Cookbooks
Frank Stitt's Southern Table: Recipes & Gracious Traditions from Highlands Bar and Grill
Southern Table features the distinctive recipes of one of America's most original culinary voices. The book received a coveted Starred Review from Publishers Weekly and won the SIBA (Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance) Award for best cookbook in 2004. Frank's debut book features regional recipes and profiles of the people, places and events that shape, and are shaped by, the culinary traditions of the South: an annual winter quail hunt amid the south Georgia pines; early-morning bartering among the produce vendors at the Alabama Farmers' Market; Buddy "the Watermelon King" Payton, who can read a watermelon the way a palm reader reads the lines of your hand; the laden farmhouse table Frank sat at as a child. In personal essays—and odes to favorite ingredients—Frank's Alabama reveals itself.
Bottega Favorita: A Southern Chef's Love Affair with Italian Food
Italians and Alabamians share a love of humble food. Whether it's ground corn, bitter greens, beans, cured pork or the day's catch, both cultures respect ingredients for what they are, not for what they might be. Bottega restaurant and Cafe "combines Southern cooking ideology and Italian tradition to craft a new style of eating," says Mario Batali, which is why "I think it is one of the best Italian restaurants outside of Italy." The dishes are "never precious, always inventive" (The New York Times): a lima bean and orzo soup with escarole; pork scaloppini with greens and polenta; or capellini gratin. Bottega was born from Frank's passion for the Italian way of life and the rustic simplicity of their cuisine. As one of the South's earliest supporters of regional producers, Frank makes ample use of local ingredients, inspiring the reader to do the same: "There's no pompano in Venice, but ours, fresh from Apalachicola, makes a great cartoccio [baked in a parchment bag] and our Chilton County white peaches make a great bellini."