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: #57472 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-04
• Released on: 1999-09-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 248 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780807847909
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

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

Southern Cooking at it's finest!
I bought this book for my wife whose been looking for a cobbler receipe. Not only did this give us an excellent cobbler but fantastic receipes for all sorts of southern dishes. My wife is not originally from the South and wanted the "secrets" to good southern cooking. Mama Dip has provided her with some of these secrets.

In addition to the receipies, the story of Mama Dip's life was inspiring. It gives us a glimpse into the life of a poor southern family. The book is worth buying for this story alone.

I'm anxiously awaiting additional titles from her!

NOTHING COULD BE FINER
When it comes to Carolina Country Cooking, Dip is simply the best. No wonder people line up at her Chapel Hill restaurant, patiently waiting for the South's best fried chicken (crispy-golden outside, juicily tender inside), her heavenly fried chicken livers, her marvelous chicken pot pie. And oh those collard greens cooked with a piece of side meat. Dip has made this Southerner mighty happy by putting all of these recipes -- and oh, so many more-- in her new cookbook. Also, by telling her story of growing up poor "but not knowing it" because of her close and loving family. We should all be so lucky. A Chapel Hill fan.

A Real Cookbook at Last
I first saw Mama Dip on the Food Network. I immediately went online to find the cookbook that was mentioned. I now have a book of recipes and techniques that I can leave for my children when I am gone. I was afraid that I would have to write down my techniques etc. but she did it for me. What a wonderful read the book is also. I can hardly wait for her to find time to put another collection together. What a wonderful woman.