Hoppin' John's Charleston, Beaufort & Savannah: Dining at Home in the Lowcountry
South Carolina and Georgia's coastal cities have developed their own cuisine since their colonial infancy, a cooking style distinctive from the rest of the South. Access to the sea's finest, freshest shrimp, crab, and oysters opened culinary possibilities far beyond those in inland plantations. Taylor's newest book presents the best of this regional cookery set among photographs of the cities' stately homes. The result is a particularly elegant volume with practical recipes that cooks throughout the U.S. can appreciate. Some will prove difficult or expensive to reproduce--smoked lamb sausage required for Frogmore stew isn't readily available outside low-country sources. As if oysters Rockefeller somehow were too plain on their own, Taylor stuffs them into puff pastry to produce enticing finger foods. Other recipes--for cornbread, lemonade, and the like--present fewer difficulties.Mark Knoblauch