Country Tastes

Here is a cookbook that, befitting its subject, begins not with a chapter on hors d'oeuvres (as a young girl on a Minnesota farm the author couldn't imagine when one might serve such creations) but with a section on all-American beef: New England boiled dinner, chicken-fried steak, cabbage rolls and meatballs of all persuasions. It is a delightful hit parade of native classics that proceeds in roughly descending order of cholesterol content. Recipes include country ham with red-eye gravy, rabbit pie, fried chicken rolled in cornflakes, crab cakes and fried catfish, chowders and gumbos, Sloppy Joes and devilled eggs, guacamole and spareribs, grits, baked beans, Cajun dirty rice, macaroni and cheese, fried green tomatoes and Harvard beets, dumplings and hush puppies, custards and shoofly pie. Although the borders of ""country taste'' are elusiveWaldorf salad makes the listthis is a simple, excellent selection by a veteran food writer and author of Scandinavian Cooking et al. (March)