Posted on 12/28/2011 4:35:49 PM PST by mandaladon
The New York Times has declared down home Southern cooking undignified in a story that heaped praise on a new generation of Southern chefs while denigrating fried chicken, Cracker Barrel restaurants and the Queen of Southern Food — Paula Deen.
The food snobs at the Times attacked Miss Paula in the second sentence of their lengthy diatribe – calling her a “so-called queen of Southern food, who cooks with canned fruit and Crisco.”
The Times bemoaned the “hayseed image” of Southern cooking while praising “a new generation of chefs who have pushed Southern cooking into the vanguard of world cuisine.”
Their headline proclaimed – “Vanquishing the Colonel – Farmers work with chefs to restore Southern cuisine’s dignity.”
You can read the entire story by clicking here.
“Today, purists believe, Southern cooking is too often represented by its worst elements: feedlot hams, cheap fried chicken and chains like Cracker Barrel,” the Times whined.
Perhaps The New York Times should consider first restoring its own dignity before launching a crusade against shrimp and grits.
It seems to me that the “so-called” queen of Southern cooking should fly up to New York City and take a cast iron skillet to the backside of the “so-called” newspaper that printed such nonsense.
But Miss Paula is a genteel Southern lady and would probably just shake her head and say, “Oh Lord, y’all.”
So as a proud son of the South, I believe it is my duty to defend the honor of our skillet friend chicken, our ham hocks and our sweet potato pies. Nobody speaks ill of butter and gets away with it.
For the record, I happen to have a Cracker Barrel rocking chair in my office at the Fox News Corner of the World – along with several copies of Paula Deen’s cookbooks.
(Excerpt) Read more at radio.foxnews.com ...
Grits are still a bit hard to find in small-town New Hampshire. Everyone knows what they are but they are ordered so seldom that they aren’t on most menus. All you can find in the stores are Quaker quick grits, no Jim Dandy sacks anywhere.
Home fries rule the roost here.
The fried clams and scallops are heavenly, however.
Did I mention chitterlings, fried brains, and watermelon?
5.56mm
Try this place sometime and you will change your mind!
I had grits with real butter, salt and pepper a few minutes ago.......
Yummmmm!
And I was trying to figure out what was wrong with Cracker Barrel. I guess you never tried Olive Garden, Applebees, TGIF..probably about a hundred other chains with worse food than Cracker Barrel.
Head cheese?
Scrapple?
I suspect you couldn't get bacon or sausage at that time and place...
S&S?
YESSSS!
(And I hate tobacco smoke)
Why do they hate the Bible belt so much? ? ?
If you are ever in Minneapolis try Manny's.
I live in NH and one of my favorite dishes (courtesy of my wife, who was born in the South) is shrimp and grits. Get real grits though, not that instant stuff (available at Hannaford supermarkets, among others), and cook them slowly. The shrimp are peeled except for the tails and sauteed in butter and olive oil with garlic, onion, lemon, salt, pepper, parsley, oregano, and Cayenne pepper. I might have missed something in that list but trust me: they are damned good.
God only knows...
“Our beliefs, food, history, geography, and love for our ancestors makes us a target for those that need to tear up the US and institute a Socialist or Communist society. As long as there is a Southern US, there will be a US.”
A huge part of that is the fact that many southerners still practice their Christianity. If that falls to the ravages of relativism ... the South is done.
That program could have been Andrew Zimmern’s “Bizarre Foods”, and if I remember correctly, those tarantulas etc. were served at a fancy-eatin’ thing in NYC. Shocking, ain’t it?
Anything Zimmern eats will help you with your diet.
Guidance for Gentlemen of the Yankee persuasion who move to the South and encounter Southern cooks:
1. After I married a Southern girl and we had been together for three or four months, she asked me what my favorite dish was that she made. I hesitated before answering and then carefully told her that she would never know. I told her that everything she made was simply extraodinary.
2. Later she asked me how I like her to cook a dish. I told her that I would never, never presume to tell a Southern cook how to cook. It would be improper: I wouldn’t want to skew her cooking judgement. She loves to cook for me.
3. I have eaten (on expense account, mind you) in some of the world’s finest restaurants in New York, Boston, Montreal, Quebec, Chicago and most other major metro areas. None of those restaurants compare with Southern cooking.
4. We occasionally will eat the same dish for 4 or five nights in a row. Each night the tastes and textures are different and it is wonderful to see a Southern cook do her best in this challenge.
5. I had the most amazing meal in my life at a restaurant in Houston over Christmas. Wild boar sausage over a bed of pasta, mushrooms, green and red peppers and other veggies. Strong as well as subtle flavors well articulated and it took me a long time to eat due to volume of food as well as the wish to extend the pleasure of the food. The wines served were matched to the food and it was an extraordinary night. Nothing in the Northern tier of Five Star restaurants I have been to can match that. Nothing. 7 stars.
More Guidance for Gentlemen of the Yankee persuasion who move to the South and encounter Southern cooks:
The best meat is bought at meat markets in the South, particularly in the rural, ranching areas. Cut to specs, it incredible good.
We send what is left over to New York and other blue zone areas. Scr3w ‘em.
When you buy a grill in the South, get one that is also a smoker and smoke it with Pecan wood, not chips. Unbelievable.
“If you are ever in Minneapolis try Manny’s.”
I heard of the place. Last time I was in Minny, my rep took me to Ruths Chris.
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