The Taste of Country Cooking The 30th Anniversary Edition by Edna Lewis

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In this classic Southern cookbook, the “first lady of Southern cooking” (NPR) shares the seasonal recipes from a childhood spent in a small farming community settled by freed slaves. She shows us how to recreate these timeless dishes in our own kitchens—using natural ingredients, embracing the seasons, and cultivating community. With a preface by Judith Jones and foreword by Alice Waters.

With menus for the four seasons, Miss Lewis (as she was almost universally known) shares the ways her family prepared and enjoyed food, savoring the delights of each special time of year.

From the fresh taste of spring—the first wild mushrooms and field greens—to the feasts of summer—garden-ripe vegetables and fresh blackberry cobbler—and from the harvest of fall—baked country ham and roasted newly dug sweet potatoes—to the hearty fare of winter—stews, soups, and baked beans—Lewis sets down these marvelous dishes in loving detail.

Here are recipes for Corn Pone and Crispy Biscuits, Sweet Potato Casserole and Hot Buttered Beets, Pan-Braised Spareribs, Chicken with Dumplings, Rhubarb Pie, and Brandied Peaches. Dishes are organized into more than 30 seasonal menus, such as A Late Spring Lunch After Wild-Mushroom Picking, A Midsummer Sunday Breakfast, A Christmas Eve Supper, and an Emancipation Day Dinner.

In this seminal work, Edna Lewis shows us precisely how to recover, in our own country or city or suburban kitchens, the taste of the fresh, good, and distinctly American cooking that she grew up with.

Hard cover.
About the author:
Edna Lewis was recently honored with the issuance of a postal stamp by the U.S. Post Office. She is renowned as one of the greatest American chefs and as an African-American woman who almost single-handedly revived a forgotten world of refined Southern cooking.
Lewis won many industry awards and was often referred to as “the
Grande Dame of Southern Cooking” and the “south's answer to Julia Child.”
Lewis (1916-2006) also had a remarkable life story. She was born and grew up in rural Virginia in an area called Freetown. She learned to cook from an extended family that included grandparents who had been enslaved.
The Edna Lewis Cookbook, Lewis's first book, published in 1972, contains over 100 recipes, arranged in menu form and organized according to the season of the year: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Christmas. With its focus mostly, although not exclusively, on Southern food, it began the revival of true Southern cooking.
Lewis went on to publish three more books:
The Taste of Country Cooking (1976), In Pursuit of Flavor (1988), and The Gift of Southern Cooking ,co-authored with Scott Peacock (2003).
Her menus and recipes were featured in a variety of publications, including the
New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, Gourmet, Food & Wine, Cook's, House & Garden, and Redbook, among others.