Back Home with the Neelys: Comfort Food from Our Southern Kitchen to Yours

Pat and Gina Neely have written a new collection of well-tried Southern recipes in Back Home with The Neelys. It is a hard cover cookbook with many professional photos. The recipes and head notes are written by either of the couple, and each shares a story about that recipe. Mostly these are related to their childhood food experiences and their families: parents and grandparents and their cooking. The stories may be an interesting reading for some but only once and then they become fillers. The recipes are well written, not difficult, and easy to follow even for beginner cooks, and the ingredients are readily available. They incorporated many ingredients not indigenous in authentic Southern kitchens (e.g. panko bread crumbs, smoked paprika, tahini, Greek yogurt, feta). Their praises for their recipes are overdone: nearly every one is most delicious, best and outstanding. The book designer did a poor job on recipe layout: many spill to overleaf pages to the cook’s inconvenience. Yet most recipes are basically Southern with the Neelys’ original tweaks and ideas. They range throughout the cooking spectrum from preserves, breakfasts, through main meals to sweets and cocktails. The index is short and only moderately well cross referenced.