Are You Hungry Tonight?: Elvis' Favorite Recipes (ISBN 051708242X)

Great concept:
What a great time to be buying cookbooks! While we have for a long while had access to recipe collections and representations of the cuisine of various nationalities and popular restaurants, recently there has been a growing library of culinary tomes that give us the skills for producing creations of our own minds. Titles such as Sauces by James Peterson, the 1-2-3 series by Roxanne Gold, Culinary Artistry, Great Wine Made Simple, and now this book provide us with the information about tastes and combinations of flavors and textures to deconstruct, reconstruct, and just plain construct familiar and novel dishes. Are You Hungry Tonight provides a brief introduction to the celebrity subject's theory of flavor. Editor Butler broadly groups flavors into four categories based on the purpose they serve in a dish. Thus, Tastes That Push represent the well-known seasonings that we use to balance sauces, for example: Salty, Sweet, and Picante. Tastes That Pull represent those taste elements that highlight underlying flavors. The authors include here Tangy, Vinted, Floral/Herbal, Spiced Aromatic, Funky (pungents or musky flavors), and Bulby (what have commonly been called Aromatics such as onions and garlic). Taste Platforms represent the textures upon which dishes are built. These include Garden Platforms, Starchy ones, Oceanic ones, and Meaty ones (what the Japanese call umami). Finally, the fourth category is Tastes That Punctuate, basically bitters that stop tastes and cleanse the palate. This model is very useful one. Ms. Butler seems not to have done her research in examining precursors to this model, and makes little reference to other cuisines than the one Elvis constructed during his lifetime. She neglects to include several important items, especially in the Platforms section (breads, pastries, soy products, seitan, and mushrooms as a basis for other flavors, for example). There are similar, usually less complex models, already in the literature. Butler and Presley's model is more extensive than most, however. Surprisingly, there is little space given in the book to theory. The majority of pages is devoted to recipes that demonstrate their combining philosophy. Butler does not describe how Presley took the elements of taste and mixed them to concoct these dishes. (A reader must refer to Culinary Artistry for such guidelines.) She does, however, provide tasting notes after each recipe that dissect the elements used in the dish. The recipes are very complex, involving multiple steps and sub-recipes. Even a cook enjoying kitchen challenges would be hard pressed to prepare a full meal using this book alone-- one would run out of burners and pans before the dishes were complete. For example, the Honey Glazed Celeriac involves making the glaze, which is a reduction of wine and acids with sauteed aromatics sieved and kept warm, plus Celeriac slices baked and then broiled, plus a garnish of sauteed zucchini with chives, plus Ginger Curry Sauce, a mayonnaise of reduced wine and aromatics whisked with other ingredients. The writing is an interesting, not entirely successful juxtaposition of aw-shucks, down-home attitude, sophisticated epicurean philosophy, and fancy foods. The recipes are heavy on the Meaty and Oceanic food platforms, making this definitely a carnivore's cookbook. Produce usually stands as garnish and accompaniment to the flesh. In the end, the most special part of the book represent a few precious pages and is underdeveloped. Perhaps a follow-up volume will expound on this interesting culinary model.

Old fashioned, deep fried goodness:
Elvis loved to eat. Who doesn't know that? This was a good concept for a cook book, and the recipes are quite good. It's comfort food but they made a point to include a chapter on vegetables subtitled with "Yes, the King ate vegetables". There are many typically Southern foods (grits, biscuits and red eye gravy, fried chicken, etc.), but the main dishes are crowd pleasers. What prevented me from giving this 5 stars is the fact that these recipes are old fashioned. Elvis lived in the days before time saving cooking devices (the microwave, for example) and a lot of prepared foods. No doubt as the child of sharecroppers in Post Depression Era Mississippi they probably spent a lot of time cooking, canning and storing foods than the average person would today. These recipes are more labor intensive than even the most experienced cook is used to. It includes the famous peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Deep fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches. This sandwich is the singular staple of Elvis's diet that has taken on a life of its own. They're good eating, for sure. Lisa Marie said recently about this odd phenomena that will this will never die, she never once saw Elvis eat a peanut butter and banana sandwich (at least not in front of her). To me, the crowning achievement of this book was the release of the Elvis and Priscilla wedding cake recipe, but it was also the most ridiculous. This is a tremendous project, and they recommend that if you've never prepared something like this before to not only pick up utensils and ingredients at a wholesale bakery shop but to set aside at least 3 days to assemble it. Why someone who would want to replicate this would do this in their home kitchen is beyond me.

Gladys's cornmeal mush......now at fancy restos they call it "polenta":
Excellent recipes that surprisingly never call for lard. These are all wonderful, from the burnt-bacon BLT to the ham and apple sauce. The chicken-pot-pie, meatloaf and gravy, biscuits, fried chicken, and corn recipes are standard favorites. There is a false note in the "blueberry pie" recipe, since Elvis was from the river delta (the flatlands), not the hills (the foothills beginning near Jackson, Tennessee, where the author is from). The recipe for Elvis and Priscilla's wedding cake is no doubt attached for the "completists' only of Elvis fans, and adds little practical to the book, but is a welcome curiosity of kitsch. The famous fried-peanut-butter and banana sandwich (not deep fried, it is pan fried, BTW) is actually a common winter staple grilled sandwich for certain southern homes: a real kid pleaser. Banana pudding with Nilla vanilla wafers is here too (although true authentic details are left out). And Elvis's love of thick slices of fresh beefsteak tomatoes is alluded to throughout (the one food item everyone aggress on that he loved). The combination of author's devotion and the wry art production make this an excellent example of hidden humor. Check out the recipe for glazed donuts and the photo of Elvis making the "ok" sign with thumb and forefinger, and you know for what to look for in the rest of the book. The spaghetti and meatballs recipe with Elvis giving a meatball smile is also too rich to ignore.

Fun and Useful:
It was really fun learning about Elvis....Also, I have made some of the recipes and they were really good....I really enjoyed this cookbook....

Pedestrian at best:
Very few recipes, very few pictures of Elvis, very much a slap-dash cobbled together effort. Nothing unique here other than the wedding cake.