Southern Cooking – Lemuria Books

Category: Southern Cooking (Page 1 of 2)

By Lelia W. Salisbury. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (January 5)

Sean Brock, award-winning chef at the iconic Charleston, South Carolina, restaurant Husk, seems to find himself at a turning point. Like many Southerners, he is deeply aware of the concept and complexities of place.

As a chef, he has immersed himself in these Southern roots and let seasonal produce and local suppliers guide what ended up on the plate. He sees these food traditions as extending beyond the South, however. He argues that they are also part of a larger national story, and that what we cook and how we source are evolving right alongside our cultural landscape.

If Brock’s previous bestselling cookbook Heritage is a map to his cooking past, his new book, South, finds Brock laying the foundation for new directions in his own life and cooking. Recently relocated to Nashville and in the process of opening two new restaurants–his first solo ventures–Brock lays out his experience with the iconic food of the South and looks ahead.

For Brock, food not only reflects a way of life, but also serves as a balm for life in an ever-changing world. “Food is medicine, after all–it can heal the soul, help mend a broken heart, or calm a busy mind,” Brock writes in the introduction.

The recipes and the chef’s notes on ingredients and techniques reveal a man who takes a meditative approach to cooking, who sinks himself fully into the process and tools and sensory experiences of making delicious and nourishing food.

South is not a book to hurry through, either in the reading or in the cooking. Many of the recipes require lengthy resting or soaking times, so these are not dishes that will be ready quickly after a frenzied day at work. Instead, they are recipes that celebrate fresh, flavorful ingredients and honors the ways, both old and new, that they can be prepared.

The South is not a single, homogeneous region, and accordingly, Brock approaches the recipes in his book as reflections of the many micro-regions within the U.S. His own personal history reflects deep attachments to two very different parts of the South. He was born in the Appalachian region of Virginia, and he spent the formative part of his culinary career in the South Carolina low country.

Accordingly, he includes five recipes for cornbread, arguing that how one cooks cornbread is the result of both location and personal preference (not to mention that the grain itself will vary according to its origin and growing conditions). After explaining the importance of starting with a hot cast-iron skillet, beginning the cooking on the stove-top to create the all-important crust, Brock then lays out recipes for basic cornbread (no sugar for him) and variations of cracklin’ (a staple at Husk), sour, rice, and hot water cornbreads (the latter he calls the “skillet baked cousin” of traditional cornbread.

While fresh produce is at the heart of the book (Brock has a special fondness for ramps, a North American wild onion), he also writes extensively about grains. Heritage grains have played a starring role in Southern and local food movements of the past 20 years, and many of the recipes explore the Southern landscape through the grains of a particular region.

He reveals that a pressure cooker is his preferred away to cook grits at home (“Think of it like using a rice cooker to cook rice,” he writes). Hominy sits alongside preparations for Carolina Gold rice, Appalachian Fry Bread, and Southern food hero John Edgerton’s Beaten Biscuits (a non-leavened biscuit that has long been a staple of the regional holiday or funeral table).

Much has been written about the global South and ways that the cuisines of other countries inform Southern cooking. Brock understands these influences, but lets them manifest in marvelously subtle ways. Rather than bringing in non-regional ingredients, he honors these outside flavors by incorporating local ingredients of the same taste profile. Benne seeds, brought to the U.S. by West Indian slaves in the early 1700s, flavor Brock’s baby back ribs, add a Southern twist to Caesar dressing, and stand in for tahini in his Sea Island Red Pea Spread.

The “Pantry” section of the cookbook features both boiled peanut and hominy miso recipes. Brock explains that German immigrant to Appalachia made sour corn to satisfy their cravings for fermented foods, making them with what was locally plentiful. He incorporate this sour corn into several recipes, including a traditional chowchow, and he suggests it as an accompaniment for Hominy and Pokeweed Griddle Cakes or Fried Green Tomatoes.

South is a marvelous walk through the many souths and the dishes that define them. Brock shares new techniques for old favorites and includes a wide selection of recipes for staple sauces and sides, canned and pickled goods. He connects deeply with the techniques of cooking with and over fire, and he offers detailed explanations for how these types of cooking add flavor and can be done at home (he even includes a recipe for Hickory-Smoked Ice Cream).

At the heart of his cooking is a reverence for what he calls “natural flavors.” Brock’s recipes are designed to let the core ingredients shine, whether it is the potlikker that becomes the star of a sea bass recipe, or the pawpaw and banana pudding recipe that adds a local spin to a beloved southern classic.

Leila Salisbury is the former director of the University Press of Mississippi. She lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

Signed first editions of Sean Brock’s South are available in store at Lemuria and on our website.

Author Q & A with Sean Brock

By Guest Author

On November 10, 2019

In Cooking, Southern Cooking, Southern Culture

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (November 10)

Sean Brock, the James Beard Award-winning author of Heritage follows up his nationally acclaimed debut book with a decidedly enthusiastic probe into the nurturing and connecting qualities of his favorite cuisine with South: Essential Recipes and New Explorations.

With an immutable passion for preserving and restoring heirloom ingredients, Brock offers up 125 recipes in South, with chapters that include everything from “Snacks and Dishes to Share” to “Grains,” “Vegetables and Sides” and even a section titled “Pantry,” complete with recipes and tips for preserving and canning–not to mention two full pages on “How to Make Vinegar.”

Sean Brock

Brock was the founding chef of the award-winning Husk restaurants and is now the chef and owner of Audrey, a distinctly unique dining destination set to open in east Nashville next year.

Brock has been recognized with the James Beard Award for Best Chef Southeast in 2010 and was a finalist for Outstanding Chef in 2013, 2014, and 2015. He has appeared on the TV series Chef’s Table and The Mind of a Chef, for which he was nominated for an Emmy.

Raised in rural Virginia Brock now lives in Nashville.

You made a national name for yourself crafting the heritage cuisine of the award-winning Husk restaurants in Charleston and Greenville, South Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; and Nashville. Tell me about your decision to shift gears and settle in Nashville as you start a new chapter of your life and career.

After my son was born, I had a health scare the last couple of years. I realized that I have to take better care of myself. I was working way too much and I worried way too much. I was operating eight restaurants in five cities. Finally, I had to say “goodbye” to that chapter and start a new path.

Your first book, Heritage, won the James Beard Award for Best American Cookbook and the IACP Julia Child First Book Award, and was called “the blue ribbon chef cookbook of the year” by The New York Times. Were you surprised by its huge success, and would you say that this achievement that helped change your career path?

I can hardly fathom that I ever even got a book deal–and that there would be so much interest in what I was doing with food.

Writing a book is really scary. With my first book, I knew I had one shot to get it out there the way I wanted. There is a gap of about a year between writing a book and getting it published–and a lot can happen in between. Once it’s out there, it’s out there. All I could do was cross my fingers and hope people would get into it. I remember holding it in my hands after it first came out, and seeing others holding it in their hands. That’s when it became real to me.

Winning the James Beard Award was such a stretch that I could have never even imagined it. I remember that day and what a whirlwind of excitement it was.

I think that book came out at a perfect time in America because I began to realize people were really, really interested in Southern food. As a place, it has many cuisines, not just one. It has a strong historical aspect that affects its preset and future.

You have said that you believe Southern cuisine ranks among the best in the world. Please tell me about South, and your motivations for writing it. What message do you want this book to convey?

It’s about how we all can contribute to our own food history. The way I see it, place has its own ingredients and its own cultural influences and natural geography. That’s how cuisine is shaped–restoring the old so we can now have the new. We look to many cultures much older than ours and how they handled their ingredients. It’s important that we can all contribute something to our own culinary history.

You grew up in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, and attended cooking school in Charleston while you were still a teenager. What influenced your early culinary interests at such a young age?

I grew up living with my grandmother for a while. I was around 11 to 14 years old at that time, and those were such formative years. I loved eating at her table and being in her garden. It gave me a different perspective about food, and I just fell in love with it.

I started working in (restaurant) kitchens at age 15. Food Network had just started on TV, and that was where I began to see that side of food preparation as a more serious craft.

Thanks to my grandmother, I learned the power of food to nurture and comfort, and I never wanted to do anything else.

Sean Brock will be at Cathead Distillery on Thursday, November 14, a5 5:00 p.m. in conversation with John Currence to sign and discuss South: Essential Recipes and New Explorations.

Author Q & A with Ken Wells

By Guest Author

On March 10, 2019

In Biography/Memoir, Southern Cooking, Southern Culture

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (March 10).

Louisiana native and journalist Ken Wells fondly recalls what he and his five brothers called “the gumbo life” in rural Bayou Black–a lifestyle lived close to the land and that meant he would not see the inside of a supermarket until he was nearly a teenager.

That phrase–Gumbo Life: Tales from the Roux Bayou–is the title of his culinary memoir which not only details the history of gumbo, but recounts recent stories of its role in today’s culture and kitchens.

Wells left Bayou Black decades ago to travel around the world as a writer for the Wall Street Journal, and he has penned five novels of the Cajun bayous. Today, he lives in Chicago.

In Gumbo Life, you describe gumbo as “more than a delicious dish: it’s an attitude, a way of seeing the world.” What exactly is gumbo, and can you tell us briefly about its diverse history?

In Louisiana, gumbo’s predominant interpretation is a café-au-lait colored soup cooked with a roux–flour browned in butter, oil, or lard–and served over white rice. Typically, ingredients include chicken, sausage, shellfish, okra, and a combination of vegetables known as the Trinity: celery, bell pepper, and onion.

Food historians think gumbo is at least 250 years old, probably older. The first written mention dates to New Orleans in 1764, and shows a dish called “gumbo fillet” or what we now know as file’ gumbo, being cooked by West African slaves. The Africans arrived with word-of-mouth recipes for spicy okra-and-rice stews that are the likely template for the first gumbos. In fact, the Bantu dialect word for okra is “gombeau”–probably how gumbo got its name.

An 1804 account by a French journalist has gumbo being served at a party in the Cajun bayous of southeast Louisiana. That reference fueled the myth of gumbo as a Cajun invention. But the Canjuns have played a critical role in gumbo’s evolution, specifically the roux. The most compelling theory is that the Cajuns, using animal fats that were ubiquitous in colonial cooking–bear lard, in particular–deployed the roux with such skill and gusto that today it is rare to find gumbos cooked without a roux.

You state that when you and your five brothers were “living the gumbo life” in Louisiana in the late 1950s, gumbo was pretty much “a Cajun and Creole secret, a peasant dish.” Tell us about gumbo’s rise in popularity around the world.

When I left the bayous for graduate school in Missouri in 1975, nobody there had a clue what gumbo was. Two things–the breakout of Cajun/Zydeco music to a national and world stage and the post-’70s boom in Louisiana tourism–began to change that. The music fueled an interest in the culture that produced it and, hence, the food that nourished it. Gumbo is…the only truly indigenous regional cuisine in all of America; not just a dish but a style and a way of cooking.

Ken Wells

Gumbo has traveled in part because of what I call the Cajun Obligation. My momma not only taught me to cook gumbo, but taught me that if you cook gumbo, you are required to share the love.

As a journalist, I’ve traveled over much of the world. I’ve cooked gumbo for friends in London; Sydney, Australia; and Cape Town, South Africa. The reviews are always the same: “How can anything be this good? Can you show me how to cook it?” I came to realize I was only the vessel stirring the roux. It’s what I call the Gumbo Effect: the dish itself. Gumbo, if you just stick to the plan with love and attention, transforms itself into food magic.

Gumbo Life is a deeply personal family story about growing up in a rural Louisiana setting where food and family were paramount. Living in points around the world since then (and Chicago now), and looking back, is it almost hard to believe how different life was for you then, compared to now?

I feel blessed. When we moved to our little farm on the banks of Bayou Black in 1957, I felt the place was happily stranded in the previous century. My dad worked for a large sugarcane-farming operation that still kept a mule lot–not entirely trusting all the plowing to tractors. My brothers and I learned to swim in the bayou. We got our water from a cypress cistern. The sugar company owned thousands of acres of marshland, fields, and woodlands that we were free to roam, hunt, trap, and fish. My brothers and I were in the 4-H Club and raised chickens and pigs that we entered in the annual 4-H Club fair–and harvested for the pot.

Food was central. My mom cooked Cajun–not just gumbo but dishes such as sauce piquant and court-bouillon with ingredients like snapping turtle and redfish that we harvested ourselves. We ate well! We grew a huge garden. I don’t think I set foot in a supermarket until I was 12 or 13 years old. That’s because there weren’t any near-by.

You book is also a history of one of Louisiana’s greatest cultural and culinary offerings to the world, along with glimpses of current gumbo tales that emphasize its adaptability–not to mention that you’ve included a glossary of regional and culinary terms, a map of the Gumbo Belt and 10 recipes! What did it mean to you personally to write this “culinary memoir”?

I obviously love my gumbo and I felt a deep exploration of its roots and iterations was a good way to tell the wider story of our singular, food-centric culture. I say “our” even though I have not lived in the Gumbo Belt since 1975, my journalism career having compelled me to living in big cities far away. I think that living away has helped me see my roots in a way that I might not have seen them had I stayed.

I have two grown daughters who, now in their 30s, love Dad’s gumbo as much as I loved my mother’s. But their childhoods could not have been more different than mine. We moved among cosmopolitan cities, lived abroad, traveled widely. They will never lead the gumbo life as I lived it and so in a way my book was written for them–to remind them of their connections to a place where our roots run so deep.

Ken Wells will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, March 13, at 5:00 to sign copies of and discuss Gumbo Life. Lemuria has chosen Gumbo Life as its March 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Nonfiction.

Author Q & A with Sheree Rose Kelley

By Guest Author

On December 23, 2018

In Southern Cooking

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (December 23)

Among the many roles that Nashville’s Sheree Rose Kelley holds, her most cherished is home baking–an art she not only believes in doing, but in sharing.

Her debut cookbook, Breads & Spreads is the first in a series she has planned with The Nautilus Publishing Co. in Oxford to “spread” the word that she feels compelled to share her kitchen skills and talents learned from the “endless line of great cooks and bakers” in her own family.

Not only does the book embrace Kelley’s rural roots of growing up in Giles County, Tennessee (encouraged by the bounty of her father’s large summer garden each year), but it enthusiastically reveals her love of the city (sparked by “sampling new restaurants and shopping for exotic ingredients”).

And when she’s not baking rolls, cakes, or biscuits, she’s fulfilling her duties as CEO of Belle Meade Winery, situated on the estate of Belle Meade Plantation in Nashville, where her husband Alton serves as executive director. At the winery she conducts culinary tours, gives cooking lessons and supervises daily wine tastings and special private events, including weddings, on the property.

When Kelley decided she was ready to take on the task of creating a book to share her family recipes, she turned to new acquaintance Roben Mounger for assistance.
“Sheree’s husband Alton introduced us,” Mounger said. “She was familiar with my blog, Ms. Cook’s Table. One day she called to ask for my help with her cookbook idea. She requested that I hold her accountable for the work to be done. For over a year, I tested and refined recipe directions and edited content.”

Mounger’s own interest in food writing had been spurred by another cookbook more than a decade ago.

“Since reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (a non-fiction work that examines one family’s story of learning to eat only locally-grown food for a year) by Barbara Kingsolver in 2007, I have been committed to documenting family stories and tales of seasonal eating, by way of a blog, newspaper column and area magazines,” Mounger said. “Breads & Spreads is the second cookbook project tied to historic Tennessee landmarks which I helped to supervise.”

Mounger said working on Breads & Spreads was more than merely a job.

“For me, working with Sheree was a dream of an assignment,” she said.

The result is a book filled with heartwarming stories, numerous family pictures and a gallery of fantastic food shots of her recipes for breads, biscuits, rolls, cornbread, appetizers and “specialty foods,” not to mention an entire chapter called ‘Spreads and Gravies’!

“Sheree has an adventure-ready spirit when it comes to learning,” Mounger said. “She has taken cooking classes in . . . France, England, Italy, Ireland, and Spain, and she says, ‘So far so good,’ with a twinkle in her eye for the other countries on her short list.”

Below Kelley discusses Breads & Spreads and her own passion for cooking.

Please tell me about the “long line of good cooks” in your family, and how they inspired you to take an interest in cooking at a very early age.

Sheree Rose Kelley

Not everyone has grandparents live into their 90s. I have been blessed to know and learn from the best. Honestly, I didn’t have a choice–it was a way of life. We grew and ate everything from the farm. It came naturally for me. I didn’t know any other way.

Learning to make cornbread and biscuits was so satisfying; those were the staples of every meal. Even as a child I was looking for new recipes to prepare, knowing I could always go back to my firsthand knowledge.

I watched Mama make Hushpuppies a million times for the many “fish suppers,” as Grandmommie would call them. She never had a recipe and when I added this to my book, I had to develop it–and they are mouthwatering!

The satisfaction in knowing how to prepare something and have it look appealing and taste good was exciting!

Tell me about Belle Meade Winery and your cooking classes there.

I first started in the gift shop branding foods for the Belle Meade line. We began to look for additional revenue streams for the site. Alton, my husband and executive director of Belle Meade Plantation, and I started the Belle Meade Winery in November 2009. After we got the winery on its feet I began developing recipes using our wines. The baking classes started shortly afterward.

The class begins with a guided hospitality tour of the mansion and then to the original working kitchen where I teach biscuit baking and ends in the winery for a wine tasting. It was a natural fit to combine the food and wine. Each guest has an opportunity to purchase the tools I use for the class, as well as any new kitchen items on the market.

Before you went to work at Belle Meade, your success with Pampered Chef was phenomenal! Did this come as a surprise to you at the time? Was it hard to give it up?

My love of selling comes naturally. Even as a little girl I would sell cards and stationary in my Mama’s beauty shop. When the opportunity for my two loves–cooking and selling–came together with Pampered Chef, I was in “hog heaven.” I earned my first trip without knowing I achieved it. I received a call from the home office to tell me I was on track and I just kept doing what I was doing and before I knew it, I was on my way to Disney World with the whole family. I had enthusiasm for the product and it shined through to each of my customers.

I really haven’t given it up–I’m selling and teaching in a different format.

Please tell me about the wonderful cover and unique binding of this book.

On a trip to England, I picked up a cookbook that was very appealing from the cover. As I examined the book, I discovered the Swiss binding (which allows the spine of the book to lay flat). As for my cover, that was the hardest decision I had to make. Would it be formal, casual, my picture on the front–or not, whatever, it had to be appealing and certainly speak to the title of the book.

Breads & Spreads is the first in a series of cookbooks you’ve planned in order to share more of your family secrets in a variety of different foods. Tell me about the series, and why you chose to start with a book on baking.

Making biscuits was the basis for the cookbook. My claim to fame is winning First Place in the 4-H Bread Baking Contest in the fourth grade for my homemade biscuits. Each meal begins with bread so why not start a series of cookbooks with the same?

My next book will be called “Summer.” My Daddy said this past summer was his final garden. I asked that he please plant one more, so I could have it photographed from the time he turns it in the early spring to harvest. All my favorite summer recipes will come alive. He has agreed!

Your faith has obviously played an important role in your life. Tell me how this has guided your career decisions.

The scripture verse of Hebrews 13:2 says, “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.”

Hospitality was a part of me before I even knew what it meant, and it has been a guiding principle in my life.

Signed copies of Breads & Spreads are available at our Lemuria’s online store.

Heiskell’s updated ‘Southern Living Party Cookbook’ provides guide to entertaining

By Guest Author

On December 18, 2018

In Cooking, Southern Cooking, Southern Culture

By Martha Foose Hall. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (December 16)

“If you are ever at a loss when planning a menu, just add a hushpuppy,” advises caterer, cookbook author, and culinary entrepreneur Elizabeth Heiskell in the recent revamp of the 1972 classic Southern Living Party Cookbook. This time around the tagline “A Modern Guide to Gathering” has been added along with favorite recipes from recent issues of Southern Living and Elizabeth’s hits from the party circuit she has traversed across the south and settled into in Oxford, Mississippi.

In five event themed chapters entitled: Teas, Coffees, and Receptions, Brunches and Luncheons, Come By For a Drink, Y’all, Cookouts, and Celebrations and Dinners, Elizabeth covers festivities ranging from casual get-togethers to elegant formal dinners. The book opens with her reminiscing about the grand hostesses in her family and owning up to some of her party foibles followed by a Hosting Handbook. This section lays out the basics for novice party throwers (and guests) and reminds seasoned hosts (and guests) of some of the simple niceties of entertaining such as invitation etiquette and proper place setting. The most helpful part of this guide may be the pages devoted to estimating quantities of food and beverages needed for different occasions which can be tricky even for experienced hosts.

Scattered throughout the book are helpful guides from the 70s edition such as how to carve a standing rib roast and how to set a tea tray. The reprinted Wine Selection Guide does seem a tad dated when looking at the choices of bottles available these days. The Champagne Primer, however, is more detailed and makes a handy reference, especially when following her encouragement to throw a soiree with, “nothing but fried chicken and free-flowing Champagne.”

The chapters present recipes in menu formats with tips on how to get everything done without stressing out. Elizabeth and the talented team from Southern Living dispense guidance on setting up a buffet and everything surrounding a party from flower arranging to selecting glassware to stain removal. There is even instruction of how to make gilded Easter eggs to use as place cards. Entertaining types will no doubt pick up some decor and table design ideas from the lovely vignettes in the colorful photographs.

Crepes St. Jacque, filled with Chablis cream sauce, scallops, and lump crab meat was a dish poised for a comeback. This imposing sounding dish is one of over 60 recipes initially featured in the 1972 edition. Here the recipe is broken down into two sweeping steps, thereby reducing the intimidation factor. Elizabeth shares some astute counseling she received which was to be ready to pitch out the first couple of attempts in a batch of crepes to get the method down and reminds cooks to make extra crepes to stash in the freezer. Throughout the book, Elizabeth’s tone as a knowledgeable neighbor is sure to comfort harried hosts.

Another sage piece of advice precedes the Fried Pork Chop recipe featured in her Gospel Brunch menu which includes Hoppin’ John, Squash and Swiss Cheese Casserole, and Banana Pudding Pie. Elizabeth adroitly advises readers to master the technique of making pan gravy. It is a skill that will serve a home cook for a lifetime and because a good gravy can make all the difference in the world. Elizabeth’s chatty nature shines brightly in this book, and it seems she could not resist throwing in a “bless her heart” and a few “Honeys” here and there. It is the easy instruction, timeless recipes and encouraging manner that is sure to make this an enduring cookbook and a practical gift for newlyweds, budding hostesses, and folks that like to have a good time.

Martha Foose Hall is the author of Screen Doors & Sweet Tea: Recipes and Tales of a Southern Cook, the best-selling homage to Southern cooking, won the James Beard Award for American Cooking and The Southern Independent Booksellers Award. Her other titles include: A Southerly Course: Recipes & Stories from Close to Home; Oh Gussie! Cooking and Visiting in Kimberly’s Southern Kitchen and My Two Souths: Blending the Flavors of India into a Southern Kitchen with Asha Gomez. Martha makes her home in the Mississippi Delta with her husband and son.

Elizabeth Heiskell will appear at the Mississippi Book Festival August 17 as a participant in the “Southern Hospitality” cooking panel at 10:45 a.m. at the Galloway Fellowship Center.

Author Q & A with Timothy Pakron

By Guest Author

On December 9, 2018

In Southern Cooking

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (December 9)

Mississippi native and vegan enthusiast Timothy Pakron has combined his passions as an artist, photographer and recipe developer into a debut cookbook like no other.
Mississippi Vegan: Recipes and Stories from a Southern Boy’s Heart was written, he says, “in a rather unconventional way.”

Instead of hiring a photographer, food stylist, and “a team of people” to help, Pakron shot all of the photos himself, wrote all the text, and invited friends from all over the world to come to his Mississippi Gulf Coast home to help him “cook, document, and style the food” that became the recipes in his book.
And the research, he notes, was constant: he made countless phone calls to his mother.

With the majority of the recipes in Mississippi Vegan being dishes he said he could only “remember in my mind,” that communication was a necessity–although many others were “picked and pulled” from lessons he’s since learned on his own, adding fresh, original dishes to his family recipes.

As one who was always been drawn to the idea of a vegan diet, Pakron not only loves the food but has embraced “vegan” as a lifestyle that he wants to share enthusiastically.

Pakron’s biggest hope is that readers understand Mississippi Vegan as a concept, not a specific location.

“It’s a constant celebration of delicious food, memories, and pride in growing and sourcing local produce,” he states in the book’s introduction. “It’s an exploration of nature and a constant search for beauty that exists in this world.”

Today Pakron lives in New Orleans, where he is refining his blog and weighing a variety of options for his next creative step.

Please tell me about your education and culinary training, your career, and what eventually brought you to New York City.

Timothy Pakron

When I was young, I would always watch my Mama cook in the kitchen. When I was a teenager, she taught me how to make gumbo. Later on, I went to College of Charleston in Charleston, S.C., where I majored in studio art, which included printmaking, painting, sculpture, and photography. Upon graduating, I began showing my art in galleries while also working a multitude of different jobs.

I moved to New York in my mid-20s to pursue my career as an artist. Eventually, I felt dissatisfied and begin focusing on food styling, food photography, and recipe development. By working as a server in three different vegan restaurants and hosting pop-up events where I was cooking all of the food, I gained a lot of experience in the food and beverage world.

Explain what it means to follow a vegan diet, and why adopting it was so important to you.

Following a vegan diet celebrates the abundance of plants and mushrooms. As long as the ingredient is a plant or a mushroom–fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, grains, legumes, shiitakes, criminis, etc.–then it is vegan. If the recipe is an animal product or is an animal by-product, it is not vegan. Eating a vegan diet is important to me because I could not and will not harm animals in any way. Eating plant-based is also healthy and beneficial to the environment, as it is more sustainable than factory farming animals.

Specifically, how do you define “Mississippi Vegan”?

“Mississippi Vegan” is a concept that merges my past and my present. It is a celebration of the abundance of edible plants and mushrooms, creativity, delicious recipes, beautiful photography, and laughter. “Mississippi Vegan” focuses on what vegans do eat instead of focusing on what vegans do not eat. “Mississippi Vegan” is love.

You were living and working in New York City when you decided to create this book, and you realized that the only way you could write it would be to move back to Mississippi. Why was that a necessary part of the project for you, and why did you say that writing this book in Mississippi was “incredibly emotional” for you?

It was necessary because the whole premise of the book was to show people the undercurrent of veganism that exists within the food from my home state–in particular, the region I was raised, the Gulf Coast.

It was incredibly emotional to me because I wrote a book about recipes from my childhood which brought back many memories. I also had not lived in Mississippi for over a decade, so to be back home and pursue such a large creative endeavor in my home state was overwhelming while also beautiful at the same time.

In the book, you describe yourself as a recipe developer, a photographer, and an artist. What role did each of these play in the creation of “Mississippi Vegan”?

Well, for many cookbooks the author will hire a food stylist and a food photographer to shoot their book. Some authors will even hire a ghostwriter to help them with the written material. I did not. I styled and shot everything myself. I wrote every word. I also created all of the recipes or made veganized translations of all of the recipes myself. It was a true labor of love and is 100 percent authentic.

How do you go about creating a new recipe–what are some of the standards or requirements that a recipe must meet to earn the Timothy Pakron seal of approval?

With all of my recipes, I like to push people a little bit, whether it be with new ingredients or using ingredients in a different way. I also want to make sure everything is super flavorful. When I can re-create a traditional recipe that reminds me of my past while also veganizing it, that’s what gets me the most excited!

This book is unique in many ways, including the fact that you did all the photography yourself. Tell me about that process.

It was overwhelming, exciting, fun, and stressful. What most people probably think is that the process was effortless, because the reader sees all of the perfectly composed images laid out beautifully in a book. In fact, there were some recipes I shot over and over and again and I couldn’t get the perfect shot. Some of the images just weren’t good enough!

The other issue I ran into was the fact that I was photographing Southern food, which is inherently not very pretty. Cheese straws, mashed potatoes, gumbo, and Salisbury steak, albeit delicious, are kind of ugly! Now that the project is over, I can honestly say that I am so very proud because I did everything for the book. It truly is my baby.

While “going vegan” seems to be growing in popularity today, some are skeptical for a variety of reasons, including how all nutritional needs are met, especially when it comes to sources of protein. How would you counter that argument?

The whole protein concern is honestly antiquated. I’ve created a career on celebrating vegan food, and if you get one look at me you will quickly notice that I do not look protein deficient! The fact of the matter is that all plants have protein, some more than others, and there is plenty of high-quality protein in things like legumes, nuts, seeds, peanuts, greens, root vegetables, and even things like fruit.

When it comes to vitamins and minerals, plants and mushrooms are amazing sources of both. I invite people to do their own research from reputable sources, not hearsay. There are plenty of books, articles, and documentaries on the topic.

You mention in the book that there will no doubt be new adventures and chapters in your life that will see you moving away from Mississippi once again. Can you share other ideas or projects you’d like to explore? And do you foresee new books as a result?

Well, a few months after I finished my book, I decided to move to New Orleans to start a new chapter in my life. And I love it here! This year I am really focusing on my blog, making sure to consistently post recipes. I could see myself writing another book, but I need a break first! If I had to mention anything, I wouldn’t be surprised if I had a streaming TV show of some kind in the future. We shall see!

Author Q & A with Elizabeth Heiskell

By Guest Author

On October 15, 2018

In Southern Cooking

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (October 14)

Creating the first revamp of a classic American cookbook in nearly 50 years would be a challenge for the best of culinary experts, but it’s probably no surprise that Oxford’s Elizabeth Heiskell was able to pull of a fresh new rendition of The Southern Living Party Cookbook with impeccable taste.

The TV personality, caterer, cooking teacher, and author beautifully presents her 2018 version of the 1972 classic with a book that not only satisfies would-be hosts and hostesses who are new to party-giving, but provides more seasoned home entertainers with a handful of new tricks, as well.

The original version become the bestselling Southern Living cookbook of all time, a proud status Heiskell hopes to continue.

While this “modern day reinterpretation” of the classic book has retained many favorite recipes from the original, it is filled with popular choices from recent editions of Southern Living magazine, and many of Heiskell’s own favorites. Menus include appetizers, main dishes, drinks, and desserts for a Bridal Tea, Garden Club Luncheon, Summer Nights, Cocktails and Canapés, Tailgate, Picnic on the Lawn, Fall Dinner, and 24 more occasions.

The party guide essentially provides templates for a multitude of party ideas–with more than just recipes. Heiskell also includes time-saving tips along with thoughtful touches to put any host or hostess at ease.

As may be expected from any Southern Living publication, the photography and design of the book offer stunning visual encouragement for readers looking for creative ideas.

Elizabeth Heiskell

Born and raised in the Mississippi Delta town of Rosedale, Heiskell’s career in food-related pursuits springs from a generations-long affinity for cooking and entertaining. She completed courses at the Culinary Institute of America in New York, and later served as lead instructor for the Viking Cooking School in Greenwood for nearly a decade. Heiskell and her family moved to Oxford in 2011, where she and her husband run Woodson Ridge Farms, providing fresh produce for member families and restaurants. She has also operated her own busy catering business for 20 years.

Along the way, Heiskell has become a food contributor for NBC’s Today Show and has appeared on Food Network’s The Kitchen, Hallmark Channel’s Home & Family, as well as Pickler & Ben, Fox & Friends, and Chopped.

Her previous cookbooks include What Can I Bring? Southern Food for Any Occasion Life Serves Up and Somebody Stole the Cornbread from My Dressing, which she co-authored with Susanne Young Reed.

The original Southern Living Party Cookbook, published in 1972, was the brand’s all-time bestselling cookbook. Did taking on the job of updating this “classic” among cookbooks place a big responsibility on your shoulders for a new generation?

I cannot even tell you! I had ladies sending me stories about how much the original cookbook had meant to them, asking me to preserve recipes they have used for decades.

Yes, I felt the pressure, but I had the advantage of being a caterer for 20 years, and cooking and giving parties in my own home. I wanted to celebrate the “mandatory” gatherings like Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve, plus fun occasions like the “Joy to the Girls” party. I hope my ideas will inspire others to not be afraid to plan and enjoy entertaining their friends.

Ultimately, we held onto about a third of the original recipes because we felt like they were too fantastic to let go. There are several in each category in the book.

The book includes 31 party-themed menus for all occasions, including teas, receptions, brunches and luncheons, tailgating, cocktails hours, cookouts and celebration dinners for holidays and family celebrations. How did you choose these categories, and what elements were important to you to include in each of these types of meals?

I really wanted to make sure that I included parties that most everyone would feel like they were up to the challenge for and could do. For instance, the “Cookouts” category is great for young couples who may not have given many parties and/or may not be confident cooks. “The Tailgate” is one for pretty much everyone. At a more elevated level is the “Impress the Boss” dinner.

With every category, I wanted to emphasize that there are things you can make ahead, things you can substitute, and ways to have everything under control ahead of time so that the host or hostess can enjoy the party, too.

You also add some party planning tips in each chapter, for everything from etiquette and invitations to hostess gifts, tables settings, and thank you notes. Why was it important to you to include these extra hints?

The bottom line is that anyone coming to your home is excited to be invited and thought of. You don’t need to work yourself into a frenzy–these are your friends and they will be happy if you just put out some wine and maybe one dip. The whole point is to have friends over.

The book itself is beautiful, inside and out. Please tell me about the stunning photography and how you planned the design of the book.

Southern Living put this book together. All the photography was done in-house in (their corporate offices) in Birmingham. We worked very closely together to make sure each photo was representative of what the finished recipes should look like.

How did you get your “big break” to become a regular on NBC’s “Today Show”

(Years ago) I would see Martha Stewart on the Today Show, and I decided my grandmother’s Pillowcase Thanksgiving Turkey needed to be on the show right then. I thought about it and prayed about it. When I was working for Viking, I just knew I would someday get the chance.

When (NBC News Chairman) Andy Lack (founder of Mississippi Today digital news service and who has family ties to Mississippi) came to Oxford for a dinner party at Rowan Oak in Oxford (in 2015), he told me at the end of the dinner, “You need to understand that you are wildly talented.”

I told him I had been waiting to be on the Today Show for 17 years. . . . I wound up making my grandmother’s Pillowcase Turkey on the show before Thanksgiving. Today I am a Today Show contributor, an employee of NBC.

What plans do you have in mind for your future at this time?

My time at this point is a big balancing act with my catering company in Oxford, being a contributor for the Today Show, and my family!

Elizabeth Heiskell will be at Lemuria on Thursday, October 25, at 5:00 to sign and discuss the Southern Living Party Cookbook.

Author Q & A with Rick Bragg

By Guest Author

On May 2, 2018

In Southern Cooking, Southern Culture

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (April 29)

With equal parts love and humor—not to mention brutal honesty—Southern storyteller extraordinaire Rick Bragg tackles a topic he admits he never thought he’d have the courage to swallow: food. And good Southern cooking.

Fortunately for his readers, the release of his latest volume, The Best Cook in the World: Tales from My Momma’s Table, (Knopf) has proven that old-fashioned Southern fare is indeed in good hands.

“I’m not a cook,” the Possum Trot, Alabama, native is quick to say, but in this 490-page “food memoir,” he lets the stories of “his people” and their hilarious and sometimes heart-wrenching circumstances do the stewing and stirring.

best cook in the world But mostly, it’s a tribute to his mother, 81-year-old Margaret Bragg, whose skills in the kitchen, he says, are still unmatched. This is a woman who never—not once—used a cookbook, a written recipe, a measuring cup or even a set of measuring spoons to put a meal on the table. Her skills came from oral recipes and techniques that go back generations—some even to pre-Civil War days.

Included are recipes for 74 Southern “soul food” dishes he says it took all of a year to convert into written form under his mother’s guidance.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and a journalism professor at the University of Alabama, Bragg is a former New York Times reporter and the recipient of a Nieman Fellowship from Harvard University. A regular contributor to Garden and Gun, his previous books include All Over But the Shoutin’, Ava’s Man, Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story, and My Southern Journey: True Stories from the Heart of the South, among others.

Your new book is a “food memoir” and tribute to your mother, Margaret Bragg, who never used a recipe or owned a cookbook. Since you admit you are not a cook yourself, how did you get the idea to write this book, and why was it so important to you?

One of the reasons I did the book was because my mom had a heart attack, then developed cancer and had two years of chemo. When she first got sick about five years ago, her kitchen was just different when she was gone. When she’s home, the kitchen usually smells like bacon grease and that wonderful Red Diamond coffee. When she was gone it smelled more like lemon dishwashing detergent. Even the cold cast-iron skillets had a different smell.

I had tried before to cook her pinto beans and ham bone, and her beef short ribs, but it didn’t taste like hers. She never, never let us boys (Rick and his two brothers) in her kitchen when we were growing up. We’d have coal dust on us, or a live frog in a front pocket of our overalls. None of us learned any cooking from her.

I asked her where the recipe was written down for beef short ribs and she said, “I’ve never written down any recipe,” and I knew that. I’ve never seen her standing over a written recipe.

I love writing about food, something I do quite a bit, and every part of this book was always about the stories of people with my blood.

All of the recipes in this book come from stories—stories about fist fights or leaving a landlord in the middle of the night—because that’s how we live around here. And you would just remember the food that was there when it happened. The story about the time Sis, my mother’s father’s cousin, shot her husband in the teeth, and what that had to do with her chicken and dressing, is pure “writer’s platinum.”

I just thought I’d like to write these things down. I thought, “Why not? Do a book about food, and set recipes in it.”

Because your mom never uses measuring cups or spoons, you literally had to convince her to come up with the recipes included in the book. Was that a hard sell, since she says in the book, “A person can’t cook from a book”? And it must have been time-consuming creating recipes for so many dishes she knew by heart. How did you go about it?

There are two leather chairs in my momma’s living room. She sat in the one on the left and I sat in the one on the right. I leaned close to her to talk about how much of what would go into the recipes, and it took For. Ever.

To her, there is no “half cup of flour.” She would say “just get a good handful” or “a real good handful.” A tablespoon to her means the big spoon in the kitchen drawer. Or she would say use a “smidgeon” or—my favorite—“some.” It really didn’t matter the quantity of ingredients in the recipes. It’s the process. You have to leave a lot of it to common sense.

It took, probably, a solid year.

I’ve been asked if we tested the recipes in the book. My ambition was to share some of the stories of the food, and some recipes, as best I can. That, and not poison anybody.

This book is not about your typical “cookbook” type of food—there are no restraints on the use of fat (often in the form of lard), or sugar, eggs, meats or other rich ingredients that have lost some favor over the past few decades. What kind of readers and cooks do you hope will be drawn to this book?

First of all, it’s not a cookbook. If people are buying it just as a cookbook, that’s not the point. What I hope happens is that people will enjoy the true narrative, the history.

I’m not a cook and I’m not a cookbook writer. This was a chance to write about where the food came from. I hope that what people in the Upper East Side (of Manhattan), London, Connecticut and everywhere else will enjoy is the narratives, and see the value of the food.

Your mom insists she is a “cook”—not a chef. Please explain what that boils down to.

A chef expects to be called “chef,” and his underlings have to refer to him as such. A cook doesn’t care what you call him or her. It’s not about pride, but pretentiousness.

There is a great deal of family history in The Best Cook in the World—not only unique, but humorous! Tell me about the process of putting these stories together.

We didn’t have to cobble the stories together. A lot of times the food would spark the story, like the chicken and dressing story. There were recipes I wanted to put in there, but I just didn’t have a good story—like peanut butter pie, fresh garden vegetables and Aunt Juanita’s peanut butter cookies. Now, commodity cheese, I have a great story. Or Ava’s tornado story—I’ve wanted to include that story somewhere for 15 years, and this was my chance.

Among the recipes that are included, what are some of your favorites—and have you, or will you—cook them yourself?

Rick Bragg

I can cook a mean biscuit, but I usually won’t if I can get some good store-bought ones. I make red eye gravy with ham and grits—the good kind. A chocolate pie sounds like something I could do.

I don’t have the patience my momma has, and I can’t make any of it taste like she does.

One of my favorite things she made us was fried pies—but she recently told my brother Sam and me that she never made that. She had forgotten. That was the reason to do this book.

Rick Bragg will beat Lemuria on Friday, May 4, at 5:00 to sign and read from The Best Cook in the World: Tales from My Momma’s Table. The Best Cook in the World is a 2018 selection for Lemuria’s First Edition Club for Nonfiction.

‘Artful Evolution’ provides lively history of Hal and Mal’s

By Guest Author

On April 11, 2018

In Southern Cooking, Southern Culture, Southern History

By Sherry Lucas. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (March 4)

Art, culture, community and family are the vines that wind through The Artful Evolution of Hal & Mal’s (University Press of Mississippi), a project that pairs Malcolm White’s words and Ginger Williams Cook’s illustrations with engaging results. Much like the iconic eatery, bar, and live music institution at its heart, it entertains at the outset and sustains in the long haul.

artful evolution Hal & Mal’s is not one story, but many, and the book sheds a warm and witty light on the background and influences that fed into this cultural outpost in Jackson’s downtown. Of all those vines, family clings the strongest with tendrils in every story of the boys who grew up in Perkinston and Booneville, lost their mother young, and held the love of father, stepmother, brother, grandparents, relatives and friends close.

Brothers Hal and Malcolm White opened Hal & Mal’s Jan. 8, 1986, and it became the capital city’s hub. It’s the junction where food, music, song, dance, words and art met, mixed, mingled, likely had a drink or two and got along famously.

Author White shares the major tenets of Hal & Mal’s business philosophy: (1) embrace art, culture and creativity as a strategy, not an afterthought; and (2) the more we give, the more successful we are. Anyone who has patronized Hal & Mal’s over the decades knows the result: a lively, generous atmosphere that boosted the best our state offered.

White’s vignettes—on red beans and rice, comeback sauce, the genius of Sambo Mockbee, Willie Morris’ bowling trophies, the Tangents, Albert King and the Autograph Wall, to name a few—share the essence of their subjects with a deft, authentic touch. An attractively breezy layout, like the happiest hours at Hal & Mal’s, works as well for dropping in, as it does for digging in for the night.

These are fine tributes, all—done with a clear eye, a fond gaze, an occasional wink and the fine appreciation of a good story. Nuggets pull you deeper into the Hal & Mal’s lore, such as the logo inspired by Smith Brothers Cough Drops, the St. Paddy’s Parade start in a snarl of rush-hour traffic, and how to start a literary stampede. “My Brother the Ampersand,” about brother Brad White, is a delight.

You can get lost in the photos on the walls at Hal & Mal’s. The same goes here as each self-contained jewel opens a window to the soul of this venerable spot. Cook’s artwork captures that ineffable lure with a sure, loving hand.

Hal White died in 2013. “Hal’s Recipe Cards,” illustrated with those index cards stained and worn with age and use, touches deep, and his younger brother Malcolm’s reference to “these pieces of folk art” speaks volumes about family, nurturing, legacy and love. He includes Hal’s daughter Brandi White Lee’s words, “the smell in those cards captures the cooking bliss … embedded into all his hugs.” For anyone who misses Hal’s soups nearly as much as they miss his presence at the end of the bar, it’s enough to pull your hand to the page for a rub.

Hal & Mal’s fed the soul as well as the belly of Jackson, with concerts and events and fundraisers and festivities that brought the creatives together for a good time and often, a better tomorrow — with a good meal in-between.

As chef and restaurateur Robert St. John notes in the foreword, Hal & Mal’s is a classic. He waxes eloquent about the killer gumbo and best roast beef sandwich east of the Mississippi River. I’ll single out the catfish po-boy as the best on either side of that river.

Doubtless, readers will bring their own stories to this table, nudged by a mention or memory, or Cook’s evocative art, into their own personal reverie. Because if you ever went there, ate there, drank there, danced, partied, mourned, celebrated, fund-raised, hell-raised or simply gathered there, Hal & Mal’s became a part of your story, too.

Sherry Lucas is a freelance writer covering food, arts and culture in Jackson. She is a long-time Hal & Mal’s patron.

Signed copies of The Artful Evolution of Hal & Mal’s are available at Lemuria’s online store.

Author Q & A with Robert St. John & Wyatt Waters

By Guest Author

On December 13, 2017

In Art/Photography, Gift Books, Southern Cooking

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (December 10)

Mississippi natives Robert St. John and Wyatt Waters have teamed up once again to create yet another “coffee table cookbook” worthy of the attention of good cooks and art admirers far beyond the boundaries of their home state.

ms palate In A Mississippi Palate: Heritage Cuisine and Watercolors of Home, St. John and Waters serve up another full plate of exceptional recipes and watercolor scenes–and this time it’s all about the Magnolia State. Included are 105 recipes and 66 watercolors, all representing the Delta and Hill Country, the Central Region, and south to the Gulf Coast.

A syndicated weekly food columnist, St. John has authored 10 books (three with Waters) and is the owner of four noted eateries in his hometown of Hattiesburg. He has been named the state’s top chef three consecutive years and has been honored with the title of Mississippi Restauranteur of the Year.

Waters grew up in Florence, began art lessons as a first-grader, and is now widely recognized for his “Southern culture” watercolors and plein air paintings. He has received the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Art, the Mississippi Library Association Special Award for Art and the Mississippi Arts Commission Governor’s Award for Excellence in Arts. In addition to his collaborations with St. John, he has released five other books, and his work has been featured in numerous regional and national publications. Today, he lives in Clinton, where he owns an art gallery.

How did you two meet and begin creating books together?

St. John: It all started as a suggestion by one of our restaurant customers. She had been bugging me for months about writing a cookbook. I had no interest in writing a book, but she persisted. One day, she was sitting in the restaurant with a man and called me over to the table. She said, “Robert, this is so-and-so with so-and-so publishing company. Tell him about your cookbook.”

I had no cookbook, and, seriously, had never ever thought about doing a cookbook before that moment. So, trying to think quickly on my feet, I said, “If I were to do a cookbook, I would have recipes I have developed here at the restaurant over the years, stories like in my newspaper column about the South, growing up in the South, and food in the South, and watercolors by Wyatt Waters.”

Without missing a beat, the publisher said, “Well, if you get Wyatt Waters, you’ve got a deal.” The problem was that I didn’t know Wyatt. I was a big fan of his work and the two books he had released at that time. So, the next day, I hopped in my car, drove to Clinton to his gallery, introduced myself, and told him that I had an idea for a book that would be like a coffee table cookbook, and a publisher willing to publish it. We hit it off, and here we are.

Waters: Robert and his wife Jill came to my gallery. He had this idea for a book that used stories, food, and heart to describe Southern culture. The idea intrigued me. I went to visit and meet with him further at his restaurant in Hattiesburg. I was impressed at how everything was done in an excellent way. Robert relates everything to food. I knew he was someone I wanted to work with and know better. Right before we met, my father had a stroke, and during the work on the book, he passed away. Putting the book together was a bonding experience, and I knew this was someone who would be a friend for life. I think Robert invented the coffee table cookbook genre. Most of the time, I don’t know if we’re working or just having a good time.

Tell me about the collaboration process.

St. John: This is our fourth collaboration. The process for each one has been different. When we worked together on our first book, A Southern Palate, we had just met each other. We had a lot in common–musical interests, family backgrounds, childhood memories, and the like–but we were two guys without a work history.

Today, we are best friends who have been collaborating for over 17 years. It’s way, way better. I love collaborative projects. There is a point where you reach when you’re working in a type of shorthand and a lot goes unsaid and unspoken. It’s familiar in a good way.

We have a blast hanging out with each other and working together. We have driven all over Mississippi for years, with the radio turned up way too loud, and we still encounter people, places, and things we have never seen before.

Waters: First of all, Robert has what I would call generosity of spirit. It’s not always clear whose idea it is. The project always take more importance than who came up with it. Another thing that helps is that i don’t pretend to know the food part. Robert has been a very good guide in that world.

The word most associated with artist is “starving.” Not something I have to worry about with Robert. When we get together and talk about ideas, I frequently grab a pencil and an envelope or a napkin and draw out ideas. When we are making final decisions about the book, another thing we do is spread out all of the paintings in consideration and begin culling the ones we don’t think fit. We also try to figure out what gaps need to be filled. There are several versions before we land on a final draft. It’s mostly based on intuition.

(L) Robert St. John and (R) Wyatt Waters

A Mississippi Palate is your fourth book together, but it’s your first that is strictly about Mississippi. Tell me how you approached this book.

St. John: In all of my–and our–other books, I have known going in what the structure would be like and how the recipes would be listed by chapter. I didn’t know on this project until we got into the recipe-testing phase of the thing. I wanted to have heritage recipes that reminded me of my childhood, but I also wanted up-to-date preparations. Ultimately, I chose things that were “Mississippi to me.” I’m happy with the end result.

Waters: This was like the most difficult of all art forms: the self-portrait. You never really can say exactly who you are. The best you can do is say at that moment what you believe you see. I’ve tried to be honest with my eyes and honest with my heart. This is the most personal of the books we have done together.

What is life like when you’re on the road for a book tour?

St. John: I love going to book signings and speaking events. I get to meet people who have read my newspaper column for almost two decades who remember stuff about my family and me that I had forgotten years ago.

But what I really enjoy is hanging out with my best friend. I drive. He rides. We listen to a lot of music. There’s a lot of me laughing at Wyatt. He cracks me up. He is one of the most clever and witty people I’ve ever known. I speak in “quantity,” he speaks in “quality.”

Waters: Music. Yes, lots of music. After we finished putting the book together, we went to Muscle Shoals and hung out with musicians Mac MacAnally and Norbert Putnam. I didn’t paint, and Robert didn’t cook. But we had a really good time. We cut up and goofed around.

There are some people who we only know from the book tours. They tell us what they’ve been doing since the last time we saw them. It’s a sort of a distant family member that you can’t exactly remember the name of.

Tell me about your new TV show, Palate to Palatte, on Mississippi Public Broadcasting. What can viewers expect, and what do you like most about doing it?

St. John: Palate to Palette has been a blast. It has been well-received–actually, way better than we could have ever imagined. Our friend Anthony Thaxton wears many hats, and is the director/editor/goat wrangler. It’s Wyatt and me having fun, eating too much, listening to music too loud. He’s painting. I’m cooking and eating, we are visiting off-the-beaten-path places and unique people. I think people are going to enjoy it, but there’s no way anyone will have as much fun watching it as we have had during the filming (in Mississippi and northern Italy).

Someone asked me what the TV show was about the other day, and I said, “It’s really kind of cheating, because it’s the same thing we’ve been doing for the past 17 years, except now we have cameras with us.”

Waters: The idea is for people to see what we do when we are working together. After a few minutes, we forget the cameras are there. WE’re just being ourselves and it’s very unscripted. Anthony Thaxton is the videographer and edits this into a story. Anthony is an old student of mine and an excellent painter himself.

Do you have another book or project that you’re eyeing now?

St. John: I’ll be opening four new restaurants in the next two years. Wyatt and I have a couple of projects we have been talking about. This TV thing has a lot of possibilities. We will definitely keep taking people to Europe on food/art tours, and we have talked about a potential New Orleans book sometime in the future. I have no interest in slowing down anytime soon. In a way, we’re just getting started.

Waters: We’ve already done a lot more than I though I would ever do. Yes, the tours and TV shows are good to do and I like the ideas of a New Orleans book very much. New Orleans is close enough to where we have a lot of experience and feel its influence.

Anything else you’d like to include here?

St. John: One of the unexpected joys that has come with being a Mississippi writer is getting to know the independent bookstore owners throughout the South, and especially in Mississippi. They are on the front lines of a very challenging business model these days. We do everything we can to support them. We are their biggest cheerleaders, but it’s a two-way street. They’ve been there for us over the years, too.

Waters: We are both sons of Mississippi, so we’re kind of like brothers. It’s a real honor to work on something that we believe in as much as these projects we do. All the things that I’ve done all my life feel like preparation for where I am right now. I want to tell those future sons and daughters of Mississippi that they can do more than they think they can. You can live your dream and you can do it in a place you love around people you love.

Robert St. John and Wyatt Waters will be at Lemuria signing copies of A Mississippi Palate on Saturday, December 16 at 11:00 a.m.

Category: Southern Cooking (Page 1 of 2)

Chef Sean Brock expands powerful influence of regional palate in ‘South’

Author Q & A with Sean Brock

Author Q & A with Ken Wells

Author Q & A with Sheree Rose Kelley

Heiskell’s updated ‘Southern Living Party Cookbook’ provides guide to entertaining

Author Q & A with Timothy Pakron

Author Q & A with Elizabeth Heiskell

Author Q & A with Rick Bragg

‘Artful Evolution’ provides lively history of Hal and Mal’s

Author Q & A with Robert St. John & Wyatt Waters

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