Mrs. Kitching's Smith Island Cookbook

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Description: Seventy-five miles southeast of Washington, D. C, in the middle of Chesapeake Bay, accessible only by boat, is tiny Smith Island, where a 300-year-old culture has survived in singular isolation. For a quarter of a century in this unique setting, Frances Kitching has been operating a small but acclaimed restaurant and inn. Susan Stiles Dowell, working closely with her, has gathered more than one hundred of her recipes -- many of them family recipes handed down in the oral tradition from mother to daughter for generations. 

Mrs. Kitching's Smith Island Cookbook, however, is not a typical regional cookbook. In Mrs. Dowell's sensitive and luminous telling of the lore and lure of this remote island, and in forty-one evocative photographs, colorful characters like crab potter Eddie Evans, peeler fisherman Dallas Bradshaw, and yarn teller Morris Goodwin Marsh come to life. 

The places, the Hamlets -- Ewell, Tylerton, and Rhodes Point -- and Nature, the force around which Smith Islanders have molded the pattern of their lives, are also there. We come to share Mrs. Dowell's concern about the future of the marvelous natural storehouse of seafood, fowl, and game and of the island and its people who fight a losing battle with erosion, storms, and isolation. 

But at the same time, thanks to the culinary art of Frances Kitching, such epicurean delights as Clam Puffs and Oyster Puffs, Pan Browned Wild Duck, Oyster Supreme, Sweet Potato Souffle, Baked Rockfish with Potatoes, and sundry Kitching favorites like Fig Cake, Pickled Carrots, and Crab Hors d'Oeuvres are here to savor. 

Frances Kitching, a Smith Islander born and bred, knew as a mere eight-year-old that she was her grandmother's favorite because she was the child who loved to cook. She had no idea that she would become a celebrity, however, when she volunteered to cook for workers installing electric lines on the Island in the early 1950s, but that experience led to her opening her inn and restaurant. A ham and cabbage dinner prepared for a travel writer cruising on the Chesapeake Bay brought the first of many rave reviews. Since then visitors and guests to Smith Island from far and wide have praised Mrs. Kitching's cuisine and have urged her to, share her recipes. 

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Condition: Good condition. Tiny tear in dust jacket's top edge.