Michael Twitty became fascinated with historic cooking when he was just seven years old. In his new book, Recipes from the American South, he writes,
My grandmother showed me how to pick and savor honeysuckles, priming me to savor chef Bill Smith’s honeysuckle sorbet years later in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I loved pickling yellow-meat watermelons and pecans on my grandmother’s farm in South Carolina, only to later make yellow tomato and watermelon sorbet at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello near Charlottesville, Virginia. Later in life, I had the magical experience of exploring Southern heirloom vegetable gardens with my friends and colleagues at Colonial Williamsburg and cooking in historical kitchens to teach visitors the beginning of Southern cuisine. My journeys flooded me with memories of my first church dinner on the grounds and family reunions, where I learned a whole vocabulary from my parents and grandparents to describe foods that told stories themselves.
In 2012, Michael embarked on a, as he calls it, “Southern Discomfort Tour,” driving thousands of miles from Maryland to Texas. “You can read about the South,” Michael says, “but smelling, touching, and tasting it were essential for me to understand it enough to write this book.”
13 years later, we have Recipes from the American South, and it’s truly an embrace of the region and all it has to offer, especially when it comes to food, history, and traditions. Mark and I talked to Michael about his labor of love.
Also! Read an excerpt from Michael Twitty’s Recipes from the American South here; and get Michael’s recipes for Yeast Rolls and Chicken and Dumplings here and here.
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