Sallie Ann Robinson’s Kitchen: Food and Family Lore from the Lowcountry

The latest excellent entry from Robinson (Gullah Home Cooking the Daufuskie Way) is a more personal take on her childhood on Daufuskie Island in South Carolina. The once-remote area—telephone service didn’t exist there until 1973—populated by African-Americans and Native Americans, is known for its hybrid low-country/African-American Gullah culture. Robinson is an inviting and charming guide, as she introduces classic seafood-focused recipes for salads (shrimp, tomato, and red onion), sides (seafood fried rice with crabmeat, oysters, and shrimp), and basic mains such as a blue crab stew, crispy fried grouper, or shrimp and blue crab burgers. Robinson includes several meat dishes—Gullah gumbo with chicken and fried okra, smothered fried chicken, duck stuffed with oyster rice—alongside such Southern staples as green lima beans with ham hocks and pecan pie. Essays by Robinson on her near-idyllic childhood there (she recalls being taught by Prince of Tides author Pat Conroy) appear throughout. This delightful cookbook also serves as an excellent regional culinary history. (Sept.)