I have little patience for the classics.

Nearly all of the music I listen to sounds more or less like the Beatles, but I actually prefer something like Cotton Mather’s Kon Tiki to any Beatles album.

Similarly, my cookbook shelf has a few perfunctory titles by the likes of Marcella Hazan and…actually, I just looked, and Marcella Hazan is the only thing there that can reasonably be described as classic. I had copies of Julia Child and Joyce Chen at one time, but I gave them away.

My classics are books like Cucina Simpatica and Dancing Shrimp. I want a book that speaks my language, something without the weight of history on it, even if it contains the same recipes as the old guard.

That’s why I’m so excited about The Lee Bros Southern Cookbook: Stories and Recipes for Southerners and Would-Be Southerners. I am neither of those, but this encyclopedic book is making me hungry anyway.

> When people ask what advice we’d give to aspiring food writers, the first thing we say is, *know how to cook a pork shoulder.* Without fail, they laugh at that advice, but we couldn’t be more serious; our Sunday night shoulders have gotten us through the lean weeks with style.

Better yet, the Lee Bros live in New York, so their barbecue recipes are all fake (i.e., oven-oriented), which means I can try them at home. I’m going to make their braised picnic shoulder tomorrow. With slaw.

The giant on whose, uh, shoulders the Lee Bros stand is the late Edna Lewis and her book The Taste of Country Cooking. Comparisons to that classic will dog the Lee Bros. But from my ahistoricist perspective, this is the Southern tome to beat.