african american

A Baker's Odyssey, includes DVD: Celebrating Time-Honored Recipes from America's Rich Immigrant Heritage

"In this book, I'm embarking on a different path, focusing on finding recipes that preserve the tastes and memories of a long-departed place."
—Greg Patent

A Baker's Odyssey is a rich collection of recipes and culinary history, all gleaned from Patent's exhaustive research in the American home kitchens of immigrants from around the world. Through his travels across the country, Patent learned the secrets to traditional baked goods originating from thirty-two different nations. From Scotland and Austria to India and Thailand to Mexico, Norway, and West Africa, the recipes represent the best of each culture's beloved culinary traditions. Chapters are organized by categories of baked goods, and include Fried Pastries and Doughs, Flatbreads and More, Savory Pastries, Sweet Pastries, Savory Yeast Breads and Pies, Sweet Yeast Breads, Cookies and Cookie-Like Pastries, and Dessert Cakes, Tortes, and Pies. Patent provides detailed information on the origin of each recipe and its ingredients, and gives a real sense of the cultural heritage behind each dish. Recipes are easy enough for home cooks of any level to master, and include everything from Jewish Matzoh, Eastern European Rugelach, and Sweet Irish Soda Bread to Russian Meat Piroshki, Italian Pignoli Cookies, and Chinese-Style Almond Sponge Cake. The book is accompanied by an hour-long DVD in which Patent provides hands-on instruction in making Strudel, Pretzels, Cannoli, Kransakake, and much more.

Sweets: Soul Food Desserts & Memories

Growing up in a large African-American family in a small town in Michigan, Patty Pinner spent her childhood helping the women of the house--the Queens of Soul Food--whip up the sweet treats that crowned family dinners, neighborhood gatherings, and church socials. In SWEETS, Patty shares her family's stories, maxims, and magical desserts, many named after family members like Cud'n Daisy, Aint Sug, and My My, her beloved grandmother. Part recipe book, part family history, this sweet-as-can-be cookbook is a heartfelt tribute to women who ruled the home and the kitchen with their wisdom, hearts, and cooking.

The New Soul Food Cookbook for People With Diabetes

The first and only African-American cookbook for people with diabetes

Although there are many cookbooks for people with diabetes, there is only one for people interested in African-American cooking. The New Soul Food Cookbook for People with Diabetes enters a new edition with great-tasting and offers you flavorful recipes such as barbecue pulled pork, fried okra, orange sweet potatoes, shrimp jambalaya and more. All of the Cajun, Creole, and down-home favorites are here for you--and now in healthier versions than ever before! Each recipe adheres to the new nutrition guidelines of the American Diabetes Association and is guaranteed to be low in saturated fat.

Hallelujah! The Welcome Table: A Lifetime of Memories with Recipes

Throughout Maya Angelou’s life, from her childhood in Stamps, Arkansas, to her world travels as a bestselling writer, good food has played a central role. Preparing and enjoying homemade meals provides a sense of purpose and calm, accomplishment and connection. Now in Hallelujah! The Welcome Table, Angelou shares memories pithy and poignant–and the recipes that helped to make them both indelible and irreplaceable.

Angelou tells us about the time she was expelled from school for being afraid to speak–and her mother baked a delicious maple cake to brighten her spirits. She gives us her recipe for short ribs along with a story about a job she had as a cook at a Creole restaurant (never mind that she didn’t know how to cook and had no idea what Creole food might entail). There was the time in London when she attended a wretched dinner party full of wretched people; but all wasn’t lost–she did experience her initial taste of a savory onion tart. She recounts her very first night in her new home in Sonoma, California, when she invited M. F. K. Fisher over for cassoulet, and the evening Deca Mitford roasted a chicken when she was beyond tipsy–and created Chicken Drunkard Style. And then there was the hearty brunch Angelou made for a homesick Southerner, a meal that earned her both a job offer and a prophetic compliment: “If you can write half as good as you can cook, you are going to be famous.”

Maya Angelou is renowned in her wide and generous circle of friends as a marvelous chef. Her kitchen is a social center. From fried meat pies, chicken livers, and beef Wellington to caramel cake, bread pudding, and chocolate éclairs, the one hundred-plus recipes included here are all tried and true, and come from Angelou’s heart and her home. Hallelujah! The Welcome Table is a stunning collaboration between the two things Angelou loves best: writing and cooking.

Mama Dip's Kitchen

You can hold this book the way you hold a child's hand. And you can let this book show you a whole new world, the way a child will reveal the secrets of a secret world if you take the time to stop and watch and listen. God bless Mildred Council and the time she took to get it all down in Mama Dip's Kitchen. And it's not just the recipes that come out of a life of good cooking--there's a great deal of Mildred Council in these pages, and we are better off for the reading, the cooking, and the sharing.

In her acknowledgments, Mildred Council thanks a woman who helped with the book. Then she thanks the woman's children, "Shawn and Chelsea, for playing so nicely while we flipped so many pages." She ends her cookbook with a recipe for a child's birthday party. Her enthusiasm for life growing through all its stages can be found on every page. "I realized my name was my earthly soul," she writes, "which needed to be tended like the pumpkin seed--tended, tilled, fed, and harvested, to have a good life. And that's what I tried to do ever since for my family and myself."

Part of that tending has been owning and operating Dip's, a popular Chapel Hill, North Carolina restaurant where she serves the kind of country food she grew up cooking. Mildred Council calls her style of cooking "dump cooking" because she scoops up ingredients without measuring and "dumps" them in the bowl or pan. It took her a good deal of time to measure out what she was doing so instinctively to be able to share her work as written recipes. But she encourages every cook to use her recipes like a sewing pattern, to experiment, to stretch here and cut there to make the food you like.

Mama Dip's Kitchen is a compendium of straightforward, simple, southern American foods in chapters devoted to "Breads and Breakfast Dishes," "Poultry, Fish, and Seafood Dishes," "Beef, Pork and Lamb Dishes," "Vegetables and Salad," and "Desserts, Beverages, and Party Dishes." In simple foods as in a simple life, the complexities run deep. --Schuyler Ingle

For nearly twenty-five years, Mildred Council—better known by her nickname, Mama Dip—has nourished thousands of hungry folks in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her restaurant, Mama Dip's Kitchen, is a much-loved community institution that has gained loyal fans and customers from all walks of life, from New York Times food writer Craig Claiborne to former Tar Heel basketball player Michael Jordan.

Mama Dip's Kitchen showcases the same down-home, wholesome, everyday Southern cooking for which its namesake restaurant is celebrated. The book features more than 250 recipes for such favorites as old-fashioned chicken pie, country-style pork chops, sweet potatoes, fresh corn casserole, poundcake, and banana pudding. Chapters cover breads and breakfast dishes; poultry, fish, and seafood; beef, pork, and lamb; vegetables and salads; and desserts, beverages, and party dishes.

The book opens with a charming introductory essay, a savory reflection on a life in cooking that also reveals the story behind Council's nickname. It is both a graceful reminiscence of a country childhood and the inspiring story of a woman determined to make her own way in the larger world.

Make It Super Simple with G. Garvin

Getting great food on the table, whether for everyday family meals or special gatherings with friends is every cook's greatest pleasure. In Make it Super Simple, Garvin keeps the tradition of family meals alive with punchy, flavorful, healthy recipes that are quick and easy to make with little to no fuss.

The Black Family Reunion Cookbook: Recipes and Food Memories

The Black Family Reunion Celebrations, organized by The National Council of Negro Women and held in seven cities across America every summer, celebrate and preserve the values, traditions, and strengths of the African-American family. Inspired by these festivals, The Black Family Reunion Cookbook contains more than 250 recipes from home kitchens across America, seasoned with warm memories and "homemade love."

Including personal reminiscences from celebrities such as Natalie Cole, Wilma Rudolph, Patti LaBelle, and Spetman College President Johnetta Cole, this unique collection reflects the local, national, and international heritage of the Black community. It offers dishes for every occasion and every taste, from African-inspired Mustard Greens with Peanut Sauce to down-home Family Famous Chicken and Dumplings, from a traditional gumbo to sophisticated Sweet Potato Smoked Turkey Bisque, and, in honor of the council's founder, Mary McLeod Bethune, her own recipe for her celebrated Sweet Potato Pie.

Soul Food: Classic Cuisine from the Deep South

Sylvia's Soul Food

Sylvia Woods has been barbecuing, baking, frying, and smothering New York City's best soul food for nearly thirty years. According to the Zagat New York City Restaurant Survey, "For down-home delicious Soul Food, this funky Harlemite is the real thing; go for great ribs, incredible fried chicken, fiery greens, and other artery-clogging Southern staples. Don't tell your doctor what you ate."

Now, for the first time, the "Queen of Soul Food" reveals her recipe secrets for more than one hundred of the authentic, stick-to-your-ribs soul food and classic Southern dishes she serves at her world-famous Harlem restaurant.

Start off with a breakfast of homemade pork sausage with eggs and the tenderest, flakiest biscuits you've ever eaten. Move on to tried-and-true soul food favorites that include Smothered Chicken, Fried Catfish with Hushpuppies, Sweet and Spicy Chicken Wings, Blackeyed Peas and Rice, and, of course, "Sylvia's World-Famous Talked-About Barbecued Ribs."

Of course, no meal at Sylvia's would be complete without a couple of "sides": Fried Green Tomatoes, Collard Greens with Cornmeal Dumplings, Candied Sweet Potatoes, and more. Sylvia's desserts are enough to satisfy any sweet tooth: Peach Cobbler, Lemon Pie, and Three-Layer Caramel Cake.

So, "if you're craving great barbecue, down-home soul food, and something uniquely New York, catch a cab up to Sylvia's, a marvelous restaurant serving up batches of great ribs, pork chops, candied sweet potatoes, and pecan pies that will satisfy the biggest eater in the family" (Passport to New York Restaurants). If you can't make it to New York, Sylvia's Soul Food will make you feel like you're there.

Sylvia's Family Soul Food Cookbook: From Hemingway, South Carolina, To Harlem

Sylvia's Family Soul Food Cookbook begins as Sylvia recalls her childhood, when she lived with both her mother and her grandmother -- the town's only midwives. The entire community of Hemingway, South Carolina, shared responsibilities, helped raise all of the children, and worked side by side together every day in the bean fields. Perhaps most important, the community shared its food and recipes. When Sylvia set out to write this cookbook, she decided to hold a cook-off back home in Hemingway at Jeremiah Church. Family and friends of all ages shared their favorite dishes as well as their spirit and love for one another. The recipes offered at the cook-off were then compiled to create this incredible collection, along with many of Sylvia's and the Woods family's own recipes.

Here are the kinds of recipes you'd find if you visited the Woods family's home. Sylvia's daughter Bedelia is well known for her Barbecued Beef Short Ribs, which are as sassy and spicy as Bedelia herself. Kenneth, Sylvia's youngest son, has loved to fish ever since he was a child, spending his summers by the fishing hole in Hemingway. Now Kenneth's son, DeSean, enjoys fishing, too. Kenneth's Honey Lemon Tilefish, DeSean's favorite, is just one of Kenneth's special recipes presented here.

And there are many, many other wonderful dishes, too. In this remarkable cookbook, Sylvia has gathered more than 125 soul food classics, including mouthwatering recipes for okra, collard greens, Southern-style pound cakes, hearty meat and seafood stews and casseroles, salads, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, and more. These recipes are straight from the heart of the Woods community of family and friends. Now Sylvia gives them to you to share with your loved ones. Bring them into your home and experience a little bit of Hemingway's soul.