CHARLES PATTESON'S KENTUCKY COOKING

Now it's Southern cooking. And where the recent flurry of major cookbooks from the region has only stimulated, not saturated, today's tradition-seeking market, the time is ripe for this more intimate nostalgia trip from Patteson, a New York City caterer from Kentucky whose native specialties reportedly transport the guests at his annual Derby Day buffet. These memories of holiday feasts and down-home comforts could well carry total strangers back to Patteson's Kentucky home, where fresh hot biscuits were made for breakfast every morning and Derby Day was always celebrated with mint juleps, burgoo, a properly moldly country ham from the smokehouse out behind the kitchen, crisp beaten biscuits (""Granny used to beat 'em with a musket""), and a dizzying array of sweets made all the more dizzying by generous dollops of bourbon. Patteson's evocation of Kentucky county fairs, hunt breakfasts, barbecues, and canning bees make for good reading and good eating; and his culinary tour of historic Kentucky inns could inspire some memorable vacation trips as well.