“The best looking dishes of food to be hundreds of years old.”
The First Coast Heritage Cookbook is a collection of recipes influenced by the ingredients and food-ways of the Indigenous Indians as well as the Spanish, French, British and African settlers who inhabited the First Coast from 14,000 BC (the time archeologists tell us evidence of human habitation first appears) to 1821 (when Florida becomes a U.S. Territory).
What’s surprising is how many of the foods we take for granted today did not exist prior to the arrival of European explorers and settlers. Imagine a world without pork, oranges, bananas, sugar, peaches and sweet potatoes (Spanish contributions) or apples, cherries, beef and white potatoes (British) or okra, watermelon, yams and peanuts (African). Ultimately, the style of cooking we enjoy as Southern cuisine today is the delicious and enduring legacy of these early settlers.