November 2006: Matt and Ted Lee’s The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook

I have a thing for Southern cooking. Last year my fave cookbook was Frank Stitt’s weighty tome on his native cuisine, and this year I am thrilled that two of my favorite food writers are out with their long-awaited book. Best of all, Matt and Ted Lee will be my guests on Chowhounds, live on November 4 at the Van Dusen Mansion for the big Mpls.St.Paul Magazine event at 10 a.m. Come say hi to all of us . . . .

Back in 1994, the Lee Brothers decided to popularize boiled peanuts­—their hometown snack—on the streets of New York. Recently expatriated from South Carolina, they began an evangelistic journey touting the world of Southern Cooking. Unlike Paula Deen and some of the other ‘performer-experts,’ the Lee brothers are great writers, great cooks, and great tour guides.

These guys are the famous New York Times food writers who so ardently defended lard and so compellingly demystified gumbo, and their collection of exceptional Southern recipes for everyday cooks, The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook (Norton Books), is a great read, with wonderful essays about growing up in Charleston and learning to love a food-centric life.

The recipes are superb, from classics like fried chicken, crab cakes, and pecan pie to little-known curiousities such as St. Cecilia punch and pickled peaches. Then there are the easy—and yes, sometimes sophisticated—dishes that the Lees have developed since moving to NYC . . . dishes such as blackened potato salad and buttermilk sweet potato pie. My favorite recipe in the book is for the one-pot Frogmore stew, a thrilling blend of shrimp, crab, sausage, and corn that typifies the Lees' approach to modernity, yet harkens back to a different time and place without abandoning the reader into that gray area where you like the read but don’t want to cook the food. This collection of stories and recipes is going to be a runaway best seller and will win every award they are put up for. Grab it now.

Buy The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook at Amazon.com.