Two Nashville Chefs Release Cookbooks and Plan Book Signings – Nashville Scene

Sean Brock and Rob Newton celebrate Southern food in new books

Chef Sean Brock of the upcoming Audrey and Red Bird in his massive East Nashville restaurant complex and chef Rob Newton of Gray & Dudley are both notable advocates for Southern food and the heritage of the recipes that ingredients that comprise the cuisine. Both Nashville chefs have written outstanding new books about their favorite foods, and we’re lucky enough to have the opportunity to meet them and get copies of their books signed in upcoming events.

Brock’s new book is called South: Essential Recipes and New Explorations, and it is filled with 125 home-cooking recipes based on the chef’s exhaustive research into the history of the dishes that inspire him. With emphasis on factors like simplicity, thrift and seasonality, Brock has invented new recipes that fit within the framework of Southern cuisine, particularly of his native Appalachian region. (If you learn nothing else from this book, Brock would like you to pronounce it correctly: apple-LATCH-in.)

In cooperation with Parnassus, Brock has planned a signing event for Monday, Oct. 21, at Blair School of Music where he’ll be joined in conversation with Patrick Carney of the Black Keys, combining Brock’s current obsessions of food and music. Tickets for the event are $46.50 and include a copy of South. Couples can attend for $5 more if they only want one copy of the book. Reserve your copy and buy your tickets in advance at the event website.

Rob Newton, meanwhile, has been working on his cookbook, Seeking the South: Finding Inspired Regional Cuisines, for more than 10 years. He began thinking seriously about what became his love letter to the South when he was running the kitchen at Seersucker in Brooklyn, N.Y. After years growing up in the Ozarks, Newton moved to New York City, where he began to explore the food of his home region from what he calls “an aerial view.”

In a recent interview, he shared the questions that were going through his mind: “I was looking for inspiration. Can you cook Southern food in Brooklyn? Can someone not from the South cook Southern food? In New York I would see guests not fully understanding the food like I did, and it would get frustrating.” So he set about putting down his thoughts on paper with the assistance of co-author Jamie Feldmar.

He divides the South into arbitrary regions for purposes of the discussion, noting, “What I grew up eating in the Ozarks is not what you’d eat in Charleston.” Some of the borders and grouping of states within regions are a bit out of the ordinary, lumping Tennessee in with “The Upper South” encompassing northern Arkansas all the way across Kentucky and up to West Virginia. He includes only the Panhandle of Florida as part of the Gulf Coast and omits Texas entirely, but as he explains, “It’s my book, so it’s my map.”

Newton criss-crossed the South over the years, picking up stories and elements of recipes that he weaves into the narrative of his book. After a really useful discussion of essential kitchen ingredients and tools, Newton addresses each region in turn, including recipes for full menus ranging from appetizers, sides, mains and desserts. One thing that is readily apparent in Newton’s recipes is that he is deeply influenced by the ethnic diversity of the South, as many of the recipes are intriguing mashups of cultures. His love of Vietnamese cuisine comes through in recipes like Grilled Cha Ca-style Trout, and Vietnamese Coffee Bundt Cake. Latin influences are evident in Masa-Fried Flounder with Tomatillo Salsa Verde and a Tamale Pie.

Even with these international influences, this is essentially a Southern cookbook full of recipes for standards like biscuits and fried chicken, but all nuanced with extra spice. Newton told me he was inspired by a trip to Italy, where he discovered the differences between that country’s regional cuisines before most American diners understood that the seafood of the Friuli is quite different from the meat sauces of Bologna. “In the ’80s, people weren’t talking that way about the South,” he recalls. “It’s one of America’s great cuisines, maybe the greatest. I wanted to help spread that message.

If you’d like to discover more about Newton’s beloved home region and get the chance to purchase a signed copy of Seeking the South, he has a big event planned for Thursday, Oct. 17, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in the main gallery of the 21C Museum Hotel, the home of Gray & Dudley. The evening will feature a reception with bites from the book and cocktails courtesy of Cathead Vodka. Tickets for the signing are $60 and include all the food and drinks plus a personalized copy of the book. Get yours here.