"southern food" news and stories

I need a salad like you wouldn't believe. Or some nice sliced fruit. And perhaps a lengthy Master Cleanse regimen. Such are the repercussions of spending 10 days in New Orleans, a city that's apparently never met a vegetable it didn't deep-fry or flavor with fatty swine.

While the Big Easy is slowly, steadily recovering, there's one sector that's stronger than before the storm: the restaurant industry, with more than 1,000 eateries open today -- the most at any time in the city's history. So with an iron stomach and a fistful of Tums, I dove into New Orleans' eats and drinks. In no particular order, here are my 10 favorite watering holes and restaurants.

1. Ms. Mae's

Years after the nation's last Kenny Rogers' Roasters served its final bird, country music stars are again making a play for their fans' food dollars.

Perhaps because so many of them hail from the South, where good cooking is considered sacred, country celebs have long been inordinately fond of the eponymous restaurant ventures. Once as critical to an Opry member's cred as a Nudie suit, signature restaurants have lately been on the wane, with once-proud institutions such as Twitty Burger and Minnie Pearl Fried Chicken going the way of the cassette tape. But a series of openings set for this fall suggests country musicians may still harbor culinary ambitions.

White-hatted crooner Alan Jackson doesn't have an endeavor of his own, but showed up this week at a Nashville area Cracker Barrel to introduce a new line of spices, clothing and home goods, including an Alan Jackson rocking chair. According to Jackson's spokeswoman Nicole Dona, the singer likes to take his daughters to the homestyle chain.

"The family will still stop now and then when they are on their way back from the lake," she writes in a e-mail to Slashfood. "He loves the breakfast and also the meatloaf sandwich."

Few of us want to make a complicated lasagna for solo dining -- by day six, you'll never want to see lasagna again! In this series, AOL Food staffer Sarah LeTrent taste-tests simple recipes suitable for a "table for one."

Oh, beloved pimento cheese; the Southeast's answer to cheese dip and queso.

The bright-orange spread is nothing more than extra-sharp cheddar, mayonnaise, diced pimiento peppers and cracked black pepper. Homemade pimento cheese is a snap to make and leftovers are a cracker's best friend. You could spruce up the spread with serrano peppers, garlic, cayenne, different types of cheese or even bacon. But to most, nothing is better than the classic four-ingredient mix between two pieces of bread.

A Tennessee pawpaw tree. Photo: Flickr / abirdv

Proponents of what could be the next big thing in Southern fruit say equating mainstays of the American lunchbox with their product is like comparing apples to pawpaws.

Unlike apple trees, pawpaw trees can be easily grown without chemical spraying and produce an enormously flavorful fruit. "It's a fantastic fruit," raves Ron Powell, executive director of the Ohio Pawpaw Growers Association, who says the pawpaw beats the apple in every nutritional category but fiber.

The pawpaw -- whose distinctively custardy insides have earned it the nicknames "West Virginia banana," "Kentucky banana" and "Missouri banana" – is an indigenous plant, most likely spread throughout the continent by Native Americans. Its tropical flavor makes the fruit a good fit for jams, breads, pies and wine.

"The beverage industry is interested," says Powell, who successfully lobbied the state of Ohio to honor the pawpaw as its official native fruit. He adds, "It has great potential for ice cream."

But unlike apples, pawpaws remain relatively unknown.

Is this Arkansan cuisine? Photo: Flickr / patrickwoodward

Arkansas has produced the world's largest spinach can, superior pink tomatoes and lauded bottled water, but its cooks have generated far less press than their counterparts in neighboring Southern states.

New Orleans' Southern Food and Beverage Museum is aiming to elevate the status of Arkansan eats with an upcoming exhibit devoted to the state's culinary traditions. As collections manager Chris Smith has discovered, however, Arkansas residents' edible habits aren't easily summarized.

"Arkansas is one of those states where the Northwest is different than the Southeast, and the Northeast is different than the Southwest," Smith says. "I don't think it has as much fried food as Louisiana, and I don't think it's as Mexican as Texas."

Smith is working to define Arkansas cuisine by relying largely on a massive collection of books submitted by sympathetic cooks after Hurricane Katrina destroyed a chunk of the museum's holdings.