Lawrence Amy - The Southern vegetarian cookbook: 100 down-home recipes for the modern table

PRAISE FOR THE SOUTHERN VEGETARIAN

True Southern food will always adapt to its surroundings. It is not the stubborn lout that many think it is; rather, its a nimble cheerleader of its region. It revels in vegetables and cherishes seasons. Burks and Lawrence are adding healthy substance to the definition of our Southern food. The Southern Vegetarian is a great addition to any culinary library.

HUGH ACHESON, AUTHOR, A NEW TURN IN THE SOUTH

What you have in your hands is a gift. It is a fresh, fun, slightly irreverent and joyful new look at Southern vegetarian dishes... a look that needed to be taken.

JOHN CURRENCE, RECIPIENT OF THE JAMES BEARD FOUNDATION AWARD FOR BEST CHEF SOUTH; CHEF/OWNER, CITY GROCERY RESTAURANT GROUP

Come eat with The Chubby Vegetarian. Justin and Amy are the only people I have ever met who can take the hock out of greens and not remove the soul from the pot.

CHEF KELLY ENGLISH, FOOD & WINE BEST NEW CHEF 2009; CHEF/OWNER, THE AWARD-WINNING RESTAURANT IRIS

Justin and Amy have a reverent respect for the traditions of Southern cooking and a bold adventurousness about its evolving future. In addition to cracking the code for a perfect cheese dip, theyre sharing dozens of instant classics in these beautiful and smartly written pages.

NICK ROGERS, FOOD WRITER AND FOUNDER OF THE WORLD CHEESE DIP CHAMPIONSHIP

If Justin and Amy were my personal chefs, even a bacon lover like me could be a vegetarian. There is a joie de vivre to their cooking because they mix heart and home into a scrumptious cornucopia for everyone.

PAMELA DENNEY, FOOD EDITOR, MEMPHIS MAGAZINE

Justin and Amy are smart, fun, and creative, and that shines through in their recipes. No need to miss meateach dish showcases an incredible fruit or vegetable with innovative flavor combinations, approachable techniques, and a touch of Southern flair.

MELISSA PETERSEN, EDITOR, EDIBLE MEMPHIS

Justin and Amys new book has a permanent place on my kitchen counter. Their enthusiasm and love of all things veggie gave me the inspiration to go meatless several days a week.

JENNIFER CHANDLER, AUTHOR, SIMPLY GRILLING

THE SOUTHERN

VEGETARIAN

COOKBOOK

2013 by Justin Fox Burks and Amy Lawrence

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Thomas Nelson, Inc., titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail SpecialMarkets@ThomasNelson.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Burks, Justin Fox.

The Southern vegetarian cookbook : 100 down-home recipes for the modern table / Justin Fox Burks and Amy Lawrence.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4016-0482-0 (pbk.)

1. Cooking, AmericanSouthern style. 2. Vegetarian cooking. I. Lawrence, Amy. II. Title.

TX715.2.S68B874 2013

641.5'6360975dc23 2012041487

Printed in the United States of America

13 14 15 16 17 18 QG 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

by Chef John Currence

BY CHEF JOHN CURRENCE

S o heres a little something few people know about me: for about six or eight months in 1986 during my tenure at UNC, I posed as a vegetarian. I say posed because, as much as I wanted to impress that very special young lady in my life, I knew all along I was a fraud... a terrible, hypocritical, meat-loving fraud.

I wore my faade nobly. I had just started cooking professionally, so I soldiered stoically through bacon-heavy shifts at Crooks Corner and absorbed occasional chiding. I girded myself for visits home to unrelenting attacks from my dad and brother, who both still have fun with my phase to this day, almost thirty years later.

How I returned to carnivore-ism is a subject of mystery. Whether it was my inability to withstand the draw of a corn dog at the North Carolina State Fair or a muffuletta given to me in my weakened condition by a friend, the reason is lost at this point, but what I do know is that my status was surrendered because I knew I just didnt belong among a noble few. I didnt care about the animal lives sacrificed. I was well aware that the diet was not necessarily any healthier than a meat-peppered one. And I was heart-broken, so I was returning to my old ways.

As a budding line cook, I was part of a vitriolic pirates movement in the kitchens I worked in during the 1980s. Vegetarian requests were met with profanity-laced insults of the infidel who would make such demands. We begrudgingly assembled vegetable plates and sent them out with even less ceremony. Our places were temples of flesh, and those who came to worship our ability to manipulate muscle were adored. All others were nothing more than nuisance.

So, when I opened my first restaurant, City Grocery, in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1992, in my mind, the kitchen would be the rogue-est of any I had ever worked in. Testosterone bled from the walls, Gun and Roses blared from a stereo twice as big as the room needed, and NOBODY questioned our combinations or dish design. The wait staff were terrified to submit special orders, split plate requests, and, most of all, vegetarian queries. It was no way to run a kitchen, and I realized it very quickly.

The order of the day became, quickly, that special requests and vegetarian considerations be given the same respect as any other order to come into the kitchen. It was in these months, coincidentally, that my food was beginning to take shape. I was beginning to understand what my place was in the South and how that informed what I was trying to create, both with the food I was making and the place we were serving it.

A significant part of what my food spoke to was directly related to time I spent working with my maternal grandparents in their vegetable garden during the summers of my childhood. We harvested in the mornings, processed midday, canned in the afternoons, and stored in the evenings. It was a daily ritual, and though it was definitely not what inspired me to become a chef, it ultimately gave me the ability to understand and respect those things we worked so hard to grow and preserve.

It was a brush with death that finally brought me to full appreciation of the vegetable. I was sidelined with a case of pancreatitis in the summer of 2009. It is a catastrophically painful condition, and there is little that they can do for it other than starve you and pray. Mine was brought on by poor diet and even poorer genetics, it turns out. As it became clear what had happened to me, the immediate concern was whether I would ever consider food or cook it the same way again.