Martha Hall Foose

Foose's Screen Doors and Sweet Tea: Recipes and Tales from a Southern Cook is the most literary cookbook we've come across in some time (when is the last time you encountered a cookbook featuring the word "electuaries," as in "These salty-sweet electuaries are brilliant paired with drinks before dinner"?). But we don't really care how literary a cookbook is, as long as the recipes are tasty, which Screen Doors readily accomplishes. The cookbook is one-third infectious stories about the Mississippi Delta Foose hails from, one-third comforting and creative recipes, and one-third Foose's insights into "why we eat what we do," as she told the Memphis Commercial Appeal. With recipes for Refuge Crawfish Pie, Yazoo Cheese Straws, and Delta Cream Doughnuts, Foose's first cookbook is firmly rooted in the Delta but her recipes for tabbouleh, Chinese grocery roast pork, and tamales reveal her sense of the South's changing demographics. On hiatus as the executive chef at Viking's Cooking School in Greenwood, Mississippi, Foose served as Cat Cora's sous chef on Iron Chef America; she and the book were featured on Good Morning America in June.

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At the Festival: Screen Doors and Sweet Tea: Recipes and Tales from a Southern Cook