Explore the food of New Orleans and beyond with cookbooks celebrating the cuisine of the American South.
By Bill Neal
Southern cuisine was born through the collision of conflicting cultures in the New World. Bill Neal cooks the food of the South through a historical context, revealing how hushpuppies, buttermilk pie, and peanut soup made their way into the American tradition.
John Martin Taylor’s distinctive regional cookbook celebrates the simple pleasures of South Carolina classics. From perfected grits recipes to freshly caught catfish stew, all the treasures of the Lowcountry are piled together among personal stories of growing up and dining in the Good Ol’ South.
Lafcadio Hearn's La Cuisine Creole is the first Creole cookbook, one of the great rare classics of the culture. Among its recipes, collected "from leading chefs and noted Creole housewives," are gumbos with oysters, okra, and shrimp; "grenouilles frites" or fried frogs; plum, sweet potato, and gingerbread pudding; and a number of beverages, several of which use absinthe as the main ingredient. Lafcadio Hearn spent close to a dozen years in New Orleans, starting in 1877. During that time, his writings significantly shaped the impressions, myths, and symbols of the Crescent City, many of which live on to this day.
There is perhaps no cuisine as rich and complex in the United States than creole. The Picayune is a lexicon for the Deep South’s culinary heritage and the myriad influences that make up cajun cookery. Find New Orleans in its oyster fritters and pecan pralines, plus more.
Curated collections from ckbk's editors
"This is a delicious recipe that fuses a few ingredients of the Orient: nam pla (pungent fish sauce used predominantly in Thai and Vietnamese cuisine), mirin (sweet Japanese rice wine) and light soy sauce (common to Chinese and Japanese cooking). The result is a subtle but wonderful happening of fishy, salty, sour, spicy, sweet flavors all at once." Ching He-Huang
