Food is the way to many of our hearts and certain dishes can also remind us of home and our cultural roots. Chef Kardea Brown, host of the television show Delicious Miss Brown on the Food Network, knows this all too well. With that in mind, she’s set to release her first cookbook titled The Way Home: A Celebration of Sea Islands Food and Family with Over 100 Recipes. The chef plans to release the book on October 25.
This cookbook and the recipes in it are inspired by Brown’s Gullah/Geechee roots and the culinary traditions of her family.
“Gullah people laid the foundation for Southern cooking. Before farm-to-table was a fad, it was what Gullah people did,” Brown said of the culture that inspired her first cookbook. “I want to show the world that soul food is not monolithic. It’s so much more than fried chicken and vegetables cooked in pork. It’s seasonal, fresh and delicious!”
Readers can expect to get inspiration for starters, main courses, sides and desserts in addition to accompanying four-color photos to bring the recipes to life on the page. To give you a little teaser, some recipes to look forward to include seafood potato salad, smothered chicken, sweet potato cheesecake, and blood orange salmon.
Brown, who was formerly a social worker, left that line of work to pursue her true love – cooking. Her first major move in this industry was the New Gullah Supper Club, which was a traveling supper club and social destination with her grandmother’s dishes as a focal point. She experienced these dishes growing up in South Carolina’s Wadmalaw Island.
The next big move for Brown was landing her Food Network show Delicious Miss Brown, which premiered in 2019. The show has garnered so much love from viewers that it’s kicking off its fifth season in August.
If you’d like to get your hands on a copy and try out some new Southern-inspired recipes, you can pre-order the cookbook on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Books-A-Million.