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The Best Cook in the World

Tales from My Momma's Southern Table: A Memoir and Cookbook

Audiobook
4 of 5 copies available
4 of 5 copies available
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.
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 corn bread ("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, redeye gravy, pinto beans and hambone, stewed cabbage, short ribs, chicken and dressing, biscuits and butter rolls. The irresistible stories in this audiobook are of long memory — many of them 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 his heritage 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.
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    • AudioFile Magazine
      Prepare to hunger for genuine Southern fare as author Rick Bragg pays tribute to his delightful mother--and to the food and storied culture of the region itself. In a Southern drawl, Bragg offers up a memoir that's wrapped around recipes and the stories they're rooted in. Describing a long family history of preparing the ultimate slow food requires an unhurried narration and many side journeys, so this audiobook is not for the impatient. Those who settle in will feast for hours at Bragg's memory buffet while meeting his colorful ancestors--and of course, his momma, the best cook in the world. Listening to the recipes is itself entertaining; Bragg fully captures his mom's colorful directions and commentary: "Grits is to carry the other flavors of stuff . . . Grits ain't nuthin' just left by theirself." J.C.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from January 1, 2018
      For Southerners, notes Bragg (All Over but the Shoutin’), every recipe is a story, not simply a list of ingredients, and he cannily shares the stories of the meals of his mother’s Alabama upbringing. For the book, Bragg asked his mother to share the secrets of her cooking, only to realize that she follows no rules or recipes: “She cooks in dabs, and smidgens, and tads, and a measurement she mysteriously refers to as ‘you know, hon, just some.’ ” Bragg recalls his grandmother Ava’s first real feast—cornbread, carrot and red cabbage slaw, creamed onions, boiled red potatoes and butter, and pinto beans and ham bone—and the impression it made on his mother. Bragg intersperses his memoir with recipes, including for pinto beans and ham bone (a main course, not a side), collard greens (which are sweeter after the first frost), pan-roasted pig’s feet, cracklin’ corn bread, baked possum, and pecan pie. In a disturbing though hilarious story, his father, speeding down a country road so he can make it home in time for supper, hits a body and leaves it there (it turns out that the body was that of a dog that miraculously survived and made its way home). Bragg’s entertaining memoir is a testament that cooking and food still bind culture together. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from June 25, 2018
      Cookbooks don’t translate easily to the audiobook format, but Bragg, reading in a friendly Southern drawl, manages to effortlessly transform this collection of his mother’s Southern comfort food recipes into an utterly captivating listening experience. This is largely due to the narrative component of the book, which includes stories from Bragg’s mother’s life in the South and is intertwined with 75 recipes for dishes including “fried chicken, potato salad, and slab of pie,” which Bragg’s grandmother served his grandfather at a barn dance and which helped to seal her fate as his future wife. The recipes themselves are rooted in the oral tradition, and many of them include measurements such as “enough” and temperature guidelines such as “you’ll know.” Bragg clearly developed each recipe while observing his mother in the kitchen. He captures his mother’s razor-sharp judgment and confidence as well as her frequent disclaimer of “Some people may do it that way, but I don’t.” As with his previous audiobooks, Bragg renders the banter of his blue-collar Southern family with pride and heart. This is that rare food-centric audiobook to savor. A Knopf hardcover.

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  • English

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