"lee brothers" news and stories

This weekend, the fifth annual Brooklyn Book Festival brought together a smattering of food writers from across the boroughs, including the Franks of Frankies Spuntino and Prime Meats; Rachel Wharton of Edible Brooklyn; chef Gabrielle Hamilton of Prune restaurant; Francis Lam, senior writer at Salon.com; and the Lee Brothers of Southern cookbook and boiled peanut fame.

There were many lively discussions on a variety of topics throughout the festival, but we've collected the most delicious quotes here:

On writing about food:

Gabrielle Hamilton: "It's a lot easier to cross off items on a prep list as opposed to figuring out the human condition."

Francis Lam: "I eat food because I love food. I cook food because I love food. I write about food because I love people."

Matt and Ted Lee, longtime connoisseurs and champions of Southern cuisine, have maintained a strong bond to the local community in Charleston despite having long ago made New York City their home away from home. When they first left the Low Country to attend colleges in 1994, they so missed the flavors of the region that they founded The Lee Bros. Boiled Peanuts Catalogue, an excellent source for mail ordering Southern staples wherever you might be. An illustrious career as freelance writers and cookbook authors followed and has brought greater national recognition of and respect for Southern food traditions, ingredients, and even novelties (Piggly Wiggly magnets, anyone?).

I was excited to make their acquaintance at the Celebrity Authors Reception, held in a beautiful private home and garden on LeGare St. here in Charleston on Saturday afternoon. As we snacked on bruschetta, fried ricotta, and phyllo crusts filled with creamy braised lamb (courtesy of Thomas Egerton at MUSE restaurant), Ted shed some light on why he believes his brother and he possess such unique insight to and appreciation for Low-country cuisine: "We grew up here, but we were not born here." The distinction may seem, on the surface, to be a splitting of hairs, but he went on to articulate that while those who were born into old Southern families often take their rich food and cultural heritage for granted, his brother and he developed a great respect for those same traditions and rituals experiencing, enjoying, and analyzing them always with just a hint of self-imposed distance and awe. Sometimes it takes an outsider, or two, to show you just what you've got going for you.

There are seasoned restaurateurs and there are talented cookbook auteurs. The twain aren't always possessed of the same skill set -- no one was expecting James Beard to jump on the line when the saucier called in sick at Chart House, nor was Julia going to be summoned to expedite at her favored Santa Barbara haunt, La Super Rica Taqueria -- but food fetishists can dare to dream. Think of it as culinary fantasy football, mulling over the cookbooks we'd like to see writ real and sit-down-in-able.

I posed the notion of a pop-up restaurant to Matt Lee and Ted Lee., co-authors of my all-time most beloved (and stained) cookbook, the James Beard Award winning "The Lee Bros. Southern Cooking," and the upcoming "Simple Fresh Southern" and they shared their menu wish list and locale in the video above. (By the way, the first guy is Ted. People get that mixed up all the time.)

Which non-restaurant chef's cookbook would you like to see turned into an eatery, even for just a single meal? Let us know in the comments below.

Ted Lee and Matt Lee Photo: The Lee Bros.

So you think you're out playing hooky from work on the promise of a lovely Southern lunch stewed up by your favorite cookbook authors and then all of a sudden, in strides Bobby Flay.

Yup -- "Throwdown."

Matt Lee and Ted Lee and the rest of the assembled had been lured to a barge on the Hudson River -- Matt's preferred canoeing channel -- on the premise that the brothers would be filming a segment for a Food Network special called "Lowcountry Lowdown." They'd filmed the first half in Charleston, S.C., and reportedly, the duel would have gone down on their home turf, had Chef Flay not fallen prey to the vagaries of air travel.

Read more about throwing down with the Country Captain 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.