Cookbooks with local flavors to be savored

Several cookbooks of local interest have landed on my desk in recent weeks.

History buffs are likely to find Ozark Culinary History: Northwest Arkansas Traditions From Corn Dodgers to Squirrel Meatloaf by Erin Rowe (American Palate, $21.99) interesting and cooks will find its many recipes intriguing. Rowe, a Siloam Springs native, includes a variety of Ozark recipes to fit virtually any cooking style from Baked Squirrel and Post Familie German Potato Salad to an Ozark Old-Fashioned featuring sorghum syrup and black walnut bitters.

Little Miss Cornbread: Our Journey to Southern-Style Vegan and Gluten-Free Cuisine & Sort-ofTrue Short Stories by Susie Jane Wilson and Amylou Wilson (Turtle Lake Press, $15) will appeal to cooks with certain dietary restrictions. Vegan and Southern may not be words seen together often, but this little book (77 pages) pulls it off. But what I really loved were the three short stories chronicling the adventures of Lee Catherine.

Leave It to Liz by Chef Liz Bray (self-published, $30, justleaveittoliz.net) gets to the good stuff first, opening with nearly 50 pages of desserts. But this book features so much more than delectable cakes — there are soups, salads, dips, entrees, side dishes, baked goods, brunch dishes and even a chapter devoted to cooking without common allergens. Benton-based personal chef Bray packs more than 230 recipes into her hardcover book illustrated with plenty of color photographs by Nancy Pruitt.

To call America The Cookbook: A Culinary Road Trip Through the 50 States by

Gabrielle Langholtz (Phaidon, $49.95) a tome is an understatement. This 767-page book includes 800 recipes, with 42 connected to our state/region. My major qualm with this book is it attributes cheese dip — which it calls chile con queso — to Texas, yet fried pickles are credited to Arkansas and the South in general. Bentonville chef Matthew McClure and home and garden expert P. Allen Smith are listed as contributors. All titles except Leave It

to Liz are available in bookstores.