A Black Southern kitchen, written down

You do not need a better kitchen to cook this food. You need it written down.

Cora-Lee's Table is a 431-page cookbook of 110 Southern recipes, each on its own page with a photograph facing it. Plain type, no fuss, and the reason behind every step. It comes as a clean PDF that reads well on a phone, a tablet or a laptop, and prints fine on plain paper.

Get the book · $32 See what is inside

110Recipes

110Photographs

431Pages

PDFInstant

"Every one of these tells you the reason and not only the step. That is the half nobody writes down."

Cora-Lee

I · The problem

The food did not go anywhere. The people who knew it did.

Most of this cooking was taught standing next to somebody. A handful of this. Cook it till it looks right. That works until the person who knew is not in the kitchen any more.

Lost

Nobody wrote it down

The measurements lived in somebody's hands. When she is gone, so are they, and what is left is a dish you remember but cannot make.

Wrong

What you find online is not it

Lightened, sweetened, hurried, or written by somebody who never ate it at a table. You can taste the difference, and you cannot fix it from a page that never had it right.

Blind

Nobody told you why

Why the greens toughen. Why the biscuit came out flat when your hands did everything right. A recipe that only gives you steps cannot help when it goes wrong.

II · What you get for $32

One book, and the whole table is in it

✓

Cora-Lee's Table (PDF, 431 pages, 110 photographs). Eight sections covering the whole table — the skillet, the pot, one chicken all the way down, supper plain, the sides, bread and breakfast, the sweets, and what is in the jar.

✓

A photograph for every single recipe. Not a handful of styled shots. One hundred and ten, one per dish, each facing its own recipe.

✓

Pages that are not recipes at all. Seasoning a skillet and how one gets ruined. What to do with potlikker instead of pouring it out. The bacon grease can. Cleaning meat. Cooking for somebody who cannot have the salt.

✓

Cooking for other people. What to cook when the news comes, the reunion table, the arithmetic of feeding a crowd, a ham for a repast, and what to send home with folks.

✓

Two ways to find a recipe. By the occasion, or by what is already sitting in your cupboard.

✓

Every cross-reference is a live link. Tap it and you are on that page. No hunting.

✓

Every safe cooking temperature on one page, so you are not searching for it with your hands full.

One time · Yours forever · About what one Sunday dinner costs

Get the book · $32

7-day money back · No questions asked

III · The chapters

Eight chapters, front to back

These are the real chapter and recipe names, taken from the book's own contents page.

Chapter One · 10 recipes

The skillet

Cornbread, with no sugar in it
Hot water cornbread
Fried chicken
Fried fish
Hushpuppies
Pork chops, smothered
Smothered chicken
Liver and onions
Salmon croquettes
Fried okra

Chapter Two · 17 recipes

The pot

Collards
Turnip greens and the potlikker
Mustard greens
Cabbage
Green beans, the long way
Pinto beans and the ham hock
Butter beans · Black-eyed peas · Field peas
Red beans and rice · Hoppin' John
Neck bones · Oxtails · Brunswick stew
Chitlins, if you are going to
Vegetable soup out of the freezer
Stock from the carcass

Chapter Three · 10 recipes

One chicken, all the way down

Roasting the bird
Chicken and dumplings
Chicken and rice
Chicken salad
Chicken stew
Chicken pie
Gizzards · Livers · Wings
The last of it, in a pot of soup

Chapter Four · 16 recipes

Supper, plain

Meatloaf · Beef stew · Chili
Hamburger steak and gravy
Country-fried steak, milk gravy
Fried pork chops · Pork roast · Oven ribs
Ham, and the week after
Ham with red-eye gravy
Spaghetti, her way
Baked chicken thighs
Smothered turkey wings
Gullah red rice · Corn pudding
Tuna casserole

Chapter Five · 21 recipes

The sides

Baked macaroni and cheese
Potato salad · Coleslaw · Deviled eggs
Mashed potatoes and gravy
Smothered potatoes · Candied yams
Fried corn · Creamed corn · Succotash
Squash casserole · Dressing
Okra and tomatoes · Stewed tomatoes
Rice, done right · Dirty rice
Giblet gravy · Fried green tomatoes
Sliced tomatoes and onion
Pickled beets · Chow chow

Chapter Six · 12 recipes

Bread and breakfast

Biscuits · Rolls · Hoecake
Sweet potato biscuits
Cracklin bread
Buttermilk pancakes
Grits · Cheese grits · Salmon and grits
Sausage gravy
Fried apples
Fried bologna and eggs

Chapter Seven · 18 recipes

The sweets

Pound cake · Caramel cake · Coconut cake
Red velvet, with cooked frosting
Peach cobbler · Blackberry cobbler
Sweet potato pie · Sweet potato pone
Pecan pie · Chess pie · Buttermilk pie
Egg custard pie · Chocolate meringue pie
Banana pudding · Bread pudding
Butter rolls · Tea cakes · Fried pies

Chapter Eight · 6 recipes

What is in the jar

Sweet tea
Lemonade
Pepper sauce
Refrigerator pickles
Pickled okra
Peach preserves
Freezing what the garden gave you

V · What this book does not do

The honest version, before you buy

No cookbook should promise miracles. Here is exactly where this one stands.

No calorie counts and no nutrition panels. It would be guesswork dressed up as fact, and this food is not eaten by the numbers.

Nothing is lightened. No recipe here apologises for butter, for the hock, or for the grease can. If that is what you are after, this is the wrong book.

It will not make you fast. A pot of greens takes as long as it takes. The book tells you how long before you start, honestly.

It is not a printed book. It is a PDF you download and keep. There is no paperback.

It is not every Southern kitchen. It is one town and one table. There is no gumbo in it, because there would not have been.

VI · Who it is for

Written for a specific cook

This book is for you if

You grew up on this food and never got the recipes written down
You can cook, but you want to know why the pot does what it does
You are feeding people rather than photographing plates
You want one book that covers the meat, the sides, the bread and the sweet
You would rather be told the truth about how long something takes

It is not for you if

You want quick, light or low-fat versions of this food
You want a printed hardback. This is a download
You are looking for Creole or Low Country cooking
You want calorie counts and macros on every page

Cora-Lee · Cora's Table

I cooked in one kitchen, in one house on the east side of Macon, Georgia, with seven of us at that table. This book is that kitchen written down.

The recipes read the way I would say them to you standing at the stove, which is why every one of them gives you the reason and not only the step. I have put in what goes wrong as well as what goes right, because that is the half nobody tells you.

There is more of me on YouTube, if you want to hear it before you buy.

VII · Questions

Before you ask

Can I read it on my phone or tablet?

Yes. It is a PDF laid out at six by nine inches, which is a book page, so it reads comfortably held in one hand. Phone, tablet, laptop, e-reader — anything will open it. You can also print it on plain paper.

What exactly arrives after I buy?

One PDF. 431 pages, 110 recipes, 110 photographs, delivered by Gumroad the moment you pay. Yours to keep, on as many of your own devices as you like.

Are the recipes complicated?

No. Most of the book is cooked in five pans — a big skillet, a heavy pot, a wide pan, a baking sheet and a roasting pan. Where a recipe needs something else, one page names every single one of them, so you know before you shop.

Are the measurements American?

Yes. Cups, tablespoons, pounds and degrees Fahrenheit. There is a page explaining what the book means by a stick of butter, and how to measure flour so a biscuit does not come out heavy.

Is there a paper copy?

Not yet. This is a download. If a paperback happens it will be announced on the channel first.

Is there nutrition information?

No. It would be guesswork dressed up as fact, and this is not that kind of book.

How is it delivered? Is checkout secure?

Through Gumroad, which handles the payment and sends the download immediately. Your card details never touch this site.

What if I do not like it?

Email coraleesupport@gmail.com within 7 days and you get your money back. You do not have to explain yourself.