process is quick and ideally suited to 
modern fast-food situations. You can, 
moreover, deep-fry almost anything. A 
friend of mine ran a fryolator at a 
chicken joint in the Southwest during a 
high school summer vacation. To relieve 
the boredom of the job, he took to 
methodically southern frying old sneak- 
ers. They came out golden brown, look- 
ing like giant fritters. 
Southern cookery, of course, includes 
much more than just southern-fried 
foods. Among the ingredients ineradica- 
bly associated with Sunbelt eating are a 
huge menu of cornmeal recipes, from 
spoon bread to corn bread to corn pones 
to hush puppies. Corn also figures in the 
most folkloric and primordial Sunbelt 
recipe of all: grits. 
Grits are actually hominy — corn 
leached out of the kernel with a lye 
solution. The Indians did the same thing 
with ashes and water. The resultant hom- 
iny, when boiled, turns into the white, 
porridgy starch always present at real 
Sunbelt breakfasts. Almost every north- 
erner 1 know turns his nose up at grits. 1 
think the name has a lot to do with it. If, 
for instance, the same cornmeal mush 
were served under its Italian title, 
polenta, it would sit better than it does 
as plain old grits. 
The best grits I ever ate were the 
baked cheese grits served at a fund- 
raising event in Lexington, Kentucky, 
during Derby week (see recipe). Cheese 
grits are meant as a side dish to go with 
a meat meal, much as a baked potato 
might. Served this way, cheese grits are 
a most refined dish, and you can delight 
and mystify your friends by including 
them in an otherwise conventional din- 
ner. Only Sunbelt exiles will be able to 
identify the dish without prompting. 
In addition to pan-southern dishes 
such as grits, every southern subregion 
has its own local specialties. Southwest- 
ern Louisiana flaunts its crayfish. The 
town of Vidalia in south Georgia boasts 
of an extraordinarily mild and sweet 
yellow onion, officially called the F-l 
Yellow Hybrid Granex, but known to 
serious Georgia cooks as the Vidalia. It 
is a prized and relatively scarce item in 
Atlanta. The season runs from mid-May 
through June. And Georgia gourmets 
have to check and double check that 
they are getting the real thing. 
For the most part, however, Atlanta 
cooks operate in the same general culi- 
nary atmosphere inherited by other Sun- 
belt cooks, whether white or black, rich 
or poor. Details vary, local ingredients 
differ, but the mixture of fried food, 
corn products, and West African influ- 
ence from slave days are all persistent 
and universal earmarks of Sunbelt cui- 
sine. This unity has obvious historical 
Atlanta’s famous Municipal Market 
features row upon row of food 
stands. Pork, the southern 
favorite, is prominently displayed. 
At right is a mound of pork sausage 
in the shape of a hog's head. 
roots. The South remained an insular, 
true region much longer than other, 
more prosperous parts of the country. It 
had its antebellum tradition as a stand- 
ard of the good life and it had, gastro- 
nomically speaking, an unabashed fond- 
ness for a bountiful, cheap, and versatile 
ingredient that predominates in south- 
ern cooking more than all those already 
named. I refer, of course, to pork. 
Pork is the central, basic meat of 
Sunbelt cookery. From battered bacon 
to country ham, the hog’s various parts 
are the cuts of historical and current 
choice below the Mason-Dixon line. I 
had this impressed on me as never be- 
fore when I broke away briefly from the 
ABA to visit Atlanta’s fabulous Munici- 
pal Market situated a short drive, but I 
worlds away in spirit, from the ABA I 
convention. 
In this old-fashioned covered market 
with its row after row of competitive 
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