Shut Up Dawgs
I now know what I need to do to conduct a fish fry, having been taught all about it by Sam's brother Henry. I need courage.
Cause apparently what you do is, you take one hell of a lot of fish, and you make sure it's damp -- not wet - and you throw it in a big ol' paper sack with a lot of spiced cornmeal, and you go out under the house where you have erected some big ol' cauldron on a tripod, filled with boiling oil, and then you lower the breaded fish, in a metal basket, into the oil, and after a while you say, "That looks about right," and then you take it out.
Henry says if you do it a lot you get better at it.
There's the rub, isn't it? On account of, if you read through the directions above carefully, you will note the use of a great deal of boiling oil.
Not a major component of the low-fat high-fiber diet we try to adhere to most of the time more or less.
So I CAN'T practice a lot. That is Right Out.
After you fry up all the fish, by the way, you fry up your hush puppies.
To the great amusement and gratification of a bunch of us Southerners, some of our blog cohorts from the British Isles are confused on the subject of hush puppies, since they can't understand why, even if we ARE Americans, we're frying up shoe leather.
Americans. What will they think up next.
Oh, my Welsh friends, we are not frying up shoe leather, though, frankly, it might be better for us. What we're doing is taking the rest of the cornmeal we used to bread the fish -- or sometimes some whole other mixture we made specially for the purpose -- and dropping it into the boiling oil from spoons, and making little savory balls of fried dough which are, as I have mentioned earlier, pretty much the whole point of a fish fry for some of us. (Brannens, I see you. Put your hands down.)
The story is -- watch for corrections in the comment section, not just from other Brannens this time but from the entire batch of Southerners who chance upon the blog, I'm guessing -- that long ago, while the guys were frying up their haul, the dogs barked and barked and wouldn't shut up, so the guys cleverly fried up balls of dough and threw it to the dogs, saying "Hush, puppies!" as they did so. (Or, as one of Sam's city cousins used to say, having sort of missed the point, "Shut up, dawgs!")
Now, I never have seen hush puppies served with anything but fish, so it's not clear to me why the dogs are along on the fishing trip, since supposedly they're high-falutin' hunting dogs, as every dog story in the South concerns high-falutin' hunting dogs. Also. Anybody who's ever eaten hush puppies knows they'd be a fool to throw them to the dogs. Throw the dogs the fish, for god's sake, not the hush puppies.
But, as it happens, there are MANY, many I say, stories of how the hush puppies got their name out there -- ah the wonders of Google. My current favorite -- and one that I have never heard till just this morning when I googled -- and bear in mind here that I am a true child of the South, and even went to Robert E. Lee grade school, so SHOULD have heard this story -- is that during the Civil War, Confederate soldiers would be cooking their dinner rations and the dogs would start yapping, and so that the Yankees wouldn't know where they were, they'd throw their lovely fried croquettes to the dogs (instead of that nasty beef jerky, but MY do the Southerners LOVE their dogs), yelling -- no, no, sorry, whispering -- "hush puppies!"
I'm telling you, this is a new story. I hadn't heard it, Sam hadn't heard it -- Dad! You chime in here, too, cause I know you hadn't heard it, or you'd have made fun of it already. It did not happen. Lord love them, the Yankees are responsible for every damn thing that ever happened to us, aren't they? Including the fact that in fits of fear, we threw all our nice hush puppies to the dogs.
Oh, we did not. What are those dogs doing there anyway? The doggie camp followers, I suppose, cause nobody ever wasted a prime hunting dog draggin' it off to the war.
Also. How dumb are these supposed Yankees, if they haven't found the camp already on account of the smoke and the lovely smell of hush puppies? (Not THAT dumb, I gather from my history books.)
Sam and I have decided that "hush puppies" is some corruption of a French phrase, just as "hoppin' john" came from "pois a pigeon." We just don't know what French phrase we're talking about here. But we like that idea. New Orleans cooking, that's what we've got here. We don't want to hear no more about those damn dogs.
Cause apparently what you do is, you take one hell of a lot of fish, and you make sure it's damp -- not wet - and you throw it in a big ol' paper sack with a lot of spiced cornmeal, and you go out under the house where you have erected some big ol' cauldron on a tripod, filled with boiling oil, and then you lower the breaded fish, in a metal basket, into the oil, and after a while you say, "That looks about right," and then you take it out.
Henry says if you do it a lot you get better at it.
There's the rub, isn't it? On account of, if you read through the directions above carefully, you will note the use of a great deal of boiling oil.
Not a major component of the low-fat high-fiber diet we try to adhere to most of the time more or less.
So I CAN'T practice a lot. That is Right Out.
After you fry up all the fish, by the way, you fry up your hush puppies.
To the great amusement and gratification of a bunch of us Southerners, some of our blog cohorts from the British Isles are confused on the subject of hush puppies, since they can't understand why, even if we ARE Americans, we're frying up shoe leather.
Americans. What will they think up next.
Oh, my Welsh friends, we are not frying up shoe leather, though, frankly, it might be better for us. What we're doing is taking the rest of the cornmeal we used to bread the fish -- or sometimes some whole other mixture we made specially for the purpose -- and dropping it into the boiling oil from spoons, and making little savory balls of fried dough which are, as I have mentioned earlier, pretty much the whole point of a fish fry for some of us. (Brannens, I see you. Put your hands down.)
The story is -- watch for corrections in the comment section, not just from other Brannens this time but from the entire batch of Southerners who chance upon the blog, I'm guessing -- that long ago, while the guys were frying up their haul, the dogs barked and barked and wouldn't shut up, so the guys cleverly fried up balls of dough and threw it to the dogs, saying "Hush, puppies!" as they did so. (Or, as one of Sam's city cousins used to say, having sort of missed the point, "Shut up, dawgs!")
Now, I never have seen hush puppies served with anything but fish, so it's not clear to me why the dogs are along on the fishing trip, since supposedly they're high-falutin' hunting dogs, as every dog story in the South concerns high-falutin' hunting dogs. Also. Anybody who's ever eaten hush puppies knows they'd be a fool to throw them to the dogs. Throw the dogs the fish, for god's sake, not the hush puppies.
But, as it happens, there are MANY, many I say, stories of how the hush puppies got their name out there -- ah the wonders of Google. My current favorite -- and one that I have never heard till just this morning when I googled -- and bear in mind here that I am a true child of the South, and even went to Robert E. Lee grade school, so SHOULD have heard this story -- is that during the Civil War, Confederate soldiers would be cooking their dinner rations and the dogs would start yapping, and so that the Yankees wouldn't know where they were, they'd throw their lovely fried croquettes to the dogs (instead of that nasty beef jerky, but MY do the Southerners LOVE their dogs), yelling -- no, no, sorry, whispering -- "hush puppies!"
I'm telling you, this is a new story. I hadn't heard it, Sam hadn't heard it -- Dad! You chime in here, too, cause I know you hadn't heard it, or you'd have made fun of it already. It did not happen. Lord love them, the Yankees are responsible for every damn thing that ever happened to us, aren't they? Including the fact that in fits of fear, we threw all our nice hush puppies to the dogs.
Oh, we did not. What are those dogs doing there anyway? The doggie camp followers, I suppose, cause nobody ever wasted a prime hunting dog draggin' it off to the war.
Also. How dumb are these supposed Yankees, if they haven't found the camp already on account of the smoke and the lovely smell of hush puppies? (Not THAT dumb, I gather from my history books.)
Sam and I have decided that "hush puppies" is some corruption of a French phrase, just as "hoppin' john" came from "pois a pigeon." We just don't know what French phrase we're talking about here. But we like that idea. New Orleans cooking, that's what we've got here. We don't want to hear no more about those damn dogs.
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