The South gets a bad rap. Sometimes.
What people mostly know about southern history runs from banning ‘divisive topics’ in schools this century, to lynchings last century, to confederacy and bloodshed the century before that, to enslavement for the couple of centuries before that.
All of that is true and awful. And apparently we need to keep telling those histories and stories because there are, even now, those who would prefer our kids not be exposed to the lessons from our four or so centuries of errors. Yet, learn we must. The more people try to suppress our more uncomfortable history, the more we must double down on teaching it.
And yet….there is also so much more to the South and its history.
Firstly, in August 2019, 400 years to the month after 20-30 enslaved Africans first arrived in America, the New York Times Magazine published a special issue. Called the 1619 Project, it sought to rewrite the black history of America. In a series of essays, the 1619 Project described not just the history of slavery (as an institution, which is how white people have mostly written about it) but of the central contribution of black people to the very creation of American democracy, American traditions, and American life as we know it.
When I first heard about this project, I was captivated and a little ashamed that I too had thought about black history mostly as ‘slavery history’. The individual and collective contributions of black people to the true formation America hadn’t been part of my education or upbringing any more than it had been for Nikole Hannah-Jones, the creator of the project. At some point, she had begun to understand that her ancestors were more than slaves and freed slaves, but rather individuals who forced and led America closer to the equality and freedom that it promised. And she wanted to hear and learn more about that. So, the 1619 Project was born out of a desire to reveal and rewrite America’s true ‘origin story’.
And that story, of course, infuses our music, our diet, our education, our industry and every part of American life, especially in the South.
It is the southern food and the food culture of yesterday, today, and tomorrow that I want to mention a little more right now.
I have been enjoying the Masterclass of Mashama Bailey lately. In her introduction to the course, she says that she never really identified as a ‘southern cook’, but found herself always looking for dishes that represented her grandmothers. And she said that by doing that, it
“…allowed me to really look at what southern food is, what black food is, what American food is. And it also allowed me to accept my own journey.”
Her goal is to celebrate and demystify southern food and its ingredients and techniques, and to amplify the oral histories and stories that have survived generations.
I love this. And I think in most cultures of the world, from white Europeans to Scandinavia, to the wide variety of Asian, African, and South American cultures, we often intuitively want to do this. We want to celebrate what our grandmothers knew, and recreate the tastes and experiences of our childhood tables. It teaches us something about ourselves and ‘our people’ to know our flavors intimately. And then it teaches us some more when we add to those flavors with our own creative interpretations. And then it teaches us even more……when we share those flavors and our tables with others, and let them share theirs.
This is what I think of as ‘food culture’, and I think it could truly be the beating human heart of our next chapter.
I had never had okra until I came to the South. I didn’t even know what it looked like, or how it grew.
The first time I had it was in the form of a whole pickled okra on the side of a plate of fried chicken at Tupelo Honey restaurant in Asheville. This was back in the early 2000s when locals could still get a table in the then-small dining space. I am a sucker for just about anything pickled, but this was delicious, and I soon followed up my okra experiences with fried okra. Also delicious.
And then came collards. And grits. And succotash, hoppin’ john, sweet potato pie, squash casserole, cornbread dressing, fried catfish, boiled peanuts, and of course, homemade biscuits in their many, buttery variations.
I have fallen in love with southern food, along with the cooks who honor its legacy and flavors, the farmers that lovingly raise heritage and new varieties of its ingredients, and most especially with my friends who sit around the table for hours and love to talk about and eat it!
But just as southern food today is an amalgam of African, European, and native cultures, I hope that the southern food of tomorrow will continue to evolve as we blend newer residents’ flavors as well. For example, I recently saw a menu with collard green eggrolls on it, and bananas foster crepes. Sounds amazing!
I think it’s more about honoring the ingredients, the techniques, and the stories and people that makes a cuisine ‘cultural’. It’s not that the flavors have to be static, but rather that there is legacy etched into the plate.
As Sylvia Harrelson Ganier (an organic farmer near Nashville, TN) says in her interview with Maneet Chauhan in The Bitter Southerner:
“I think Southern food is truly a plant-based food. Give me the okra, give me the field peas. Give me the corn when it's in season. Give me the tomato that you can eat right off the vine like it's an apple. That's Southern. That's Southern food, that's Southern culture. When Southerners get together, they talk about food. Usually, the first thing they say is, "Did you eat?1 Can I get you a glass of tea?".
We want to feed you. Because we know if we can break bread together, we're going to get along.”
And that is, for me, the point of it all: food, flavor, culture, land, legacy - it’s all about connection. I can tell my stories through food and you can share yours with me. We don’t have to fight about any of it, we just have to eat. Together. And then let’s get a second helping.
It’s where communication, respect, and true hospitality begins - at the table. And I think we’re all desperate for more of it. And there IS plenty more of it in the South than most people realize.
It’s one of the reasons why I have great hope, as a resident of the South, for America’s future, and for all of our futures. It’s why food, the land it’s grown on, and the table we eat it at, plays and should continue to play such a central role in our human lives.
Chauhan describes Sylvia Harrison Ganier as her ‘ideal southerner’ in the article. She says Sylvia is “hospitality, sass, resilience. Grit and drive.”
That’s my ideal southerner too, and I am fortunate to be able to invite many friends who embody that completely, to my table.
Today’s recipe: Of course, it’s southern biscuits.
I’m sorry for the gluten suffers out there, because I don’t know of a good recipe for biscuits that uses gluten-free flours, but if you do, please share!
I’ve tried making lots of biscuit recipes over the years (including one at my Mother-in-law’s house that failed so spectacularly that I tried passing off my flat little discs as a new kind of breakfast bread: Fliskits!). But the biscuits from Tupelo Honey really are some of the highest and fluffyist around.
So here is a recipe from The Spicy Southern Kitchen, that makes a few tweaks to make them even more delicious. Are they healthy? No. Are they good for your soul? Oh yeeaaaah.
Actually what southerners say is “Duyeet?”
Gosh this is beautiful and rich and so dead
right on true....In a country that seems to be going to hell in a handbag, it makes me wish that we were all spending more time at the community table, swapping recipes, fighting over who gets the last of the fried okra, and telling stories over another glass of tea for hours on end. Brings tears. ♥️