Come to our April 18th meeting, where our special guest speaker will be Mrs. Mildred Council, whose Chapel Hill restaurant, Mama Dip's Kitchen, is a beloved destination for classic Southern cooking, from smothered porkchops, chicken and dumplings and black-eyed peas to fudge pudding, poundcake, and pecan pie. Her two best-selling cookbooks belong in your library of traditional Southern cooking, both for her moving narrative of her life in food and for an abundance of old-school recipes that light up the 21st century table. As always, if you can bring along a snack, do so. If you can't, come on anyway. CHOP NC always has a gracious plenty of good snacks and good company to go around

Wednesday, April 18th 7pm at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill.

Please join us for our March meeting as we host author, culinary instructor, and food historian extraordinaire Grace Young for an evening of fun, conversation, and of course food. Grace's latest book, Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge, demystifies and celebrates the art of stir-frying with instruction, stories of home cooks and professionals, and recipes from across the world.

Grace Young is the winner of the 2011 James Beard International Cookbook Award for Stir-
Frying to the Sky’s Edge. It was also named one of the top cookbooks of 2010 by NPR, Washington
Post, Good Morning America, and Huffington Post. She is a food writer and the author of Wisdom
of the Chinese Kitchen (winner of the IACP Le Cordon Bleu International Cookbook Award) and

The Breath of a Wok (winner of the IACP Le Cordon Bleu International Cookbook Award, The Jane
Grigson Award for distinguished scholarship, and the World Food Media Awards’ Best Food Book in
Australia). In 2008, Grace received the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters Culinary Journalist
Scholarship for research for Stir-Frying to the Sky’s Edge. Young’s work has appeared in Bon Appétit,
Food and Wine, Gourmet, Gastronomica, and Saveur magazine where she is also a contributing editor.
She teaches Chinese cooking and always travels with her own wok. For seventeen years, Young was
the Test Kitchen Director and Director for Food Photography for over forty cookbooks published by
Time-Life Books. She lives in New York City with her husband.

Like Young’s previous cookbooks, this book is crafted with spectacular photographs and elegant writing, Filled with a wealth of instruction, cultural history, personal experiences, and hard-earned advice, this the first and only Chinese cookbook to describe the optimal approaches for stir-frying meat poultry, fish, shellfish, vegetables, rice, and noodles. Young advises, for example, that when stir-frying meat, poultry, or shellfish the ingredients must be spread around the wok and seared briefly before stir-frying. She explains why a wok is preferable to a skillet for stir-frying rice and noodles and describes the distinctions among different types of woks and skillets and how they affect results. She categorizes vegetables by texture and instructs on their different cooking times. This expert guidance will benefit novice and experienced cooks alike.

Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge offers over 100 recipes, with classic dishes from Guangzhou (Canton), Shanghai, Fujian, Sichuan, Hunan, Beijing, and Hong Kong, such as the revered Kung Pao Chicken, Stir-Fried Ginger Beef, and Dry Fried Sichuan Beans. Further enriching the book is Young’s fascinating history of stir-frying’s place in the Chinese Diaspora. She shares innovative crossover recipes that illustrate the adaptability of the stir-fry technique for fusing the traditions of numerous cultures including surprises such as Chinese Trinidadian Stir-Fried Shrimp with Rum, Chinese-Jamaican Jerk Chicken Fried Rice, and Stir-Fried Bok Choy with Pancetta from France.
Beyond the lessons and recipes Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge so generously provides are the human stories of how this simple cooking technique enabled generations of Chinese around the world to eat well and with exquisite economy. Young’s research extended to such unexpected countries as Trinidad, Holland, Germany and Canada. She also interviewed Chinese who grew up in Peru, Jamaica, Burma, Malaysian, Singapore, Vietnam, Macau, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Libya, and the Mississippi Delta. With tales that illuminate the Chinese philosophy of cooking and examine the Chinese experience through the lens of stir-frying, it is an invitation to understand stir-frying as an expression of cultural continuity.

There is an age-old Chinese expression: “One wok runs to the sky’s edge,” which means one who uses the wok becomes master of the cooking world. As the wok user becomes master of the cooking world, so does the user of Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge become master of the stir-fry.

Join us on Wednesday, February 15th when we head to Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen in Cary for some of Chef Jay Pierce's famous skillet fried chicken. Meet at the restaurant at 6:45pm, we'll be seated at 7. The fried chicken plate costs $17 plus tip, excluding drinks. 

RSVP here by February 14th

Lucky 32 Cary is located at 7307 Tryon Road in Cary, in between US 1/64 and Kildaire Farm.

Welcome to CHOP NC's brand new year. Looking back at 2011, we got ourselves up and running, with a half-a-dozen gatherings to organize the group and hear speakers on the subjects of food, history, culture, and culinary traditions. Great company, connections, resources, and snacks. Special thanks to Flyleaf Books and Jamie Fiocco for hosting our regular third-Wednesday meetings, to Sara Foster for hosting a planning gathering at Foster's Market in Chapel Hill, and Jill Warren Lucas for writing up her interviews with our guest speakers in advance of their events. Here's what's coming up:

January 2012:  TWO (2) II Meetings at Flyleaf Books!
* Organizational Meeting:  Wednesday, January 18th, 2012 
 7:00 - 8:30 p.m. Come look back at our first season, and help craft this year’s CHOP NC. If you can volunteer to help CHOP NC run and grow, we’ll have jobs for you to consider. If you can’t volunteer, come anyway, and give us your thoughts, ideas and company. I’ll bring rice and Thai curry. Snacks welcome but not required. 

* Guest Author Event: Wednesday, January 25th, 2012
 7:00 p.m. No snacks --- expecting a big crowd. Talk and book-signing with Gabrielle Hamilton, chef-owner of Prune in NYC, and author of Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef. 

This month, on Wednesday, October 19th, we’re delighted to welcome Elaine Maisner, senior executive editor at University of North Carolina Press.* Since 1994, Elaine has overseen the creation and publication of numerous books, on culinary topics and many other subjects, including Holy Smoke!" by John Shelton Reed and Dale Volberg Reed. On this month’s third Wednesday, at the wonderful, welcoming, and literarily-magnificent Flyleaf Books of Chapel Hill, NC, Elaine Maisner will discuss the extensive list of culinary-themed books published by UNC Press, while focusing on a few classics and some of the titles for which she as served as editor. Come to Flyleaf, 7 to 8:30 p.m., to hear Elaine Maisner’s presentation, visit with fellow friends of CHOP NC, and enjoy some tasty snacks. 

October 19,  7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Flyleaf Books  752 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, Chapel Hill, NC  (919) 942-7373
Free and open to the public. Bring your friends, and a snack to share if you'd like!




*We’ve changed our plans for our upcoming October meeting, due to a scheduling conflict for the Reeds. We will look forward to a presentation on their research for “Holy Smoke” at a meeting next year. 

“His mother was the ‘first lady of American restaurants.’ His father was ‘odd, self-centered and nuts.’ Randy Fertel leverages a raucous New Orleans upbringing, in which Salvador Dali and Edwin Edwards play bit parts, to tell the story of an uncommon American family, defined, in equal measure, by bold swagger and humbling vulnerabilities.”
 – John T. Edge, series editor of Cornbread Nation: The Best of Southern Food Writing

November 16,  7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Flyleaf Books  752 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, Chapel Hill, NC  (919) 942-7373
Free and open to the public!  Bring your friends, and a snack to share if you'd like!

Spirits of Just Men tells the story of moonshine in 1930s America, as seen through the remarkable location of Franklin County, Virginia, a place that many still refer to as the "moonshine capital of the world."
Charles B. Thompson, Jr is the curriculum and education director at the Center for Documentary Studies and a lecturer of cultural anthropology at Duke University. 

Sept. 21, 2011 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Flyleaf Books 752 Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard Chapel Hill, NC 27514
Free and open to the public! Bring snacks to share if you'd like.