Copyright © 2013 by Sunny Anderson
Photographs copyright © 2013 by John Lee
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.clarksonpotter.com
CLARKSON POTTER is a trademark and POTTER with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Anderson, Sunny.
Sunny’s kitchen : easy food for real life / Sunny Anderson; photographs by John Lee. — First edition.
pages cm
Includes index.
1. Cooking, American. 2. International cooking.
3. Anderson, Sunny—Anecdotes. 4. Cooking—Anecdotes. I. Title.
TX715.A56666 2013
641.5973—dc23 2013007784
ISBN 978-0-7704-3678-0
eISBN 978-0-7704-3679-7
All photos are by John Lee with the exception of photos on pages
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courtesy of the Anderson family archives.
Cover design by Ashley Tucker
Cover photography by John Lee
v3.1
to daddy
& mommy
With no manual, you somehow raised a
dreamer willing to do the work. I continue
to dream and work. Thank you, Mutt-Mutt.
A view of Manhattan from Sunset Park, Brooklyn
FOREWORD
My grandma Williams is the archetype of all grandmas. There is always a cake on the counter, and big hugs and words of wisdom for a grandchild in need. We are able to talk like girlfriends, and I love her so much. I asked her to share some words with you, and although they aren’t all related to cooking, they have everything to do with me and my first book.
from my grandma williams
Sunny has a type of cooking that reaches back from her childhood and her family roots in North and South Carolina, all the way to Brooklyn, where she lives now. And there is a lot of variety in these recipes—they aren’t all the same type of food. There are even some fancy things for Sunday dinner. Sunny is truly country to town in one bite. Good ol’ basic old-time country meals—that’s what Sunny has here.
She may be young, but she’s seen many things in her lifetime that she brings back and revives in her home kitchen. She shares all of the spices and national foods from her travels, without being all fussy about it. And now I’m using them too. These are the things that make a difference to me in a cook. You have to grow. You have to keep learning. And you have to be inviting, to welcome people into your kitchen. It’s what I do and I guess in some way she got that from me. We love her here in Fayetteville, North Carolina. It makes us feel good that Sunny’s cooking. It’s a career like working in a beauty shop—just like someone is always gonna be getting their hair done, someone is always gonna need to eat.
Cooking remains new for a lot of people, even people like me who have been cooking for a long time. I never knew how she fixed her collards so quick, so Sunny showed me and I watched. And I said, “Well, that’s between you and them, Sunny; all I do is cut the stems and put them in a pot with some ham hock and seasonings. But seeing you do it without pork, I know people are learning something new.”
A romantic, Granddaddy gave Grandma a rose on a family trip to France when they visited us while we were living in Germany.
(1987)
She’s easy to learn from. I’m just so proud—what a trip her life has been.
I always looked forward to seeing Sunny and her brother in the summer for the one week we had together. It meant a lot to me. I got to feed them and hug them, and I call that making memories. I’d take Sunny to the country and her uncle Buddy would kill a hog for us to roast on the spit. Her brother would pour all the feed into the pig pen when he was supposed to put in only a handful, and the adults would laugh. The kids would turn my tomatoes from the garden into bowling pins and ruin them making strikes in my backyard. To me, at the age I am now, those memories mean more than anyone will know. I hope that you create memories like that with your families around food and maybe even travel like we did.
Because Sunny and her bother were military kids, I didn’t get to see them so often, so their granddaddy and I decided to visit everywhere the military sent their parents. When Sunny was born on the Fort Sill Army Base in 1975, I took my first plane trip to Oklahoma. Then, in the following years, her parents took us places we would never ever have gone, like Paris and Germany. I can see her granddaddy now, sitting in a castle’s window ledge in Germany, taking pictures and smiling. That’s priceless. I thank God it turned out as good as it did for our family. We’ve had food and family memories in so many places all our lives, and it makes me feel good. Sunny’s life has taken me far, and now it’s taking her far too.
Everywhere she’s ever been, her granddaddy and I wanted to be there, and I’m here with her now for both of us. Anyone reading
Sunny’s Kitchen
is getting a piece of life, a piece of our family history, and a piece of our heart. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I love Sunny.
GRANDMA’S
words to live by
• When I get ready to cook I use the same equipment over and over. I still mix biscuits out of the same bowl because in some way, I feel the bowl was meant for them.
• If grocery stores can keep food in their freezers, why can’t we do the same at home? Buy vegetables and fruits in season and freeze them. You can have a craving for soup and go right to your freezer for out-of-season ingredients. That’s how you save money. I’ve been putting collards in my freezer for years.
• Don’t shortchange your cooking and expect it to turn out good. My half sister gets on me for putting four sticks of butter in a cake, but to me that’s a cake. The batter is the basis of the cake no matter what you put between the layers, and I think there should be four sticks of butter.
