Who Is Princess Pamela? A Southern Cooking Legend Returns
Who is Princess Pamela? The author of my favorite cookbook. The original one, not this new, white folks version.
The book, written in 1969, is a collection of recipes from The Little Kitchen, Pamela Strobel’s twelve-seat soul food restaurant, which she opened in Manhattan’s East Village in the 1960s. Orphaned at 10 years old, Strobel was just a teenager when she traveled north from South Carolina to make a new life for herself.
When Southern food experts and brothers Matt and Ted Lee found a well-worn copy of Princess Pamela’s Soul Food Cookbook: A Mouth-Watering Treasury of Afro-American Recipes in a vintage bookstore, they realized there was something special beyond the book’s plain paperback cover. The out-of-print book deserved a second life, so the Lees decided to republish it. In reissuing the book, they took great care to leave Strobel’s words as written, although they tested each recipe and offer suggestions on adjusting the seasonings for today’s reader (which in my opinion were completely unnecessary suggestions).
Learn more about this remarkable woman HERE, HERE and HERE.
The only thing better than Princess Pamela’s blackberry cobbler is to add peaches to it. Almost the best thing in the whole world, food-wise.