Welcome to the SFA

Welcome to the Southern Foodways Alliance -- an institute of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture with headquarters at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi.

The Southern Foodways Alliance documents and celebrates the diverse food cultures of the American South. We set a common table where black and white, rich and poor -- all who gather-- may consider our history and our future in a spirit of reconciliation.

The Southern Way

By Jeff Siegel
Chef, the Food Magazine for Professionals
September 2001

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John Egerton, a leading critic and scholar of Southern cooking and culture, raised the mallet high over his head, and then brought it down as hard as he could.

The mallet hit the piece of dough with a tremendous wham. He did it again and again and again, and someone in the audience asked him how long he had to keep pounding. "Too long," he said, and everyone laughed.

Egerton's assault on the dough was not frivolous. He was demonstrating how to make beaten biscuits for a group of chefs, writers, academics and even an assortment of interested laypeople who were attending the Southern Foodways Alliance symposium in Greensboro, North Carolina, in the middle of July. The 100 or so people spent three days talking about food, watching food being prepared and eating food—and lots of it.
The four-year-old alliance, part of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture in Oxford, Mississippi, was formed to celebrate, promote, and preserve Southern cooking and its traditions and folklore. It takes in everything from beaten biscuits to discussion of the roles played by okra and fried chicken in Southern culture. The group, despite (or perhaps because of) its Southern roots, does not shy away from discussion of racial influences on food.

Beaten biscuits—incredibly labor intensive made with traditional biscuit ingredients that render a thinner, more cracker-like product—are part of that heritage. The point was not that anyone should add them to a menu, but that knowing about them is crucial to putting together a successful menu, just as a novelist can't write the best American fiction without knowing about American fiction.

The alliance's first symposium was held in 1998 on the Ole Miss campus; each since has sold out. The Greensboro event, less academic than those in Oxford and the first of several planned field trips in other cities throughout the South, focused on the foods of the Carolina Piedmont, the area east of the Allegheny Mountains down to the coast.

"Food spans all social and economic groups, and that’s something that's very important to understand," says John T. Edge, the symposium's director. "And since Southern food is one of the bases of American cooking, anyone who understands it will be better able to interpret American culture. Any chef who has confidence in Southern food can better interpret other American food."

This was just one of the symposium's themes. Participants also disc used sustainable agriculture, how to support organic farmers and producers, and pratical ways to incorporate these ideas into menus. Chef Susan Goss, who operates Zinfandel, a new American-style restaurant in Chicago with husband Drew, was one of a group who visited a local organic farm that pre-sells part of its crop in the early spring, before planting. This technique assures the farmers of cash for seeds and supplies, while providing area restaurants with a supply of top-quality produce throughout the summer and fall without any price fluctuations.

"Sometimes, in our rush to be chic, to be the next fusion or the next great American cuisine, we lose sigh of what we're supposed to be doing," says Goss. "Coming here has rekindled a fire in me. Sitting in a van, as we drive around, talking to all these interesting people, inspires me as a chef. It's revitalizing to me."

That was the goal of the Saturday night dinner, as well. It emphasized fresh, seasonal and regional ingredients. (Even the wines served were from North Carolina, including an astonishing Seyval Blanc.) Equally important, it emphasized simple preparations based on the idea that simple is not necessarily "bad" in these days of elaborate tasting menus, heavier, French-style sauces, and menu descriptions that often read like short novels.

The five courses, for example, included heirloom tomatoes with marinated lump crab; black-eyed pea/corn soup with chicken dumplings (in which the dumplings were actually a chicken mousse); and a main-course vegetable plate that was not vegetarian because it is au courant to be vegetarian, but because that's how the people in the Piedmont eat at the height of the summer.

The vegetable plate—fresh baby limas and corn, zucchini casserole, mashed potatoes and a cucumber/tomato salad—featured the recipes of Mildred Council of the country-style Mama Dip's Kitchen in nearby Chapel Hill. The corn and lima beans, so fresh and sweet, stewed in a little butter and water and then slightly thickened with a flour paste, were a revelation to anyone who has ever turned his or her nose up at limas.

Kathleen Ellington, co-owner of Kathleen's Art Café in Dallas with husband Robert, was also revitalized by the symposium. She was looking for ways to reinvigorate her menu, perhaps adding more homestyle touches such as greens, in advance of opening a second location next spring. That's one reason she volunteered for the biscuit practicum with Nathalie Dupree of PBS fame.

"Coming to something like this is a real eye-opener for me," says Ellington, who grew up in California. "Even though I'm not from the South, I love it. I can learn things, see how things are done, and take those things back t the restaurant with me. And if we don't do Southern cooking, I can still use what I have learned. We do New American, and that means Southern influences."

Which was the entire point of the exercise, says Louis Osteen, the award-winnign chef and owner of Louis's Restaurant in Charleston, S.C.

"I can remember, when I started cooking in professional kitchens in the 1970s, the precedence was on European cooking, and American cooking was non-existent," he says. "Amercian food, and especially Southern food, was demeaned, and even thought of as a bit backward and rustic. But Southern is finally starting to be recognized for giving the U.S. all of its best things—music and food. Southern food is the best regional food in the country. It's the purest, the most flavorful and the most diverse."

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