Best Kept Secrets of the South's Best Cooks

When I first pick up a cookbook on Southern foods, I immediately look in the index for Grits. The first entry under grits in this book is called Hot Brown with Fried Cheese Grits. Now you're not only talking grits, but fried as well. How can you get more Southern than that? And the more I looked at this recipe the sooner I had to try it. It was wonderful. The recipe called for it to be used as a bread replacement in an open faced turkey sandwich. Unfortunately the fried cheese grits by themselves were all eaten before the turkey could get put on them. Oh well, I'll just do another batch. I'm actually from the Atchafalaya (Pronounced chaf-a-lie - I know, I know, but that's the truth.) Basin, so Crawfish Etouffee was a big thing when I was a kid. Now most crawfish are being imported from China rather than the Atchafalaya swamps. They of course aren't as good, how could they possibly be, but they'll do. Just remember to do as the book says and don't boil them too much. The editors comment that there seems to be no regional or even generally agreed upon recipe for fried oysters. So the editors whipped up a bunch of different ones and say that the one in the book is the best they found. It certainly has some different stuff in it. I haven't tried it yet, tomorrow night. The thing I'd add is use small size oysters rather than the giant ones you can get now a days. They get crisp rather than having the soft insides like the larger ones. That's enough writing. I tried a few other recipes, most worked out very, very well. (One we didn't like, but I think that one was my fault, I changed a couple of things.) This is a good Southern cookbook, possibly even the best.