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'Mama Dip's Kitchen'
by Mildred Council
The University of North Carolina Press - 1999
Buy it on Amazon

Mildred Council (also known as Mama Dip) has been serving up old-fashioned, down-home soul food at her legendary restaurant, Mama Dip's Traditional Country Cooking, in Chapel Hill, N.C., since 1976.

In this half-memoir, half-cookbook, Council explains how she learned to cook without recipes, relying on her senses and going by look, feel and taste. She calls her methodology "dump cooking."

Thankfully, despite the slightly unappetizing term, her compilation of 263 traditional Southern recipes -- from fried catfish to peach cobbler to chow-chow -- hits all the right marks, just in time for comfort-food season.

See what we tested and whether it's worth buying after the jump.

It would seem that providence has brought me a country ham. Upon reading a Facebook posting of mine last night, crowing about (okay, showing off), my haul of whole hog BBQ from Ed Mitchell's The Pit in Raleigh, a dear pal inquired as to the possibility of my acquiring a ham for him while I was still in North Carolina. My husband Douglas and I were planning hitting the road at an unholy hour this morning, so I gave a Chapel Hill Harris Teeter the ol' Tarheel try 'round about midnight. Plenty of Harris' She Crab soup, Duke's mayo, Cheerwine and Peanut Butter Moon Pies to be had, but not so much with the artisanal pig products. Well shoot! I'd tried.