When he was an
eleven-year-old Boy
Scout, Mark F. Sohn cooked near his home in the hills of
western
Oregon.
Over an open fire and in the shadows cast by tall
Douglas
firs, he baked biscuits, simmered stew, and scrambled eggs. From that time, he
has enjoyed cooking, and in 1987, he studied culinary arts at L'École de
Cuisine, a school in
Paris,
France,
owned by Pierre Cardin and Maxim's Restaurant.
Mark Sohn, Ph.D. and recently
retired Professor
of Educational Psychology at Pikeville (Kentucky)
College, is a foods author, recipe developer, newspaper columnist, cooking
teacher, food stylist, and photographer. He serves as the food and cooking
editor for The Encyclopedia of Appalachia with an expected publication by
the
University
of
Tennessee Press
in 2005. Since accepting that position in 1998, he has written about 20 articles
on Appalachian food for six other encyclopedias including the Oxford
Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, Scribner's Encyclopedia of Food,
The West Virginia Encyclopedia, and The Encyclopedia of Southern
Culture.
Sohn is from a
family of cooks. As a young man, his father, Fred, worked in
Germany
as a flour miller, test baker, and cereal chemist. Today, Fred is a meticulous
avocational bread baker, and Mark’s mother, Frances, cooks everything else. Mark
Sohn also has four brothers who preserve, cook, bake, and critique food. The
whole family is fascinated by food, and each is quick to defend a favorite
recipe or argue the merits of a particular restaurant.
Mark Sohn is married to
Katherine Kelleher of
Greensboro,
North Carolina,
and he and Kathy have two grown children, Laura, a music promoter, and Brian, a
teacher. They enjoy cooking and sometimes use one of their father’s recipes.
To his credit,
Mark Sohn has written about 1200 published recipes, and he produced and cooked
more than 450 cable-access television food shows. His current book is
Appalachian Home Cooking: History, Culture, and Recipes published in
October, 2005, by the University Press of Kentucky. His 1996 book, Mountain
Country Cooking: A Gathering of the Best Recipes from the Smokies to the Blue
Ridge, was a 1997 James Beard Foundation nominee for Book of the Year in the
category Food of the
Americas.
Sohn's other cookbook is Southern Country Cooking, published in 1992 by
Penfield Press and available from the author. Sohn's recipes have
appeared in magazines including Food and Wine, Saveur, and Southern Living, and
his food photography has been featured in regional art galleries.
