See below, a list published by The Bitter Southerner - http://bittersoutherner.com/ - which bills itself as “stories from the American south.” It’s a fun, free, online magazine. Excellent writing, wide range of topics. I highly recommend it.
I circulated the list by email this morning. There is little agreement on the chosen seven, and less agreements on the recipes. Comments have ranged from “G-ddamn Yankee must have come up with this list…!!” to “Flour in cornbread? Pure heresy. At least there’s no sugar in it…” to “I would eat all of those dishes any day” to “No biscuits!!!”
Battered, or merely dunked in milk and shaken in flour? Single dunk or double dunk? Or perhaps only shaken in flour, no milk dunk at all?
Fried in lard? Crisco? Peanut oil?
Marinated in buttermilk or not?
Personally, I like a little flour in my cornbread, and like good Brunswick stew better than any fried chicken 'cept Mama’s (which, by the way, was single dunked and shaken, then pan fried in Crisco - delicious trans fats!).
My favorite was Hopkin’s House in Pensacola, though I once worked Greenville ER during Christmas and they closed up that morning and drove me to a farm 12-15 miles away. I was served breakfast and lunch there, the fried chicken & biscuits to die for.
I suspect that biscuits and fried chicken were omitted on the grounds that they are too contentious. My grandmother’s were the best of each ever made on this plane of existence (single dunked and shaken, skillet-fried, and she had a special bin for flour with a trap door at the bottom built into her cabinet over the counter to make it easy to get to it since she made biscuits every day). Any contradiction of that statement is fightin’ words (other than lauding the versions from one’s own ancestor, as there’s no sin in defending one’s mama or granny).
The shrimp, sausage, and rice dish sounds good, but I question whether that kind of rice dish is ubiquitous enough to be a Southern essential. I tend to associate rice-centered dishes with coastal SC (such as my own family’s simple country ham and perlo rice) and LA. The rice and sausage combination is good enough and integral enough to some regions that I’ll give it a pass, though I’m partial to a good Horry County chicken bog.
The field peas and chow chow sound really intriguing, but because of where I live I don’t expect I 'll ever see fresh ones. Are any available as dried varieties you can get online or do you have to get them fresh?
The rice dish sounds like some bastard child of shrimp creole and jambalaya. Rice is definitely more of a coastal item, we ate it several times a week. When I lived in Birmingham rice was looked down on as a side.
Rachel, you might be able to find the peas frozen. During pea season I buy them each week as the different varieties come into the farmers market and throw them straight into the freezer. Some varieties are dried but the real great varieties aren’t (lady peas, pink eyes, cream, purple hulls, etc)
The fact that the pod of the gods didn’t get mentioned is laughable. You can’t go to any meat and three place around the south and not find okra as an ingredient or as the main item in a dish.
These are expensive, but special: http://www.ansonmills.com/products/41
Then again, almost everything on offer by Anson Mills merits those two adjectives.
Camellia brand dried peas are available on Amazon.
Remind me next summer when they’re in season and I’ll ship you some. You wouldn’t be the first Berserker to whom I’ve shipped fresh field peas. I’ll be sure to include my very favorite kind: Purple hull pink-eyed peas.
This recipe, from local chef Linton Hopkins, makes terrific chow chow (although I like to cut the sugar almost in half): Chowchow Recipe - Linton Hopkins
This is closer to what you eat here in Louisiana. Rice and gravy at every meal. Red beans and rice. Jambalaya. Cornbread. Pig of every form, especially cooked with the veggies. Crawfish (when in season). Gumbo in winter (sausage and turkey/duck or seafood). You get the idea…
