Country Cat owners release heritage craft cookbook this month
It took four years to write, but Adam and Jackie Sappington promise their first cookbook Heartlandia: Heritage Recipes from The Country Cat will be epic.
Its the whole story of The Country Cat, says Adam Sappington, half of the chef-owner power duo at the Montavilla restaurant thats now growing to be a mini restaurant empire. Its my lineage, my life, why I cook, how Jackie and I met. Its how to do sustainable food in a family-friendly environment.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the 293-page hardcover ($30) was released Sept. 1, just in time for Feast Portland and a several-city book tour the Sappingtons will embark on shortly afterward.
Adam Sappington, ever smiling and quick-spoken with a lot of Midwest in his speech (sweetheart, honey) sat down with the Tribune recently after a classic Country Cat fried chicken brunch.
Fried chicken is definitely one of the recipes featured in the book, having come from his fond memories around the table as a kid with his mom, dad and brother growing up in Missouri.
It was very Midwest, Adam says of meal times. We had fried chicken every Sunday night. Nothing fancy. We ate dinner together every night.
Its his great grandmothers fried chicken recipe that he uses, Adam says cooked with lard in a cast-iron skillet.
Shed deliver it to the prison; feed the sheriff, he recalls.
He and the cookbook team visited his childhood home and the now-closed prison to take photos for the cookbook.
Other photos and recipes include The Country Cat classics, such as: braised duck legs with mushroom dumplings and dried fruit compote; grilled rib-eye with blue cheese compound butter; molasses-hickory pork shoulder; smoky bacon-braised collard greens; bacon and butterscotch chip cookies with cream cheese frosting and challah French toast with Makers Mark custard and clabber cream.
But their brand has been about much more than just the food.
Its the process of bringing it to the table and preparing it with intention.
Since the restaurants opening eight years ago, the Sappingtons who met while cooking at Wildwood in 1995 have been known as much for their heritage craft cooking as their whole animal butchery.
These are the chefs that cure country ham for four months, make five tons of house-cured bacon and 1,000 pounds of beef jerky (aka meat candy) each year, make 350 buttermilk biscuits by scratch daily and carve a whole 160-pound heritage pig on-site weekly.
Their Whole Hog plate features a brined chop, pinwheel of pork belly, smoked shoulder meat and head cheese croquette, served over white corn grits with a seasonal fruit sauce.
Adam has earned three semifinalist nods for James Beard Best New Chef Northwest, and the restaurant has been featured on The Food Network.
The publicity allowed the Sappingtons to open an event space, The Calico Room, next door, launch a line of chef aprons and perhaps the gutsiest move for any Portland chef open a second location at the Portland airport.
Open for a few months now, they feed about 1,500 hungry travelers daily, doing whole animal butchery, curing and smoking on site.
Nothing comes in fabricated, Adam says. In addition to the 120-seat restaurant, theres a grab-n-go window that sells about 1,000 turkey sandwiches each week.
Its gangbusters, he says. We want to revolutionize the way people eat in airports. Its like the Wild West of the culinary world.
Hes not saying whether another airport location may be in their future.
For now, the couple are gearing up for Feast Portland events (including a sold-out book-release dinner at The Calico Room on Sept. 18), and preparing for book signings and a multicity tour this fall. Theyll travel with their sons, 12-year-old Atticus and 10-year-old Quinn, whom they say are adventurous eaters, used to the frenetic pace of their food-based lives.
Check it out: A Heartlandia book signing is set for Powells Books at 4 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 20.
For more: www.thecountrycat.net.
@jenmomanderson