The Southern Cook's Handbook: A Step-By-Step Guide to Old-Fashioned Southern Cooking

Think of Southern foods and immediately images arise of crispy fried chicken, garden vegetables stewed with savory pork, crusty cornbread served hot from the skillet with sweet butter, piles of steaming golden biscuits, and scrumptious desserts such as three-layer caramel cake, blackberry cobbler, homemade peach ice cream.Comforting dishes such as these are why Southern food is one of the best preserved and most cherished culinary traditions in this country. Years ago these traditions were passed down from mother to daughter, cook to cook, in the hands-on, handed-down learning environment of the family farm kitchen. But in today's new South, where pastures are covered with suburbs more than cattle and once agrarian families are dispersed, time spent in the kitchen is hurried; and hands-on cooking lessons are now paid courses rather than shared labors of love between friends or family.Southern cousins, Courtney Taylor and Bonnie Carter Travis, both experienced cooks and writers, are passionate about preserving the Southern culinary tradition. In their new book, The Southern Cook's Handbook, they take an in-depth look at the ingredients and methods of Southern cooking and offer step-by-step basic guidelines for making delicious, authentic Southern dishes. They reveal old tricks no one ever told you, and answer questions you never thought to ask. Travis and Taylor get into the kitchen with you, telling you how ingredients should look, feel and smell, and explaining all of the fundamentals and methods of the Southern culinary experience. Cooks cannot go wrong with the extensive reference section; it includes a variety of cooking guides, from barbecuing to blanching; a glossary ofcooking terms, plus measurements, tips, techniques and solutions to cooking questions. They also provide more than 200 of the South's most traditional and popular recipes, such as mint juleps, gumbo, cheese grits, field peas and other vegetables, fried okra, pecan pie, fig preserves and a host of other uniquely Southern delights.Believing that proper, patient instruction and practice are the keys to becoming a great Southern cook, the authors have included information that's fool-proof, fail-safe and fun to use. The Southern Cook's Handbook is a how-to manual, a primer for the new cook, as well as a refresher course for the old hand -- it is an essential reference to any Southern cook's kitchen.

Courtney Taylor

Courtney Taylor was born and raised in Natchez, Mississippi, where she learned to cook as a child at her great grandmother's side. This marked the beginning of her lifelong fascination with food.

In her cooking career, Taylor has created food gift items for the Lee Bailey shops in Saks Fifth Avenue, developed the recipes for Lee Bailey's Southern Food and Plantation Houses (Clarkson Potter, 1989), wrote How to Eat Like a Southerner and Live to Tell the Tale (Clarkson Potter, 1990). For the past seven years she has been the food feature writer and food columnist for the Jackson (MS) Clarion Ledger. In 1997 she received an award for her newspaper column from the National Association of Food Journalists. Taylor now lives in Madison, Mississippi, with her husband and two children.

Bonnie Carter Travis

Bonnie Carter Travis grew up on a cattle farm outside Natchez, Mississippi, where she spent long hours in the kitchen with her mother and the family's two hired cooks, a brother and sister who were not only master cooks but also expert story-tellers. So, from the beginning, Travis associated the kitchen with good times and good conversation.

She received her B.A. and M.A. in English from the University of Mississippi and a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Southern Mississippi, where she later served as an English professor and Director of the linguistics program. Travis is the author of Southern Cooking: Methods and Memorable Recipes (Prentice-Hall, 1981), as well as five English textbooks. She was also instructor of writing for oceanographers at NASA, director of various writing workshops, contributor to humorous publications, and editor for scholarly articles and books. Travis lives in Madison, Mississippi, with her husband.