Our South: Black Food Through My Lens - A Cookbook

by Ashleigh Shanti

Raised in Appalachia, native daughter Ashleigh Shanti, a queer Black woman and acclaimed chef, knows Southern Black cooking means more than we’ve come to believe. While hot buttered cast-iron-pan cornbread and crunchy, juicy, lard-fried chicken have their roles to play, they are far from the entire story.

The key to understanding how Black influence has defined foodways and cultures in the South is to explore its microregions, each with its own distinct flora and fauna, dialects, traditions, and dishes. In Our South, Ashleigh takes you through the five regions closest to her heart, beginning with a glimpse of mountain life in the Backcountry through recipes like Fish Camp Hush Puppies and quail spiked with black pepper. A swing over to the coastal Lowcountry fills your plate with smoky grilled oysters and benne seed–topped crab toasts. Seasonal produce shines in the Midlands, where bountiful stone fruits enrich dishes from shortcakes to salads. Lowlands nods to the diversity of food cultures that meet in the region, where Ashleigh grew up eating noodle dishes like Virginia yock alongside Southern classics like Brunswick stew. The book culminates in Homeland, with foods that share what it’s like to cook—and live—as a Black Southern chef now.

Long before competing on Top Chef and earning a coveted James Beard Award Rising Star Chef nomination for her cooking at Asheville, North Carolina’s Benne on Eagle, Ashleigh shelled boiled peanuts and coveted the jars of pickles in her great-aunt Hattie Mae’s larder. In high school, she pored over food and travel magazines and marveled at how her mother never failed to put a hot meal on the table, whether instant grits or slowly cooked celebration dishes. After spending a gap year in Nairobi and graduating from culinary school, Ashleigh entered the restaurant world, bartending, catering, teaching, and staging. She rekindled her connection to the cuisine of her roots before opening her own restaurant, Good Hot Fish, named for a phrase her ancestors would shout to draw in customers.

Ashleigh’s culinary journey culminates in Our South, where each dish speaks deeply to its origins, revealing the true story of Black food in the region and the many pleasures of the South you can savor at home, wherever that may be.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Food, Nonfiction

320 pages, Hardcover

Published October 15, 2024

Reviews

[Karen Witzler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boiled Peanut and Virginia Ham Soup -- I will be looking for a copy of this cookbook to purchase. And the sociological/memoirish aspect is quite lovely and consonant with my own beliefs, feelings, nature - unlike The Blue Willow Inn Bible of Southern Cooking: 450 Essential Recipes Southerners Have Enjoyed for Generations, another Deep South cookbook I recently read whose recipes are fine but whose text is drenched in a mixture of antebellum bs and Church of God politics.

Read Ashleigh Shanti instead, a queer black Southern woman who cooks an elevated version of country cuisine. From Gullah/Carolina lowlands to Appalachia to Virginia and the Maryland Tidewater - she knows her ingredients and her history. The Southern US and its cooking styles are here in all of their complexity presented by a fresh and compelling young representative of the region.

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having grown up in the south and having met and loved B. Smith I was apprehensive about Our South. Darn it, I’m buying ANOTHER cookbook. A library check out merely sealed the deal.

Just a few notable recipes:

Chow chow (so many types)
Hush puppies
Salted rising bread
Kilt lettuce
Brown butter apple pork chops
Crispy Trout with creek sauce
Peach shortcake
Buttermilk cornbread salad
Oyster dressing cakes
Classic Johnny cakes (😭made these and adore them. Brought back a flood of memories)
Turkey wings with potlikker gravy
Collard and sweet potato chowder
BBQ oysters

I could go on and on and on! I want everything in this gorgeously laid out cookbook.

[Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the concept, and the photos and layout were all very harmonious. I marked a lot of recipes to try and make, and not being from the south, there were a lot of flavor profiles/combos and ingredients I'm not super familiar with. Because of that, the barrier to entry for me in actually making the recipes does feel a little higher than I'd prefer.

[Nena Trif]

reading cookbooks counts as reading, and this one is so good!! Got this one as a gift for my gf but took many pictures for myself :)

[Elizabeth]

As heard on The Splendid Table: Conversations & Recipes For Curious Cooks & Eaters - 812: Bread with Richard Hart and Our South, Black Food Through My Lens with Ashleigh Shanti

This week, we sit down with two chefs at the top of their craft. First, we talk to legendary baker Richard Hart about the inspiration behind his new book, Richard Hart Bread: Intuitive Sourdough Baking. He fills us in on why he thinks that humble bakers are the best bakers, how he really is just a simple “yeast farmer” and he shares his realistic thoughts on how to keep a sourdough starter. Check out his amazing recipe for Rye Wrapped in Fig Leaves. Then, we talk with chef Ashleigh Shanti about her connection to Southern food, from its complex regional histories to the culinary traditions of her beloved Appalachia. She leaves us with her take on a classic green bean recipe, Leather Britches. Ashleigh is the author of Our South: Black Food Through My Lens and owns Asheville’s Good Hot Fish. 

Broadcast dates for this episode:

October 11, 2024 (originally aired) October 10, 2025 (rebroadcast)

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[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a generational achievement in food writing. I'm not really a collector of cookbooks per se, but the last time I was so moved to own a book and eat my way through its culinary revelations, the author was Paul Prudhomme and he introduced me to his Louisiana kitchen.

Ashleigh Shanti's writing and cooking highlight whole new vistas on regional and social cuisines that I have come to study further with each new plate of delight. As a reader with a multicultural background, I'm especially moved by her ready use of foods that are the essence of home and family while including other ingredients that have also migrated the many miles to comfort the peoples who brought them along as part of their own homes. What a fabulous quilt is the table we share!

(N.B. I was first exposed to Our South in my local branch library. Try your own library to see if they have a copy or two. Check it out. Perhaps you'll be moved by mention of leather britches, lady peas, and rice middlins. But even if not, the collection of recipes here is just divine - just find your resonant flavors!)

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this cook book! More of a reading cookbook than a recipe cookbook in some ways, unless you lean towards the chef side, but I read it straight through and bookmarked several recipes to try.

Many of the recipes in this book are very much not accessible either through level of complexity or odd/expensive ingredients (5 pounds of pine rosin as one example??), but there were several foundational recipes (soup beans, johnny cakes, potlikker) that I'm very excited to make in the next few weeks!

[Felita Hawkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Our South: Black Food Through My Lens by Ashleigh Shanti:

A rich and evocative culinary journey. Ashleigh Shanti turns what could have been a standard regional cookbook into something much deeper — part memoir, part cultural exploration, and entirely delicious. Through beautifully photographed recipes organized by micro-regions of the South, she highlights the diversity of Black Southern foodways and the personal stories behind them. Whether you’re familiar with Southern cooking or discovering it for the first time, Our South offers thoughtful insights, inspired recipes, and a fresh lens on tradition and identity. 

[Maria Kammer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating read! I learned so much about the cuisine, culture and an area of the U.S. of which I am not familiar. I love the feel of this cookbook;literally. The font and paper that the lovely photos and recipes are printed on really adds to the vibe of this cookbook. I first heard of the author on a podcast which piqued my interest in her title. I am anxious to try several of the recipes, especially those that feature greens and what you can create with them.

[Cindy Dyson Eitelman]

I can’t really give a rating for cookbooks because I can’t say that I’ve read every word or cooked very many, if any, recipes from them. But if I could, I’d give this one a 5-star review. The introduction and head notes are very interesting and there are a whole lot of recipes in here I’d love to try. I probably won’t, but if I get back into “cooking mode” it would be worth buying a copy of this just to have the options close at hand.

[Queer · Rating 5 out of 5]

from leather britches to ham salad stuffed okra, there is soul in this south. There’s a balm here for every hungry soul so that we can connect over trout roe and beer. This collection reminds me of Edna Lewis, Mama Dip, and the countless other visionaries and luminaries of southern cuisine(s). I can’t wait to revisit this for years to come and remind my own wandering heart - to come home.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gorgeous with interesting intertextual bits but not vegetarian friendly.

[DragonTree · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really liked it.

[Sarah Crawley]

I read this like a book and found it fascinating. Weird amounts of overlap between Pennsylvania Dutch food ways I grew up with and Appalachian food.