Brandi’s Book-report. Yes, It’s Food

Brandi's Book-report.

This week it's (not a real shocker that there is food involved) the new cookbook from Brys Stephens, called "The New Southern Table".

Brys has "food roots" from his travels all over the world. Spending time in different countries, traveling and discovering flavors and foods. When he returned to the US and settled in Charleston South Carolina, he found work as a recipe tester for other chefs as well as a food writer. But this book comes from his love of "traditional Southern ingredients" combined with "world wide flavors". For instance, incorporating quinoa with black eyed peas, squash in tempura, roasted sweet potatoes with tahini.

For the book report, I made the Black-Eyed Pea, Sausage and Escarole Soup. Took me a quick look online to see that "Field Peas" and "Black-Eyed Peas" are pretty much the same thing, but when I went to the grocery store the only black-eyed peas they had were already seasoned with bacon fat and other seasonings (which if I was serving them as a side dish, they would have been great!) but since I was incorporating them into a soup, I went with cannellini beans instead.

The recipe came together quickly, under 25 minutes from start to finish. Of course, the most important part, it was delicious!