Southern fried chicken, red beans and rice with corn bread and honey butter

I have decided to head to the southern states of America for my first dish. There is a restaurant in New Farm not too far from where I live called Blue Smoke BBQ. It is a Southern American restaurant that specialises in ribs which are smoked on the premises. The food is great, and perhaps one of the more unexpected highlights is their corn bread with honey butter and this is where I have started. There are quite a few versions of corn bread including corn pone, an old recipe that has even been referred to by Mark Twain, johnny cakes and hush puppies - a deep fried version. Each has their own story and place in American history.

Now if you are wondering how corn bread fits into my original challenge of polenta, I will explain. Polenta is Italian and refers to corn meal. A main in ingredient in corn bread is cornmeal, although a finer version of the one used in Italian cooking. Corn bread however is generally a side dish so I needed go decide what to serve it with. I trawled through Southern American food such as Creole and Cajun dishes including Jambalaya and Gumbo, to soul food staples such as black eyed peas and collard greens. Due to limitations in obtaining ingredients at short notice and a limited budget, I chose two simple classics.

The first dish I chose is one we are are perhaps most exposed to every day, Southern Fried Chicken. This dish first emerged in the southern United States when African slaves were brought to the south to work on the plantations. The Africans seasoned the chicken with spices they brought from home and as it was expensive to rear other animals, chickens, which were relatively inexpensive to rear, became a staple meat.

The second dish I chose was red beans and rice, a Louisiana Creole classic. Creole food blends French, Spanish, Canarian, Caribbean, Mediterranean, Deep Southern American, Indian, and African influences and comes from the greater New Orleans area.

So that was my meal, not on the top of the healthy list but a nice slice of southern American cuisine, kept very simple. The dish did not present like a work of art, but was very flavoursome. The corn bread was delicious served warm with a light spread of honey butter. The red beans and rice were cooked with a ham hock so the rice had taken on the smokey ham flavour. The fried chicken worked out well and was soaked in buttermilk for a few hours, and then rolled in lightly spiced flour.

My next trip to this cuisine though will definitely focus on some more complex dishes using seafood, as well as some "peasant" dishes using cheap cuts of pork.