A Lifetime of Recipes Gathered, One Stop at a Time

Often I am asked where my recipes come from.

Pumpkin Bread Pudding

I’ve long believed that no trip down Highway 17 is complete unless I come home with a new recipe tucked into my pocket. Some people collect postcards or seashells—I gather dishes, notes scribbled on napkins, and stories folded into the pages of cookbooks I never intended to buy but simply couldn’t leave behind.

In Charleston, I once leaned across the counter of a small French bakery south of Broad, asking the baker—who had flour smudged across his cheek like war paint—if he would share the secret to his buttery cinnamon buns. He didn’t hesitate. He scrawled the steps on the back of a receipt and handed it to me as if it were contraband. To this day, that dog-eared slip is pressed between the pages of my first book, a sacred and profane recipe.

Somewhere in a notebook I started when I moved to Beaufort in the 1970s, there are instructions for the perfect party crab dip given to me by Becky Trask. She wrote down the basics for me on the back of her grocery list.

Some recipes arrive by chance encounters from cooks far away or from neighbors down the street. Once, I was seated at a table in Slightly North of the Broad in Charleston when I heard an oyster farmer at the next table describe his grandmother’s way of boiling shrimp heads for stock. No precise measurements, only the rhythm of a memory: “Plenty of salt, onion skins, and don’t be afraid to add cloves of garlic and some lemons.” That became the backbone of my gumbo, a dish that tastes like Lowcountry tidewater in every spoonful.

Savannah gifts her recipes with equal generosity. At Back in the Day Bakery, I once asked Cheryl Day about her hand pies, those sweet pockets of dough that taste like something your aunt might slip into your lunch bag. She laughed, tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear, and told me the trick: “always brush the tops with cream, never just egg wash. Makes them shine like church windows,” she said. I’ve followed her advice faithfully ever since.

And Savannah’s beloved caterer, Susan Mason, makes the best crab cakes this side of the Mason-Dixon line. It’s a recipe so good, I share it every chance I get.

Sometimes, the recipes feel like whispers from another century. On Jones Street in Savannah, a woman whose family had cooked for three generations in the same kitchen gave me her formula for benne seed wafers. She spoke softly, as though the sesame seeds might scatter if overheard. Those crisp little cookies tell a story older than any of us—a thread of Africa woven into Southern sugar.

I don’t have a big collection from my own childhood. What I do have is a mosaic pieced together from bakers and chefs, shrimpers and neighbors, strangers and friends I’ve met along the coast. Many are from friends I knew in my early days living in Beaufort decades ago. My notebooks are stuffed with clippings, my drawers with recipe cards spotted by olive oil and salt air.

They remind me that food is never just food. It’s belonging. And every recipe I bring home ties me a little tighter to this Lowcountry coast I love.

Each one feels like a gift - passed hand to hand, kitchen to kitchen. Together, they form a map of my travels along Highway 17, a chronicle of Charleston’s cobbled lanes and Savannah’s moss-draped squares, a story told not in words but in butter, flour, shrimp shells, and sugar.

The best ones are not necessarily those shared by noted chefs, but by someone who stopped to talk to me while leaning over a grocery cart.

In the end, what I’ve discovered is that recipes are never really about the food. They are about belonging—to a place, to a memory, to the people who cared enough to share them.

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Dipping your spoon into warm, bourbon-spiked sweet fall comfort will make your day heavenly. This recipe combines two of life’s great pleasures, pumpkin and a little bourbon.

Pumpkin Bread Pudding

Adapted from October 2007 Gourmet Magazine: I like to add a little bourbon, but this is optional

1 1/2 cups whole milk or 1 cup heavy cream

3/4 cup canned solid-pack pumpkin

1/2 cup sugar

2 large eggs plus 1 yolk

1/2 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/8 teaspoon ground allspice, pinch of ground cloves

2 tablespoons bourbon

5 cups cubed (1-inch) day-old baguette or crusty bread

3/4 stick unsalted butter, melted

Preheat oven to 350°F with rack in the middle.

Whisk together pumpkin, cream or milk, sugar, eggs, yolk, salt, spices, and bourbon, if using, in a bowl. Toss bread cubes with butter in another bowl, then add pumpkin mixture and toss to coat. Transfer to an ungreased 8-inch square baking dish and bake until custard is set, 25 to 30 minutes. Be ready to enjoy!