On Cooking Southern: Corny SFA Symposium Pits Biscuits Against Cornbread

Oxford’s homegrown Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA) has a well-deserved reputation for turning over rocks and shedding the proverbial light on previously unsaid, unacknowledged, yet fundamental truths about culture.

Last weekend, the funkiest academic organization this side of Oz stayed true to its mission to document, study and explore the diverse food cultures of a changing American South. Almost 400 people from as far away as Washington state and Maine convened October 13-16 for the SFA’s 19th Fall Symposium to deconstruct, dine on and derive visual enjoyment of corn as “symbol, sustenance and problem.”

Attendees ranged from metropolitan chefs, food suppliers and farmers, to industrialists, academics, writers, filmmakers, museum administrators and good ol’ foodies.

Food most definitely was the focus, but it was featured and tasted and discussed via multi-disciplinary platforms such as film and oral history, always important tools for SFA scholarship. Poetry, storytelling and art continued to be part of the mix as well.

Oxford American editor Rebecca Gayle Howell’s poems about a farmer’s relationship with his favorite pig almost turned the crowd’s bacon addicts into vegetarians. A commissioned art installation at the Powerhouse by Shea Hembry, Arkansas conceptual artist, created a surreal space in which attendees dined.

The symposium also continued its music and theater tradition during the closing sessions on Sunday morning by debuting “In These Fields,” a folk opera, written by Kentucky novelist Sam Gleaves and bluegrass musician Silas House, performed with the Kentucky Players. SFA literature summarized the opera as a presentation about “entwined histories of four generations of Southerners, mixing Cherokee, Scots-Irish, and African American bloodlines and influences.”

During the four-day symposium, attendees and presenters explored the prehistory of corn in the Americas and its travels around the world and back, along with its ongoing contribution to both sustenance solutions and health problems. Cornbread with or without sugar was discussed in the context of racial and economic divides.

The nixtamalization of corn was a new favorite technical term, and corn’s role in comingling of Hispanic and Caucasian food cultures was a recurring theme. Coca-Cola and corn syrup and the industrialization of corn received thoughtful scrutiny as well; attendees got to taste Mexican Coke (made with cane sugar) and American Coke (made with corn syrup) to judge whether there really is a difference. NOTE: There is.

And throughout the weekend, attendees snacked on all foods made with some type of corn or corn-derived product.

Registration kicked off with homemade corndogs from restaurant Iris’ chef Camron Razavi and founder Kelly English, who also provided the Sunday take-out culinary conclusion of fried chicken crusted in cornmeal.

The list of crowd-favorite dishes is long: Roasted corn pizza. Blue corn nachos topped with black-eyed peas and green tomato pico de gallo. Frozen mint juleps crafted with corn-fueled bourbon. Delacata empanadas and mortadella sandwiches. Andouille breakfast pot pies containing kernels of fresh corn and encased in a flakey cornmeal pastry. Sweet corn ice cream sandwiches with cornmeal cookies. One particularly heart-warming example was a fish muddle composed of Jimmy red grits topped with layers of pepper gravy, corn and pepper relish, charred corn, crispy trout skin and smoked trout meat.

The first sit-down meal featured a classic Brunswick Stew tarted up with edamame. The pan-South, comfort-food meal included classic condiments such as cornbread tea biscuit sandwiches containing country ham and pimiento cheese, chow-chow, relish, watermelon pickle, curried apple chutney, sweet potato spoonbread with sorghum, and hoecakes. One of the desserts was a corn pudding custard pie, which, like the stew, was designed to encourage discussion among participants about regional recipe variations — such as Georgia versus Carolinas versus Virginia versus Alabama.

Perhaps the most thought-provoking meal ever served to such a hip crowd was the Saturday luncheon at the Powerhouse prepared by Oglala Lakota chef Sean Sherman. His soon-to-open Minneapolis restaurant, The Sioux Chef, will feature nature-to-table indigenous Native American cuisine with a modern twist. The SFA luncheon reflected that emphasis, with cedar tea and five dishes that included not one iota of salt, pepper, cane sugar, honey, flour, dairy, or anything else brought to the New World by Europeans.

Sherman’s luncheon title says it all: “Midday meal absent colonial thought.” SFA director John T. Edge encouraged attendees to go home and study the menu.

One of the many highlights of this year’s symposium was the Saturday night biscuits-versus cornbread debate between writer Jennifer Cole of Birmingham (biscuits) and author-top chef Kevin Gillespie (cornbread) of Georgia, moderated by Kat Kinsman. Two days later, attendees were still debating which bread won.

Another highlight was the annual display of symposium registrants’ books at Off Square Books. Many of the “almost 400” are published authors. Where else but in Oxford during the Southern Foodways Symposium might a person be able to purchase the following and dozens more food and culture related titles, all signed:

• Southern Provisions. The Creation and Revival of a Cuisine by Dr. David Shields
• The Wettest County in the World by Matt Bondurant
• The American Way of Eating. Undercover at Walmart, Applebee’s Farm Fields and the Dinner Table by Tracie McMillan
• Citizen Coke. The Making of Coca –Cola Capitalism by Bartow J. Elmore
• Lesser Beasts: A Snout-to-Tail History of the Humble Pig by Mark Essig
• A Mess of Greens: Southern Gender and Southern Food by Dr. Elizabeth Engelhardt
• Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History by Rachel Lauden
• The Basque Book by Alex Raij
• The Big Jones Cookbook. Recipes for Savoring the Heritage of Regional Southern Cooking by Chicago chef Paul Fehrbach

For more information about the symposium topics and annual winners of the SFA Craig Claiborne Lifetime Achievement Award, the Ruth Fertel Keeper of the Flame Award, and the John Egerton Prize, go to SFA’s website.