A Matter of Taste 
Sunbelt Cuisine 
Southern cooking is this country’s major surviving native cuisine 
by Raymond Sokolov 
Millions of practical, footloose Amer- 
icans have solved the problem of keep- 
ing warm in an era of zooming fuel costs 
by taking the path of least resistance. 
They have headed south where, much 
of the time, naturally available solar 
energy warms their bones and heats 
their homes at no cost at all. This migra- 
tion has enormously distorted American 
life, undermining the political strength 
of the depleted Northeast, straining the 
water resources of the Southwest, and 
generally shaking up established pat- 
terns everywhere. One harmless benefit 
the “new carpetbaggers” have acquired 
in their flight from chill is daily access to 
Sunbelt food, that amalgam of tradi- 
tional Deep South and western cooking 
that is this country’s major (and perhaps 
only) surviving native cuisine. 
For the past two years, I have been 
poking about all over the United States 
searching for healthy vestiges of re- 
gional cooking and regional foods. Al- 
most everywhere I have gone, the dishes 
and ingredients touted with pride in 
cookbooks or at chamber of commerce 
events have all but vanished from the 
normal life of the area or are seriously 
threatened by industrially produced 
foods from other places. Agribusiness 
and the homogenization of modem life 
have turned people everywhere away 
from pristine clambakes, wild persim- 
mons, and other once-rife local delica- 
cies and on to the foreshortened national 
menu of hamburgers and other fast 
foods. But in the Sunbelt states, they 
order things better. 
Southern-fried chicken and barbecue 
are in no sense vanishing foods. Indeed, 
as everyone knows, they have spread to 
the four corners of America. The mys- 
tique of good ol’ boy chow has capti- 
vated folks in Boston and San Francisco. 
As early as 1972, fast chicken empori- 
ums had reached Manhattan and soul 
food was available in many white neigh- 
borhoods. This trend has not slowed in 
the ensuing decade. First Kentucky, 
then Kansas fried chicken appeared 
around New York City. (More recently, 
perhaps as a kind of chauvinist back- 
lash, someone opened a “New York” 
fried chicken restaurant.) And within 
the last year, fast chicken purists in the 
Big Apple finally got a chance to sample 
the southland’s spiciest, crispest mass- 
produced fried chicken when Popeye’s 
came to town. 
With such authentic Sunbelt fare 
now available in my own city, you might 
think I would not bother to travel to 
Atlanta for southern cooking. Even 
without Popeye’s practically in my 
backyard, I could easily have satisfied 
my craving for finger-licking fare by 
cooking one of the many outstanding 
fried chicken recipes I have managed to 
salt away (see below). As it happens, I 
went to Atlanta last May to meet with 
publishing friends at the American 
Booksellers Association’s annual con- 
vention and, well aware of the wave of 
murders terrorizing the city, I resolved 
to take my meals in my hotel. 
One look at the dismal dining room 
there, however, and old reflexes asserted 
themselves. I took to the street in search 
of an authentic southern breakfast and 
found it at a large, peaceful downtown 
cafeteria. 
What drew me inside the S & W, a 
branch of a chain that extends through- 
out the Southeast, was a perplexing item 
on the menu in the window: “battered 
country bacon, 45 cents.” This was a 
regional specialty I had never heard of. 
Did they beat crisp bacon until it shat- 
tered? It might be interesting. 
At the service counter, I was handed 
a plate with a long, brittle, dark brown 
strip on it. Suddenly I realized what it 
was: southern-fried bacon. To the blink- 
ered northern sensibility, this will sound 
like the ultimate redneck abomination. 
Batter-fried bacon. Refried fat. 
On the palate, however, this down 
home specialty had its points. The bacon 
itself was thick-sliced slab bacon, tasty 
as always. And the crisp coating, which 
did shatter when cut, complemented the 
fattiness of the bacon in much the same 
way that toast goes with bacon in a 
bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. 
Munching on my battered bacon, I 
sank into speculation on the southern 
mania for southern frying almost every- 
thing. At its best, this method “sur- 
prises” the flavor of food and seals it in, 
while leaving the chicken or catfish 
moist and fresh inside. Southern cooks, 
building on these basic recipes, have 
extended the frying of breaded foods — 
from hush puppies to crab cakes to fried 
oysters to southern-fried partridge and 
quail — further than cooks of any other 
area. 
Perhaps the most extreme form of 
this propensity is chicken-fried steak, 
not everybody’s idea of refined food, but 
I did meet a Texan book salesman in 
Atlanta who visibly salivated at the 
mention of the dish. 
For the restaurateur, deep-frying is an 
ideal method. Once the fat has been 
heated to the appropriate temperature, 
it can be reused several times (obviously 
this can be overdone and often is). The 
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