Panhandle to Pan explores the evolution of Florida Panhandle cuisine as well as the regional traditions and trends that make the region a culinary hotspot. Included are 150 innovative recipes.

Gourmand International World Cookbook Awards, Selected to Represent the USA in the Local Category Florida Book Awards, Gold Medal for Cooking Award-winning chef and restaurateur Norman Van Aken invites you to discover the richness of Florida's culinary landscape. This long-awaited cookbook embraces the history, the character, and the flavors of the state that has inspired Van Aken's famous fusion style for over forty years. Drawing from Florida's vibrant array of immigrant cultures, and incorporating local ingredients, the dishes in this book display the exciting diversity of Van Aken's "New World Cuisine." Recipes include Key lime beignets; cornbread-stuffed quail with strawberry-ancho-guava jam and sweet and sour parsnips; "Spanglish" tortillas with hash browns, creamed spinach, and serrano ham; pork stew with raisins, tamarind, plantains, and chiles; and fully loaded cracked conch po' boys. While preparing these dishes, readers will enjoy advice and stories straight from the kitchen of a master chef. Van Aken infuses his recipes with tips, techniques, and personality. He reveals the key to a good gumbo, praises the acidity of a pickled peppadew, connects food innovation to jazz and blues music, describes hitchhiking adventures across the state with his wife, Janet, and tells the tale behind the Mustachioed Swimmer, a cocktail named for Tennessee Williams. Norman Van Aken's Florida Kitchen is a delicious read--the definitive guide to the historic past and multicultural future of Florida's abundant foodways. With its forward-thinking blend of old and new, thoughtful step-by-step instructions for wonderful meals, and plenty of friendly conversation, this book is a rare immersion in a culinary artist's world.

Seafood Lover's Florida covers the culture of seafood in the Sunshine State and features the history of the cuisine, recipes both original and contributed by restaurants, and where to find, and most importantly consume, the best of the best local offerings. The book also showcases photos of recipes, techniques, and equipment as well as shots of the interiors and exteriors of the restaurants help make the book an essential reference tool.

"A collection of Florida seasonal recipes and reflections"--

More than 200 recipes and 45 full-color photographs celebrate 25 years of good eatin’ in this original regional Southern cooking classic. A quarter-century ago, while many were busy embracing the sophisticated techniques and wholesome ingredients of the nouvelle cuisine, one Southern loyalist lovingly gathered more than 200 recipes—collected from West Virginia to Key West—showcasing the time-honored cooking and hospitality traditions of the white trash way. Ernie Mickler’s much-imitated sugarsnap-pea prose style accompanies delicacies like Tutti’s Fancy Fruited Porkettes, Mock-Cooter Stew, and Oven-Baked Possum; stalwart sides like Bette’s Sister-in-Law’s Deep-Fried Eggplant and Cracklin’ Corn Pone; waste-not leftover fare like Four-Can Deep Tuna Pie and Day-Old Fried Catfish; and desserts with a heavy dash of Dixie, like Irma Lee Stratton’s Don’t-Miss Chocolate Dump Cake and Charlotte’s Mother’s Apple Charlotte.

The new star of the culinary galaxy is South Florida, declares The New York Times. And no wonder. Out of America's tropical melting pot comes an inventive cuisine bursting with flavor--and now Steven Raichlen, an award-winning food writer, shares the best of it in Miami Spice. With 200 recipes and firsthand reports from around the state, Miami Spice captures the irresistible convergence of Latin, Caribbean, and Cuban influences with Florida's cornucopia of stone crabs, snapper, plantains, star fruit, and other exotic native ingredients (most of which can be found today in supermarkets around the country). Main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club's HomeStyle Books. Winner of a 1993 IACP/Julia Child Cookbook Award.

This Florida Book Awards Gold Medal-winner in the Cooking category celebrates the Sunshine State’s culinary heritage—from turtle soup to boiled peanuts. Though starting in one-story shacks in the piney woods of the Panhandle, Cracker cooking in Florida has evolved with our tastes and times and is now just as home in high-rise apartments along the glistening waterways. When supplies were limited and the workday arduous, black coffee with leftover cornbread might serve as breakfast. Today’s bounty and life’s relative ease bring mornings with lattes and biscotti, biscuits and sausage gravy. What’s on the plate has changed, but our heritage infuses who we are. As we follow the path laid out by gastronomic pioneers, this culinary quest, guided by sixth-generation Cracker Joy Sheffield Harris, will whet your appetite with recipes and sumptuous reflections. Pull up a chair and dig in.

Once exotic, Cuban cuisine has now entered the mainstream. Similar to Spanish cooking but with distinctive spice blends created by the Cuban people, authentic Cuban cooking is fresh, aromatic, and delicious. Cuban Home Cooking will inspire you to stock your kitchen with cumin, oregano, saffron, and peppers, put on your apron, and fire up your stove! You'll learn how to make a variety of appetizers and sides; delicious entrees featuring chicken, beef, pork, and seafood; delectable sweets; and even the perfect Cuban sandwich. This revised edition includes additional recipes. Most ingredients can be found in your local supermarket, and a useful glossary provides ideas for substitutions if you don't have some of the ingredients on hand. Jane Cossio and Joyce LaFray, both experts in Cuban cuisine, have decades of experience cooking Cuban dishes in their own kitchens. Their simple and easy-to-follow recipes include caldo gallego (a luscious soup with chorizo and greens), pltanos dulces fritos (fried sweet plantains), ropa vieja (shredded beef), flan (Cuba's most popular dessert), and of course, real caf Cubano--the finishing touch to any home-cooked Cuban meal.

Surrounded by water on three sides with an inland maze of lakes, rivers, streams, and springs, Florida has a fishing culture unlike any other state and with it comes an abundance of delectable recipes. Following their awardwinning Field to Feast, Pam Brandon, Katie Farmand, and Heather McPherson traversed the state to savor the largess of the state's countless waterways and bring these distinctly Floridian recipes from the sea to your table. Along the way, the authors befriended the fishermen, the frog giggers, and the shrimpers whose pride in their hard work is near tangible and whose immutable joy comes from spending time so close to nature. Their stories, evoking a way of life that has endured for generations, will transform you--if you have not been already--into a champion of local fishermen. From amberjack to snook, from roasted Apalachicola oysters to steamed spiny lobster from the Florida Keys--plus, all the accompanying starters, salads, and sides--Good Catch brings Sunshine State flavor into your kitchen.