The Best Cook in the World by Rick Bragg

'Bragg is a soulful storyteller, a reporter with a poet’s eye, and an appreciative diner. love song to the woman who raised him and who has been his greatest muse.' Margaret Bragg can cook up a storm, while Rick Bragg writes with a powerful, page-turning punch. The Best Cook in the World is Julia Child by way of the Hatfields and McCoys. 'Marvelous. uproarious.These stories shimmer and shine, casting a Southern spell with Bragg’s gorgeous prose. 'His prose evokes the sights, sounds, and smells of a rural Alabama kitchen and transforms apparent poverty into soul-satisfying plenty.' 'Heartfelt, often hilarious stories from an Alabama kitchen, a place from which issue wondrous remembrances and wondrous foods alike.Affectionate, funny, and beautifully written: a book for every fan of real food.' 'Bragg’s entertaining memoir is a testament that cooking and food still bind culture together.' For readers who crave soul with their recipes this is a fitting tribute to foodways that are fast escaping.' gleam with a special luster they’ve been polished by time, and no one is meant to get hung up on the details.' This book is a tribute, a monument, to his mother and her people, captured here in solid recipes for good food. All the stories in this book. “Wonderful, rollicking, poignant, sometimes hilarious tales about how generations of Bragg’s extended family survived from one meal to the next.” Because good food always has a good story, and a recipe, writes Bragg, is a story like anything else.

In The Best Cook in the World, Rick Bragg finally preserves his heritage by telling the stories that framed his mother's cooking and education, from childhood into old age.

Many of her recipes, recorded here for the first time, pre-date the Civil War, handed down skillet by skillet, from one generation of Braggs to the next. But she can tell you the secrets to perfect mashed potatoes, corn pudding, redeye gravy, pinto beans and hambone, stewed cabbage, short ribs, chicken and dressing, biscuits and butter rolls. Her notion of farm-to-table is a flatbed truck. She measures in 'dabs' and 'smidgens' and 'tads' and 'you know, hon, just some.' She cannot be pinned down on how long to bake corn bread ('about 15 to 20 minutes, depending on the mysteries of your oven'). Margaret Bragg does not own a single cookbook. Including seventy-four mouthwatering Bragg family recipes for classic southern dishes passed down through generations. From the beloved, best-selling author of All Over but the Shoutin', a delectable, rollicking food memoir, cookbook, and loving tribute to a region, a vanishing history, a family, and, especially, to his mother.

The Best Cook in the World by Rick Bragg