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. ...

Recalling childhood visits to her grandmother's house in New Orleans, where she would feast on shrimp and okra gumbo, Dale Curry offers fifty recipes--for gumbos, jambalayas, and those little something extras known as lagniappe--that will put Louisiana taste and hospitality on your table. "Gumbo" calls to mind the diverse culinary traditions of Louisiana that, like gumbo itself, are simmered from elements of the many cultures circulating in the state. Drawing historically from French, African, Caribbean, Native American, Spanish, Italian, and other culinary sources, the Creole and Cajun...

Greens--collard, turnip, mustard, and more--are a defining staple of southern food culture. Seemingly always a part of the southern plate, these cruciferous vegetables have been crucial in the nourishing of generations of southerners. Having already been celebrated in operatic terms--composer Price Walden's "Leaves of Green" includes this lyrical note: "From age to age the South has hollered / The praises of the toothsome collard--greens now get their leafy culinary due in Thomas Head's Savor the South cookbook. Head provides a fascinating culinary and natural history of greens in the...

While fried chicken may be the South's iconic dish, when it comes to southern foodways, there are a lot of ways to love America's most popular fowl. Preparations range from Country Captain to Carolina Chicken Bog to Chicken and Parslied Dumplings and more. Here, Cynthia Graubart celebrates the bird in all its glory, southern style and beyond. This little cookbook packs all the know-how that cooks need to make irresistible chicken dishes for everyday and special occasions, from shopping and selecting to cutting up, frying, braising, roasting, and much more. Ranging in style from traditional...

Crabs and oysters take center stage as Chef Bill Smith conveys his passion for preparing these sumptuous shellfish long associated with southern coastlines. Smith's sensibilities as a North Carolinian born and raised down east are vibrantly on display as he recalls the joy of growing up catching crabs and shucking oysters. Smith traveled the coastline, visited with crab fishermen and oyster farmers, and dove deep into a library's worth of regional cookbooks and collections of heirloom recipes from seaside communities, notably in North Carolina and Louisiana. His collection of fifty recipes,...

Recalling boyhood shrimping expeditions with his father and summoning up the aromas and flavors of a southern shrimp boil or shrimp fry, chef Jay Pierce brings America's favorite shellfish to center stage with fifty recipes for southern classics, contemporary dishes, and international delicacies. Pierce's lively introduction focuses on the South's fishing and culinary connections with shrimp, which are abundant in the estuaries and bays that line southern shores. Shrimp, he notes, are one of the last truly wild creatures that Americans consume in significant quantities. Pierce encourages...

Among the staple foods most welcomed on southern tables—and on tables around the world—rice is without question the most versatile. As Michael W. Twitty observes, depending on regional tastes, rice may be enjoyed at breakfast, lunch, and dinner; as main dish, side dish, and snack; in dishes savory and sweet. Filling and delicious, rice comes in numerous botanical varieties and offers a vast range of scents, tastes, and textures depending on how it is cooked. In some dishes, it is crunchingly crispy; in others, soothingly smooth; in still others, somewhere right in between. Commingled or...