My first apartment in New York was on Avenue A and 3rd Street, at a time when the East Village was a rather seedy no-man's-land where you couldn't score much more than smack and a good bialy. There were no gourmet stores, no coffee bars, not even an ATM within blocks. But there was the original Two Boots pizza parlor and, for a short and very blissful time, a little joint called Southern Style where you could get some clean and tasty down-home cooking for cheap. To my knowledge, they never served fried green tomatoes but that alone is not enough to explain why I'd never eaten any before making them myself recently. Thanks to new restaurants like this, or this one, Southern food seems to be having quite the renaissance these days, so I'll probably end up sampling someone else's fried green tomatoes soon. But until that day, mine will have to set the standard.
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In my quest to offer you more alternatives to the dreaded, over-processed, denatured, cardboard-like breakfast cereals we should all be rejecting forever, I hereby tempt you with a delicious bowl of nutty, nutritious and quite comforting grits. As you can see, I've gotten all fancy with purple rice and, though you need not be so esoteric, I highly recommend you source your grits from somewhere like Bob's Red Mill or Anson Mills. Both offer a variety of organic heirloom rices and grains, all painstakingly milled and very fresh. The taste really illustrates the difference, as does the quality of the nutrition you get from products like these. Please don't feed your kids (or yourself) instant oats or Rice Krispies or cornflakes when you can give them healthy, whole foods instead. And grits are a great vehicle for other flavors, like soft-cooked eggs, crispy bacon, spicy Tabasco, creamy yogurt, maple syrup, strawberry jam, cultured butter—pretty much anything tastes good plopped on top of or stirred into this yummy bowl of mush. This particular bowl I ate with a dollop of crème fraîche and some crunchy smoked sea salt.
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We made fried chicken this weekend but we were too busy to take any pictures of it, so all I can offer you is this shot of my nephew who said it was the best dinner he'd ever had. That's some endorsement. The recipe came from Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock. If you don't know about these two cooks—a delightfully odd couple—let me just give you a little background. Edna, who passed away in 2006 at the age of 89, was the granddaughter of a former slave who had helped found Freetown, a Virginia farming community. She grew up on the fresh food at hand, then moved to New York City where she cooked for and rubbed shoulders with artists, musicians, writers and Communists. She had an elegant style and a gift for simple, classic flavors. Late in life, Edna encountered Scott Peacock, a gay man half her age, a kindred spirit and chef whom she mentored and befriended. In fact, the two wound up sharing an apartment, and Scott cared for her until her death. (A situation that was evidently problematic for her family.) They collaborated on a cookbook, The Gift of Southern Cooking, that is full of wonderful traditional American Southern recipes, including the one I used for fried chicken.
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