![]() Everyone wanted to know: What is this stuff called grits? How is it made? Who eats it? Why all the fuss? ![]() Interest, therefore, focused sharply on grits. Fried chicken was no longer primarily Southern, thanks to Colonel Sanders and his thousands of Kentucky Fried Chicken stands over the country. With the succession of Jimmy Carter of Georgia to the Presidency there was a sudden burst of interest in the North and East in Southern cooking. It is sometimes on the brunch menu of the Caribb ean Room of the Hotel Pontchartrain on St. One of the most pleasant grits offerings is to be found in the New Orleans area under the name of ''Grits 'n Grillades'' it consists of thin strips of beef, cooked in oil in a skillet and seasoned with a variety of herbs and condiments known to the Gulf Coast country, served on a bed of grits that has been boiled to a thickness capable of supporting the meat. The Southerner's devotion to grits is really meant for grits-and-gravy, grits-and-ham, grits-and-sausage, grits-and-eggs, grits-with-meat-and-cheese and so on ad infinitum. But add butter and salt or any one of the many tasty items found particularly in the South and you're on your way to a pleasant experience. Basically it is an insipid mass, much like mashed potatoes. Not even the most ardent lover of grits would think of eating it alone. Today, of the 150 million pounds of grits milled annually in the United States, more than two-thirds is consumed in the states that once constituted the Confederacy. John Smith to Jimmy Carter have had grits as a principal part of their meals at breakfast, midday dinner or supper. Generation upon generation of Southerners, from Capt. The experiment was a success, and grits became a gastronomic mainstay of the South and symbol of Southern culinary pride. They anglicized the name to ''hominy'' and set about devising a milling process by which the large corn grains could be ground into smaller particles without losing any nutriments. The settlers liked it so much they adopted it as a part of their own diet. The welcomers called it ''rockahominie.'' On a day in the spring of 1607 when sea-weary members of the London Company came ashore at Jamestown, Va., they were greeted by a band of friendly Indians offering bowls of a steaming hot substance consisting of softened maize seasoned with salt and some kind of animal fat, probably bear grease. (The word grits has a grammar of its own and can be used with a singular or plural verb at the option of the speaker.) This is the South, and grits, regarded as a universal staple, is served whether you order it or not, especially at breakfast. Wherever it is, these travelers will find, right there beside their ham and eggs or eggs benedict, a heap of some presumably edible material that they have not ordered, and may not even be able to identify. It may be at a roadside diner in Georgia or at an elegant brunch at a sophisticated New Orleans hotel. ![]() N ortherners escaping South to warmer climes will, sooner or later, find themselves faced with a phenomenon known and loved by their Southern cousins but all but absent north of the Mason-Dixon line. TURNER CATLEDGE, former executive editor and vice president of The New York Times, lives in New Orleans. ![]()
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