While the hindquarters of swine have been preserved in salt the world over for thousands of years, there are only a few places on earth where ham is as celebrated or integral to the cuisine as it is in the American South. To begin to understand the place that this iconic food holds in the hearts of southerners, Damon Lee Fowler writes, one has only to step into the historic smokehouse of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and take a deep breath. More than a century after the last hams were hung to smoke in that chamber, the aroma of salt, smoke, and air-dried pork still permeates the rough masonry...

While many fish, from bream and crappie to bass, trout, and shad, are popular in the South, none of them has settled as thoroughly in southern culture as the humble, bewhiskered, bottom-dwelling catfish. For Memphis natives Paul and Angela Knipple, enjoying "that steamy sweet white meat encased in golden crisp cornmeal was just a part of our childhoods." In this Savor the South cookbook, the Knipples share their family memories of catching and eating this favored southern food. Painting a portrait of catfish's culinary and natural history, along with its place in southern foodways and the...

Show me a recipe with pecans, and I have to try it." Attributing her own love of this American nut to the state of her birth--Georgia is the nation's leader in growing pecans--and to the happy fact that her mother "hardly made a cookie, candy, or pan of Sunday dressing without them," Kathleen Purvis teaches readers how to find, store, cook, and completely enjoy this southern delicacy. Pecans includes fifty-two recipes, ranging from traditional to inventive, from uniquely southern to distinctly international, including Bourbon-Orange Pecans, Buttermilk-Pecan Chicken, Pecan Pralines, and Leche...

In this paean to the brightly colored root, April McGreger tells the multifaceted history of a fundamental southern food, praising its rich and diverse savory-to-sweet flavor profile, botanical varieties, and shockingly high nutritional value. Along with instructions for selection and storage, McGreger shares the fifty best sweet potato recipes in the world. Embracing but going well beyond the classics--from Sweet Potato Pone and Candied Sweet Potatoes to Sweet Potato Chiles Rellenos and Sweet Potato-Ginger Cremes Caramels--McGreger's creations will delight and satisfy with their...

John Shelton Reed's Barbecue celebrates a southern culinary tradition forged in coals and smoke. Since colonial times southerners have held barbecues to mark homecomings, reunions, and political campaigns; today barbecue signifies celebration as much as ever. In a lively and amusing style, Reed traces the history of southern barbecue from its roots in the sixteenth-century Caribbean, showing how this technique of cooking meat established itself in the coastal South and spread inland from there. He discusses how choices of meat, sauce, and cooking methods came to vary from one place to...

Passionate okra lovers crave this bright green, heat-loving vegetable, whether fried, grilled, steamed, roasted, boiled, broiled, pickled, raw, whole, sliced, or julienned. With Okra, Virginia Willis provides "the key that unlocks the door of okra desire" to okra addicts and newcomers to the pod alike. Topping eight feet, with gorgeous butter-yellow flowers that ripen into the plant's signature seed-filled pods, okra has a long association with foodways in the American South. But as Willis shows, okra is also an important ingredient in cuisines across Africa, Asia, and Latin America....

Did you know that bourbon must be made in America and aged for at least two years in new American oak barrels that are charred on the inside? In this spirited little cookbook, Kathleen Purvis explores the history, mythology, and culinary star power of this quintessential southern liquor. On the scene in Kentucky, home to most bourbon makers, she reports on the science and love behind the liquor's long, careful production. Featuring both classic and cutting-edge cocktails, the cookbook ranges well beyond beverages to present bourbon as a distinct ingredient in appetizers, entrees, side dishes,...

For fifteen years, food writer Belinda Ellis traveled around the country for the White Lily flour company, teaching people to make biscuits and listening to their stories. "I learned that deep in the soul of a biscuit, there's more than the flour, fat, and milk. A hot biscuit embodies a memory of place and family," she writes. Ellis's heartfelt tribute to the biscuit celebrates the many possible flavors and uses for this classic southern bread. The first recipe in the book is a master recipe with step-by-step photographs showing how to make the perfect biscuit. In an evocative and...

Andrea Weigl defines the year by her canning sessions. In the winter, she makes bright yellow Jerusalem Artichoke Relish from her backyard crop. In the spring, she conjures up sweet red Strawberry Preserves. In the summer, it's savory Yellow Squash Pickles and peaches, pickled, brandied, or as a thick butter. And in the fall, she folds her Fig Preserves into a cake famous on North Carolina's Outer Banks. Today's revival of pickling and preserving, which became widely popular in the South only after the Civil War, when sugar was easier to obtain, is part of the booming interest in...

Without corn, Tema Flanagan writes, the South would cease to taste like the South. Her treasury of fifty-one recipes demonstrates deliciously just how important the remarkable Zea mays is to southern culture and cuisine. Corn's recipes emphasize seasonality. High summer calls for fresh corn eaten on the cob or shaved into salads, sautes, and soups. When fall and winter come, it is time to make cornmeal biscuits, muffins, cobblers, and hotcakes, along with silky spoonbread and sausage-studded cornbread stuffing. And the heaviest hitters, cornbread and grits, are mainstays all year round. ...