Rick Bragg presents and signs new recipe book at Octavia Books

By Lauren LeCompte
Loyola Student News Service

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling author returned to a New Orleans bookstore to present and sign his new book of classic Southern recipes and lighthearted family stories.

“What I wanted to pull off was the narrative of our food,” Alabama native Rick Bragg said.

Dozens gathered as Bragg presented and read from his book “The Best Cook in the World: Tales from My Momma’s Table” at Octavia Books on Thursday, May 3.

The book contains his mother’s recipes for mashed potatoes, corn pudding, short ribs, biscuits and other “Southern, blue-collared cooking” passed down in his family for generations, according to Bragg.

“The problem was we had no written recipes. We had none until this book came out,” he said.

Before writing this book, Bragg said he was worried that his mother, Margaret Bragg, in her mid-80s, was going to die without writing down her recipes.

“We almost lost her. At 81, she survived a massive cancer operation and two whole years of chemo,” he said.

“I asked her for a recipe. She said, ‘Hon, there ain’t no recipes. None.’ ” He added that she never used a cookbook or wrote one of her own.

Bragg won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 1996 for his work in The New York Times. He’s also won the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ Distinguished Writing Award twice and many other writing awards. He has written more than a dozen books.

“The storytelling that I get credit for was born in me. My mother talks like this, my grandmother talked like this, and my brothers talk like this. I just write it down,” he said.

Maria Montoya, a former reporter for The Times-Picayune, attended the signing. “I’m no longer a journalist, but I still like to read all of his books,” Montoya said. “I loved his art for telling a story and not overcomplicating it.”

This wasn’t Bragg’s first book signing at Octavia Books. In 2008, he read from his book “The Prince of Frogtown,” a tale about his stepson. Other books by Bragg that focus on his youth and family include “All Over but the Shoutin,’” “Ava’s Man” and “My Southern Journey: True Stories from the Heart of the South.”

“There’s a lot of grit and a lot of sadness in the other books,” Bragg said.

Montoya said “All Over but the Shoutin’” was her favorite because she related to it the most, but this new book is amazing.

“Even though people think it’s just about Southern cooking, I think anybody who grew up poor or grew up with family who was connected or a little bit crazy can connect with this,” she said. “He’s just very real.”

“It’s not upper-class Southern cooking. It’s working-class, blue-collar cooking. That’s what I want people to know,” Bragg said.

The Loyola Student News Service features reporters from advanced-level journalism classes at Loyola University New Orleans, directed by faculty advisers.