In 1991 Ed Mitchell drove to the nearby Piggly Wiggly, bought a thirty-five-pound pig (that's a small one), and fired up the coals. That was the start of his barbeque business. Now ed is known simply as "the Pitmaster" in barbeque circles and is widely considered to be one of the best at what he does. Here Ed and his son, Ryan, share the tradition of whole-hog barbeque, and share methods passed down through generations. Bring your barbeque to the...

"It begins with a simple ritual: Every Saturday afternoon, a boy who loves to cook walks to his grandmother's house and helps her prepare a roast chicken for dinner. The grandmother is Swedish, a retired domestic. The boy is Ethiopian and adopted, and he will grow up to become the world-renowned chef Marcus Samuelsson. This book is his love letter to food and family in all its manifestations. Marcus Samuelsson was only three years old when he, his...

"Before becoming executive chef and part owner of the California soul food restaurant Alta Adams in West LA, Keith Corbin had spent a quarter of his life in prison. Renowned as the best cook of crack cocaine in Los Angeles, Corbin more or less raised himself on the streets of Watts, learning to cook crack when he was only thirteen. He knew he was doing it right if it had the consistency of the roux his granny made for her gumbo. It was a violent business-one...

Award winning author Adrian Miller vividly tells the stories of the African Americans who worked in the presidential food service as chefs, personal cooks, butlers, stewards, and servers for every First Family since George and Martha Washington. Miller brings together the names and words of more than 150 black men and women who played remarkable roles in unforgettable events in the nation's history.

Philadelphia 1793. Hercules, President George Washington's chef, is a fixture on the Philadelphia scene. He is famous for both his culinary prowess and for ruling his kitchen like a commanding general. He has his run of the city and earns twice the salary of an average American workingman. He wears beautiful clothes and attends the theater. But while valued by the Washingtons for his prowess in the kitchen and rewarded far over and above even white...

"Join superstar restaurateur and chef Justin Sutherland on his tour of American Southern cuisine shaped by his upbringing in the Northern Midwest and the South, and by his African-American and Asian heritage. Justin owns multiple restaurants in the Twin Cities, though his reputation is national. You may know him from television, where he won an Iron Chef episode, competed on Season 16 of Top Chef, and is one of the chefs featured on Fast Foodies and...

"Edna Lewis (1916-2006) wrote some of America's most resonant, evocative, and significant cookbooks ever, including the now classic The Taste of Country Cooking. Lewis cooked and wrote first as a means to explore her memories of childhood on a farm in Freetown, Virginia, a community originally founded by freed black families. Later, she wrote to commemorate and document the seasonal richness of southern foodways ... She moved from the rural South...