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U.S.
Southern Food
In our study of black cuisine around the world, we looked
at Southern food in America. Just what is Southern food --
and where is it going?
What
is Southern cuisine, where did it come from, where is it going,
and what happens when you take it outside the South?
No
body knows -- at least not for sure. But at the Southern Foodways
Alliance and its annual symposium -- this year entitled "Travelin'
On: Southern Food En Route" -- people sure love to talk
about it.
Each
fall, the SFA, headquartered at the University of Mississippi,
sponsors a symposium attended by chefs, authors, food writers,
and people who just love to cook or eat. The attendees, limited
to about 90 people, attend lectures, eat food, and try to
answer these seemingly unanswerable questions.
"Simply
put," says the Alliance's web page, "the mission
of the SFA is to celebrate, preserve, promote, and nurture
the traditional and developing diverse food culture of the
American South."
But
perhaps Lolis Eric Elie, author of the cultural barbecue travelogue
"Smokestack Lightning" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux),
said it better: "What we are doing here is talking about
all them places don't nobody know about that fixes stuff like
you used to be able to get."
A
messy trail
"What is 'Southern Food?'" should be an easy question.
Fried chicken, blackeyed peas and cornbread spring instantly
to mind. But back in the lecture room in the Barnard Observatory
on the Ole Miss campus, cultural geographer Richard Pillsbury
explains the definition can be slippery.
"There
is no food that is characteristic of the whole South,"
Pillsbury said. "Grits are not everywhere. Biscuits are
not everywhere. And you have to be open-minded about what
you call cornbread."
A
good example, he said, are attempts to track barbecue sauces.
To
illustrate, Pillsbury displayed a map of the South covered
with blotches to represent areas where different barbecue
sauces are used -- tomato based, vinegar based, mustard based.
It resembled a stained placemat in a roadside diner.
"One
of the first things I learned is that barbecue is a mess,"
he said.
A
map of migratory trends doesn't help much more. Branches spread
out from South Carolina north, North Carolina southeast and
west, and from Pennsylvania into Appalachia and westward to
Kentucky.
What
is clear, said Pillsbury, is that the South is really a lower
South and an upper South settled by different groups with
different foodways.
For
example, he said, Charleston was not simply English but one
of the most international cities in the colonies with 40 percent
of its immigrant population at one point French Huguenots.
There were also Jews fleeing persecution in Spain and enough
Germans so that when two Lutheran churches were established,
one fell out with the other over using too much English in
services.
Then
there were the slaves and many Europeans who came in through
the Caribbean and who brought with them foodways, like eating
rice.
Those
who moved down from Pennsylvania were lowland Scots, he said,
many of whom had spent time in Ireland as well.
The
result are novelties such as tamales in Mississippi, and liver
hash atop rice served with barbecue in South Carolina.
The
South, rather than being an homogenous place where everyone
eats grits, fried chicken and biscuits, is a patchwork of
cultures with the areas reflecting the diverse influences
ranging from Native Americans who were there to begin with,
to immigrants from widely disparate areas.
What's
happening to Southern cuisine?
Most attendants at this year's symposium might agree that
the "old South" is still around, but they will also
quickly tell you its getting more and more difficult to find.
A
stream of speakers and panel participants lamented the loss
of "meat and threes" -- the one time staple of every
southern community -- a small, family-run restaurant that
would serve you a meat and three vegetables at a modest price.
Cookbook
author Nathalie Dupree (whose "New Southern Cooking,"
published in 1986 just out of print after 14 editions) still
believes that Southern cooking is still "home cooking."
"You
can't go out to eat every night and feel satisfied,"
Dupree said. "Home cooking is still sought after and
viable in the South."
But
Louis Osteen, Charleston restaurateur and cookbook author,
says restaurants are stepping up to cook the way people once
cooked at home.
"There
used to be a line between restaurant food and home food. Now
restaurants are going to cook those foods," Osteen said.
John
Floyd, the editor of Southern Living magazine, believes that
the old South, where Mama made biscuits from scratch and lovingly
whipped a pound each of butter, eggs, and flour into a dense
pound cake, is gone forever.
Of
Southern Living's 2.5 million subscriber's, said Floyd, half
the readers were not born in the South. That doesn't mean
Southerners aren't interested in cooking. Southern Living
publishes around 800 recipes a year, said Floyd, most of them
submitted by readers of the magazine.
The
change, said Floyd, is that the readers of his magazine, regardless
of where they were born, are charmed by the Southern way of
life. "It's the lifestyle that people are enamored of,"
he said.
Pillsbury
agrees that the South is continuing to shift from what most
people have always thought it was.
"The
South is marked by vast areas of change." What geographers
see is a region where "migrants and immigrants"
continue the influx of "outlanders," said Pillsbury,
with Atlanta, with its large population of non-natives, the
ultimate example.
"Tremendous
numbers are coming in and altering Southern food and its interpretation,"
he said.
Marvin
Jones lamented that "meat and threes" are disappearing
in his native south Chicago, and with them traditional Southern
food.
"I
went into what was supposed to be a soul food restaurant,
but there wasn't a black soul in the place," said Jones.
But, he admits, when asked to come to the symposium, he was
in a kitchen on Martha's Vineyard cooking cornmeal-encrusted
blue fish.
While
some people think that new interpretations of traditional
Southern food mark a loss, Jason Girard, who serves up Cajun,
Creole and soul food at Buddy Guy's Legends in Chicago, says
change is only natural.
"This
is not a bastardization. It's an evolution," said Girard.
By
Randall H. Harber
CNN News Editor
December
1, 2000
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