Screen Doors and Sweet Tea: Recipes and Tales from a Southern Cook [Hardcover]

Martha Hall Foose (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 29, 2008

Gifted chef and storyteller Martha Hall Foose invites you into her kitchen to share recipes that bring alive the landscape, people, and traditions that make Southern cuisine an American favorite.

Born and raised in Mississippi, Foose cooks Southern food with a contemporary flair: Sweet Potato Soup is enhanced with coconut milk and curry powder; Blackberry Limeade gets a lift from a secret ingredient–cardamom; and her much-ballyhooed Sweet Tea Pie combines two great Southern staples–sweet tea and pie, of course–to make one phenomenal signature dessert. The more than 150 original recipes are not only full of flavor, but also rich with local color and characters.

As the executive chef of the Viking Cooking School, teaching thousands of home cooks each year, Foose crafts recipes that are the perfect combination of delicious, creative, and accessible. Filled with humorous and touching tales as well as useful information on ingredients, techniques, storage, shortcuts, variations, and substitutions, Screen Doors and Sweet Tea is a must-have for the American home cook–and a must-read for anyone who craves a return to what cooking is all about: comfort, company, and good eating.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The warm, languid air of the South filters through this engaging book, in which Foose shares the traditional recipes that she ate while growing up on the Mississippi Delta and has returned to after training as a pastry chef in France and traveling the world. Gently humorous stories about family and friends form a seamless part of her instructions for community recipes like Strawberry Missionary Society Salad, as well as pleasant surprises like Tabbouleh, Curried Sweet Potato Soup, and Chinese Grocery Roast Pork that take Southern food beyond stereotypes. Fried chicken and grits do appear, but for such classics Foose emphasizes relatively simple, wholesome preparations that are rich without loading on more butter and oil than necessary. Although recipes for Gumbo Z'Herbs, Chile Lime Skirt Steak, and creamy succotash are mouthwatering enough just to read about, many cooks will be tempted to flip straight to the last chapters, where her enticing breads and pastries provide the book with a winning flourish. The cook may be Southern, but the appeal of the dishes she presents should reach well beyond people who grew up in the land of four-hour lunches and sweet tea savored on a porch swing. (Apr.)
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Review

"This is one cookbook I would proudly have in my kitchen! It has great information and wonderful recipes!"
—Paula Deen, Food Network host and bestselling cookbook author

“Martha can truly cook. Some familiar but never predictable recipes–pimiento cheese, gumbo, cornbread–besides being too good to leave out, are joined in this sterling cookbook with many others less commonly seen but no less superlative, all unmistakably Southern, like Delta hot tamales, for example, or West Indies salad (from Mobile, circa 1940s), salmon croquettes, biscuits with tomato gravy, and black bottom pie. Her book is one to be cherished, shared, and consumed.”
—John Egerton, author of Southern Food: At Home, on the Road, in History

“If you’ve got a rocker on the front porch, get into it; if not, settle into your favorite chair. In either case, fix yourself a long drink and give yourself the pleasure of spending a little time with Martha Foose on her Mississippi farm before you head into the kitchen. Martha is that delightful combination of charming storyteller and darn good cook and in this book you get generous servings of each–both are delicious.”
—Dorie Greenspan, author of Baking From My Home to Yours

“Martha Foose's Screen Doors and Sweet Tea is a treasure-chest of superb recipes like Green Chile Rice, Lady Pea Salad, and Sweet Tea Pie. And her stories of growing up in Mississippi have the unmistakably Southern cadence of tales swapped across the dinner table. The book has given us a new appreciation for the genius of Delta cuisine, and even better, it has us yearning to cook, gather friends, and tell stories.”
—Matt Lee and Ted Lee, authors of The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook

“This book takes me back to the things I loved about my childhood in the rural south. I can’t wait to get copies for my mother and aunts. I love it.”
—John Besh, chef-owner of Restaurant August, Besh Steak, Lüke, and La Provence

“This is it. The real thing. Honest eats. And diverting tales. From Martha Foose's Mississippi Delta, that queer and otherworldly land of catfish and cotton.”
—John T. Edge, author of Fried Chicken: An American Story

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Clarkson Potter; 1 edition (April 29, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307351408
• ISBN-13: 978-0307351401
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 0.9 x 9.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (64 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #71,702 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #93 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Gastronomy > Essays

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A true southern cookbook you can actually use every recipes, June 10, 2008

By 

Cindy N. Sturdivant (glendora, ms) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Screen Doors and Sweet Tea: Recipes and Tales from a Southern Cook (Hardcover)

I actually bought this book to support Martha and the local bookstore in my hometown of Greenwood, Ms. Thinking it was just another cookbook to add to my collection...Wow, What great stories and the recipes are awesome..I had been looking for a good egg and olive sandwich and pimiento and cheese,
No more, found it in this delicious cookbook..Can't wait to try other recipes. This book has inspired me to get back to cooking...I suggest that anyone that wants a cookbook, you can actually use and enjoy....Don't miss this one!!!!....5 thumbs up..

Thank you Martha.
Cindy Sturdivant

81 of 87 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars LOVE this book!, May 5, 2008

By 

Vuvuzela van Heerden "Vaaljapie" (Home on the Range, NV United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Screen Doors and Sweet Tea: Recipes and Tales from a Southern Cook (Hardcover)

I was determined to make a red velvet cake the other day and thought, What Would Martha Do? As in Martha Foose, not what you're thinking....Well, lo and behold, I dare you to try out her Red Velvet Cake recipe, nothing like you have ever tried before, and leave all that food coloring back at the store. Her recipe rocks and I learned alot.

Before I got started on this Red Velvet Cake venture, I mixed up a Mailbox Cocktail. Mmmm, that's all I can say and that's all there is to say: Mmmmm. My new favorite drink.

And then I read the story of Young Steve and the long wait by the mailboxes for the Regulation-Size B.B. Gun Pistol to arrive; and I was there along with ya'll on Pluto. For I know so well, those advertisements in the back of the comic book pages, the ones I grew up on in the seventies when we had no TV in South Africa, the ones that bragged about the possibility of sea monkeys, X-Ray glasses, T.V. watches, daisy guns and pup tents; those ads that were the epitome of American Spendour to me and now to Young Steve.

Thanks, your story in a blink took me back there to that time of sweet dreams and the possible, what fun. I think I will mix another Mailbox Cocktail and try out some more Pick-Up Party Food.

I TOTALLY recommend this book for anyone ready to live with the South in their heart and kitchen.

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A little bit of the south in the heart of the midwest!, June 13, 2008

By 

S. Fischer (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Screen Doors and Sweet Tea: Recipes and Tales from a Southern Cook (Hardcover)

Wow- I collect & use many cookbooks, but this one in particual almost reads like a best selling novel. Along with some of the best southern inspired recipes as a main course, the reader gets treated to a side dish of recipe history and a dessert of wonderfully helpful notes! Some of my personal favorites include the Chicken Thighs & Dumplings--little pillow dumplings adrift in the richest of stews, honest devil-ed eggs, watermelon salsa (just incredible!) and the best ever, natural Red Velvet cake. Wash it all down with a McCarty Pottery Julep or a Mailbox cocktail! Well Martha, very, very well done!