was very difficult to get help because of the very rural outpost of a town it’s in). During Covid, she stayed home helping to raise their twins (and she was still married then) and she decided to write another cookbook, this one. She’s since opened a restaurant in Charleston.
THIS BOOK: Over the years of being a chef, she adapted recipes from lots of places and created lots of her own, obviously. She went about creating 8 or 9 “flavor heroes,” she calls them. These are recipes/concoctions she makes regularly that she uses to enhance all kinds of other things (finished dishes – other recipes, meaning they’re added TO something) from appetizers, main dishes, to salads and veggies, to desserts. She created them for the restaurant, and I think I remember correctly, she eventually had an employee make these up in gigantic batches. It was probably her full time job! She sells them online too (for a steep price) at Handy & Hot (in Charleston).
So far I’ve made three of them (the ones pictured). It’s a bit difficult to categorize this book – to explain the flavor heroes. All of them have very unusual names – not necessarily explanatory about what they are. Like the first one, the very first one she created, she titled “Little Green Dress.” In texture it looks kind of like pesto, but trust me, it’s NOT pesto.
Another one she called “Red Weapons.” It’s a tomato based concoction that separates into 3 layers once finished and the various layers are used in different ways, separately, or in various quantities in another dish. It’s very labor intensive to prepare, but you end up with double the amount you see at right (which is four cups – so it makes eight cups). My friend Cherrie and I got together for an entire day and made the three pictured here). Since Cherrie and I shared it, four cups is about right for me!
Another one is called “Herbdacious,” and that’ll be the one I’ll post first. We made a wonderful tuna salad crunchy cracker thing for lunch for ourselves using herbdacious, and we prepared meatloaf using one of them. Might have been the first flavor hero one, LGD. Both are green, one more chunky than the other and totally different flavor profiles. I haven’t yet baked the meatloaf, but I’ll post all about it eventually.
There’s an unusual sauerkraut flavor hero, another with preserved lemons, limes, oranges and grapefruit (like preserved lemons that we know, but with the added other citrus fruits). Another one she calls “Community Organizer,” which has a very interesting provenance (you’ll have to read the book). Mostly that one is added to savory dishes, also tomato based. Another one is called “Quirky Furki Umami” which is seaweed driven. Another is called “R-rated onions” (mostly they’re caramelized onions).
So far I’ve only tasted the herbdacious used in the tuna salad on a cracker, and all I can say is that it was fabulous. I cannot WAIT to make it again – I think I have enough to do that from the leftovers. The herbdacious provided flavors that just burst in your mouth.
Vivian is a GREAT writer – she’s so funny. I can imagine she’d have been a handful as a child. She writes for the magazine Garden & Gun – (it’s one of my favorite magazines) and with every issue I can’t wait to see what her new column has to say. If you’re anxious to try something, you’ll find the recipe for LGD if you click through to the magazine. Her columns are not always about food – one was about the dating life of a well-known chef (herself) when you’re in your 40s and haven’t dated for mostly two decades. It was LOL funny.
SO, this book . . . if you have someone in your life who is a good cook, and likes taking on some relatively heavy-duty cooking projects, he/she might find this book well worth it. You wouldn’t have to tackle three of these in a day like Cherrie and I did – you could do just one. I’m looking forward to trying the Red Weapons in a baked dish with feta cheese and shrimp (or swordfish). Even if you’re not a cook, but you enjoy good food, you might enjoy reading the book just for Vivian’s witty writing all by itself. This cookbook might not be for everyone because each recipe for a flavor hero is a bit of a challenge (maybe except for the R-rated onions). I can’t wait to start using some of the flavor heroes in my everyday cooking. But first, I’m digging out the leftover tuna mixture and will make myself another lunch of crackers with it.
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