“A lot of things shock you when you move from the South to the North, or vice versa,” writes Kelsey Barnard Clark. “Up North, people talk funny, move faster, and don’t wave to strangers on the street.”
After earning her Culinary Institute of America degree, the budding chef from Dothan, Alabama, was quick to adapt, landing gigs in the kitchens of Cafe Boulud and other top-tier Manhattan restaurants. Those experiences prepared her well when she returned to the slower pace of her hometown to buy a home, raise a family, and start a catering business and eatery, KBC. She honed a modernized approach to Southern food that eventually made her a winner on “Top Chef.”
“Southern Grit: 100+ Down-Home Recipes for the Modern Cook” (Chronicle, $29.95) showcases those dishes in the idyllic-looking setting of a home with a white picket fence, gleaming kitchen, and backyard with a lush garden and henhouse.
Baptisms, bridal showers, family holiday celebrations, and “girls’ group” get-togethers fuel creations such as Black-Eyed Pea Hummus, Bourbon Cider Mimosas, Cornmeal Catfish with Green Goddess Dressing, and sheet pan-roasted Supper Club “Smoked” Wings tempered with Alabama White Barbecue Sauce.
A bread and dessert chapter with nostalgic favorites such as Corn-Mold Skillet Cornbread and Beeb’s Blackberry Cobbler ends with a recipe for Stairway Red Velvet Cake and the story behind it.
Feeling burned out from New York and “the Michelin kitchen lifestyle,” she writes, she returned home to Dothan one holiday season to make some extra money catering. In two days, with help from family and friends, she baked 60 red velvet cakes and lined them all the way up her parents’ staircase.
Looking back, she views those stacked white boxes as a sweet metaphor for “the steps of my future in Dothan.”
Susan Puckett is a cookbook author and former food editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Follow her at susanpuckett.com.
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