Tag Archive for: southern food

Another bite of biscuit heaven…

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“Grazing is a state of being in the South. In fact, many of our community cookbooks from the twentieth century are front-heavy, with so many more hors d’oeuvre and finger-food recipes than main courses (or even desserts) that it makes you wonder why we even bother with the rest of the meal.  It’s actually plain good sense: as any southerner knows, a dizzying array of nibbles in view when your guests arrive is the utmost gesture of hospitality.”

— The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook (Stories and Recipes for Southerners and Would-be Southerners)

Alrighty folks, I know that I say everything I post on here looks irresistibly scrumptious, but really, can this delectible concept be beaten? Spicy! Sweet! Salty! Enjoy! (And if you follow this recipe we want to hear from you how it turned out. And then we want you to FedEx us some.)

Buttermilk Biscuits with Kentucky Ham, Molasses Butter & Creole Chile Jam
(From Convivial.org)

One of my favorite Southern appetizers is a ham biscuit — Kentucky smoked ham on a buttermilk biscuit — it’s that simple.  However, because it’s only two things put together, the biscuits better be great and the ham even better.

A real, aged country ham is remarkably different in flavor and texture from a mass-produced ham.  An authentic country ham is considered the South’s prosciutto — it’s smoky, wild, gamy and salty.

Col. Bill Newsom’s Kentucky hams are hand-cured (nitrate & nitrite free) using a 200 year old family method, slow-smoked over hickory, and hung for several months to age.  This traditional, painstakingly long process is becoming a lost art.  Not mass-produced or distributed wholesale, these artisan hams are handled only 18 times before arriving at your door with a numbered certificate.   Foodies everywhere are grateful to Nancy Newsom Mahaffey (aka, the Ham Lady) for continuing her grandfather’s tradition.

Dryness tends to be a problem with just ham on biscuits, especially if they sit for any length of time…

For the complete article and the recipe (!) please click here.

Corn Bread Nation

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The only thing better than eating is reading about eating.

So, in saunters Corn Bread Nation and everyone salivates: “Cornbread Nation: The Best of Southern Food Writing” debuted in 2002, and since then readers can’t seem to get enough of this anthology published in conjunction with Southern Foodways Alliance.

The fifth and latest anthology was released just last month.

Here’s an article about it from PopMatters –

Cornbread Nation 5: The Best of Southern Food Writing by Fred W. Sauceman and John T. Edge
By Carolyn W. Fanelli 5 May 2010

Have you ever eaten something so blissfully good that you wanted to write an ode to it or, perhaps, in the more modern fashion of Glee or Bollywood, burst into song and dance? The Cornbread Nation series captures just this feeling of unrestrained exuberance. Published in association with the Southern Foodways Alliance, it explores, explains, ponders, and celebrates Southern food and culture with such gusto that even if you’ve never ventured south of the Mason-Dixon line, you’ll soon be craving sweet tea.

In Cornbread Nation 5: The Best of Southern Food Writing, sweet tea is exactly what inspires Fred Thompson in his contribution to the collection, “Taste of Tradition”. It begins, “My mother swears she didn’t put sweet tea in my baby bottles, but the twinkle in her eye and the sly, sideways smile tell me she’s probably not being truthful.” If sweet tea can substitute for baby formula, than surely it’s no surprise that, in a dry Mississippi county, Donna Tartt’s family stored bourbon under the bathroom sink, “like medicine”…

For the complete article, click here.

Southern Food Primer

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If you’re into southern baking enough to be here on this blog, odds are you may not need a primer on southern food, but just in case you want one anyway the good folks over at Southern Foodways have one all wrapped up for you:

Southern Food Primer

John Egerton writes, “Within the South itself, no other form of cultural expression, not even music, is as distinctly characteristic of the region as the spreading of a feast of native food and drink before a gathering of kin and friends.  For as long as there has been a South, and people who think of themselves as Southerners, food has been central to the region’s image, its personality, and its character.” – Southern Food

Need a primer on Southern Food?  Here ya go.  Download as a .pdf.  Or scroll through this page to read the full text online.

(It’s really worth a read, go ahead, click.)

The Southern Food & Beverage Museum

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Well, you knew there had to be a southern food museum somewhere, and there is! A great one!

Celebrate the food culture of the South by checking out The Southern Food & Beverage Museum online, or by visiting them in person in New Orleans!

The Southern Food and Beverage Museum is a nonprofit living history organization dedicated to the discovery, understanding and celebration of the food, drink and the related culture of the South.

…Not only are these guys collecting menus from every restaurant throughout the South and Southern-inspired restaurants everywhere in the world, they also create cool exhibits. Their newest exhibit, SPOILED by Tom Varisco, chronicles the tales that refrigerators told in the post-Hurricane Katrina clean-up.

Speaking of clean-ups, there is a great post at Southern Foodways on how the recent oil spill has effected the lives of folks who make their living on the water. Read it here.

Southern Foodways Goes Whole Hog

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“Southern baking is not only a way of survival: it is an expression of love, empathy, and celebration. Food brings families together at mealtime, celebrates the gathering of communities at traditional “dinner on the grounds,” consoles friends when a loved one dies, and offers topic for conversation at holidays. It represents the resourcefulness and ties that bind southern families and communities together…”

Therefore, it makes sense that these traditions should be preserved for future generations…

The Center for Public History and The Southern Foodways Alliance have completed an oral history project exploring Southern baking traditions. They have conducted over thirty interviews, created a traveling exhibit, and conducted a number of public programs at their exhibit locations, finely tuned for the special audiences in their community.

Please enjoy exploring their diligent work at The Center for Public History, University of West Georgia (View the on-line exhibit here.)

…And for hours of incredible education and entertainment, check out the The Southern Foodways Alliance‘s “Potlikker” documentary films online, here. With titles like “Whole Hog” and “Hot Chicken” you know can’t go wrong with these films!