Matthew Raiford and Amy Paige Condon — Bress 'n' Nyam

From Hot Buttermilk Biscuits and Sweet Potato Pie to Salmon Cakes on Pepper Rice and Gullah Fish Stew, Gullah Geechee food is an essential cuisine of American history. It is the culinary representation of the ocean, rivers, and rich fertile loam in and around the coastal South. From the Carolinas to Georgia and Florida, this is where descendants of enslaved Africans came together to make extraordinary food, speaking the African Creole language called Gullah Geechee.

In this groundbreaking and beautiful cookbook, Matthew Raiford pays homage to this cuisine that nurtured his family for seven generations. In 2010, Raiford's Nana handed over the deed to the family farm to him and his sister, and Raiford rose to the occasion, nurturing the farm that his great-great-great grandfather, a freed slave, purchased in 1874. In this collection of heritage and updated recipes, he traces a history of community and family brought together by food.

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Matthew Raiford was named a 2018 James Beard Award semifinalist and has been featured in the New York Times, Southern Living, and more.

Award-winning freelance writer Amy Paige Condon is the founder of the Refinery Writing Studio, where she teaches creative writing. She serves as associate editor of Beacon, a quarterly magazine devoted to solutions journalism from the Savannah Morning News. With Cheryl and Griffith Day, she co-wrote the New York Times-bestselling The Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook (Artisan 2012). She followed it with the Wiley's Championship BBQ Cookbook (Gibbs Smith), which was named the best cookbook of 2014 by the National Barbecue News. She coauthored CheFarmer Matthew Raiford’s first book, Bress ‘n’ Nyam: Gullah Geechee Recipes from a Sixth-Generation Farmer.

Jessica B. Harris, considered by many to be one of the ranking authorities on the food of the African Diaspora, is the author, editor, or translator of eighteen books including twelve cookbooks documenting the foodways of the African Diaspora. She is a sought-after speaker and has lectured widely and written extensively for scholarly and popular publications. Harris consults internationally and conceptualized the award-winning cafeteria of the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture. She is currently leading the Culinary Institute of America’s new African Diaspora Foodways initiative. Dr. Harris is also lead curator for the exhibit African/American: Making the Nation’s Table to be presented by New York’s Museum of Food and Drink in 2022. Dr Harris holds numerous awards and accolades including an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Johnson & Wales University. In 2019, her food-related works were inducted into the James Beard Cookbook Hall of Fame and she is the 2020 James Beard Lifetime Achievement awardee. Dr. Harris taught at Queens College/CUNY, New York, for five decades and is currently professor emerita at that institution.

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