Cooking the Gullah Way, Morning, Noon, and Night - Softcover

Robinson, Sallie Ann

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807858439 ISBN 13: 9780807858431

Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007

Synopsis

Sallie Ann Robinson was born and reared on Daufuskie Island, one of the South Carolina Sea Islands well known for their Gullah culture. Although technology and development were slow in coming to Daufuskie, the island is now changing rapidly. With this book, Robinson highlights some of her favorite memories and delicious recipes from life on Daufuskie, where the islanders traditionally ate what they grew in the soil, caught in the river, and hunted in the woods.

The unique food traditions of Gullah culture contain a blend of African, European, and Native American influences. Reflecting the rhythm of a day in the kitchen, from breakfast to dinner (and anywhere in between), this cookbook collects seventy-five recipes for easy-to-prepare, robustly flavored dishes. Robinson also includes twenty-five folk remedies, demonstrating how in the Gullah culture, in the not-so-distant past, food and medicine were closely linked and the sea and the land provided what islanders needed to survive. In her spirited introduction and chapter openings, Robinson describes how cooking the Gullah way has enriched her life, from her childhood on the island to her adulthood on the nearby mainland.

About this title

About the Author

Sallie Ann Robinson is author of Gullah Home Cooking the Daufuskie Way. She now makes her home in Savannah, Georgia.

Reviews

Gullah are the hardscrabble South Carolina Low Country descendants of plantation slaves, and their meals reveal African, Jamaican and Caribbean influences. Robinson was raised on Daufuskie Island, an isolated Gullah bastion near Hilton Head. She combines a memoir of growing up with her nine siblings and down-to-earth recipes to cover each meal of the day. Most of her remembrances involve chores and the fertile life of the island, though she also includes a fine chapter on Folk Beliefs and Home Remedies, where we learn that ear cleaning should be done with a hen's feather (never a rooster's) and that a handful of spider web makes for an excellent bandage. As for the recipes, each could be filed under one or more of the three S's: simple, soul food or seafood. For breakfast, there is Country Fried Fish with Grits. Lunchtime sandwiches include Fried Soft-Shell Crab, which could be paired with 'Fuskie Seafood Gumbo with a stock made from fatback bacon and pig tail. Dinner entrees come stuffed, like Flounder Full of Crabmeat, which can be grilled or steamed. All the dishes can be washed down with one of her seven homemade wines, which generally involve adding five pounds of sugar to five pounds of fruit (like persimmons or peaches) and a gallon of water. (Oct.)
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Edition details

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0807858439
• ISBN 13: 9780807858431
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176