Turkey and the Wolf

February 4, 2022

Hereford grew up eating junk food from mom-and-pop country stores found throughout the South. After a roundabout career path, detailed in his introduction, he opened his own restaurant, Turkey and the Wolf, which featured junk food with an elegant twist. The restaurant has a fun, comfort-food sensibility, which Hereford calls an overrated sandwich shop. He wants everyday cooks to relax, hang out, and just enjoy cooking. Hereford choses favorite recipes he thought could be easily made in anyone's kitchen. He takes recipes from his sandwich shop as well as his breakfast place, Molly's Rise and Shine. Recipes include influences from Southern cooking as well as from comfort foods including pork rind tacos, chicken hand pies, apple fritters, and grits with collards. Recipes are arranged by dish type. Ingredients are, by design, easy to find, and directions are geared to the general cook who knows their way around the kitchen. A word of warning, Hereford is pretty free with his opinions, and his language can be salty. VERDICT This wild and laid-back cookbook will be a joy for those who are looking for a break from more serious cookbooks and want to dig in with junk food cravings.--Ginny Wolter

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 6, 2022
Southern food gets a kick in the pants in this exuberant and irreverent debut, a collection of high/low recipes from Hereford, whose buzzy New Orleans restaurant gives the book its title. Sandwiches and other things eaten with hands are the stars of the show, and gluttony-sating ones at that: bread is frequently coated with “soft-ass” butter on both sides and then toasted, and mayonnaise—specifically, Duke’s brand, a tattoo of which adorns the author’s body—is wantonly slathered on everything from an Italian-style hero (along with 12 ounces of soppressata and a pound and a half of mortadella to feed six) to a spicy chicken sandwich, and is the foundation of a number of sauces. Hereford’s no-BS throughout, with advice to buy hash-brown patties from a fast-food joint for his McCaviar bites (topped with anchovy crème fraîche and fish roe) and to load up on store-bought ingredients, be they pork rinds, tostadas, or chicken-flavor soup base. Adventurous home cooks should give the hogshead cheese recipe a go (it’s a two-day affair, and pro tip: put the head into the stockpot snout-side up), and the less adventure-inclined can take a run at the “Shrettuce” recipe for thinly shredded lettuce. The recipes are blazing and the tone delightfully profane, making this perfect for anyone ready to check their pretensions and get a little messy.