Frank Stitt's Southern Table

By Frank Stitt / Christopher Hirsheimer, Photographer / Birmingham, AL

Frank Stitt's Southern Table features the distinctive recipes of one of America's most original culinary voices, an award-winning third-generation Alabamian whose travels around the world brought into focus the uniqueness of the food back home. Now, Frank Stitt has written a long-awaited cookbook featuring his enticing, Provencal-influenced southern food. More than 150 recipes range from the traditional -- Green Tomato and Peach Relish, Spoonbread, and Pickled Shrimp -- to the inspired -- Slow-Roasted Black Grouper with Ham and Pumpkin Pirlau, and Roast Fresh Pork Rack with Corn Pudding and Grilled Eggplant. Desserts such as Bourbon Panna Cotta and Sweet Potato Tart with Coconut Crust and Pecan Streusel elevate the best of the South for cooks everywhere.

In addition to regional recipes executed with finesse, Frank Stitt's Southern Table profiles those 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 Stitt sat at as a child. In personal essays -- and odes to favorite ingredients -- Frank Stitt's Alabama reveals itself to us. At Highlands Bar and Grill, Stitt embraces these southern traditions and blends them with worldly flavors and humble elegance. The result is food that no one anywhere can resist.