Southern Cooking


Book Description




An Irresistible History of Southern Food


Book Description

Fried chicken, rice and gravy, sweet potatoes, collard greens and spoon bread - all good old fashioned, down-home southern foods, right? Wrong. The fried chicken and collard greens are African, the rice is from Madagascar, the sweet potatoes came to Virginia from the Peruvian Andes via Spain, and the spoon bread is a marriage of Native American corn with the French souffl technique thought up by skilled African American cooks. Food historian Rick McDaniel takes 150 of the South's best-loved and most delicious recipes and tells how to make them and the history behind them. From fried chicken to gumbo to Robert E. Lee Cake, it's a history lesson that will make your mouth water. What southerners today consider traditional southern cooking was really one of the world's first international cuisines, a mlange of European, Native American and African foods and influences brought together to form one of the world's most unique and recognizable cuisines.




The Big Jones Cookbook


Book Description

An original look at southern heirloom cooking with a focus on history, heritage, and variety. You expect to hear about restaurant kitchens in Charleston, New Orleans, or Memphis perfecting plates of the finest southern cuisine—from hearty red beans and rice to stewed okra to crispy fried chicken. But who would guess that one of the most innovative chefs cooking heirloom regional southern food is based not in the heart of biscuit country, but in the grain-fed Midwest—in Chicago, no less? Since 2008, chef Paul Fehribach has been introducing Chicagoans to the delectable pleasures of Lowcountry cuisine, while his restaurant Big Jones has become a home away from home for the city’s southern diaspora. From its inception, Big Jones has focused on cooking with local and sustainably grown heirloom crops and heritage livestock, reinvigorating southern cooking through meticulous technique and the unique perspective of its Midwest location. And with The Big Jones Cookbook, Fehribach brings the rich stories and traditions of regional southern food to kitchens everywhere. Fehribach interweaves personal experience, historical knowledge, and culinary creativity, all while offering tried-and-true takes on everything from Reezy-Peezy to Gumbo Ya-Ya, Chicken and Dumplings, and Crispy Catfish. Fehribach’s dishes reflect his careful attention to historical and culinary detail, and many recipes are accompanied by insights about their origins. In addition to the regional chapters, the cookbook features sections on breads, from sweet potato biscuits to spoonbread; pantry put-ups like bread and butter pickles and chow-chow; cocktails, such as the sazerac; desserts, including Sea Island benne cake; as well as an extensive section on snout-to-tail cooking, including homemade Andouille and pickled pigs’ feet. Proof that you need not possess a thick southern drawl to appreciate the comfort of creamy grits and the skill of perfectly fried green tomatoes, The Big Jones Cookbook will be something to savor regardless of where you set your table.




A Real Southern Cook


Book Description

"Dora Charles is the real deal, and hers may be the most honest - and personal - southern cookbook I've ever read." - John Martin Taylor In her first cookbook, a revered former cook at Savannah's most renowned restaurant divulges her locally famous Savannah recipes--many of them never written down before--and those of her family and friends Hundreds of thousands of people have made a trip to dine on the exceptional food cooked by Dora Charles at Savannah's most famous restaurant. Now, the woman who was barraged by editors and agents to tell her story invites us into her home to taste the food she loves best. These are the intensely satisfying dishes at the heart of Dora's beloved Savannah: Shrimp and Rice; Simple Smoky Okra; Buttermilk Cornbread from her grandmother; and of course, a truly incomparable Fried Chicken. Each dish has a "secret ingredient" for a burst of flavor: mayonnaise in the biscuits; Savannah Seasoning in her Gone to Glory Potato Salad; sugar-glazed bacon in her deviled eggs. All the cornerstones of the Southern table are here, from Out-of-This-World Smothered Catfish to desserts like a jaw-dropping Very Red Velvet Cake. With moving dignity, Dora describes her motherless upbringing in Savannah, the hard life of her family, whose memories stretched back to slave times, learning to cook at age six, and the years she worked at the restaurant. "Talking About" boxes impart Dora's cooking wisdom, and evocative photos of Savannah and the Low Country set the scene.




New Southern Cooking


Book Description

Here on display in this must-have collection is the cooking artistry, gift for teaching, and relaxed, confidence-inspiring tone known so well by Nathalie Dupree's enthusiastic nationwide audience. Many of the dishes prepared on New Southern Cooking with Nathalie Dupree (the fifty-five-part television series that has aired on PBS, the Learning Channel, and Star TV) are included, and a great many more: dishes simple or elaborate, dishes for a weekday meal or a multicourse feast, dishes such as a timeless, crumbly, melt-in-the-mouth biscuit or a tantalizing Grilled Duck with Muscadine Sauce. You'll find all the old-time flavors and textures embodied in such classic delights as black-eyed peas, fried chicken with the crustiest of coatings, country ham, and peach cobbler. Here, too, is all the new lightness and flavor combinations that mark today's innovative Southern cooking-expressed in such recipes as Acadian Peppered Shrimp (made tangy with just the right touches of basil, garlic, oregano, and cayenne), chicken breasts with stir-fried peanuts and collards, and grouper grilled over a pecan-seasoned fire. Nathalie Dupree shows us how to get that Southern aura of comfort and welcome into our meals. She draws on the many cuisines, rustic and elegant, that have profoundly influenced Southern cooking from its beginnings—including English, French, African, Spanish, and West Indian. Nathalie has provided a wonderfully wide-ranging selection of Southern recipes remarkable for their ease of preparation and perfectly tuned to the pace of our lives today. Whether you're cooking for guests or the folks at home, planning a backyard barbecue (there are twenty-two barbecue recipes alone!) or a big gala party, you'll find here an abundant supply of irresistible recipes, accompanied by charming illustrations by Karen Barbour.




Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking


Book Description

This definitive guide to Southern cooking methods and techniques by the creators of the PBS show New Southern Cooking features more than 600 recipes. In Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking, Nathalie Dupree and Cynthia Graubart present the most comprehensive book on Southern cuisine in nearly a century. Based on years of research, Dupree and Graubart embrace the great Southern cookbooks and recipes of the past, enhancing them with the foods and conveniences of today. With more than 600 recipes and hundreds of step-by-step photographs, Dupree and Graubart make it easy to learn the techniques for creating the South’s fabulous cuisine. From basics such as cleaning vegetables and scrubbing a country ham, to show-off skills like making a soufflé and turning out the perfect biscuit—all are explained and pictured with clarity and plenty of stories that entertain.




Craig Claiborne's Southern Cooking


Book Description

The author introduces many of the three hundred dishes featured in a back-in-print cookbook that focuses exclusively on the South with comments and notes on their history, their evolution over the years, and his favorite versions.




Southern Food


Book Description

This lively, handsomely illustrated, first-of-its-kind book celebrates the food of the American South in all its glorious variety—yesterday, today, at home, on the road, in history. It brings us the story of Southern cooking; a guide for more than 200 restaurants in eleven Southern states; a compilation of more than 150 time-honored Southern foods; a wonderfully useful annotated bibliography of more than 250 Southern cookbooks; and a collection of more than 200 opinionated, funny, nostalgic, or mouth-watering short selections (from George Washington Carver on sweet potatoes to Flannery O’Connor on collard greens). Here, in sum, is the flavor and feel of what it has meant for Southerners, over the generations, to gather at the table—in a book that’s for reading, for cooking, for eating (in or out), for referring to, for browsing in, and, above all, for enjoying.




Essentials of Southern Cooking


Book Description

Essentials of Southern Cooking honors the spirit, the history, and the taste of a classic Southern table by focusing on the essence of great Southern food. In this engaging look at the heritage of Southern cuisine is a collection of over 200 recipes that balance the enduring appeal of rural Southern flavors with the modern sensibilities of today's cook.




Paula Deen's Southern Cooking Bible


Book Description

A definitive guide to Southern cooking and hospitality with 300 recipes, a two-color interior with nearly 100 instructional illustrations, an extensive appendix, sixteen pages of gorgeous color photography, and plenty of tips, stories, and Southern history throughout. Hi, y’all! This book is my proudest achievement so far, and I just have to tell y’all why I am so excited about it. It’s a book of classic dishes, dedicated to a whole new generation of cooks—for every bride, graduate, and anyone who has a love of a great Southern meal. My family is growing and expanding all the time. We’re blessed with marriages and grandbabies, and so sharing these recipes for honest, down-home dishes feels like passing a generation’s worth of stovetop secrets on to my family, and yours. I’ve been cooking and eating Southern food my whole life, and I can tell you that every meal you make from this book will be a mouthful of our one-of-akind spirit and traditions. These recipes showcase the diversity and ingenuity of Southern cuisine, from Cajun to Low-Country and beyond, highlighting the deep cultural richness of our gumbos and collards, our barbecues and pies. You may remember a few beloved classics from The Lady & Sons, but nearly all of these recipes are brand-new—and I think you’ll find that they are all mouthwateringly delicious. It is, without a doubt, a true Southern cooking bible. I sincerely hope that this book will take its place in your kitchen for many years to come, as I know it will in mine. Here’s to happy cooking—and the best part, happy eating, y’all! Best dishes, Paula Deen