Carla Hall's Soul Food: Everyday and Celebration

Beloved TV chef (ABC's Emmy Award-winning The Chew and fan favorite on Bravo's Top Chef), Carla Hall takes us back to her own Nashville roots to offer a fresh, lip-smackin' look at America's favorite comfort cuisine.

In Carla Hall's Soul Food, the beloved chef and television celebrity takes us back to her own Nashville roots to offer a fresh, lip-smackin' look at America's favorite comfort cuisine and traces soul food's history from Africa and the Caribbean to the American South. Carla shows us that soul food is more than barbecue and mac and cheese. Traditionally a plant-based cuisine, everyday soul food is full of veggie goodness that's just as delicious as cornbread and fried chicken.

From Black-Eyed Pea Salad with Hot Sauce Vinaigrette to Tomato Pie with Garlic Bread Crust, the recipes in Carla Hall's Soul Food deliver her distinctive Southern flavors using farm-fresh ingredients. The results are light, healthy, seasonal dishes with big, satisfying tastes--the mouthwatering soul food everyone will want a taste of.

Recipes include:

• Cracked Shrimp with Comeback Sauce
• Ghanaian Peanut Beef Stew with Onions and Celery
• Caribbean Smothered Chicken with Coconut, Lime, and Chiles
• Roasted Cauliflower with Raisins and Lemon-Pepper Millet
• Field Peas with Country Ham
• Chunky Tomato Soup with Roasted Okra Rounds
• Sweet Potato Pudding with Clementines
• Poured Caramel Cake

With Carla Hall's Soul Food, you can indulge in rich celebration foods, such as deviled eggs, buttermilk biscuits, Carla's famous take on Nashville hot fried chicken, and a decadent coconut cream layer cake.

Featuring 145 original recipes, 120 color photographs, and a whole lotta love, Carla Hall's Soul Food is a wonderful blend of the modern and the traditional--honoring soul food's heritage and personalizing it with Carla's signature fresh style. The result is an irresistible and open-hearted collection of recipes and stories that share love and joy, identity, and memory.

Five days a week Carla Hall bursts into your kitchens as the co-host of ABC's talk show "The Chew." Carla has never considered doing anything more than following her heart. From accountant to model to caterer to talk show host, life is a journey, and every wrong turn leads to a right.

After graduating college with an Accounting degree Carla moved to Europe to pursue a modeling career which ultimately led her to discovering her true calling as a chef.

While Carla didn't start cooking professionally until she was well into her 20's, her recipes reflect those classic dishes from her childhood growing up in Nashville, TN surrounded by soul food cooked from the heart. Her culinary philosophy is all about keeping it simple and flavorful. ("If you don't know how to perfectly roast a chicken, that's where you need to start in the kitchen.")

Inside and out of the kitchen, Carla believes that you have to, "Say Yes! Adventure follows, then growth."

Genevieve Ko is a graduate of Yale University. She is a freelance food writer and a consultant to chefs and restaurants. She lives in New York City.