Southern Belly

by John T. Edge

  Inside, Janet Bradley Parker, great-granddaughter of founder Mary Bradley, works the register. Over by the flip-top Coke cooler, she stocks bags of circus peanuts and candy orange slices. The plank-floored aisle her grandparents devoted to underwear and dog food now displays what Janet calls, apologetically, “Cracker Barrel stuff.” CDs of “Uncle Handsome’s Redneck Poetry.” The Jeff Foxworthy oeuvre, that sort of thing.

  Along the rear wall is a meat case. A man named Rabbit is in charge. He sells liver pudding, which the family makes from pig liver, feet, and skins, the mix sweetened with onions, spiced with sage and salt and pepper. And hog’s headcheese, too, made from, well, you know.

  But country sausage—coarsely ground, stuffed into links, and house-smoked over oak and hickory—is the keeper, the draw that pulls people twelve miles down the road from Tallahassee, onto the front porch, through the screen door. After the workers depart, I snag a rocker and eat a grill-blistered link, tucked within a hot dog bun and smeared with mustard. And I savor each bite, reveling in the play of smoke and pork and sage.

  10655 CENTERVILLE ROAD / 850-893-1647

  SHINGLES CHICKEN SHACK

  A stone’s throw from the wastewater treatment plant, over near Coal Chute Park, at what might best be described as the intersection of Mill Street and Miles Street, is this joint posing as a restaurant, opened in 1968 by Henry Shingles.

  Of course, you’ll want to use your hands.

  A neon beer sign blares through the front window. Inside, an oversized shop fan stirs the air. Banners for the Florida A&M Rattlers football team hang at eye level. Tufted Naugahyde booths line one wall. The other is dominated by a Ms. Pac-Man game and a jukebox, stocked with Bobby Blue Bland and Little Milton.

  The menu board advertises bream and mullet, as well as chicken livers and gizzards. Like the other folks in line I order chicken, a leg and a thigh. In response, I get the same sweet guff they did.

  “You see these arms?” asks Irma, daughter of Henry. “You see these scars? I was raised up in this place, in the middle of all this grease,” she says, gesturing to the rear of the kitchen where a deep fryer spits and hisses. “If you want chicken, you’ll wait for my brother. He’ll cook it for you, but I’m not getting in that mess.”

  When I assent, Irma slides a longneck beer my way. “Next one’s on the house,” she says. “Might be a while.” But the wait is shorter than she predicted and the chicken Darryl eventually dishes is well salted and brittle-crusted, the perfect accompaniment for a third beer. I thank Irma, defer another gander at the scars that blotch her forearms, and exit as the jukebox rattles and shakes and Little Milton sings, “If grits ain’t groceries …”

  905 MILES STREET / 850-681-2626

  **Ernie Mickler** White Trash Culinary Chronicler

  White Trash Cooking was among the most unlikely best sellers to ever climb the charts. It was published with a spiral binding, in the manner of the South’s beloved community cookbooks. The background for the cover image of a fleshy-armed woman in a flower-print halter was a patchwork of Tabasco sauce, Ritz crackers, and Velveeta cheese, bricolaged with those everyday icons Uncle Ben, Aunt Jemima, and Martha White, all of which was overlaid on a photostat of mulched turnip tops and precisely rectangular turnip roots—the sort of vegetable matter that does not come fresh from the farm but straight from the can.

  * * *

  Listen here, buddy, this be’s the victuals of white, Southern rural peasants … Hit’ll eat!

  * * *

  On the inside cover, Jonathan Williams, the original publisher, declared, “If you were trying to explain these recipes and snapshots and all to some grand maître like Paul Bocuse, you’d say: ‘Listen here, buddy, this be’s the victuals of white, Southern rural peasants … Hit’ll eat!’” Williams suggested that the reader imagine Bocuse and his ilk “swooning over such delicacies as ‘Big Reba’s Rainbow Icebox Cake,’ ‘Tutti’s Fruited Porkettes,’ and the ‘Cold Collard Sandwich,’ as the Durkee’s dressing drips onto their cravats.”

  For those who did not dog-ear a copy, mixing up Goldie’s Yo Yo Pudding and Mona Lisa Sapp’s Macaroni Salad, baking Resurrection Cake, Grand Canyon Cake, and Vickie’s Stickies, for those who have never had the pleasure of pondering recipes for Canned Corn Beef Sandwiches, Potato Chip Sandwiches, and Girl Scout One-Eyed Egg Sandwiches—and for those who once knew but have since forgotten their glories—a Mickler primer is appropriate.

  Ernest Matthew Mickler, baby-faced with the unstudied good looks of a country boy come to town, was born in 1940, in Palm Valley, Florida, near St. Augustine. His father was a shrimper. His mother worked as a cook and a filling-station attendant. Mickler was fond of telling interviewers that his family lived without electricity until he was seventeen or eighteen, in “the middle of the swamp,” at “an old fish camp.” He described the buildings as “crude-cut cypress,” the family privy as “out of doors.”

  * * *

  I like my sloppy joes on cornbread, which is real lowdown.

  * * *

  Mickler’s father died when the boy was six. Mickler called him a “mean SOB.” He once called his mother, Edna Ray Mickler, “the lowdowndest White Trash that ever walked the face of the earth.” But he aimed to flatter. “Mama was a great fisherman,” Mickler said. “Redfish, bass, trout, drum on the hook and line. Mullet in the net. And she shrimped, too. Caught tubs of fish.”

  By way of the book, Mickler became a media celebrity, cooking chicken feet and rice with David Letterman—and starting an on-stage trash-can fire in the process. And he became an arbiter of pop culture. When Tammy Faye Bakker, wife of the fallen PTL founder Jim Bakker, offered her sloppy joe recipe to the PTL’s 900-line callers, Mickler defended Tammy Faye’s inclusion of canned chicken gumbo soup and her instructions that a cook will “know if you have enough catsup when it gets the right degree of redness.” Mickler told a reporter, “I bet it’s delicious. But I like my sloppy joes on cornbread, which is real lowdown.”

  Soon more than 200,000 copies of the book were in print. But trouble followed money. In December of 1986, in the wake of a People magazine article that referenced a $45,000 royalty payday, an attorney representing the Ledbetter family of Alexander City, Alabama, threatened suit over Mickler’s unauthorized use of their daughter’s photograph on the book cover.

  The Ledbetters joined an unlikely cadre of people who, taking note of the book’s success, threatened suit against Mickler. The most curious complainant was the Junior League of Charleston, publishers of Charleston Receipts, the ultimate white-glove Southern cookbook.

  The good ladies of Charleston claimed that twenty-three recipes in White Trash Cooking, including roast possum and broiled squirrel, were lifted almost verbatim.

  Meanwhile, Mickler went to work on his second book, Sinkin Spells, Hot Flashes, Fits and Cravins. The back cover shows Mickler, in his prime, tending a cast-iron skillet roiling with grease. In the background, at the sink, is a man in briefs and a white T-shirt—his partner, Gary Jolley. By way of White Trash Cooking, Mickler outed the South’s White Trash. With book two, he outed himself.

  “I casseroled them to death,” Mickler said of Sinkin Spells, the book he had written and collected in fits and starts, much of it while on book tour for White Trash Cooking. No matter what Mickler might suggest, Sinkin Spells was a more mature effort, one that utilized the recipes and folio form but shifted the focus to food ceremonies, like dinner after a cemetery cleaning, the casserole luncheon of a quilting circle, and the wake of Mickler’s own mother.

  Sadly, “One Side of a Conversation between Gracie Dwiggers and Rosetta Bunch about Edna Rae’s Wake and Funeral, Told over the Phone” was one of Mickler’s last efforts. Sinkin Spells, Hot Flashes, Fits and Cravins was published in November of 1988. Mickler died of AIDS soon after. But today, his books stand as testaments to the working-class cooks of Florida—and beyond.

  Nassau Grits

  an homage to the Coffee Cup

  Serves 4 to 6r />
  We all know cheese grits. The best use hand-grated cheddar, the worst processed dairy goo. Nassau grits are, however, little traveled beyond Pensacola, the epicenter of their enjoyment. In The Florida Cookbook: From Gulf Coast Gumbo to Key Lime Pie, Jeanne Voltz traced the recipe to a gentleman named Henry Richardson, whom she said discovered a similar dish while on a fishing expedition to the Bahamas. Voltz snagged the original recipe, from his niece Molly Biggs. In the ensuing years, the Coffee Cup has adapted that recipe to suit their needs—and so have I.

  1⁄2 pound bacon

  1 medium onion, finely chopped

  1 bell pepper, seeded and finely chopped

  3⁄4 cup ground or finely chopped ham (about 6 ounces)

  1 14-ounce can chopped tomatoes

  1 teaspoon finely chopped garlic

  3⁄4 cup uncooked white grits

  Salt and freshly ground black pepper

  Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Add the bacon and cook, turning once, until crisp, 5 to 7 minutes. Remove to a plate lined with paper towels. Once cooled, crumble into bits and set aside.

  Pour off all the bacon drippings except for 2 to 3 tablespoons. Add the onion and bell pepper and sauté until the onion is translucent, 3 to 5 minutes. Add the ham, stirring to mix well. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes. Add the tomatoes and garlic and reduce the heat to low. Simmer, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes.

  Meanwhile, cook the grits as directed on the package instructions. When they reach a creamy state, stir in the ham and tomato mixture. Taste and adjust for seasoning with salt and pepper. Transfer to a large serving bowl and crumble the bacon over the top. Serve immediately.

  GEorgIA

  ’m a Georgian by birth. I mark my years by my eats. I was weaned on a steady diet of barbecue sandwiches, Brunswick stew, and sweet tea from Old Clinton Bar-B-Q. During my teens, I wolfed down chili dogs and slaw-capped dogs from the Nu-Way in Macon. While in my early twenties, I developed a taste for Atlanta icon Deacon Burton’s fried chicken. What is more, along the way, I came to respect the Deacon as much more than a talented fry cook. His grease was the grease that bound Atlanta, black and white, young and old, rich and poor. To sup at his table was a blessing.

  Athens

  MEAT ’N’ THREE CAFÉS

  Athens has two great meat ’n’ three cafés. At Weaver D’s, a cinder-block diner on the edge of downtown, Dexter Weaver has, since 1986, served the signature foods of the African American experience: crisp chicken drumsticks, straight from the fryer basket. Nutmeg-spiked sweet potato soufflé, too. Collard greens in a fatback-enriched potlikker. And cheddary squash casserole. Across town at Wilson’s Soul Food, a storefront café in business since 1981, Angelish Wilson dishes fried pork chops, white rice sopped in pan gravy, collard greens, and butter beans.

  Weaver D’s is the more famous spot. The rock band R.E.M. named an album “Automatic for the People” in homage to Weaver’s slogan, his response to almost any communication from a request for cornbread to a comment on local politics. “It’s automatic,” Weaver will tell you. And then an explanation: “I’m for the people, I work for them.”

  I’ve long been a fan of Weaver’s. And I remain a fool for any vegetable casserole he serves. But, of late, I’ve been as likely to duck into Wilson’s. The location, near the Hot Corner, the traditional epicenter of African American commerce in Athens, is part of the draw. So is the honest interior: walnut paneling on the steam table side, faded bamboo-patterned wallpaper in the dining room.

  Slide your brown plastic tray along the track that fronts the steam table, perusing the choices. On Tuesday, chicken and dressing is front and center. On Wednesday, salmon croquettes. Greens every day, either collards or turnips, depending upon what the Wilsons can get fresh. On the side there’s homemade chowchow, which, despite a namby-pamby appearance, packs a fiery wallop. For dessert there’s sweet potato pie, with an umber custard and a crisp crust.

  If you’re lucky, Angelish Wilson will be working the line. Introduce yourself and she’ll steer you toward what’s best. (Return the next day and she’ll remember your order, and should you choose a fried pork chop again, she’ll suggest a vegetable plate.) Ask about her family history and you’ll hear about her father M. C. Wilson. “Rich or poor or living under a bridge, he would treat everybody the same,” Angelish will tell you, sketching the philosophy that animates her café. “And that’s how we aim to act, too.”

  WEAVER D’S / 1016 BROAD STREET / 706-353-7797

  WILSON’S SOUL FOOD / 351 NORTH HULL STREET / 706-353-7289

  Atlanta

  CARVER’S COUNTRY KITCHEN

  Casseroles are maligned by righteous eaters, and I’ve done my share of bad-mouthing. In a magazine article I referred to cream of mushroom soup as the “ubiquitous duct tape of culinary creation.” I was being snide. I believed my palate was somehow superior. Those were the dark days, before I had the chance to eat at Carver’s Grocery, a white brick hutch with wire-caged windows, set on the eighteen-wheeler-thrummed western fringes of downtown.

  Sharon and Robert Carver are the proprietors. Robert ran it as a true grocery from 1975 until 1990, when Sharon quit her real estate job to cook. She began serving fried chicken, fried catfish, and hot dogs in the cement-floored store. She added meat loaf and chicken-and-dumplings. But Sharon, who favors shamrock-green aprons and swoops her gray hair up, found her métier in the cooking of casseroles, dishes that claim a lineage back to ancient admixtures like Moroccan tagines and French cassoulets.

  The word casserole entered the English language in 1708. But the American iteration did not come to the fore until 1934, when Campbell’s introduced a tinned concentrate of cream of mushroom soup. Tuna noodle casserole followed. And in that wake came Sharon Carver’s broccoli soufflé, inspired by a 1960s-era cookbook from the Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Junior Women’s Club.

  “It’s got mayonnaise, mushroom soup, cheddar, and eggs in it,” says Sharon of the wedges of green velvet she dishes from a hotbox at the back counter, alongside a trompe l’oeil window box framed by flower-print curtains. “My sweet potato casserole has eggs, sugar, evaporated milk, butter, pumpkin spice mix, and brandy flavoring. It came from the same book. People love our hash brown casserole, too. That came from a little spiral-bound book done by the wives of real estate agents in Donaldsonville, Georgia. I got rutabagas; no one does them anymore. Robert got that recipe from a fellow he met in the grocery store, an old A&P now run by a bunch of Koreans. I mash them up with salt and pepper and sugar and butter.”

  Ask Sharon the key to her success and she doesn’t flinch. “My secret ingredients are cream of mushroom soup, sugar, and salt,” she says. “You got to have that flavor. That’s what gets you hooked. That’s what gets everyone addicted to my food.”

  1118 WEST MARIETTA STREET / 404-794-4410

  SWEET AUBURN CURB MARKET

  The urban renewal programs of the 1960s were either (1) well-intentioned, misguided, and ultimately unsuccessful attempts to replace substandard housing with high-rise apartments outfitted with the latest comforts or (2) insidious and covert attempts to displace our nation’s poorer citizens, cordoning them off as an attempt to make the city safe for an increasingly frightened white citizenry while simultaneously setting the groundwork for real estate profiteering by city fathers and their cronies.

  Farmers’ markets are where country comes to town.

  Urban renewal and the construction of the interstate highway system almost killed what had come to be called the Municipal Market. When erected in 1924, the graceful brick building was at the epicenter of commercial life in the fast-growing city. The highbrow Atlanta Women’s Club raised funds for construction efforts. Night and day, the market teemed with poultry growers from up around Gainesville and sweet potato farmers from down around Jackson. But as Georgia’s economy evolved, and agriculture took a backseat to manufacturing and service industries, the market fell into a long decline. Auburn Avenue, the heart of the near
by black business district, never recovered from the loss of its long-time core of captive buyers engendered by Jim Crow. Urban renewal programs and interstate construction were the coup de grâce.

  By the late 1970s, Atlanta was debating whether to tear the building down. But cooler heads prevailed. Today, the market—rechristened the Sweet Auburn Curb Market—still struggles. (On a recent visit, I watched as a man dropped a water-melon in the parking lot and, when he realized what he had done, began eating sticky bits of fruit while challenging all comers to a seed-spitting contest.)

  That is not to say that the market is without merit. Indeed, the real story here is that Sweet Auburn has survived all these years. Of late, things are looking more hopeful. On a recent visit I spied, among the vendors of honeycomb tripe, hog’s headcheese, rank meat, and collard greens, the baked goods of Sonya Jones, proprietor of the Sweet Auburn Bread Company. Though Jones—a graduate of the prestigious Culinary Institute of America—has since moved from a stall in the market to a freestanding shop down the street, her sweet potato muffins, pies, and cheesecakes still evoke the market sensibility, the possibilities of urban Atlanta.

  SWEET AUBURN CURB MARKET / 209 EDGEWOOD AVENUE / 404-659-1665

  SWEET AUBURN BREAD COMPANY / 234 AUBURN AVENUE NE / 404-221-1157

  HAROLD’s BARBECUE

  Aleck’s Barbecue Heaven was Atlanta’s premiere black-owned barbecue spot. The white flip side of that same coin is surely Harold’s, a low-slung red cinder-block bunker of a joint which has been in business since 1947 and is located just down the road from the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. It goes without saying that the neighborhood is kind of sketchy. Like the Pen, Harold’s boasts bars on its windows.