The Best Cook in the World ― Tales from My Momma's Table

From the beloved, best-selling author of All Over But the Shoutin', a delectable, rollicking food memoir, cookbook, and loving tribute to a region, a vanishing history, a family, and, especially, to his mother, and including 75 mouth-watering Bragg family recipes for classic southern dishes passed down through generations.

Margaret Bragg does not own a single cookbook. She measures in "dabs" and "smidgens" and "tads," and "you know, hon, just some." She cannot be pinned down on how long to bake a cornbread ("about 15 to 20 minutes, depending on the mysteries of your oven.") Her notion of farm-to-table is a flatbed truck. But she can tell you the secrets to perfect mashed potatoes, corn pudding, red-gravy, pinto beans and hambone, stewed cabbage, short ribs, chicken and dressing, biscuits and butter rolls. Many of her recipes, recorded here for the first time, pre-date the civil war, handed down skillet by skillet, from one generation of Braggs to the next. In The Best Cook in the World, Rick Bragg finally preserves it all by telling the stories that framed his mother's cooking and education, from childhood into old age. Because good food always has a good story, and a recipe, writes Bragg, is a story like anything else.

RICK BRAGG is the author of two best-selling books, Ava's Man and All Over but the Shoutin'. He lives in Alabama.