TRUE GRIT

The best bowl of grits I ever had was served to me by a man of Greek descent in a Manhattan diner. He assumed I was a New Yorker because "real southerners never ordered grits." So he said. I would have laughed, but I was too busy spooning the buttery porridge into my piehole. The Greek cooked them perfectly, which is to say they weren't runny or thick, but somewhere in between flowing and standing, which is to say rib-sticking. Double pats of butter dissolved upon the white corn peak and suddenly the bagel and lox was a distant second fucking fiddle. We ordered another and had to restrain from ordering a third. Can't recall the name of the diner.

People really fuck grits up. Hardly anyone can get it right. Maybe the Greek had experience with polenta. It would make sense. They are actually just about the same. Kissing cousins so to speak. The trick, I've found, is to use a shallow pan and not a pot. Water at a rolling boil and then less grits than water sifted in a steady stream and stirred with passion via wire wisk. Turn the heat down. It will thicken. Butter. Wisk. Some milk or cream - not too much. Wisk. The grits soon come together. You were thinking about adding more, but that would've fucked them up. Lawry's. Black pepper. Maybe some more butter. If you're adding cheese, now is the time. To a warm oven for a few minutes. Broiling for texture works here, too. Brown the cheese blanket over top and it's done. No big deal, right?

Everyone's like, Hey, do you use these stone-ground blah blah organic blah blah green farmed blah blah grits? And I'm like, Oh, yeah. You mean the ones that cost $10 a bag and take 45 minutes to cook? Hell no. I do not use those grits. So everyone's like, I just can't cook these Aunt Jemimiah blah blah grits and what about adding cinnammon and brown sugar blah blah? And I'm like, hell no. Aunt Jemimah - Quick Grits - right? What's the problem? My cat can cook them. If we're obsessing over brands here, I'm putting full support behind Lake Side Mills Yellow Grits. They will put you back $2 and change and they are the only thing good to come out of North Carolina since Pasquotank shine.

Cheffy folk are putting grits on big white plates in minute portions and surrounding them with little precious sprigs of herbs and foams and shit like that. Maybe a quail leg and breast. Hey, NEW-VOE SOUTHERN... It's maddening. What's worse is going to a restaurant and ordering shrimp and grits and getting a bowl of cheese grits with six barbecued shrimp fanned around the bowl. The gilded lily is the "dusting" of cayenne on the rim. No support for this. Fuck the cheffies. Make your own shrimp and grits and you'll quickly learn to shun the tall toque fetishism ruining American dinners all over the U.S.