Product Description

People travel from far and wide to taste the fresh and delicious seafood served at Uncle Bubba s Oyster House in Savannah, but now you can stay home and let chef and owner Earl Bubba Hiers treat you to his famous Southern hospitality. His first-ever cookbook tells you how to prepare both the dishes that made his restaurant famous and the home cooking that he and his older sister, Food Network star Paula Deen, grew up eating in their Granny Paul s kitchen.
Learn how to make the finger-lickin , Dixieland favorites like Low Country Boil, Lip-Smackin -Good Chicken Casserole, Salmon and Grits, and Oyster Stew. Right off the restaurant s menu are dishes like BBQ Shrimp, Gumbo, and Shrimp and Grits. And because good cooking seems to run in Bubba s family, recipes like Raised Biscuits, Kathy s Dig Deep Salad, and Cheesy Squash Casserole come straight from the recipe boxes in the authentic Southern kitchens of Bubba s grannies, aunts, and friends.
Desserts are Bubba s favorite, and there s no shortage. Try Aunt Glennis s version of the classic Dixie staple, Red Velvet Cake, or the Lemon Cheese Cake, which true Southerners know is not a cheesecake at all. There s also Chocolate Almond Pie, Butterscotch Pound Cake, Bourbon Chocolate Pecan Pie, and three recipes for truly scrumptious desserts that are Paula s gift to her baby brother. Plus, along with the recipes, you ll get family stories and photographs that bring Bubba and Paula s Georgia childhood to life.
Like his restaurant, Bubba s recipes are casual perfect for summer cookouts and picnics where paper napkins and plastic forks are just fine, and the card playing and story swapping begins when the Chargrilled Oysters are put on the table and doesn t end until long after the last bite of Georgia Peach Cake is cleaned from the plate. Soon, just like Bubba, you ll be spending long afternoons around the grill, bragging on your barbecue and waiting for the Beer Rolls to come out of the oven.

EARL BUBBA HIERS is the chef and co-owner of Uncle Bubba s Oyster House in Savannah, Georgia. Before joining his sister, Paula Deen, in the restaurant business, he operated a highly successful landscaping and grounds-keeping company in his hometown, Albany, Georgia. In 1999, Bubba got his start when he moved to Savannah to help Paula and her sons, Jamie and Bobby, renovate a historic downtown building as a new home for their popular restaurant, The Lady & Sons. Bubba lives with his family in Savannah.

POLLY POWERS STRAMM is a native of Savannah, Georgia. Her articles have appeared in magazines and regional newspapers and her weekly column, Polly s People, runs in the Morning News. She lives with her family in Savannah.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #123255 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-15
• Released on: 2007-05-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The latest salvo from the Paula Deen camp (Bubba is her beloved baby brother) fits comfortably alongside Deen's many cookbooks. Sharing much in common with his sister (namely, a fondness for cream cheese, butter and mayonnaise), Hiers offers a number of dishes featured at his coastal Georgia restaurant, Uncle Bubba's Oyster House. Simple, tasty southern classics like Cornbread, Fried Chicken and Pecan Pie abound, but it's the seafood that takes center stage, ranging from Gumbo, Crab Stew and BBQ Shrimp to Seafood Nachos and Baked Oysters with Crab. Virtually all the recipes are straightforward and call for seafood that can be easily sourced even for cooks who don't live near the coast. Rounding out the collection are the usual sides (red beans and rice, cole slaw) as well as interesting variations like Vidalia Onion and Lump Blue Crab Salad. A solid collection of desserts suits every skill level-beginners will do just fine with any of Hier's three pound cakes, while more advanced bakers will want to try his Lemon Cheese Cake, really a traditional layer cake with lemon curd, seven minute frosting and, oddly enough, not a dab of cream cheese.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Followers of Paula Deen's irrepressible exploits on cable television's Food Network know that she has a baby brother who is similarly in the Savannah restaurant business. He runs his own eatery, a seafood house. Like his big sister's cuisine, Uncle Bubba's cooking appeals to tourists and natives alike, and it is made reproducible in the home because he does not rely exclusively on Savannah products. These recipes emphasize seafood, befitting the city's coastal location, and crab and shrimp recipes appeal broadly. He is never loath to call for a can of mushroom soup or a packet of dehydrated soup mix. Both of these appear in his instant version of Beef Burgundy along with meat, wine, and mushrooms. Despite its Georgia origins, the peach cake calls for canned peach-pie filling as well as boxed cake mix. On the other hand, Uncle Bubba's beef stew specifies only fresh ingredients. Knoblauch, Mark
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

It's not everybody who's lucky enough to make a living at what they love best. Me? I'm one of the lucky ones, and boy, don't I know it! My whole life has been about cooking, eating, and swapping stories.

Now that I have a restaurant where I get to do those things on a daily basis, I try never to forget just how blessed I am. Most every day I put on my baseball cap and visit with the fine folks who are eating in our restaurant. I stop by each table and eyeball what they've ordered. Could be a plateful of my chargrilled oysters or Georgia sweet shrimp with homemade cocktail sauce. Either one will make you want to clean your plate and beg for more.

I always say, "Hey, y'all, I'm Uncle Bubba. Where y'all from?" People appreciate the personal attention and lots of times say they never realized that there really is an Uncle Bubba. I say, "Yep, that's me, and I'm proud to be a good ole Southern boy."

My family and I have never been what you would call fancy diners. Growing up in southwest Georgia, we never had white tablecloths or silver candlesticks. We just wanted to eat good, laugh a lot, and have a good time. When I opened the doors at Uncle Bubba's Oyster House I tried to carry on what I describe as down-home Southern style. I want people to come just as they are and enjoy what I think is the greatest seafood ever, like my oyster stew, for instance. It's just like the stews I ate when I was a boy growing up, made by my Mama, Corrie Paul Hiers, and my Granny Paul. (That's what I preferred to call her; Paula called her Grandmomma Paul.) To make oyster stew, we start with sautéed onion, pour in real milk, add some real butter and a few other special ingredients, and then add the best oysters you've ever put in your mouth.

Like I said before, I'm proud of the name Bubba. Yep, people kid me about it all the time but I just laugh because it's a nickname that fits my personality. I was named for my daddy, Earl Wayne Hiers Sr. He was a great guy who never met a stranger. He and Mama didn't want me to be called Little Earl or Junior so they called me Bubba, which in the South is slang for brother. Most of you know that I am Paula Deen's one and only baby brother.

But believe it or not, Bubba isn't my only nickname. My Granny Hiers called me Sonny Boy. Come to think of it, that's what she called everybody. One story about her gets me laughing out loud every time I tell it. When I got out of high school I was dying to have a motorcycle bigger than the Honda 50 I scooted around on in Albany, Georgia. My Aunt Peggy Ort, my Mama's sister, just about had a fit when Mama bought me that first motorcycle. She reminds me of that motorcycle all the time and how she couldn't believe that her sister would buy a motorcycle for a fifteen-year-old boy. Anyway, after high school I bought a Honda 750 and decided to ride it to Florida because I had met a girl who lived around Winter Haven, which was close to where Daddy's relatives lived.

I grew up around good cooks. I can still taste the chicken, with the secret barbecue sauce, that Daddy used to put on the grill. It was truly finger-lickin' good. Food like that was my downfall when it came to my weight. When I went to college I started working out because I wanted to get to know some of the good-lookin' girls on campus. I went to the gym and, before long, I had dropped about thirty pounds. So, lookin' all handsome, I took one of my old belts, strapped it around my suitcase, hooked it to the back of the motorcycle and took off down Interstate 75. My first stop was Winter Haven because I wanted to visit Daddy's baby brother, Uncle Bob, who, by the way, used to be a model in New York. (I guess that's where me and Paula get some of our good looks from.)

Around the corner from Uncle Bob was where Daddy's Mama lived. I pulled into Granny Hiers's driveway and saw her pushing open the screen door. She waved at me and said, "Hey Sonny Boy, come on in."

We sat in her living room laughing and talking for a while and all of the sudden, she leaned up and looked at me through her thick glasses and said with a little giggle, "Tell me your name again, Sonny Boy." It tickled me so much that I almost wet my pants. Then it dawned on me that she hadn't seen me since I'd lost weight. She just died laughing and hurried over to hug and kiss me all over again. She told me she thought I was her next door neighbor's boyfriend because he had a motorcycle, too. Then, of course, she had to offer me something to eat because that's what we do in our family. She could make the best country fried steak, smothered in gravy and onions. It was so tender you could cut it with a fork.

Food stories like that seem to follow me everywhere but they don't always have whatcha call happy endings. When I was a senior in high school or a freshman in college (I forget which), I was living with my sister Paula because we had lost our parents by the time I was sixteen. Paula's seven years older than I am, and she was married and raising two boys, Jamie and Bobby, who have always been like little brothers to me even though I'm their uncle.

One night Paula and I decided to grill steaks. Money was always pretty tight, so this dinner was an extra special treat for us. We laid out the steaks on the counter and went outside to light the charcoal grill. Paula and I walked back in the kitchen and we couldn't believe what we were looking at.

We had a boxer named Deacon (Daddy named him), and we were all ready to put those pretty steaks on the grill before Deacon changed our plans. That dog was staring at us with one of those juicy steaks hanging out of both sides of his jaw. Somehow Paula and I scraped up enough money to replace the steak. Paula sent me back to the grocery store and sent Deacon to his doghouse to think about what he had done.

I guess it's only fittin' that I should be in the restaurant business because that's where I got my start in life. When I was born, we lived about ten miles from Albany, Georgia, at a place called River Bend on the Flint River. My granddaddy and granny on my Mama's side, John L. Paul and Irene Paul, operated a motel, restaurant, swimming pool, lounge, and skating rink at River Bend. My parents had the service station and a little store across the street where they sold souvenirs, Coca-Colas, ice cream, Moon Pies, pecans, and Georgia peaches to the Northern tourists who were driving through Georgia on their way to the Florida panhandle.

From the get-go I was forever in the kitchen getting under Granny Paul's feet or in the way of Sam, her head cook. They always worried about me because I would be right there when they were frying huge pans of chicken or pulling trays of homemade biscuits out of the oven. I always managed to sneak a piece of Granny Paul's cake or pecan pie, but she didn't mind. She knew that there was one thing I didn't want and that was my stomach hurtin' because it was empty.

Back then I thought the Coca-Cola man who drove the big red truck was somethin' special because Coca-Colas were my absolute favorite. That Coca-Cola driver would pull up to the restaurant, slide open the truck's back door, and show me what seemed like millions of green glass Coke bottles. I learned from watchin' Mama and Granny Paul that you can use Coke to make sauces for good ole fried chicken and country hams. Me? I just liked to drink 'em.

I never tired of listening to stories that Aunt Peggy or Granny Paul would tell me about River Bend. One even had to do with that Coca-Cola truck. One day when I was about three years old, I went missing -- or at least everybody thought so.

I had only climbed on the back of the Coke truck and nobody knew where I was. Mama was panicking, sure enough. She was clutching her apron, and yellin', "Where's Bubba?" over and over again. Finally somebody found me on the back of the truck. Boy, did I get my you-know-what tore up. Never did chase that truck again, though.

There's one more River Bend story that Paula, Aunt Peggy, and Granny Paul used to love to tell everybody. It seems a couple from up North pulled up to the gas pump, and Les, who worked at the station, walked out to fill up their car with gas, check the oil, and clean the windshield, while they snacked on cheese and peanut butter crackers and a Coke. Les had a big old four-door Plymouth that I liked to play in. So while Les was seeing about the car, the man and woman watched me bouncing up and down on the front seat of that old Plymouth.

They went on their way, switched on the radio, and heard that a little boy from up North had been kidnapped. I fit the description of that boy and they got to thinking about it and put two and two together. They stopped at a pay phone, called the sheriff, and told him that they thought they had found the missing boy. The next thing Mama knew the sheriff's car came to a screeching halt in front of the store. The sheriff demanded to know who that little boy was. That got Mama so flustered that she could hardly find my birth certificate to prove that I belonged to her.

After we moved into town, Daddy had a used-car lot and would come home every day at noon for a hot meal. Whether it was breakfast, lunch, or supper, Mama always put good food on the table for us. For lunch she might fry chicken and fix macaroni and cheese and okra. If it was summertime she'd slice some homegrown tomatoes and, no matter what, she was always baking biscuits. After finishin' a breakfast of scrambled eggs, crisp bacon, buttery grits, and biscuits covered with grape jelly, I'd hardly let that screen door slam behind me before I'd be daydreaming about Mama's hot and gooey chocolate chip cookies that she'd have waiting for me when I got out of school.

One summer day when Daddy came home at noontime for lunch he brought a Shetland pony that he took on at the car lot. He gave that pony to me and I named him Tony. I'm telling you, I felt like the biggest bigshot around because I would grab a handful of Mama's cookies and lead Tony around the neighborhood like a dog. Nobody else had a pony, es...

Customer Reviews

Uncle Bubba's Savannah Seafood
Very good recipes and easy to follow. Some of the recipes...you just have to be southern to fix...

Great Comfort Food
My wife loves Paula Deen and has all of her recipe books so I thought it only natural to buy Uncle Bubba's book as well. It combines our love of seafood and southern cooking. I would recommend this to anyone who appreciates good old comfort food and enjoys a great meal with friends and family.

Better than any other so far!!!!
I will have to say this cookbook is much better than any of Paula Deen, or the Deen Brothers books that I have purchased. She helped put this one together with Uncle Bubba, but beats the pants off hers alone. Super recipes and easy to follow, too.