True Blood

October 1, 2012
Dedicated fans of the HBO series True Blood (and of punny recipe titles) will get a kick out of this playful volume. The creator and an associate producer get help from a former New Orleans Times-Picayune staff writer Shalett and Louisiana native cooking teacher Bienvenu, and the result is part series scrapbook, with plenty of stills from the show and all recipe notes and chapter intros attributed to characters, and part cookbook and cocktail guide. Twenty of the book’s 85 recipes are for drinks, purportedly from Fangtasia and Lou Pine’s Biker Bar, for such concoctions as Dead on the Beach, Vampade, Moonshine Rising, and Hair of the Wolf. Though vampire references and related imagery are hardly appetizing, readers who look past that will find a few decadent recipes for mere mortals. In his preface, Ball specifically recommends Summer Tallulah Huckaby’s Betrothal Biscuits. Other notable entries include Up-in-Arms Biscuits and Gravy, What a Fried Chicken, Confederate Ambrosia, The Pearl in My Oyster Po’ Boy, A Hush-ed Puppy, and Sookie Stackhouse’s Fried Apple Pies, Classic Chess Pie, and Glazed Fresh Strawberry Pie in the homestyle Southern collection.