The Southern Cook's Handbook: A Step-By-Step Guide to Old-Fashioned Southern Cooking [Plastic Comb]

Courtney Taylor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2001

Crispy fried chicken, field peas simmered with savory pork, crusty cornbread hot from the skillet, three-layer caramel cake, homemade peach ice cream-old-time dishes like these have made Southern cooking a cherished tradition. Southern cousins, Courtney Taylor and Bonnie Carter Travis, both experienced cooks and writers, now bring that traditon to you.

In "The Southern Cook's Handbook", Taylor and Travis get into the kitchen with you, explaining the fundamentals of Southern cooking and telling you how ingredients should look, feel, and smell. You can't go wrong with the extensive methods section, featuring step-by-step instructions for all the basics from pan-frying and making gravy to rolling out the perfect pie crust and whipping up the lightest cream cake.

You'll find a wealth of tips and techniques to make you an instant expert: a chapter on choosing fresh produce; charts for blanching, barbecuing, and measuring; a glossary of cooking terms; and much, much more. The authors also provide recipes for over 200 of the South's most popular delights-old favorites like mint juleps, gumbo, cheese grits, fried okra, pecan pie, blackberry cobbler, and fig preserves.

"The Southern Cook's Handbook" is a how-to manual, a primer for the new cook, as well as a refresher course for the old hand. It is an essential reference for any cook's kitchen.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Courtney Taylor

Courtney Taylor was born and raised in Natchez, Mississippi, where she learned to cook as a child at her great grandmother's side. This marked the beginning of her lifelong fascination with food.

In her cooking career, Taylor has created food gift items for the Lee Bailey shops in Saks Fifth Avenue, developed the recipes for Lee Bailey's Southern Food and Plantation Houses (Clarkson Potter, 1989), wrote How to Eat Like a Southerner and Live to Tell the Tale (Clarkson Potter, 1990). For the past seven years she has been the food feature writer and food columnist for the Jackson (MS) Clarion Ledger. In 1997 she received an award for her newspaper column from the National Association of Food Journalists. Taylor now lives in Madison, Mississippi, with her husband and two children.

Bonnie Carter Travis

Bonnie Carter Travis grew up on a cattle farm outside Natchez, Mississippi, where she spent long hours in the kitchen with her mother and the family's two hired cooks, a brother and sister who were not only master cooks but also expert story-tellers. So, from the beginning, Travis associated the kitchen with good times and good conversation.

She received her B.A. and M.A. in English from the University of Mississippi and a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Southern Mississippi, where she later served as an English professor and Director of the linguistics program. Travis is the author of Southern Cooking: Methods and Memorable Recipes (Prentice-Hall, 1981), as well as five English textbooks. She was also instructor of writing for oceanographers at NASA, director of various writing workshops, contributor to humorous publications, and editor for scholarly articles and books. Travis lives in Madison, Mississippi, with her husband.

Product Details

• Plastic Comb: 286 pages
• Publisher: Quail Ridge Press; Spi edition (September 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1893062295
• ISBN-13: 978-1893062290
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #373,936 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I remmeber momma, April 2, 2005

By 

JEV Jr. (ALABAMA United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Southern Cook's Handbook: A Step-By-Step Guide to Old-Fashioned Southern Cooking (Plastic Comb)

I am a 59 year old male in search of receipes that will yeild the memories of my childhood in Alabama. I have found it in the
Southern Cook's Handbook. This cook book is the answer to "how did they do that?". I thought I knew how to bake a ham, but then I tried the step-by-step guide to baking a ham, and boy what a difference it made. The spiral cut ham I baked for Easter was tender, moist, and flovoralbe. I tried the corn bread step-by step instructions and the corn bread turned out terrific( I didn't think my corn bread could get any better, but it did). This is a cookbook that will be used and past around. Thank you Courtney Tayor.

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Extremely High Quality Resource, June 27, 2004

By 

Elliot Essman (Larchmont, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Southern Cook's Handbook: A Step-By-Step Guide to Old-Fashioned Southern Cooking (Plastic Comb)

As a chef and food writer deeply interested in Southern cooking, I turn to this book first, again and again. It's easy to wax eloquently about this cuisine, or even write songs about it, but the fact is, traditional American cuisine suffers from a lot of bad writing. Not so with The Southern Cook's Handbook. The book is superbly organized and very well written. Recipes, with commentary, are clear, and they work. The authors succeed in their efforts to organize the book first with basics (choosing equipment and seasonal produce) then an important section on methods (making stock, gravy, etc.) before giving us the recipes, also well organized as to type. This is by far the best book to buy in a crowded field.

Food writer Elliot Essman's other reviews and food articles are available at www.stylegourmet.com

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not disappointed with this one!, February 25, 2008

By 

Petunia "Selective Reader" (Tennessee) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Southern Cook's Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Old-Fashioned Southern Cooking (Plastic Comb)

Recently received my copy of the Southern Cook's Handbook, and I am delighted to recommend it to anyone interested in Southern home cooking. Not only excellent recipes, but a step-by-step guide to the methods of southern cooking as well. I have quite a collection of cookbooks, but I can see that I will be referring to this one quite frequently. Even after 40 years of marriage, I have gained new ideas after reading this book. Last night I made the creamy chicken salad, and we loved it! I will definitely be ordering more to give as wedding presents!