My favorite subject, food. The best food is southern, so pull up a chair, get a pencil and paper, we're cooking. Now I know your mouth is watering, but there is more to fried green tomato's than the recipe. First do you have buttermilk? If you don't, you need some, and get a quart, because you will want to put it in every thing we are cooking.
While we are cooking, I'm going to show you where I live. Put you in the mood, for what we are cooking, and you ask? What are you cooking?
Fried Chicken
Okra
Fried Green Tomato's
Rice & Grave
Cornbread
Now every good cook in the south has at least one Iron Skillet , we have several. The one you must have is for cornbread. A seasoned iron skillet is one that has been oiled real good and baked in the oven empty, and never soaked it water after that. Just take a paper towel, and wipe it out after use. I can not stress how important that is.
Mills in the South, Stone Ground flower and corn meal.
Now, we have our buttermilk, corn meal, and flower. Let's get started, first slice your green tomato's into slices, then crack an egg into a bowl, with your buttermilk mix well, just enough to cover the tomato's and set in the refrigerator for now.
Today, we don't much cut up a whole fryer. It comes frozen in bags of thighs, legs, and breast. We also get our biscuits frozen, but that is another story. Ever how you get your chicken, Place it into a bowl salt and pepper, and soak in buttermilk in the refrigerator. Told you to get a quart, and save back a glass for desert, a bed time treat.
At my house the bends in the refrigerator, are full of red tomato's, and okra. The counters, and windows too. We don't just use Masson Jars just for drinking sweet tea, or cider. We're canning, tomato's, and snapping greenbeans, boiling jars, and we have familey in and out.
I love South Carolina, we have every thing here. In the low country, the rice, and tea plantation were the main crops. Little is known today about it, but South Carolina was where royalty, and the wealthy, got indigo. The deep reddish blue flower they made purple dye from. But let's get back to the rice, we're cooking.
You need a covered baking dish, cornning ware is what we use. A cup of rice, a cup of water, and in the oven at 350 degrees. While you are at the oven, take your iron skill,et, put a generous tablespoone of margarine or butter in and put into oven until hot. This will be for the cornbread, so lets get to making cornbread.
Get a bowl, Do Not Measure, this is where I use to mess up all the time. It is about a cup of each flour, and corn meal. A little more corn meal, than flour. Now, add 1 egg, a little milk, and mix until it is like a cake batter. This is the imporant part, take the melted butter in your iron skillet, and pour into the batter hot. Mix well, and pour the mix back into the skillet. Put this into the oven with the rice, should be ready in about 20 to 30 mins.
We're Cooking Now
All this is making me hungery, I need some more tea. Now you have to have Duke's mayo for this but with all these mader's in the kitchen time for a 1/2" slice of tomato, for a mader sandwich.
Sorry back to supper.
Since zip-lock bags were invented, no more big mess with the flour, and corn meal in the kitchen. put some of both in a bag with salt and pepper. Now for the okra; don't let it grow over 3". They are to tough, when they are big. Slice them about 1/4", put into bag shake, and into hot frying pan of oil. Do not flip over until brown on one side. OK. Repeat with green tomato's. Get the tomato's out of the refrigerator. Put into bag shake, and into frying pan. You can use the same one as the okra, but wait till the okra is finished first. The best part, the chicken.
"Southern Fried Chicken"
Take the chicken soaking in the buttermilk out of the fridg. Get another zip lock bag this time just flour, salt, and pepper. Shake real good, and here is the real trick. A large frying pan that cooks even. Large seasoned iron skillet, or even electric fryer, will do. Hot oil, do not even start till it oil is hot. You can check to see if it is hot by dropping a little of the drippings in it. No one likes soggy fried chicken, that's what you get when the oil is not hot. Do not turn over untill done on one side.
Check the oven the rice and corn bread is ready. Flip the corn bread out upside down on plate, and get out of the way before you are trampled over. Tell every one to go wash thier hands, and set the table. You have to make the gravy. Every one is scared of gravy, it is easy. Leave the crunchy parts of the chicken in the pan, but pour off most, but not all the oil. Leave about a table spoon. From the zip lock bag you floured your chicken with, put a couple spoon fulls into your frying pan and stir. Add a little more flour while stirring add a glass of milk slowly. After the milk goes in you can not add any more flour, but you can add Kitchen Bouquet for color.
Ask the Lord to bless this food,
and dig in.
Hope you enjoy
Yall come back to
Charles Kenneth's Corner
P.S. With that left over buttermilk. Get a glass, crumble up cornbread, and chopped up onion into it. Pour buttermilk, get a spoon, and eat this before bed time.
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