What Is Southern Cooking?

One of the most identifiable cuisines in the US is Southern. It's known for fried chicken and peach pie, biscuits and sweet iced tea. Yet what exactly is it? Soul food? An offshoot of African cuisine? Food of the rich? Food of the poor? Food of the whites? What should it really be called?

Julia Moskin tackled that question in an article in today's New York Times Food section. She visited Atlanta, heart of the cuisine to speak with two defining chefs, Todd Richards and Virginia Willis. Both ,like many other Southern chefs are chipping away at the stereotype of what the food  should be. More and more immigrants are pouring into the cities and coasts, fusing their recipes with these centuries old ones. There is Korean- Southern fried chicken, Vietnamese Cajun crawfish, and tacos stuffed with barbecue.Yet the question remains - just what exactly is Southern cooking?Many are reluctant to see it as a black-white divide however Chef Willis did wonder that aloud during their interview with Ms. Moskin.Many of the cooking traditions and techniques can directly be traced to Africa, invented by home chefs for both their own families and the families that either enslaved them or employed them.However Chef Richards has another take on it. It's necessarily about race but more about class and place he argues.Blacks and whites  may not have been eating together but they were eating the same dishes.

Yet soul food has come to mean black food while Southern and country refers to white cooking, even though both cuisines have exactly the same recipes.Both chefs have mirror backgrounds and food experiences.Their mothers washed collard greens and peanuts in the family washing machines (!), their recipes for potato salad are nearly identical with not too soft potatoes, hard boiled eggs, pickled relish, mayo, mustard and paprika. Ms. Moskin asked them to bring another Southern specialty  - pimento sandwiches, a filling composed of cream cheese, mayo, pimentos and shredded cheese. Both came up with their own variations.Ms Willis used it as a topping to a tomato pie,while Chef Richards added thick cut bacon and sauce from a can of Mexican chipotle chiles on toast and topped with juicy grilled peaches.Both chefs have written cookbooks, Chef Richards has Soul while Ms.Willis wrote Secrets Of The Southern Table: AFood Lover's Guide Of The Global South.Chef Richards approaches from the perspective of an African American while Chef Willis comes from a Southern white angle. Both are self taught although Willis also learned from her mother and grandmother. What they cook is Southern cuisine, just variations. It evolves constantly thanks to immigrants and new chefs with their own interpretations.

SOuthern cooking should just be known as  regional cooking.It is not black or white, rich or poor. It 's like any other cuisine, old cooking techniques being updated with new ingredients and keeping the old ones.