Melba's American Comfort

May 1, 2016
Doyenne of contemporary cooking Wilson packs her Harlem restaurant nightly with fans eager for her fried chicken and other comfort foods from the noble culinary tradition of southern America. With this book, her far-flung devotees need no longer commute uptown to experience her much-beloved dishes. Her championship fried chicken comes in multiple guises here, ranging from traditional to lower-fat oven-fried to an inventive gluten-free bird. Similarly, macaroni and cheese appears in both everyday and Sunday-best varieties. A trained chef, Wilson does not hesitate to launch herself out of the comfort-food zone and introduce some exotic ingredients. She transforms Southeast Asian spring rolls by stuffing them with quintessentially American collard greens and sweet potatoes. Her beef short-rib recipe would fall perfectly into place in a French provincial cookbook, and grits morph into rich polenta cakes. Wilson keeps recipes perfectly accessible, and she offers helpful tips. A few cocktails add to this book's sophistication.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)