About this item
The Mississippi Delta is a complicated and fascinating place Part travel guide part cookbook and part photo essay Eat Drink Delta by veteran food journalist Susan Puckett with photographs by Delta resident Langdon Clay reveals a region shaped by slavery civil rights amazing wealth abject deprivation the Civil War a flood of biblical proportions andmdashabove allmdashan overarching urge to get down and party with a full table and an open barTherersquos more to Delta dining than southern standards Puckett uncovers the stories behind convenience stores where dill pickles marinate in Kool-Aid and diners where tabouli appears on plates with fried chicken She celebrates the regionrsquos hot tamale makers who follow the time-honored techniques that inspired many a blues lyric And she introduces us to a new crop of Delta chefs who brine chicken in sweet tea and top stone-ground Mississippi grits with local pond-raised prawns and tomato confit The guide also provides a taste of events such as Belzonirsquos World Catfish Festival and Tunicarsquos Wild Game Cook-Off and offers dozens of tested recipes including the Memphis barbecue pizza beloved by Elvis and a lemon ice-box pie inspired by Tennessee WilliamsTo William Faulknerrsquos suggestion ldquoTo understand the world you must first understand a place like Mississippirdquo Susan Puckett adds this advice Go to the Delta with an open mind and an empty stomach Make your way southward in a journey measured in meals not miles.
About the Author
Susan Puckett is a James Beard-nominated food journalist and editor who has authored or collaborated on more than a dozen books. A native of Jackson, Mississippi, she was the food editor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for nearly 19 years. Most recently, she co-wrote Turnip Greens and Tortillas: A Mexican Chef Spices Up the Southern Kitchen with Eddie Hernandez, executive chef of the wildly popular Atlanta-based Taqueria del Sol restaurants. As a rookie reporter for her hometown newspaper, The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi, she wrote stories about working gristmills, cushaw melons, molasses-making and other fading food traditions around the state. The paper compiled those pieces in a book, A Cook's Tour of Mississippi, with an introduction by famed Mississippi writer Willie Morris.This experience led her to study food in-depth at Iowa State University, where she wrote her second book, A Cook's Tour of Iowa. Noted American regional food writers Jane and Michael Stern praised it as "an account of the way Americans really eat...a rarity within gastronomic literature."Since then, Susan has written about food for numerous publications around the country, including Eating Well, National Geographic Traveler, The Local Palate, Saveur, and The Food Network.com. While at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, she and her staff garnered dozens of awards for writing and editing from the James Beard Foundation and the Association of Food Journalists. After leaving the paper, she traveled extensively through the Mississippi Delta to produce a travelogue with recipes called Eat Drink Delta: A Hungry Traveler's Journey Through the Soul of the South. In 2014, the Georgia Center for the Book named it one of "Ten Books All Georgians Should Read."Susan co-authored Citizen Farmers with Daron "Farmer D" Joffe, which won the top award in the Food Matters category in the 2015 International Association of Culinary Professionals' cookbook awards competition. She has coached many other chefs and other aspiring cookbook authors on their writing endeavors, including James Beard winner Steven Satterfield on his book, Root to Leaf. Follow her at susanpuckett.com.
