Mama was a natural cook. At harvest time, she would whip up a noontime dinner for the men in the field: fried chicken with milk gravy, ham, mashed potatoes, lima beans, field peas, corn, slaw, sliced tomatoes, fried apples, biscuits, and peach pie.
Nothing rekindles my spirits, gives comfort to my heart and mind, more than a visit to Mississippi... and to be regaled as I often have been, with a platter of fried chicken, field peas, collard greens, fresh corn on the cob, sliced tomatoes with French dressing... and to top it all off with a wedge of freshly baked pecan pie.
We have fried catfish, country fried steak and cinnamon-roasted pork. We have collard greens, black-eyed peas, hush puppies, biscuits, sweet potato pie and lots of gravy. Most players love it, but we also have a baked catfish for players who are still looking to stay on the approved diet.
I'm good at anything that's country - biscuits, gravy, chicken-fried steak. Look at me, for God's sake. I cook what I like to eat.
It's for balance, if you want to do that. But the truth is that we all know how we're supposed to eat. And so if you have fried chicken and mashed potatoes and white gravy, then the next day you have, like a grape and you're totally evened out and you're good.
The most I ever ate? In one sitting? Maybe four big plates of fried chicken, biscuits, chitlins, gravy. Then dessert. Apple pie, sweet potato pie. My mother cooked that stuff, good Southern food, and when I was 300 pounds, I never missed a meal.
I can't really cook, but the first dish I ever made was for my girlfriend, Eleanor. I made chicken breast wrapped in ham, homemade mashed potatoes, and gravy.
All I ever wanted was a Virginia farm, no end of cream and fresh butter and fried chicken - not one fried chicken, or two, but unlimited fried chicken.
I love food: biscuits and gravy, cheese grits, spaghetti and meatballs, chicken-fried steak with white gravy... but my favorite dish is my wife's beanie weenie cornbread casserole. It's so good. It sounds stupid, but if you eat it, it's heaven. Of course, it's only something you can eat if you've got a lot of money.
[My favorite dish to cook] is fried chicken, and by the way I'm good at it, too. I make really good fried chicken.
If you live in the South, you are often a very short distance from a garden, or even a farm owned by your family or by your neighbor's family. When I was a child, even though I grew up in an era of highly processed food, the grocery store sold local field peas, lima beans, tomatoes, and sweet potatoes. While there is a deep sense of place in the South - and the foods of this place - I don't want to present a pastoral vision of the contemporary South. The majority of Southerners cannot access fresh, local, affordable food.
Memories of my Southern upbringing in Richmond, Virginia, always include the smell of good southern food: fried chicken, cheese grits, Smithfield ham, and buttermilk biscuits.
Unlike the stereotypical author, I've never had a job as a short-order cook, but I love cooking hot breakfasts for lots of people, juggling the eggs and the bacon and the tomatoes and the fried potatoes and so on.
In the winter, my failsafe dinner party menu has to be my roast chicken or a creamy fish pie with mashed potatoes on top, followed by something like a tarte tatin. My cooking style is quite homely.
Everything edible is fried in Texas! Or it is buried in the ground to cook before it is eaten. ... Texas food should be forbidden! 'The steaks at night are big and bright, deep in the heart of Texas!' And they are always afloat in grease. Next morning you are served a smaller steak, which serves as a platform for two fried eggs ... all of this afloat in the same grease! 'Chicken, you say? You bet! Comin' up!' Same grease! They are right. Comin' up! For hours afterwards. I couldn't believe the crust of an apple pie! Same grease!
I cannot wait to go get my fried butter on a stick, and fried cheesecake on a stick and...Twinkies, especially in honor of those who would rather just be forced to eat our peas.
Be aware of what you cook tomatoes with. The high acid content of the tomato slows down the cooking process of some other foods. Dried beans cooked with tomatoes added to the pot can take up to 20 percent more cooking time than beans without tomatoes added.