The Gift of Southern Cooking

Recipes and Revelations from Two Great American Cooks

Edna Lewis--whose The Taste of Country Cooking has become an American classic--and Alabama-born chef Scott Peacock pool their unusual cooking talents to give us this unique cookbook. What makes it so special is that it represents different styles of Southern cooking--Miss Lewis’s Virginia country cooking and Scott Peacock’s inventive and sensitive blending of new tastes with the Alabama foods he grew up on, liberally seasoned with Native American, Caribbean, and African influences. Together they have taken neglected traditional recipes unearthed in their years of research together on Southern food and worked out new versions that they have made their own.

Together they share their secrets for such Southern basics as pan-fried chicken, creamy grits, and genuine Southern biscuits. Scott Peacock describes how Miss Lewis makes soup by coaxing the essence of flavor from vegetables, and he applies the same principle to his intensely flavored, scrumptious dish of Garlic Braised Shoulder Lamb Chops with Butter Beans and Tomatoes. You’ll find all these treasures and more before you even get to the superb cakes (potential “Cakewalk Winners” all), the hand-cranked ice creams, the flaky pies, and homey custards and puddings. Lewis and Peacock include twenty-two seasonal menus, from A Spring Country Breakfast for a Late Sunday Morning and A Summer Dinner of Big Flavors to An Alabama Thanksgiving and A Hearty Dinner for a Cold Winter Night, to show you how to mix and match dishes for a true Southern table.

Interwoven throughout the book are warm memories of the people and the traditions that shaped these pure-tasting, genuinely American recipes. The result is a joyful coming together of two extraordinary cooks, sharing their gifts. And they invite you to join them.