• Eat Your Books

  2008 James Beard Award Winner

Notes about Recipes in this book

• White barbecue sauce

  • Rinshin on June 05, 2016

    Just love this unusual sauce. Goes great with chicken even poached chicken. I like to use this sauce too in some of my Japanese style salads.

• Cool Florida avocado soup

  • bellatavia on October 01, 2011

    This is an elegant crowd-pleaser that can be enjoyed by more adventreous children, too. My niece ate this when she was 2 years old and loved it. The recipe is perfect as-is.

• Country captain

  • cahunter925 on November 16, 2015

    Need a 6-6 1/2 pound ROASTING chicken - Makes 10 - 12 servings

• Turkey purloo

  • Gio on September 23, 2015

    Pg. 144. Great use of the remains of cooked chicken. We used chunks of rotisserie chicken. It's basically a creamed chicken with mushrooms and rice. Seriously delicious. Pay attention to the roux, it's rich and very tasty, and makes the dish. Would make it again, and again.

• Creole sauce

  • valbe on January 26, 2022

    Added frozen cooked shrimp and served with brown and white rice as per the preceding recipe (Bronzed Shrimp Creole). Recipe suggests to make one day ahead and that it is also good over broiled fish, shellfish, or chicken, or to braise pork chops. Tasty and easy!

• Herbed crab salad

  • bellatavia on June 05, 2016

    The Fresh Herb mayonnaise that goes in this lump crab is perfection in this summertime lunch or dinner entree. The stuffed tomatoes are deceptively filling -- 1/4 lb of lump crab is more than enough per person.

• Red beans and rice

  • TrishaCP on October 13, 2014

    Sadly, while certainly edible, these beans were bland- to me the kiss of death for red beans and rice. Since I subbed bacon ends from my meat CSA for the tasso, I added garlic (2 cloves) and bay leaves to bump up the flavor, but it still just didn't have the pop that I like.

• Nana's lima beans

  • schenck65 on February 18, 2012

    Anderson claims in this recipe that she and her friends had seconds of these limas for dessert. My kids didn't call it dessert, but the older one had 4 servings and they both drank the pot likker out of the ramekins I served the beans in. I found them mild and velvety, comforting on a rainy night.

• New southern collards (or turnip greens)

  • Lindalib on September 05, 2012

    A "miss" from the usually reliable Jean Anderson. She has you saute garlic and scallions in olive oil and then add dried, sliced collard greens and continue to saute until wilted. The directions then instruct you to cover the pan to steam the collard greens for 15 minutes. The problem is there is no added liquid or moisture so the collards don't actually steam. In the end they were crispy though edible- just.

  • emiliang on October 21, 2013

    Agreed with the previous reviewer: you really need to add a bit of liquid to the pan for the steaming step. Pretty good, but on the bitter side.

• James River corn pudding

  • hillsboroks on September 10, 2019

    This dish is all about the fresh corn. The sweeter and fresher it is, the better the flavor. Luckily we had cooked extra sweet corn on the cob so I cut the kernels off and refrigerated them overnight to make this the following night. While if I had started with raw sweet corn I may have given it 5 stars, the finished pudding was very good and a nice change of pace side dish.

• Sweet potato casserole

  • schenck65 on February 13, 2012

    My kids ate this like candy and so did I. They especially loved the caramelized bits where I'd swooped the puree up into waves. I made this with Meyer lemons instead of the requested orange and lemon juice and zest--not to be schmantzy, but because I happened to have a big one in the fridge. The flavor was lovely.

• Fried green tomatoes

  • emiliang on October 19, 2015

    Loved these! You will need at least two eggs, though.

• Barbecue slaw

  • JoanN on September 08, 2014

    Tangy and slightly sweet; very vinegary, in a good way. And less caloric than mayo-based slaws. Especially good with buttermilk fried chicken. Diego preferred the Classic Cole Slaw from BAYA, but ate this very happily.

• Mississippi fresh fig ice cream

  • bellatavia on October 01, 2011

    I love to make ice cream, and have triend many different bases for custards. This was the first one I ever made that required 8 (EIGHT!) egg yolks, making this technically a frozen custard rather than an ice cream. However, the resulting ice cream was quite decadently rich, with a thick creamy texture. The only thing that I would change about this recipe is to use 1/3 less sugar. I found the ice cream to be overly-sweet, so much so that it nearly drowned out the fig flavor. And, as the recipe notes, the riper the figs, the better.

• Louisiana fresh fig cake

  • bellatavia on October 01, 2011

    I made this recipe last week and found it flawless. The bundt cake came out perfect. It's just the teensiest bit dry, but I think I might have left it in the oven too long because my knife kept coming out wet, until I realized it was hitting the figs. She suggests serving it with fresh whipped cream or vanilla ice cream, but I think this would we enhanced by a vanilla-cinnamon glaze.