As you can probably tell from my menu, I’ve had a craving lately for Southern food. My repertoire at home and at work usually tends towards Italian influences—perhaps because this cuisine is adaptable to so many different vegetables, always goes good with wine, and usually involves parmesan cheese, one of the greatest creations of human kind. There are times, though, when I am drawn back to my roots.
The span of my life has essentially been a bridge between two worlds. Before me was a long line of cooks who made things themselves, using what was in season and local, usually things they had grown themselves. I was born in 1968, long after the “advances” that created “freedom” from the tyranny of the kitchen—jell-o, cake mixes, packaged bread with preservatives, cool-whip, powdered gravy, Crisco, margarine, instant coffee, coffeemate, etc, etc. My “country” grandmother relied on all these items heavily. She cooked for a man who demanded three big cooked meals a day plus a homemade dessert—every day. I can imagine how exciting it must have been to have a little break, although I can’t say that it really allowed her to get it out of the kitchen. Those habits, those grooves in the linoleum were just too deep. Most of the time, though, she still cooked the same way she always had, so I was able to taste homemade yeast rolls, huckleberry pie, chicken pot pie, venison in gravy, long-simmered peas, fried catfish, refrigerator pickles, and occasionally some windfall like squirrels or duck, and always the bounty from the kitchen garden.
So, I hold these memories in my DNA—I know when I taste meat from the feedlot or farmed catfish that it’s not supposed to taste that way. I know that Luby’s and Cracker Barrel are corporate jokes played on Americans lonesome for their long-dead mother’s cooking. But how will my children know? What will “home cooking” mean to them?
This is why it is so important for me to buy a pork shoulder or bacon from a farmer, here where my children live—they will know how pork is supposed to taste. When I make them scrambled eggs in the morning, I open the carton to Becky & Kevin Ottmer’s eggs—some small, some huge, and all colors—white, pale blue, mint green, brown. The eggs Liam ate this morning were brilliant yellow and creamy, with not a whiff of that yucky sulfurous smell that made me hate scrambled eggs as a kid. This is why it is so important to me also, when I offer Southern food to my customers, that it not be a sad imitation, but the real thing. And there’s no reason it shouldn’t be. Southern food grew out of a desire to nourish the soul, not just the bodies, of the hardworking people it fed. It was a response to the joys of the seasons from people closely connected to the earth. It is communal food—easy to cook in huge batches, as it so often was after harvest, barn-raising or Sunday baptism. So, there’s no need for me to adulterate this food with “convenience” items like chicken bouillon—this is food that only requires time, love, and tradition to be transcendent. We’ve got all that.
