Famous Florida Recipes : Centuries of Good Eating in the Sunshine State

This little cookbook is a favorite of many Floridians. For more than ten years, Lowis Carlton traveled Florida, collecting and testing recipes found to be popular with different cultures in all the regions of the state. Iconic recipes include Greek lamb kabobs from Tarpon Springs, fried Catfish from Clewiston, beef barbecue from Florida cow country, Key West paella, and yam praline pie from the Panhandle. Recipes are grouped by region and each section is preceded by a mini history.

Now, over 50 new recipes (221 recipes total) from noted Florida food writer Marisella Veiga, Famous Florida Recipes brings in new cultural and regional material for home cooks throughout the state. With new dishes to make like Vietnamese fish sauce made popular in Central Florida, or Minorcan clam chowder in St. Augustine, readers interested in all of the culture and history that makes up the food profile of Florida will have the opportunity to cook from around the state and learn its history.

Lowis Carlton has written for a variety of national publications and is also the author of the book Florida Seafood Cookery. While serving as food editor for the Miami Herald, Lowis won the Vespa Award, a national newspaper award for food writing. She has served as a judge for the Pillsbury Bake-Off and has traveled extensively in Europe studying food customs. Lowis was gourmet editor for Palm Beah Life magazine for many years, and was also a columnist for the Florida Department of Agriculture, writing about Florida products for 200 newspapers throughout the U.S.

Reviser Marisella Veiga was born in Havana, Cuba, and raised both in Miami, Florida, and St. Paul, Minnesota. Her writing has appeared in numerous national and international literary and commercial publications. Her book We Carry Our Homes with us: A Cuban American Memoir details her family’s early years in exile.

She has received the Evelyn La Pierre Award in Journalism, the Canute M. Brodhurst Prize for short fiction as well as a Pushcart Prize Special Mention in Fiction. She was a syndicated columnist with Hispanic Link News Service. She was a featured home cook at the Florida Folklife Festival in White Springs, Florida.

Along with Cuban home cooking demonstrations, Veiga continues researching and writing about food and foodways—Cuban and now Floridian. Over decades of living and working in Florida, she intentionally set out to learn its history and become familiar with all parts of the state so as to better love it. As a result, Marisella Veiga is at home in rural settlements and urban centers throughout the Old Peninsula.