Richmonders like cookbooks, especially when they’re written by one of us.

Kendra Bailey Morris, an accomplished local chef and food writer, has taught hundreds of classes, appeared in print, radio, and TV locally and nationally, and writes a popular food blog, called Fatback and Foie Gras.

She can now add “author of The Southern Slow Cooker,” recently published by Berkeley’s Ten Speed Press, to her list of accomplishments.

Most impressive, however, is the way Bailey Morris answers an increasingly popular question in the introduction to her new book: “What is southern food?” To her, southern food is many things. In her book, Bailey Morris says that southern food is, “the welcome table, a convivial place where you can savor a hearty meal
cooked with love and where there’s always room for one more chair.”

Just let me know what time and I’ll be there.

In addition to the conviviality of southern food, it’s also characterized by seasonal ingredients, often cooked low and slow. And that’s the main focus of The Southern Slow Cooker.

Bailey Morris’ style is a mash-up of the savory and sweet, the sacred and profane, the high brow and down low. Hams cooked with Dr. Pepper and Southern Comfort and ribs glazed with bourbon and Coke BBQ sauce share the pages with pork roast topped with a vanilla fig jam and Cornish game hens with apple butter BBQ.

Chapters in The Southern Slow Cooker are dedicated to soul-warming soups, stews and chilis, low and slow meats, vegetables and sides, desserts and sweets, and southern odds and ends. Peppered with advice about slow cooking and anecdotes from growing up in the south, Bailey Morris takes us on a ride through her south.

Let’s not forget to drink. She’s a girl after my own heart, providing drink pairings for almost every recipe—from wine and beer suggestions to more elaborate cocktail concoctions from local mixologists like T. Leggett’s “Danville Rattlesnake” or Mattias Hagglund’s “The Man Named Curtis Sloe.”

Richmonders can order their copy of The Southern Slow Cooker by visiting www.southernslowcooker.blogspot.com.