Cookbook Club

Exclusive Q&A with Michael W. Twitty

By: Emily Havener

There are 280 recipes in culinary historian Michael W. Twitty’s new book, Recipes from the American South, but it’s the one that didn’t make it into the wide-ranging, exhaustively researched, deeply felt collection that woke him up in the middle of the night. “I forgot fried okra,” he confesses. “There was room for 300 recipes, but we stopped at 260 to include room for variations. Fried okra is the one that got away.”

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The quintessential Southern vegetable gets plenty of love, represented in 10 different dishes, among them okra cakes, okra gumbo, okra pickles, and Limping Susan, the answering culinary song to Hoppin’ John, also in the book.

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Date Published: 10.14.25
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About The Author

Emily Havener

Emily Havener enjoys writing about food almost as much as she enjoys eating it. She has been food blogging and developing recipes since 2008, and her particular areas of expertise are finding creative ways to use leftovers and never making a recipe the same way twice. She’s always up for raw fish of any kind and a good gin cocktail or a glass of orange wine.