Product Description

For nearly twenty-five years, Mildred Council—better known by her nickname, Mama Dip—has nourished thousands of hungry folks in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her restaurant, Mama Dip's Kitchen, is a much-loved community institution that has gained loyal fans and customers from all walks of life, from New York Times food writer Craig Claiborne to former Tar Heel basketball player Michael Jordan.

Mama Dip's Kitchen showcases the same down-home, wholesome, everyday Southern cooking for which its namesake restaurant is celebrated. The book features more than 250 recipes for such favorites as old-fashioned chicken pie, country-style pork chops, sweet potatoes, fresh corn casserole, poundcake, and banana pudding. Chapters cover breads and breakfast dishes; poultry, fish, and seafood; beef, pork, and lamb; vegetables and salads; and desserts, beverages, and party dishes.

The book opens with a charming introductory essay, a savory reflection on a life in cooking that also reveals the story behind Council's nickname. It is both a graceful reminiscence of a country childhood and the inspiring story of a woman determined to make her own way in the larger world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #82058 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-04
• Released on: 1999-09-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 248 pages

Amazon.com Review
You can hold this book the way you hold a child's hand. And you can let this book show you a whole new world, the way a child will reveal the secrets of a secret world if you take the time to stop and watch and listen. God bless Mildred Council and the time she took to get it all down in Mama Dip's Kitchen. And it's not just the recipes that come out of a life of good cooking--there's a great deal of Mildred Council in these pages, and we are better off for the reading, the cooking, and the sharing.

In her acknowledgments, Mildred Council thanks a woman who helped with the book. Then she thanks the woman's children, "Shawn and Chelsea, for playing so nicely while we flipped so many pages." She ends her cookbook with a recipe for a child's birthday party. Her enthusiasm for life growing through all its stages can be found on every page. "I realized my name was my earthly soul," she writes, "which needed to be tended like the pumpkin seed--tended, tilled, fed, and harvested, to have a good life. And that's what I tried to do ever since for my family and myself."

Part of that tending has been owning and operating Dip's, a popular Chapel Hill, North Carolina restaurant where she serves the kind of country food she grew up cooking. Mildred Council calls her style of cooking "dump cooking" because she scoops up ingredients without measuring and "dumps" them in the bowl or pan. It took her a good deal of time to measure out what she was doing so instinctively to be able to share her work as written recipes. But she encourages every cook to use her recipes like a sewing pattern, to experiment, to stretch here and cut there to make the food you like.

Mama Dip's Kitchen is a compendium of straightforward, simple, southern American foods in chapters devoted to "Breads and Breakfast Dishes," "Poultry, Fish, and Seafood Dishes," "Beef, Pork and Lamb Dishes," "Vegetables and Salad," and "Desserts, Beverages, and Party Dishes." In simple foods as in a simple life, the complexities run deep. --Schuyler Ingle

From Library Journal
In this memoir/cookbook, Council, a popular restaurant owner in North Carolina, explains her famous "dump cooking" method of preparing food, which means no recipes, just measuring by eye, feel, taste, and testing. She also includes 250 of her favorite dishes.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"The legendary founder of Dip's Kitchen in Chapel Hill, Mildred Council, is back with yet another of her anticipated written seminars on the fine art of Southern cooking: Mama Dip's Family Cookbook, a book so full of yummy that you're in danger of adding inches and pounds just holding it."
— Blue Ridge Business Journal

Mama Dip [has the] ability to render great flavors from simple and good ingredients.

Southern Living

Old-fashioned, down-home Southern cooking.

Black Issues Book Review

If we ever adopt the Japanese practice of designating and honoring Living National Treasures, Mama Dip will surely be one.

MetroMagazine

It's almost like standing at Grandma•s stove, with her teaching enduring ways of cooking.

Raleigh News and Observer

I've been a fan of Dip's for years. Chapel Hill wouldn't be the Southern Part of Heaven without her.

Dean Smith

Customer Reviews

Needs a spiral cover!
Mama Dip's cookbook offers the best collection of recipes since _Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine_. The country-style scrambled eggs are more than authentic and delicious, as are the breakfast chicken biscuits. One doesn't have to be toothless to enjoy Grandpa's chicken and people of all ages will make the cream cheese pound cake disappear. Try the roast turkey for a moist, tender, flavorful bird that won't last much past the meal - if that far! The rib roast is practically unspeakable - offer this succulent delight to guests and watch their reactions. While dishes prepared in a "traditional" soul food style are front and center, there are some tasty surprises, such as the stuffed mushrooms. It takes a long time to try every targeted recipe because there are so many, with nine of ten recipes bona fide hits. You won't be disappointed!

GREAT COOKBOOK!
The best pecan pie recipe in this book that I have ever found, and I have looked for one for years! It can be doubled to fit my Watkin's 10" deep dish pie pan without burning the pecans or the filling! I love it!

One of My Favortie Cookbooks!
The recipes in this cookbook are fantastic. They are simple to make and absolutely delicious. Mama Dips has changed our long standing Thanksgiving tradition...her roated turkey recipe is so delectable we use this recipe now instead of the one that's been in use for the last 50 years. You won't go wrong with this cookbook. Highly recommended!!!