Southern Girl Meets Vegetarian Boy

Book excerpt: “Being a vegetarian doesn’t have to be boring . . . Damaris truly puts the South in your mouth and let me tell ya, you’re gonna dig it.” —Guy Fieri Damaris Phillips is a southern chef in love with an ethical vegetarian. In Phillips’s household, greens were made with pork, and it wasn’t Sunday without fried chicken. So she had to transform the way she cooks. In Southern Girl Meets Vegetarian Boy, Phillips shares 100 recipes that embody the modern Southern kitchen: food that retains all its historic comfort and flavor, but can now be enjoyed by vegetarians and meat-lovers alike. The book features Phillips’s most cherished entrees from her childhood made both with and without meat: Chicken Fried Steak becomes Chicken Fried Seitan Steak. Loaded Potato and Bacon Soup is now Loaded Potato and Facon Soup. She gives down-home side dishes a makeover by removing meat, adding international spices, and updating cooking techniques, and offers soul-satisfying, irresistible desserts that triumph over the meat-eater-versus-vegetarian divide, every time. Phillips found a way to make Southern food that everyone can enjoy, wherever they are on their culinary journey. “Love for a vegetarian may have driven Damaris to write this, but it’s her love for vegetables and her knowledge of Southern cuisine that comes through on every page.” —Alton Brown “Damaris Phillips has the knowledge, the experience, and the down-right courage to take on her native Southern cooking and turn it on its head . . . vegetarians everywhere will be thrilled!” —Bobby Flay