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For home cooks with a passion for southern food, award-winning author Michael W. Twitty has done all the heavy lifting with his new cookbook, “Recipes from the American South.” The culinary journalist gathered over 260 delicious recipes from the South celebrating the history and cultures that have influenced this iconic cuisine.
“The big takeaway is diversity and inclusion,” states Twitty about what he hopes readers will find in his new cookbook, which acknowledges the influence of European, Indigenous, African and immigrant communities on southern food.
The Heritage of Recipes From the South
“I think there’s some people that say, ‘[southern food] it’s all us.’ And that’s not true. I know some of the best parts of it are us, but it’s not all us,” observes the culinary historian.
“That’s what food reflects. You see a lot of remnants of indigenous cooking. We brought something from our homes in Africa…the cultures in the South developed as sort of a call and response to dialogue with each other. And because of that dialogue, we have what’s in front of us. Southern cuisine is very much a product of place, people, time, ingenuity and imagination.”
To that extent, Twitty’s cookbook contains recipes packed with heritage-rich foods, along with their history, all framed by the author’s culinary insights and personal anecdotes. The result is a comprehensive guide for home cooks that’s as enjoyable to read as it is to use. “I wanted something that could be on the coffee table, on the kitchen table or right by the stove,” says Twitty.
Gathering the Recipes
The two-time James Beard Award-winning author of “The Cooking Gene,” as well as “Rice” and “Koshersoul” approached putting together his latest cookbook with the same attention to detail and research as he did with his previous projects.
“I needed to make sure this is not just a ‘salt and pepper Southern cookbook,’” states Twitty, who shares that it took him about four years to do the research and gather these specific recipes from the South.
“These recipes are composites,” he notes about the southern food cookbook. “They’re also not all adaptations. So for example, Cheryl Day, a prominent African American baker, I adapted some [of her recipes]. I’m not a baker, but I wanted it to be really good and accurate. So I asked her for two or three recipes to adapt, and I mentioned her name in the text.”
RECIPE: Collard Green Empanadas
Twitty’s research for the project was extensive. “I basically had to look at the array of recipes available to me. I have over three to 4,000 books and have about 1,200 cookbooks. For this book, I went through a least 400 cookbooks [for the research],” he shares.
“It was me sitting in this big, long dining room table with all the cookbooks spread out, trying to figure out what techniques do I favor? What things make these recipes unique?”
Twitty says that he selected particular recipes from the South with the hope that readers will come to understand that cookbooks like this are created to be a cultural time capsule.
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Southern Food Favorites Are Served
The cookbook’s recipes are divided into eight easy-to-navigate sections. Among them are Breads, Biscuits & Breakfasts (these are the southern food comfort staples like buttermilk biscuits, Sspoonbread and grits); Vegetables and Soups, Stews & Casseroles (spotlighting the greens grown in the garden and the creativity stirred into every pot like black-eyed peas, tomato pie, maque choux); Mains (encompasses the pride-of-place dishes like southern fried chicken, Texas brisket, oxtails); Desserts (the signature sweets that delight us like coconut cake, Mississippi mud cake, chess pie). Fish & Shellfish, Sauces, Seasonings & Pickles and, Beverages round out the deliciousness found in this cookbook.
Dedicated to being enjoyed and used by the home cook, “Recipes from The American South” is Twitty’s homage to the individuals he calls our “tradition bearers.” “My dearest love and respect is for the home cook…I grew up in a community outside of DC, where we did have a lot of ethnic diversity. So I got to see the ‘bubbies,’ the ‘pawpaws,’ the ‘abuelas’ as the people who encapsulated the traditional food in their families,” says Twitty, who now makes his home in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
RECIPE: Fried Green Tomatoes
When asked about what he feels is the essence of recipes from the South, Twitty puts it this way, “It’s the dishes that send you home back to God and welcomes you into the world that celebrates love and intimacy. It’s the food that childhood nostalgia is built on. It’s a connection between the generations.”
He continues, “It doesn’t matter what culture. It’s the pleasure in the southern grandmother’s face, whether she’s Chinese or Latino from North Carolina or Creole Black or Gullah Geechee or Appalachian. When she sees her grandchild enjoy the foods that she’s [made] and she knows that food will go to the next generation and generation after that—that is a particular pleasure other people can relate to.”
The author believes this connection between food and generations runs especially deep in the South. “We care as much about flavor as any Mediterranean culture…We believe in patience as ingredients in our cooking, and most of all we believe in love. And I don’t say that in a ‘hallmark’ [overly sentimental] kind way,” he clarifies. “We really do believe in that emotional quotient as being essential to being a good cook. You have to feel.”
