Breaking news: devastating departure Stephen Ganz, shortly passed away in a plane crash accident including… more details ⬇️

Hello, hello. I’m Brittany Luse, and you’re listening to IT’S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR, a show about what’s going on in culture and why it doesn’t happen by accident.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

LUSE: The true credit for bringing the recipe to my attention comes from our producer Corey Antonio. He had these biscuits at this brunch party that he said were the best biscuits that he had ever had in his life.

CRYSTAL WILKINSON: Oh.

LUSE: OK, Corey Antonio is from the South. OK?

WILKINSON: And that’s high compliment. I got chills and everything off of that – the best. The best biscuits. OK.

LUSE: That’s Crystal Wilkinson, former poet laureate of Kentucky. And she created the most perfect biscuit recipe I’ve ever tried. And thanks to those flaky layers of dough and butter, I went on a journey through the foods of her upbringing in the Appalachian region of Kentucky. Crystal is the culinary mind behind “Praisesong For The Kitchen Ghosts: Stories And Recipes From Five Generations Of Black Country Cooks.” It’s a cookbook that weaves intimate stories with treasured family recipes to pay tribute to the women in Crystal’s family who taught her how to live, love and cook.

WILKINSON: It came to me when my grandmother passed away. I knew how to cook, but that first holiday after she passed was one of the hardest. I’d get started. I’d break down. I’d start to make my dressing, and I would break down. And finally, I remembered one of her dresses. And I went and got the dress out of the closet and brought it in here in my kitchen and hung it up on the back door. And I felt as if she was in the room, like she was saying, OK, girl, you know, come on. And it just cracked open this whole much larger thing for me.

LUSE: Today on the show, Crystal talks about preserving Black Appalachian food culture and the ghosts in her kitchen.