I AM FROM HERE

A noted Southern chef delivers a palate-pleasing blend of memoir and recipes.

“Recently, someone important asked me if I consider myself a Southern chef. The answer is absolutely yes…this is where I have made my home, and this is where I make my living.” So writes Bhatt, who has headed numerous kitchens in Oxford, Mississippi, since 1992. Born in Gujarat, he came to the U.S. with a wealth of Indian recipes learned in his mother’s kitchen. He pointedly asserts his status as a Southern chef who knows that grits and curry belong together and that the two food traditions (which, of course, each embrace countless other food traditions) have plenty of affinities, including a love of vegetables straight out of the garden and of rice, especially now that the South has increasingly become a place of settlement for new arrivals from Latin America and Asia and has grown more open to new foodways. “I grew up eating okra, black-eyed peas, fresh tomatoes, and lima beans,” Bhatt writes. Those Indian staples are Southern ones, too. Still, the author brings plenty new to the table, such as a lively dish of coal-roasted sweet potatoes flavored with ghee, cloves, nutmeg, and lots of black pepper. Some of his dishes pass muster in a Southern setting but would likely scandalize the folks back home, as with a recipe for tandoori pork marinated in yogurt. Most of the recipes, however, travel easily between the continents—e.g., a variation on collard greens and cornbread that yields a treat “just like a pakora made with corn and spinach or fenugreek leaves that I had as a child.” Bhatt closes with a listing of dishes built around occasions such as brunch (tomato-coconut chutney) and winter dinners (Afghan-style spinach with dill and cilantro) that will send readers to the kitchen straightaway.

Bhatt makes a convincing case for a Southern cuisine based on both tradition and innovation.