The Best Cook in the World

Starred review from January 1, 2018
For Southerners, notes Bragg (All Over but the Shoutin’), every recipe is a story, not simply a list of ingredients, and he cannily shares the stories of the meals of his mother’s Alabama upbringing. For the book, Bragg asked his mother to share the secrets of her cooking, only to realize that she follows no rules or recipes: “She cooks in dabs, and smidgens, and tads, and a measurement she mysteriously refers to as ‘you know, hon, just some.’ ” Bragg recalls his grandmother Ava’s first real feast—cornbread, carrot and red cabbage slaw, creamed onions, boiled red potatoes and butter, and pinto beans and ham bone—and the impression it made on his mother. Bragg intersperses his memoir with recipes, including for pinto beans and ham bone (a main course, not a side), collard greens (which are sweeter after the first frost), pan-roasted pig’s feet, cracklin’ corn bread, baked possum, and pecan pie. In a disturbing though hilarious story, his father, speeding down a country road so he can make it home in time for supper, hits a body and leaves it there (it turns out that the body was that of a dog that miraculously survived and made its way home). Bragg’s entertaining memoir is a testament that cooking and food still bind culture together. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM.

Starred review from June 25, 2018
Cookbooks don’t translate easily to the audiobook format, but Bragg, reading in a friendly Southern drawl, manages to effortlessly transform this collection of his mother’s Southern comfort food recipes into an utterly captivating listening experience. This is largely due to the narrative component of the book, which includes stories from Bragg’s mother’s life in the South and is intertwined with 75 recipes for dishes including “fried chicken, potato salad, and slab of pie,” which Bragg’s grandmother served his grandfather at a barn dance and which helped to seal her fate as his future wife. The recipes themselves are rooted in the oral tradition, and many of them include measurements such as “enough” and temperature guidelines such as “you’ll know.” Bragg clearly developed each recipe while observing his mother in the kitchen. He captures his mother’s razor-sharp judgment and confidence as well as her frequent disclaimer of “Some people may do it that way, but I don’t.” As with his previous audiobooks, Bragg renders the banter of his blue-collar Southern family with pride and heart. This is that rare food-centric audiobook to savor. A Knopf hardcover.