Georgia Magazine - December 2017 - 39

Southern vegetable cooking

KIM SUNÉE
G HEE LEE, © 2017 BY PHOTO BY LEELA CYD.
S.
BY KIM SUNÉE AND SEUN
"EVERYDAY KOREAN" USED BY PERMISSION OF COUNTRYMAN PRES
LEE.
HEE
G
SEUN
AND

The variety of Southern produce
attests to its importance on regional

"Everyday Korean" shines a light on how
Korean cuisine keeps its identity while
embracing American fare.
December 2017

And Abby Jackson's self-published with Nancy Suttles "Farmstyle
Living Cookbook" (2015; $25) is rich
with vegetable dishes that complement traditional Southern foods.
Grilled corn and black bean salad,
for instance, makes a delicious companion to barbecue. It also could be
made with black-eyed peas, embellished and bent to a variety of uses.
Damaris Phillips' "Southern Girl
Meets Vegetarian Boy" (Abrams, 2017;
$30) arose from the Kentucky omnivore's romance with her now-husband, a vegetarian. Here, vegetablefocused recipes and faux-meat dishes
share space with classics such as My
Old Kentucky Home Fried Chicken.
Collaborator with Nathalie Dupree on several books (see page 40A
online), Cynthia Graubart offers a
book highlighting one of the South's
most revered customs: Sunday supper. Her "Sunday Suppers" (Oxmoor
House, 2017; $28) honors that tradition, from simple, spontaneous suppers to complex, preplanned feasts
for large gatherings.
To slim down Southern fare, Augusta-born Virginia Willis has some
good ideas in her "Lighten Up, Y'all"
(Ten Speed, 2015; $25). Nutritional
information accompanies each dish,
and baking and roasting take precedence over traditional frying, but
flavor is not compromised. Even the
classic biscuit is somewhat modified
to be healthier.
Southern
libations
are also rich in classics.
Southern Foodways Alliance Editor Sara Camp
Milam and Atlanta champion mixologist Jerry Slater produced "The Southern
Foodways Alliance Guide
to Cocktails" (University of
Georgia Press, 2017; $30).
The pair draws recipes for
specialty cocktails from a
variety of regional sources,
and the capstone is a chapter of cocktail bites recipes from Vishwesh Bhatt's
Snackbar in Oxford, Miss.,
Abby Jackson's "Farmstyle Living" cookbook lends
where the alliance is headsophistication to rustic Southern cooking.
quartered.

tables. Steven Satterfield, this year's
James Beard Foundation's Best Chef:
Southeast and co-owner at Miller
Union, published a thick tome on the
subject, "Root to Leaf" (HarperCollins,
2015; $45).
This is not a vegetarian cookbook, although many dishes can be
made that way. The classic "Gumbo
Z'Herbes"-"Z'Herbes" is a corruption of the French "aux herbes," or "of
greens"-contains meat but can be
made without it, as was often done
in New Orleans during Lent. Recipes
for fruit dishes appear as well.
With restaurants in Atlanta, Savannah and Athens, Canada-born
Hugh Acheson has taken his adopted
region's cuisine completely to heart.
His "Broad Fork" (Random House,
2015; $35) embraces the plant world
by seasons. The book is a great
introduction to vegetables you've
never heard of and those you may
have ignored. His newest cookbook,
"The Chef and the Slow Cooker,"
was released in October by Clarkson
Potter ($30).
Robyn Stone's "Add a Pinch"
(Clarkson Potter, 2017; $23) isn't exclusively about vegetables, either,
but interesting and classic recipes for
Southern vegetable dishes abound.
Also good are the tips that follow
many of the recipes, especially those
that note which dishes are "freezerfriendly."

"ABBY J'S FARMSTYL
E LIVING COOKBOOK"
REPRINTED WITH PERM
BY ABBY JACKSON AND
ISSION. COVER PHOTO
BY NANCY SUTTLES NANCY SUTTLES, © 2017.
.

Recipes from My Kitchen to Yours"
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017;
$30), offers that roasted chicken he
likes to serve at home, perfumed with
rosemary and garlic, among other
simple dishes.
Atlanta native Kevin Gillespie,
also a "Top Chef" competitor, founded
groundbreaking restaurant Gunshow
and his paean to traditional Southern
home cooking, Revival. His "Fire in
My Belly" (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2012; $40) with David Joachim is
part autobiography, part philosophical statement and part cookbook.
Gillespie's second book, also
with Joachim, is "Pure Pork Awesomeness" (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2015; $30), entirely devoted
to the noble pig. Besides information
and intriguing recipes, great stories
include the night a woman reamed
him out at Woodfire Grill for taking
pork belly off the menu.
In "Red, White and 'Que" by Karen Adler and Judith Fertig (Running
Press, 2017; $25), you'll find recipes
that go beyond the pig to include
grilling and smoking vegetables and
fruits as well as fish and seafood.

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Georgia Magazine - December 2017