SEASONAL READS

Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking by Nathalie Dupree

By Kathleen Nalley | November 01, 2014

Ever wondered how your grandmother kept her okra from getting slimy? Or how she made those perfectly fluffy biscuits? With chef, cookbook author and television personality Nathalie Dupree’s 720-page Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking, you can create the foods you love from childhood.

Filled with helpful tips (including how to use leftover vanilla beans, make homemade stocks and cornstarch slurries, and use fatback as flavoring), anecdotes, and variation ideas for many recipes, readers enjoy a “one-stop shop” for Southern cooking.

Dupree offers a cornucopia of traditional Southern recipes, including favorites such as a “Mess of Greens and Pot Likker,” to poke sallet with green onions and bacon, to lacey hoecakes, to date and soda cracker pie; then the author detours into more elevated Southern takes on classics, like grilled duck with muscadine sauce, chiffonade of turnip, kale, and baby beet greens, and candied lemon slices.

With an introduction by South Carolina novelist Pat Conroy, this voluminous tome is the quintessential Southern cooking handbook.

Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking
by Nathalie Dupree & Cynthia Graubart (Gibbs Smith, 2012)

Genre: Cookbook

Perfect for: The cook who wants to master Southern cuisine