u.s. regional

Screen Doors and Sweet Tea: Recipes and Tales from a Southern Cook

Gifted chef and storyteller Martha Hall Foose invites you into her kitchen to share recipes that bring alive the landscape, people, and traditions that make Southern cuisine an American favorite.

Born and raised in Mississippi, Foose cooks Southern food with a contemporary flair: Sweet Potato Soup is enhanced with coconut milk and curry powder; Blackberry Limeade gets a lift from a secret ingredient–cardamom; and her much-ballyhooed Sweet Tea Pie combines two great Southern staples–sweet tea and pie, of course–to make one phenomenal signature dessert. The more than 150 original recipes are not only full of flavor, but also rich with local color and characters.

As the executive chef of the Viking Cooking School, teaching thousands of home cooks each year, Foose crafts recipes that are the perfect combination of delicious, creative, and accessible. Filled with humorous and touching tales as well as useful information on ingredients, techniques, storage, shortcuts, variations, and substitutions, Screen Doors and Sweet Tea is a must-have for the American home cook–and a must-read for anyone who craves a return to what cooking is all about: comfort, company, and good eating.

Paula Deen: It Ain't All About the Cookin'

Do you know the real Paula Deen? You may think you know the butter-loving, finger-licking, joke-cracking queen of melt-in-your-mouth Southern cuisine. You may have even visited The Lady & Sons to taste for yourself the down-home delicacies that made her famous and even heard some version of her Cinderella story (a single mom with two teenage sons started a brown-bag lunch business with $200 and wound up with a thriving restaurant, a fairy-tale second marriage, and wildly popular television shows), but you have never heard the intimate details of her often bumpy road to fame and fortune.

Courageously honest, downright inspiring, and just a little bit saucy, Paula shares the highs and lows of her life in the inimitable charming and irreverent style that you know from her television shows and personal appearances. She talks about long childhood summers spent in a bathing suit and roller skates and hard years living in the back of her father's gas station; a buzzing high school social life of sleepovers, parties, cheerleading, and boys; and a difficult marriage. The death of her beloved parents precipitated a debilitating agoraphobia that crippled her for years. But even when the going got tough, Paula never lost the good grace and sense of humor that would eventually help carry her to success and stardom. Of course, you can't get by on charm alone: as Paula has learned, you need plenty of willpower, hard work, and, above all, the love and support of family and friends to finance, sustain, and run a successful restaurant.

In each chapter, Paula shares new recipes: there's serious comfort food like her momma's Chocolate-Dippy Doughnuts, Courage Chili for when you know life's going to get tough, Sexy Oxtails for seducing that special someone, and the recipe for her new mother-in-law's Banana Nut Delight Cake that Paula finally got just right. And you'll love the never-before-seen photos of her family.

In this memoir, Paula Deen speaks as frankly and intimately as few women in the public eye have ever dared. Whether she's telling tales of good times or bad, her story is proof that the old-fashioned American dream is alive and kicking, and there still is such a thing as a real-life happy ending.

New West Cuisine: Fresh Recipes from the Rocky Mountains

New West Cuisine offers a tantalizing taste of the West. Introducing 15 great kitchens in the northern Rockies, from upscale mountain resort destination restaurants to scenery-rich ranches to mom-and-pop roadside attractions, New West Cuisine offers a variety of seasonal menus from the region's most sought-after eateries. The settings and styles differ, but all share a passion for delicious handmade food, seasonal and local ingredients, and the rich Rocky Mountain tradition of warmth and hospitality. Featuring 100 recipes as well as helpful sidebars, New West Cuisine also contains stunning scenic photography of the Mountain West.
Recipes Include:
Smoked Salmon Salad with Heart Beets and Horseradish Cream
Charred Heirloom Tomatoes
Herb-Encrusted Elk Rack with Wild Berry Sauce
Grilled Chicken with White Barbecue Sauce
Rainbow Trout Tacos with Corn Relish and Avocado Sauce
Huckleberry and Apple Crisp
Orange Poppyseed Buttercream Cake
Chocolate Chip Tartlet
Author Bio: Chase Reynolds Ewald holds degrees from Yale and the Graduate School of Journalism at U.C. Berkeley. She currently serves as Senior Editor for Western Art & Architecture magazine. Chase is the author of five additional books, including Arts & Crafts Style and Spirit; Cowboy Style; and, with Amy Jo Sheppard, Sweet Treats from the Wild West. She lives in Tiburon, California.
Combining her passion for cooking with her outdoor interests, Amy Jo Sheppard has served as a chef at a guest ranch in Wyoming, a remote lodge in Denali National Park, and aboard an excursion boat in Prince Williams Sound. She lives in Helena, Montana.

Smokestack Lightning: Adventures In The Heart Of Barbecue Country

Through vivid descriptions of restaurants and barbecue joints around the country, stirred together with legends and bits and pieces of barbecue history, Lolis Eric Elie profiles the largely American pastime of barbecuing. Traveling from Texas to the Carolinas, the author chronicles the lore and traditions of the barbecue belt and collects recipes, descriptions and photographs of everything from barbecued cows' faces to pigs' snouts, on his quest to determine barbecue's role in American culture.

It was while eating a big ol' plate of steaming ribs that journalist Lolis Eric Elie and photographer Frank Stewart decided to traverse the country to investigate America's obsession with smoked meat. Their quest took them from all-night barbecue binges on Chicago's south side to barbecue competition circuit events like Memphis in May and Big Pig Jig in Vienna, Georgia, where people drop thousands of dollars to spend a sleepless night smoking meat. In SMOKESTACK LIGHTNING, Elie and Stewart profile the down-home devotees of the barbecue world, painting an anthropological portrait of one of our nation's favorite pastimes. Featuring 50 mouthwatering recipes for such meats, sauces, and side dishes as Oklahoma Joe's Brew-B-Q Ribs, Moonlight Mutton Dip, and Lady Causey's Overnight Cabbage Slaw, SMOKESTACK LIGHTNING is a unique culinary chronicle that'll make your stomach rumble.

Entertaining with Bluegrass Winners Cookbook: New Recipes and Menus from Kentucky's Legendary Horse Farms

Kentucky hospitality is showcased in this updated edition of the beloved cookbook that has had 20 printings and sales of more than 100,000 copies. From a formal winter dinner to a post Kentucky Derby brunch, Bluegrass hostesses share their recipes and family traditions for every season and occasion. Includes farm histories written by racing historian Edward L. Bowen and more than 100 color photos.

The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 7: Foodways (New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture)

This 7th volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture marks the first encyclopedia on the food cultures of the South. Articles explore not only what southerners eat but also why they eat it. The volume contains 149 articles, almost all of them new to this edition of the Encyclopedia. Longer essays address the historical development of southern cuisine and ethnic contributions to the region's foodways. Topical essays explore iconic southern foods such as MoonPies and fried catfish, prominent restaurants and personalities, and the food cultures of subregions and individual cities.

The Cowgirl's Cookbook: Recipes for Your Home on the Range

West Coast Seafood: The Complete Cookbook

Picture yourself standing before the fish monger's display case with the day's catch all nicely laid out on gleaming shaved ice, the price tags and labels in place, the fishmonger's retail smile intact. He's waiting, patiently, for you to make up your mind. Trouble is, you're shopping for a specific fish, and it's not for sale. So what do you do, fall back on old tried-and-true recipes for the seafood you recognize in the case? You can hear your family yawning, can't you?

Fear not, lover of seafood. Jay Harlow has written West Coast Seafood: The Complete Cookbook. Tuck this sucker under your arm next time you head out the door and you will never again suffer seafood angst. Nor will you have to stand in front of the fish counter thumbing through a book like a damned fool. Harlow, you see, has organized West Coast Seafood by type of seafood, not according to where in a meal the dish will be served.

And if that doesn't tell you that this guy knows what he's doing, then just dig in. Complete Cookbook falls short of the mark; Final Word comes closer. Because everything is here: all the information you need to select the best-quality seafood; instructions to clean and prep the seafood you bring home; and then a wide flavor range and cooking-style range to keep new and exciting dishes coming to the dinner table.

The finned fish of fresh and salt water, both wild and farmed, are all here. Can't stand the idea of another grilled salmon steak? Try Kurt's Salmon with Oyster Stuffing. And if there are any leftovers, go straight to Salmon Cakes. How does Grilled Halibut with Roasted Garlic Marinade sound? Or Halibut Cooked with Poblano Chiles and Cream? Yes, there are Dungeness Crab Cakes in West Coast Seafood, but you will also find Stir-Fried Crab with Chiles and Ginger.

There are no desserts. But Harlow does end his book with a selection of appropriate sauces as well as two essays on the future of fishing, and the place of aquaculture. Like the entire book, well worth reading. --Schuyler Ingle

This is the new definitive seafood cookbook from writer and chef Jay Harlow. West Coast Seafood addresses the finfish and shellfish, ocean and fresh water catch available fresh from California to Alaska, with over 250 recipes, both basic and lavish.

This important new cookbook introduces the up-to-the-minute selection of fresh fish and shellfish available on the West Coast and furnishes 250 wonderful recipes that bring out the most in albacore, spot prawns, black cod, salmon, rainbow trout, petrale sole, skate, oysters, and more. It includes color photographs.

Cocina tradicional mexicana

Olive in California: History of an Immigrant Tree