Damon Lee Fowler

The best cooking is always the simplest. When the ingredients are first rate, a wise cook knows to do no more than is absolutely necessary to bring out their flavor. This is especially true in summer, when produce is at its peak and the heat, even when the air-conditioner is going full blast, makes spending time in the kitchen deeply unappealing.

And when we go back to Savannah and are lucky enough to come home with a pound cake from Mollie Stone Read More 

The summer heat and humidity in our corner of Southern Virginia may not be quite as intense as it was in coastal Georgia, but it's still summer in the South. My cooking continues to be heavy on summer comfort food: lots of fresh produce, pan-roasted meat and poultry, salads, and cold soups.

Luckily, Petersburg has a lovely Farmers' Market in an open lot of Old Towne's River Street, Read More 

Shortcake is one of the most versatile of all home desserts. The biscuit-like cake can be enriched with more butter and an egg yolk, spiced, studded with currants or chopped raisins, glazed with beaten egg white for a glossy finish, or brushed with milk and topped with cinnamon sugar.

The filling can be anything at all from savory to sweet: on the savory end, creamed chicken, creamed asparagus or peas, or even seafood (though I'd leave out the sugar in the shortcake for that); on the sweet end, fresh berries or soft summer fruit such as peaches, plums, mangoes, or figs, jam, cooked fruit compote, or even citrus marmalade. Read More 

Toward the end of the summer of 1979, while I was in graduate school at Clemson University, my mother came for a short visit. As usual, she left me with a cache of produce from her garden, supplemented by baskets of fragrant late peaches and blueberries from local orchards.

It was my first apartment, and therefore the first kitchen that was wholly my own: usually, such gifts led to a day of curious cooking, but a project deadline loomed and my un-airconditioned apartment was too hot to consider turning on the monstrous avocado-green electric stove that dominated my little kitchen. Read More