The renewed interest in Southern cooking looks like it will be hanging around like a hound dog waiting for a hush puppy.

The latest cookbook in this genre is “Quick-Fix Southern: Homemade Hospitality in 30 Minutes or Less” (Andrews McMeel, $16.99) by Rebecca Lang, who is a contributing editor at Southern Living magazine. Lang revisits the classics, offering recipes for everything from mint juleps to fried green tomatoes, but adds a twist by suggesting some shortcuts. She has a recipe for sweet potato biscuits made with baby food, for example, and includes a tasty-looking barbecue recipe done in the slow cooker. For those of us who live in parts of the country where it’s hard to find Martha White, Lang explains how to make your own Southern all-purpose flour. Southern biscuits turn out better with southern flour, which has less protein than northern brands because it’s made with winter wheat.

 

– Meredith Goad, staff writer