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 Southern
Cakes: Irresistible Recipes for Everyday
Celebrations
Writing this book was a sweet excursion down memory lane
for me, back to the first cooking I ever did. Long
before I knew much about Thailand, much less how to cook
paht Thai and pho, and grow lemongrass at home, I was
baking cakes and pies in my North Carolina kitchen. I
loved baking instantly, from the time I was 9 years old.
Cakes gave me particular pleasure, with the glorious
mess of flour and sugar, and the mystery of turning a
jumble of single ingredients into a smooth, lucious
batter which emerges from the oven as a third entity:
The sweet, delicious, inviting incarnation of a homemade
cake. I loved making cakes, I loved presenting them to
my family, and I loved, loved, loved eating them. All
these things are still true, to this day.
I
still love cooking and writing about Thai food and Asian
cuisines, but I've longed to write about cakes and
sweets and Southern cooking for more than 10 years. It
took awhile, like cake batter rising in the oven and
cooling in the pan, but was it ever worth the wait.
Writing this book was particularly sweet because I had
constant, precious help from my daughter, Camellia, who
stepped to become chief tester ("What cakes are we doing
today?" she asked with an eager and lovely smile?). A
fabulous, creative cook, she took on every challenge and
turned out magnificent cakes along with savvy
observations that helped me craft the recipes just
right. My daughter Isabelle served as the tasting and
review panel, offering insight, criticism, and praise in
abundance. She kept us going when it seemed we couldn't
find the strength to crack one more egg, with her wit
and clever projects to amuse the cooks. My husband Will
came home from work to survey the results of our
cake-baking sessions, and provided smart, succinct input
and a gratifying appetite for our creations.
Since the demands of recipe testing often left us with
way more cake than any one family needs, we enjoyed
sharing plates of cake with neighbors, friends, and
teachers. We also loved taking a plate of cake slices to
the police station, the fire station, or the post
office. When we had abundance of cake, we wrapped up
individual slices in waxed paper and took them to the
community kitchen where meals are served daily for
anyone who could use one. It made me happy to share the
cakes we baked for the purpose of writing this book, and
it makes me indescribably happy to have Southern Cakes
to share with you.
Cooking up this book kept many hands busy for a good,
long while, and I am deeply grateful to all the people
who made it real. I came up with the ideas, recipes and
the words, but without the brilliance and creativity and
skill and hard work on the parts of photographer Becky
Luigart-Stayner and her team, and of Bill LeBlond and
Amy Treadwell and their fine colleagues at Chronicle
Books, I wouldn't have such a delicious treasure of a
book to share with you. I would love to hear what you
think about Southern Cakes, how the recipes work for
you, and anything you'd like to share about cakes that
are precious to you.
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 300
Best Stir-Fry Recipes
What
a feast we had while I was working on this cookbook!
Stir-fry cooking can involve almost any savory
ingredient you could name, and we put a good number of
them to work as I created the recipes for 300 Best
Stir-Fry Recipes. I arranged the chapters in the style
of an Asian restaurant menu in the West, with Chicken,
Pork, Beef, Fish, etc. as the organizing principle for
the book. That's because we tend to pick the protein and
build a meal around it. If you're looking for a way to
fix boneless, skinless chicken breast that won't put
everyone around the table to sleep, open to the Chicken
Chapter and start cooking. Stir-frying puts flavor and
freshness front-and-center, and provides you with an
amazing variety of ways to season the same ingredient
and get it on the table fast.
I
remember eating stir-fry dishes at Wong's Chinese
Restaurant in High Point, North Carolina, where
sweet-and-sour pork and moo-goo-gai-pan came in small,
lidded metal dishes that always reminded me of flying
saucers. I adored everything I tried, but considered it
all an exotic adventure, having little relationship to
what my mother and grandmother cooked at home. My real
introduction to stir-fry cooking came took place in
Thailand, where I spent three years as a Peace Corps
volunteer. I lived in a small town in Surin province,
and quickly came to adore Thai food in all its
manifestations. Stir-frying was an essential technique,
and almost any meal included a stir-fried dish enjoyed
with rice and other dishes. Vegetables came out crisp
and gorgeously colored, meat bestowed deep flavors, and
rice provided the canvas for enjoying them both.
Back
home in North Carolina, I turned to Chinese cookbooks
for instructions on how to stir-fry, and while I learned
so much and benefited from many fine books (and more
published since that time) I was surprised to see that
it sounded difficult and fraught with rules. Some
instructions called for precision chopping so that every
ingredient was the same exact size. Others called for
multiple steps of stir-frying this ingredient, then that
one, then another one, and then finally putting them all
together for a showstopping but laboriously-made dish.
Some instructions told me to pre-cook meat in a panful
of hot oil, then scoop it out, drain the oil, cook other
ingredients, and add the partially cooked ingredient in
to begin the final phase. For a restaurant cook these
things may make great sense, but for home cooks on a
busy weeknight, dumping out hot oil so you can keep
cooking in the same pan is not a practical plan.
These techniques are part of classic stir-fry cooking in
many places, but not in the world of simple, homestyle
Asian cooking. Where I lived and taught school in the
countryside of Northeastern Thailand, my neighbors would
have laughed out loud and the thought of all that
fussing over a little ol' stir-fried dish. Thai cooks
heat the oil till it will sizzle a spoonful or so of
garlic, toss that to season the oil, add the meat and
cook it till it changes color, add the vegetable
(usually one, not 3 or 8 or 17 different vegetables by
the way) and toss till it brightens, then add some
seasonings, broth, fish sauce, sugar, salt, maybe oyster
sauce or chilies or soy sauce for color, and then when
it's all done and beautiful and has a small amount of
sauce, out it goes onto a platter and we eat with
delight. Occasionally cooks add a cornstarch thickening
to make a luscious gravy for a stir-fried dish, but
usually they don't believing that the pan-juices are all
you need to have a grand dish.
In
300 Best Stir-Fry Recipes, you'll find a collection of
dishes from all over Asia, and from Chinese restaurants
in the West, where I still love to dine out. Kung Pao
Chicken, Clams with Black Bean Sauce, Thai-Style Chicken
with Basil, Lemon Chicken, and Moo-Shu Pork are all
there to enjoy, along with dozens of stir-fry dishes
using ingredients that won't show up on the table in
Hong Kong or Taipei. I tried Italian sausage with green
peppers and onions, and it was fantastic. I made a
day-after-Thanksgiving turkey stir-fry that came out
great. I tried kielbasa with cabbage, ham with salsa and
corn, a simple version of veal piccata made with pork,
and a fried rice dish made with black-eyed peas and ham
in the style of Hoppin' John. The results were amazing
and we ate happily and well the whole time I was cooking
up this book.
The
thing to remember with stir-fry cooking is that your
preparation time is the big part, with the actual
cooking time being the fast finish. Cutting things up,
chopping, measuring out ingredients for the seasonings
and sauces that are added late in the cooking, these are
the tasks of stir-fry cooking. You can do lots ahead,
measuring out sauce and chopping up garlic, green
onions, zucchini, and meat, and set it out by the stove
or covered in the fridge for perishable things. For
shortcuts in the prep process, look for recipes using
ground meat or shrimp which need no chopping, and check
the salad bar for ready-to-go vegetables from purple
onion and peppers to broccoli florets and peas. Produce
sections carry shredded carrots, trimmed broccoli and
cauliflower, celery sticks, and sliced mushrooms, and
frozen vegetables make a perfect standby. Frozen shelled
edamame beans and petite peas or regular peas are
mainstays of my frozen "pantry", as are lima beans and
corn.
Plan
a stir-fry meal around a "satisfy-er"; I made up this
word to substitute for "starch", a word that though
accurate causes me to wince because it sounds like
laundry or else is so associated with "things we
shouldn't eat!" that I want to give it a new life in our
food picture. Stir-fry cooking was born to go with rice,
lots of rice, and that is the favorite all over Asia. I
adore rice, and so does my family, but we love pasta and
noodles as well, and noodles of any kind make a fine
stir-fry companion. So does couscous, the five-minute
miracle available in the supermarket nowadays. As long
as you have something substantial to play chorus to
stir-fry's star-turn, you'll have a fine meal. I
included a chapter called Rice, Grains, and Other Sides,
to provide you with an array of options for "filling
out" your stir-fry meal. I like to include one other
dish as well. Often it's a simple salad made from mixed
greens, sliced apples, dried cranberries, and sliced
almonds, dressed with a simple vinaigrette. We also love
a big bowl of frozen peas, cooked just till tender and
tossed with a little knob of butter and a kiss of salt
and pepper. Canned stewed tomatoes, a simple fruit
salad, a plate of sliced cucumbers and sliced tomatoes
with salt and pepper, and bowls of a favorite soup are
other ways to complete the picture.
300
Best Stir-Fry Recipes is the biggest book I've ever done
--- four times as many recipes, and an intense
exploration of one way of cooking in countless
variations. I loved "touring the world" in my mind in
the process of coming up with recipe ideas. Seeing my
words and recipes brought to big, beautiful life was a
thrill, and I am grateful beyond words to Bob Dees,
publisher of Robert Rose, Inc., for the opportunity to
write this beautiful and useful book. My editor Carol
Sherman not only watched my words and made the jigsaw
puzzle pieces fit together wonderfully, she cooked
recipes and wrote delighted e-mails about them from her
kitchen, which really cheered me on. Judith Finlayson,
Jennifer MacKenzie, Daniella Zanchetta, and teams of
talented people at PageWave Graphids and Robert Rose
worked hard and wonderfully well to produce a book I
love.
Whether you're stir-frying in a large, deep skillet, or
a wok, using a spatula or a big spoon to toss, scoop and
stir up your dish, drawn to stir-fry cooking because
it's healthful, speedy, or simply because it tastes good
and keeps you in close personal contact with our good
friend, food, more power to you! I'm honored that you
are reading these words, and thinking about cooking
something to bring to your table. Let me know what you
think, how things come out, and what's cooking in your
stir-fry kitchen.
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 Quick
and Easy Vietnamese: 75 Everyday Recipes
Though it
shares certain culinary traditions with its Asian neighbors,
Vietnamese cuisine is entirely distinct, focusing on a bounty of
fresh fruits, vegetables, and herbs for signature clear, bright
flavors with contrasting notes of salty, sweet, sour, and spicy.
Creamy chicken curry is paired with the zesty tang of lime juice
and the heat from ground pepper and chilies. Crisp, fried fish is
served with a puree of pineapple-chili sauce. Delicate, rice
paper-wrapped summer rolls merit a rich and savory soybean dipping
sauce. From snacks and soups to grilled meats and seafood to
essential noodle dishes and desserts, Quick & Easy Vietnamese
presents the full spectrum of Vietnamese cooking at its most
simply delicious.
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 Quick
& Easy Thai: 70 Everyday Recipes
Whether you’ve wondered if you could ever bring great Thai flavors
to your everyday table, or you already enjoy cooking Thai food at
home, this book is for you. Start with Chicken Satay with
Spicy Peanut Sauce or Thai Crab Cakes, and then move on to Chicken
Coconut Soup, paht Thai and the fabulous dish pictured on
the cover, Chiang Mai Curry Noodles.
I found the ingredients for this book in my nearby well-stocked
supermarket, and I hope you. If you need help stocking your Thai
pantry, check my section on mail order/web sources for every item
you need.
I arranged this book like a Thai restaurant menu, from appetizers
and soups to sweets and drinks. The book jacket doubles as a
bookmark for that recipe you just can’t wait to try.
Here I return to my Thai theme with an eye on the clock. My love
for intense flavors squares off with my mission to get something,
anything onto the table on a school night. Many recipes are
authentic Thai dishes which are intrinsically simple to prepare.
Others are my streamlined versions of Thai favorites, with a few
smart shortcuts to get you to the table fast.
Quick & Easy Thai includes two dozen gorgeous color photographs,
in a handsome paperback binding with a brilliantly colorful
overall design. I hope you enjoy looking at and cooking from this
book.
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Real
Thai: The Best of Thailand’s
Regional Cooking
 The “Real” in the title means that every recipe illustrates an
authentic Thai dish in its classic form. “Real” also means that
the recipe exists to help you cook that dish in your own kitchen.
Whenever they work, I offer you substitutes for traditional
ingredients, along with do-ahead notes and shortcut options
whenever they make sense. I love this book, and cook from it
often. I’m honored that it still pleases so many people.
Real Thai was published in the spring of 1992. After my three
years in Thailand as a Peace Corps volunteer, I wanted to present
simple, everyday Thai food with insights into the people and
places behind the recipes. I began writing Real Thai after several
years of teaching Thai cooking classes and writing about Thai food
for newspapers and magazines.
To research the regional distinctions within Thai cuisine, I
returned to Thailand during the hot season of 1989 for three
months of delicious, fascinating research. I traveled all over the
Thai kingdom by train, bus, pickup truck, ferry and long-tailed
boat.
I called on my former students who whisked me out to their
villages to slurp steaming soup noodles and savor coconut rice
from roadside stalls. I patrolled the fresh markets of Chiang Mai
with my fellow Peace Corps veteran Sandi Younkin. We joined her
dear friend Sak and his family in Chiang Rai province for an
outing to the banks of the Mekong River overlooking Laos, where we
watched boat races and picnicked on fiery green papaya salad and
sticky rice.
I scribbled away in my reporter’s notebook, standing at the elbow
of the best paht Thai cook in the night market, and sitting by the
best Issahn grilled chicken vendor in the morning market in Khon Kaen. I joined a Chinese family in the Southern Thai city of
Nakorn Sri Thammaraht for Ching Ming, an annual excursion to the
family cemetery to spruce up the ancestors’ graves, offer them
food, and then celebrate with a fabulous picnic.
I had a blast, and I learned enough to fill a 50-pound book. Since
I had a firm deadline and strict limit on words and pages, Real
Thai came in at a manageable 120 recipes and weighing less than a
small sack of jasmine rice.
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 Real
Vegetarian Thai
This book flew off the shelves as soon as it appeared in 1997, and
readers tell me that they cook from it often. Vegetarians tend to
be dedicated, adventurous cooks, and I figured the dazzling
flavors of Thai food would be most welcome in their kitchens.
I love it as a way to increase my family’s vegetable intake beyond
salad, baked sweet potatoes and frozen peas. While my mission was
to translate Thailand’s authentic cuisine into vegetarian form, I
ended up with more than I planned to create: An abundance of
simple ways to make the greens, squash, snow peas, asparagus, baby
carrots, broccoli and other good-for-you vegetables that we all
need to eat lots of, taste fantastic.
Modeled on my first cookbook, Real Thai: The Best of Thailand’s
Regional Cooking, this book contains my vegetarian versions of the
traditional cuisine of Thailand. Though a small and growing
vegetarian community thrives in modern Thailand, the authentic
cuisine of the Thai kingdom includes meat. The quintessential
rural Thai meal is rice with fresh fish, dried chilies, and
preserved fish and seafood-based seasonings, but meat of all
descriptions is central to Thailand’s traditional cooking. This
fact took me off the “authentic” trail and onto a creative path.
Leaving out meat was the easy part. My big challenge was capturing
Thailand’s vibrant, boisterous flavors, without using fish sauce.
Thai cooks seem to season everything save sweets and Thai iced tea
with this ubiquitous salty dark-brown seasoning known as nahm
plah in Thai.
I found that vegetable broth and salt filled the gap nicely. I was
able to capture Thai food’s signature flavors in classic dishes
from mussamun curry and paht Thai to crispy corn fritters
and satay with spicy peanut sauce. While Real Thai is
organized by region, this book presents my Thai recipes in a menu
format, from snacks and soups to curries, stir-fries and sweets.
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 The
Curry Book: Memorable Flavors and Irresistibly
Simple Recipes from Around the World
The Curry Book provides curry-powered inspirations for an
abundance of fine and simple feasts. Splashes of curry brighten my
standard party menu of vegetable dip, stuffed mushrooms, and
deviled eggs. My husband adores the Pork Chops with Curried
Chutney Sauce, especially when they come with a platter of Rice
Pilaf with Golden Onions, Cashews and Peas.
Published in 1997, the Curry Book is also a passport to the
spice-infused lands where curry is a delicious way of life. Savor
Singapore Curry Noodles and dine on Lamb Curry Kashmiri-Style.
Cook up a platter of Homestyle Tandoori Chicken and try jasmine
rice with a bowl of Thai Green Curry with Snow Peas and Shrimp.
In this book I’ve kept things accessible by focusing on
ingredients you can find in a well-stocked grocery store. I
included a list of mail-order/web sources in case you need help
stocking your pantry. With recipes for rice, chapattis and fresh
paneer cheese, Thai curry pastes, Ginger-Pear Chutney, and
Mango Smoothies, you’ll be ready to celebrate curry flavors,
anytime, anywhere.
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 The
5 in 10 Pasta and Noodle Cookbook
This dandy little book marks my first effort at quick-and-easy
cooking, and it is a gem. Unlike my other four books, it is a
“package” project, in which the creator of a series hires authors
to write each book.
The focus was creating speedy but delicious pasta dishes using a
few everyday grocery store ingredients and a minimum of effort.
Everything about this book is practical: The interior spiral
binding, colorful, easy-care design, and of course, abundance of
satisfying, anytime recipes. My husband and daughter turn to it
often, and our dinner is pasta and salad two to three nights a
week.
To my regret, this book is out of print. If you have it, you are
in luck! If you don’t, look for it at your local library or in
used book stores, along with several other 5 in 10 titles, written
by good friends of mine.
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