For generations, North Carolinians have prepared and savored time-honored recipes that are as much a part of their tradition as boatbuilding and netmaking. Here thirty-four Tar Heel cooks offer recipes that can't be found in popular cookbooks or on restau

For generations, coastal North Carolinians have prepared and savored time-honored recipes that are as much a part of their tradition as boatbuilding and netmaking. Home-cooked meals using the great variety of seasonal foods remain central to family life. In this collection Nancy Davis and Kathy Hart have preserved an important part of the heritage of this region. Here thirty-four Tar Heel cooks offer recipes that can't be found in popular cookbooks or on restaurant menus. In Edenton, Frances Drane Inglis shares her recipe for plum pudding from the pages of a nineteenth-century family cookbook. And from Gloucester, Bill Pigott offers one of his specialties, conch chowder, a Carteret County classic. But these cooks describe more than just good food; they recount the heritage of the coast through stories, anecdotes, helpful tips, and historical facts. Vignettes on each cook lend a historical perspective to this book and the old-time recipes will be treasured for years to come.

At oyster roasts and fancy cotillions, in fish camps and cutting-edge restaurants, the people of South Carolina gather to enjoy one of America's most distinctive cuisines--the delicious, inventive fare of the Lowcountry. In his classic Hoppin' John's Lowcountry Cooking, John Martin Taylor brings us 250 authentic and updated recipes for regional favorites, including shrimp and grits, she-crab soup, pickled watermelon rinds, and Frogmore stew. Taylor, who grew up casting shrimp nets in Lowcountry marshes, adds his personal experiences in bringing these dishes to the table and leads readers on a veritable treasure hunt throughout the region, giving us a delightful taste of an extraordinary way of life.

Ricky Moore was born and reared in the North Carolina coastal town of New Bern, where catching and eating fresh fish and shellfish is what people do. Today, Moore is one of the most widely admired chefs to come out of the region. In this cookbook, he tells the story of how he started his wildly popular Saltbox Seafood Joint® restaurants and food truck in Durham, North Carolina. Moore, a formally trained chef, was led by a culinary epiphany in the famous wet markets of Singapore to start a restaurant focused purely on the food inspired by the Carolina coast and its traditional roadside fish shacks and camps. Saltbox Seafood Joint's success is a testament to Moore's devotion to selecting the freshest seasonal ingredients every day and preparing them perfectly. In sixty recipes that celebrate his coastal culinary heritage, Moore instructs cooks how to prepare Saltbox Seafood Joint dishes. This cookbook, written with K. C. Hysmith, explains how to pan-fry and deep-fry, grill and smoke, and cook up soups, chowders, stews, and grits and seafood. Moore has taken pity on us and even included the recipe for his famous Hush-Honeys®, an especially addictive hushpuppy. Charts and illustrations in the book explain the featured types, availability, and cuts of fish and shellfish used in the recipes.

For a comforting family meal or a festive celebration; for a romantic supper for two or for a grand banquet for forty-two; for a quick feast or an worldly experience; let the recipes in this cookbook help you answer the question "What's for dinner?" There are recipes for every occasion; some easy to prepare, some gentle on your wallet, others simply delicious. Many let you entertain guests while cooking. And you can depend on the recipes in this book to be the best you can find anywhere, because these are much-requested favorites from around the world. The heritage is vast and unique, and the food is absolutely fabulous!

If there's one thing we learned coming up on Daufuskie," remembers Sallie Ann Robinson, "it's the importance of good, home-cooked food." In this enchanting book, Robinson presents the delicious, robust dishes of her native Sea Islands and offers readers a taste of the unique, West African-influenced Gullah culture still found there. Living on a South Carolina island accessible only by boat, Daufuskie folk have traditionally relied on the bounty of fresh ingredients found on the land and in the waters that surround them. The one hundred home-style dishes presented here include salads and side dishes, seafood, meat and game, rice, quick meals, breads, and desserts. Gregory Wrenn Smith's photographs evoke the sights and tastes of Daufuskie. "Here are my family's recipes," writes Robinson, weaving warm memories of the people who made and loved these dishes and clear instructions for preparing them. She invites readers to share in the joys of Gullah home cooking the Daufuskie way, to make her family's recipes their own.

More than 100 heirloom recipes from a dynamic chef and farmer working the lands of his great-great-great grandfather. From Hot Buttermilk Biscuits and Sweet Potato Pie to Salmon Cakes on Pepper Rice and Gullah Fish Stew, Gullah Geechee food is an essential cuisine of American history. It is the culinary representation of the ocean, rivers, and rich fertile loam in and around the coastal South. From the Carolinas to Georgia and Florida, this is where descendants of enslaved Africans came together to make extraordinary food, speaking the African Creole language called Gullah Geechee. In this groundbreaking and beautiful cookbook, Matthew Raiford pays homage to this cuisine that nurtured his family for seven generations. In 2010, Raiford’s Nana handed over the deed to the family farm to him and his sister, and Raiford rose to the occasion, nurturing the farm that his great-great-great grandfather, a freed slave, purchased in 1874. In this collection of heritage and updated recipes, he traces a history of community and family brought together by food.

Vivian Howard, star of PBS's A Chef's Life, celebrates the flavors of North Carolina's coastal plain in more than 200 recipes and stories. This new classic of American country cooking proves that the food of Deep Run, North Carolina -- Vivian's home -- is as rich as any culinary tradition in the world. Organized by ingredient with dishes suited to every skill level, from beginners to confident cooks, Deep Run Roots features time-honored simple preparations alongside extraordinary meals from her acclaimed restaurant Chef and the Farmer. Home cooks will find photographs for every single recipe. Ten years ago, Vivian opened Chef and the Farmer and put the nearby town of Kinston on the culinary map. But in a town paralyzed by recession, she couldn't hop on every new culinary trend. Instead, she focused on rural development: If you grew it, she'd buy it. Inundated by local sweet potatoes, blueberries, shrimp, pork, and beans, Vivian learned to cook the way generations of Southerners before her had, relying on resourcefulness, creativity, and the traditional ways of preserving food. Deep Run Roots is the result of years of effort to discover the riches of Eastern North Carolina. Like The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, The Art of Simple Food, and The Taste of Country Cooking before it, this is landmark work of American food writing. Recipes include: Family favorites like Blueberry BBQ Chicken Creamed Collard-Stuffed Potatoes Fried Yams with Five-Spice Maple Bacon Candy Chicken and Rice Country-Style Pork Ribs in Red Curry-Braised Watermelon Show-stopping desserts like Warm Banana Pudding, Peaches and Cream Cake, Spreadable Cheesecake, and Pecan-Chewy Pie. You'll also find 200 more quick breakfasts, weeknight dinners, holiday centerpieces, seasonal preserves, and traditional preparations for all kinds of cooks.

The first major Gullah Geechee cookbook from “the matriarch of Edisto Island,” who provides delicious recipes and the history of an overlooked American community The history of the Gullah and Geechee people stretches back centuries, when enslaved members of this community were historically isolated from the rest of the South because of their location on the Sea Islands of coastal South Carolina and Georgia. Today, this Lowcountry community represents the most direct living link to the traditional culture, language, and foodways of their West African ancestors. Gullah Geechee Home Cooking, written by Emily Meggett, the matriarch of Edisto Island, is the preeminent Gullah cookbook. At 89 years old, and with more than 50 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, Meggett is a respected elder in the Gullah community of South Carolina. She has lived on the island all her life, and even at her age, still cooks for hundreds of people out of her hallowed home kitchen. Her house is a place of pilgrimage for anyone with an interest in Gullah Geechee food. Meggett’s Gullah food is rich and flavorful, though it is also often lighter and more seasonal than other types of Southern cooking. Heirloom rice, fresh-caught seafood, local game, and vegetables are key to her recipes for regional delicacies like fried oysters, collard greens, and stone-ground grits. This cookbook includes not only delicious and accessible recipes, but also snippets of the Meggett family history on Edisto Island, which stretches back into the 19th century. Rich in both flavor and history, Meggett’s Gullah Geechee Home Cooking is a testament to the syncretism of West African and American cultures that makes her home of Edisto Island so unique.

Elegant and inspired European cuisine with a decidedly Southern twist. “Bonjour, Y’All,” the slogan for Heidi Vukov’ Croissants Bistro and Bakery in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, perfectly encapsulates the popular restaurant’s elegant and delicious pairing of two distinct culinary traditions—European cuisine and Southern home cooking. This book celebrates Croissants’ diversity, featuring dozens of menu delights such as Crab Cakes, Angry Bulls Bay Clams, and Peach Pork Tenderloin, recipes that successfully combine the elegance and finesse of the French palate with the hospitality and warmth of the Southern kitchen. Also included among the more than fifty recipes are Germanand Italian-inspired dishes, summer cocktails, and sumptuous confections such as Black Forest Torte from Croissants’ award-winning European bakery. “Heidi Vukov moved from Pennsylvania to South Carolina in the early 1990s, and shortly thereafter opened Croissants Bistro and Bakery in Myrtle Beach. Since then, she’s been named South Carolina Restaurateur of the Year and Croissants has become a destination restaurant on the South Carolina coast. Heidi lives in Myrtle Beach with her husband, Gary, and has four children scattered across the United States in Utah, Tennessee, Washington, D.C., and California. “Sara Sobota has been a freelance writer in the Myrtle Beach area for twenty years. Her travel and lifestyle writing has appeared in such magazines as US Airways and Agent@Home, and she also blogs for the Huffington Post. She teaches composition, journalism, and business communication at Coastal Carolina University.