About

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Cynthia Graubart is a James Beard Award-winning cookbook author, Southern Living columnist, speaker, former cooking show television producer, and most-recently the author of Slow Cooking for Two: Double Dinners (Gibbs-Smith, 2014) and Slow Cooking for Two: Basics, Techniques, and Recipes (Gibbs-Smith 2013). Cynthia is also the co-author with Nathalie Dupree of Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking (James Beard Award 2013; Gibbs-Smith 2012), as well as the best-selling Southern Biscuits (Gibbs-Smith 2011), also co-written with Nathalie Dupree.

Cynthia emerged as an expert with the publication of her first book, The One-Armed Cook: How to make dinner with a baby on your hip, hailed as “the culinary version of What to Expect When You’re Expecting.”

Cynthia has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Georgia, and studied for her Master’s degree in Journalism at the University of Florida. Cynthia launched her television cooking show career producing Nathalie Dupree’s first national public television series “New Southern Cooking,” and continued for more than 10 years producing and consulting for television cooking programs, chefs, and authors known around the world.

Cynthia is passionate about food – from researching its origins, writing recipes, and teaching techniques, to bringing families together at the table. She appears on television and radio and has developed a dedicated audience hungry for the “how-to” of basic kitchen knowledge and techniques. She is a member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) and has spoken at its annual conference. She is a member of Les Dames d’Escoffier (LDEI) and has served on the board of the Atlanta Community Food Bank. She and her husband, Cliff, who owns the Old New York Book Shop, regularly travel to book festivals and host book store owners, as well as authors, on a regular basis in their Atlanta home.

 

While fried chicken may be the South’s iconic dish, when it comes to Southern foodways, there are a lot of ways to love America’s most popular fowl. Preparations range from Country Captain to Carolina Chicken Bog to Chicken and Parslied Dumplings and more. Here, Cynthia Graubart celebrates the bird in all its glory, Southern style and beyond. This little cookbook packs all the know-how that cooks need to make irresistible chicken dishes for everyday and special occasions, from shopping and selecting to cutting up, frying, braising, roasting, and much more. Ranging in style from traditional Southern to contemporary to international, the fifty-three recipes are organized to help easily match the cut of chicken to the perfect recipe. Be assured that Graubart includes instructions for making the best fried chicken ever—seven different ways.

Graubart also brings together the chicken’s culinary history with the popular culture and lore that surrounds chicken cookery in the South. She notes that the special Sunday Sabbath dinner was often built around a chicken—in fact, prior to the 1940s, chicken was sometimes more expensive than beef or pork. Today, the Southern states lead the country in annual poultry production, and Kentucky Fried Chicken features throughout the American landscape. But you won’t need take-out when you have CHICKEN in your kitchen.