If there's anything to be learned from Britney Spears' recent wedding, it's that sometimes you have to embrace the more, shall we say, laid-back side of life.
However, for the sake of her career and tabloid coverage, the Louisiana newlywed should have stuck to expressing herself in culinary exploits, instead of overexploiting a pair of ripped jean shorts.
The greasier side of Southern cooking is, if not sophisticated, at least delicious enough to merit attention on any food page. After all, even with all those millions, the Spears-Federline wedding featured not sushi, not caviar, but fried chicken and ribs. Because, really, you can wear all the Versace you want, but when you come home, you really just feel like rolling up your sleeves and diving into a plate of grease.
As a chef, greasy spoon cuisine is not an easy genre to master, especially in today's health-conscious society. It's hard to cook with such dietary abandon as to really make it taste good. Licking your fingers requires enough grease to easily run down your hand.
Keeping this in mind, there is much more to Southern cooking than simply slapping a few slices of bacons on a pan until they shrivel up into little dripping brown rectangles.
Greasy cooking does require a sense of fat finesse. You've got to know how to propperly assemble the perfect number of fatty foods. While the majority of your plate will be heavy, the trick of grease cooking is balance. A greasy meat should be paired with an absorbent biscuit, and cut by a sharp beverage. Hominy grits, a natural grain, would round out those lovely fatty strips of bacon perfectly.
If you're really feeling brave, you can go for Gumbo (true to Spearsian roots), but this simple sausage, gravy and biscuits combo is a perfect merger of meat, salt and cheese -- staples of the Southern diet. Best of all, it's simple and satisfying. However, adding a few tablespoons of dill to these cheddar cheese biscuits can dress them up for a fancier occasion.
Ah yes, but we forget the fried chicken and ribs. For the college student, it's best to leave the ribs to Andy Nelson and fried chicken to the Colonel.
It's just hard to imagine a deep fryer lying around a college kitchen. This recipe can be whipped up relatively quickly, and more importantly, it is seductive comfort food at its very best.
For a "vegetable,' don't radically depart from the essence of the meal. Not dramatically changing the texture of the plate will only add to the overall experience of the dish.
For example, think more carrots with a bit of mint, rather than salad greens with balsamic vinegar. A dark beer would go quite nicely for a truly masculine dinner, but for breakfast, regular black coffee pairs nicely enough.
So, roll up your overalls, clean the dirt from under your fingernails and enjoy some old-time country cooking.
