Pass the Twinkies and fire up the grease
By By Robert St. John / food columnist
Feb. 11, 2004
Southerners will fry anything. We fry chicken, steak and a myriad of vegetables including green tomatoes. Potatoes were born to be fried. Okra is best when fried. At the Purple Parrot Cafe we fry grits, and at a few Chinese buffets they are frying biscuits.
In college, I worked in a bar that fried dill pickles. It was my first exposure to that particular Southern delicacy. Fried dill pickles were our best-selling food item. Of course, the brisk sales of our salty, fried pickles might have had something to do with the massive amounts of Budweiser being consumed on the premises, and it didn't hurt that the only other food items in the joint were pickled eggs, beef jerky and those nasty little neon-red sausage things.
We sold them nonetheless, and I ate them often. As it turns out, fried dill pickles became a major component of my college diet that year, along with late-night tater logs from the Minute Mart, and the entire freshman (and a portion of the sophomore) class' allocation of barley and hops one must cover all of the major food groups.
It seems deep-fried pickles weren't enough we had to take our gastronomic daring one step further and drop a Twinkie into the lard. Who came up with this idea? Was someone fidgeting in their La-Z-Boy one day and, on a crazed food whim, said, "You know, Judy Lynn, we've deep fried just about everything in this apartment except the ferret, the rottweiler and your Aunt Erma. Go in there, fire up the Fry Daddy and drop a few Twinkies in the grease. Let's party!"
I exhaustively researched this fried Twinkie craze (read: 30 minutes surfing the Internet while watching the Pro Bowl) and discovered that the fried Twinkie was invented in Brooklyn by a self-proclaimed "gourmet chef." His restaurant serves dozens of the fried, cream-filled sponge cakes every day. This restaurateur also fries Reese's peanut butter cups and Mars bars.
In Scotland they have been frying Mars bars for decades. Yes, but those kilt-wearing culinarians have also been eating haggis for centuries, so we already know of the Scot's legendary intestinal fortitude.
I am told that fried Twinkies and fried Oreos are currently making a big splash on the carnival/fair circuit. It seems that funnel cakes are being inched out by products with a decidedly longer shelf life. I have long said, when referring to festival food, "Not rain, nor sleet, nor malfunctioning Tilt-A-Whirl's operated by three-fingered carnival workers, will stop the masses in their quest for tacky country crafts and funnel cakes." Now, thanks to these recent menu additions to the midway maggot wagons, that statement must be amended to include the enigmatically odd fried Twinkie.
I have eaten fried Oreos. A few months ago, I was dining at my favorite catfish house, and upon completion of our meal, the waitress walked over with a basket of, what looked like, small beignets. She said, "They're fried Oreos, give 'em a try." We did. And that's about all I can say about that, other than it tastes like chicken.
I blame the corn dog for all of this deep-fried insanity. Over 60 years ago, at a Texas fair, a fellow named Fletcher decided to batter a weenie and drop it into a scalding vat of lard. It became an instant hit and eventually inspired a chain of shopping-mall kiosks dedicated to fried wieners and overly sweetened lemonade.
Since that time, others in search of entrepreneurial freedom have been trying to take the easy road to recipe development and dropped whatever they could get their hands on (short of the neighborhood rottweiler) into the grease.
Nowadays, we will shove a stick into any foodstuff Oreo, Mars bar, Twinkie and call it a meal. Junk food has reached a new low.
I, who will eat almost anything, am slightly nauseated by the thought of swallowing a deep-fried Twinkie. However, I will sacrifice my digestive tract for the sake of journalism, and make it a personal quest to attend the next fair or carnival that comes my way. I hereby vow to use that opportunity to eat a deep-fried Twinkie and bring the results back to you, faithful reader and fellow culinary trailblazer. Best case scenario: I get another column out of it. Worst case scenario: A night-long conversation calling Ralph on the porcelain white telephone.
Robert St. John is the executive chef/owner of the Purple Parrot Caf and Crescent City Grill in Hattiesburg and Meridian. He can be reached at robert@nsrg.com.
