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By Root 181 0

bakers, and fishermen, and we’ve learned a tremendous amount from them: about buying and storing ingredients, about the most useful tools and techniques, and about how to organize your kitchen in a way that minimizes time and effort while keeping your outlook fresh. Perhaps most important, we’ve learned how to pick our battles wisely, to carve a path through competing issues of quality, time, resources, and flavor that is most humane to you, the cook.

Along the way, we’ll pass along those insights, and we’ll note the pantry staples and condiments that are most often the foundation for Simple Fresh Southern meals. We’ll tell you what brands we use and why we use them, and we’ll encourage you to find your own favorites in the marketplace. After all, so much of the fun—and the unique personality—of your kitchen is what you bring to it; even something as mundane as a brand of canned tomatoes feels super-special if it’s a favorite you’ve selected after sampling all the brands in your market.

And be on the lookout for our “Garnish It” notes. When we were younger, the word garnish brought to mind inert sprigs of curly-leaf parsley that “dress up” the inflight meal. But these days, the garnish in our recipes is usually a finishing layer of flavor and texture—a sprinkling of citrus zest, a scattering of good smoky bacon, a little shower of flaky Maldon salt—that transforms a great dish into an extraordinary one, with minimal effort and expense.

Our exposure to a wide variety of cooking professionals has had the benefit of making us better southern chefs, but it has also made the time that we spend in the kitchen more pleasurable and fun. And the “joy factor” is critical for us, because speed and simplicity are not virtues in and of themselves; whether a task takes five minutes or fifteen, if you’re not truly enjoying the time you spend in your kitchen, you might as well order in. Even the most seemingly dull task like dicing an onion can be a true pleasure if you feel clever in the kitchen: you’re using a knife you love, an onion you’re thrilled to eat, and you’re confident in your technique. In Simple Fresh Southern, we’ll show you how to get that symphonic convergence of ingredient-tool-technique that really makes your kitchen—and you!—perform.

Y’all enjoy!

WINE COOLERS: TANGERINE, STRAWBERRY, AND HONEYDEW

In our first cookbook we made the claim that southerners brought a special mojo to crafting their desserts, but we should issue a correction: southerners have a gift for composing both fun desserts and drinks. And the beverages don’t have to be sweet like dessert—or alcoholic, for that matter—to be interesting. Outside the standard iced tea, beer, and wine there is plenty of territory to conquer, so here we present a small sampling of the drink ideas we’re loving now, from a ginger-spiced lemonade to a souped-up rum and coke to a chocolate milkshake that is decidedly not for kids.

Fasten your seat belts. For many of you this is going to be the first time you’ve seen the words Purple and Jesus next to each other, and you wine enthusiasts may never have contemplated letting a wine cooler pass your lips, but if you give us a few minutes of your time, we promise that our recipes—even the silliest sounding ones—deliver finely articulated flavors, well-calibrated textures, and an extra jolt of vivacity that comes from using fresh fruits and vegetables (yes, see the Celery Julep). Our plentiful variations multiply the possibilities and occasionally offer a few ways to detoxify or fortify these drinks.

Southerners who pride themselves on good hospitality know that nothing jazzes up an everyday occasion, or burnishes a reputation, like an original and delicious beverage.

RECIPES

Strawberry Wine Coolers

Applejack Punch

Watermelon Margaritas

Ginger Lemonade

Hummers

Celery Julep

Peach Iced Tea

Lowcountry Pousse-Rapière

Spiced Rum-n-Cokes

Purple Jesus (“PJ”)

STRAWBERRY WINE COOLERS

serves 6 • TIME: 15 minutes

Wine coolers are potentially one of the best ideas going—the combination of wine and fruit