Carrollton blogger offers smart recipes

‘Add a Pinch: Easier, Faster, Fresher Southern Classics’ by Robyn Stone (Clarkson Potter, $25)

Robyn Stone lives in Carrollton, and by the looks of her beautiful blog and its namesake cookbook, “Add a Pinch,” she is one fine Southern cook.

An author for whom family and food are mingled with a sense of place, she grew up in tiny Bowdon, also in Carroll County. The comforting, homestyle recipes she feeds her family today are not all that different from those that her grandmother Verdie cooked for her granddaddy Eual. And yet they are. Stone’s style is classic Southern, updated for time-pinched modern folk who want to eat with integrity and nurture body and soul.

She’s an advocate for mindfully chosen ingredients that come from nearby and don’t need to be processed.

She’s big on skillet suppers, slow-cooker meals, casseroles and one-dish dinners that use fat, sugar, cream with a lighter hand.

This means Southern Buttermilk Fried Chicken finished to a crisp in the oven. Sweet-and-sour meatballs like her mama made, only paired with zucchini instead of pasta. Peppers stuffed with wild rice and mushrooms instead of ground meat. Corn creamed with a little water, milk and butter instead of bacon fat. Butterbeans simmered in chicken stock and a touch of pepper and cumin, rather than ham hock.

When it comes to sweets, Stone’s a woman after my own heart: Italian Cream Cake, pecan pie , lemon meringue pie and Georgia Peach Crisp.

Her recipe collection is a fresh, gentle diversion from a regional cuisine that many want to jack up with fat, salt and sugar just because they can. Southern grandmas may have used butter and lard because it came from their own animals and was a genius way to add flavor with economy. Stone knows that oftentimes you only need to add a pinch.

‘River Cottage A to Z: Our Favourite Ingredients & How to Cook Them’ by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and the River Cottage team (Bloomsbury, $65)

Haddock, haggis, hake, ham and hare.

Alphabetically organized by ingredient, the weighty, 708-page tome is the so-called “bible” of the brand founded 20 years ago as a TV series by self-sufficiency guru Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Though I was ready to dismiss the material as arcane and irrelevant to Americans based on the very first entry (Alexanders: a flowering coastal plant common in the south of England), I quickly warmed to the peculiar charms of the reference guide.

And I do say: Some of the recipe titles really crack me up (Hempy Hummus, Pruney Sausage Rolls, Hot Dogfish Dog). It’s also funny how some exoticsounding ingredients turn out to be so common. (What’s a courgette? I would have guessed a fish, or a ballet movement. But it’s nothing more than a zucchini!)

Speaking of fish, when stumped by a name (brill, coley, gurnard, plaice), it usually turned out to be just that, a fish.

When I came to the entry on “Squirrel, grey” (no, it’s not a tea!), I had to chortle, at both the recipe (Squirrel and Beans on Toast) and the incisiveness of the entry: “Squirrels may be bright-eyed and charming, but that’s no reason not to eat them — particularly when you consider that they are delicious, very much free-range and that there are far too many of the bushy-tailed little blighters about.” (Writer runs to closet to retrieve rifle.)

Right now, strawberries and rhubarb are in season, and I happened to spy two delicious-sounding treats: strawberries with lavender, and honey and vanilla and rhubarb ice cream.

So just like that, lads and lasses, I’ve gone from hating on this book to lapping it up.

Now back to salt beef and sweet cicely.

‘Burma Superstar: Addictive Recipes From the Crossroads of Southeast Asia’ by Desmond Tan and Kate Leahy (Ten Speed Press, $29.99)

A few years ago, some New York friends took me to one of their favorite neighborhood restaurants, where I had my first bite of Myanmar’s famous laphet thoke, a salad that derives its mysterious allure from fermented tea leaves.

I was immediately hooked on the distinctive sweet-sour-savory tang and the crunchy pop of fried garlic and yellow split peas, toasted nuts and sesame seeds, all of which transformed ordinary salad greens into something magical and haunting.

When “Burma Superstar” arrived on my desk, I imagined its namesake San Francisco restaurant to be a hip, of-the-moment place with a celebrity chef and, of course, a killer laphet thoke.

In fact, Burma Superstar opened in 1992 as a tiny momand-pop. It wasn’t until Bay Area businessman and Burma native Desmond Tan and his wife bought the place in 2000 that it began to sizzle.

Today, there are three Burma Superstar locations, a sister restaurant, and an importing company that has made the famous fermented tea leaves accessible to Americans.

Smartly written and exquisitely photographed by John Lee, “Burma Superstar” showcases the dishes that have made the brand famous, plus a few from home cooks in Burma and San Francisco.

If you’re headed to Myanmar, “Burma Superstar” will be a delicious and tantalizing introduction. If you want to bring the fragrant curries, salads and little dishes of a nation sandwiched between India and China and bordered by Laos and Thailand to your own kitchen, it’s an essential guide.

As Leahy suggests, before you start chasing exotic ingredients, you might begin with some simple recipes from the front of the book (maybe the Egg and Okra Curry or the five-ingredient Bagan Butterbeans), then move on to more complex dishes, like the classic fish-and-noodle soup, Mohinga.

This beautiful book is a joy to read and savor, certain to shine a light on a cuisine that was hidden from the world for so long. And it’s an invitation not only to sip your tea, but also to eat it.