Interspersed throughout are 75 recipes, most drawing on local ingredients such as the abundant seafood, and often creatively making use of everything on hand (several dishes are flavored with pigs’ tails). Robinson includes sections on canning and preserving, winemaking, and on folk beliefs and home remedies. The book immerses the reader in this culture through Robinson’s personal stories and family recipes.
“Cooking the Gullah Way” follows the rhythm of a typical day on Daufuskie Island, which was fairly isolated until the mid-20th century.
It took a little creativity to determine the heat, timing and muffin pan size, but the resulting muffins were light and flavorful, not too sweet, and the big kernels of corn throughout were a wonderful touch. Of the recipes we tested, the favorite was hominy muffins. The recipe for a potato mold calls for “some potatoes” to be mixed with “some butter” and a “little” milk, before adding “enough chopped parsley to make it look pretty.” And instructions often indicate simply a moderate, hot, or “rather quick” oven. Many are unusual (not to mention impractical) from today’s standpoint one for truffled turkey calls for 3 to 4 pounds of truffles - imagine paying for that many truffles nowadays!Īs with other cookbooks of the time, recipes are in paragraph form and require a level of proficiency from the user. His recipes range from the haute cuisine of the day to rustic, informal dishes and baked goods. During his tenure with Pullman, he prepared lavish meals for presidents, celebrities, dignitaries and royalty. “Good Things to Eat,” originally published in 1911, begins with a brief autobiography, describing how Estes, born into slavery in 1857, rose to be a chef for the Pullman Private Car Service and later a world-traveled private chef. Patty Pinner’s “Sweety Pies: An Uncommon Collection of Womanish Observations, With Pie” collects recipes for an enticing variety of pies and presents them with mini-profiles (of the pies’ originators) and kitchen folklore. In her second book, “Cooking the Gullah Way: Morning, Noon, & Night,” Sallie Ann Robinson continues to document the cuisine and culture of the Gullah, former African slaves isolated for years along the Eastern coastal shores from the Carolinas to Florida. “Good Things to Eat, as Suggested by Rufus,” is a reissue of the first cookbook by an African American chef, Rufus Estes. AMONG the events commemorating Black History Month this year is the publication of three new books celebrating the rich and varied culinary contributions of African Americans.
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