Family of the Spirit Cookbook: Recipes and Remembrances from African-American Kitchens

What might have been an engaging blend of Studs Terkel-like oral history and Jeff Smith-like frugal cookery is instead a pastiche of familiar folk wisdom and uneven recipes that is closer kin to community church cooking than to full-blown culinary exploration. Many of the recipes collected here do convey a sense of the breadth of influences on African-American fare, especially evident in such dishes as curried goat, okra gumbo and stewed turkey necks. These also suggest a driving force behind the heritage--``to cook things that were sustenance and economical'' and ``to use everything.'' But many of the 11 cooks who reminisce and provide edibles are oddly unrevealing in their talk--``Life was hard, but I would say I had a really nice childhood''--and give us relatively little insight into their food traditions. Recipes of ``authentic'' dishes are undermined by such requirements as packaged cornbread mix. An introduction might have given the book a clearer focus; we leave it wanting more. Photos not seen by PW. (Oct.)