Florence Cornish - Made in the USA: classic and contemporary American recipes from coast to coast

Food is our common ground, a universal experience

James Beard

For my family.
And for all the hungry women.

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Its 30 degrees, around 8pm on a Friday night, and Im on the hunt for fried chicken. Not just any fried chicken. Im in Memphis, Tennessee, so naturally, Im after Guss World Famous Fried Chicken. In my guide book, a lone dollar sign signalling cheap eats and a review proclaiming something along the lines of If you dont go here to eat, you may as well have not even come to Tennessee because this chicken will change your life means that there is no way Im leaving on the Greyhound tomorrow without eating some. So, after creepily trotting behind two women who mentioned chicken and die happy, I find it. Chequered table cloths, plastic plates, cookies wrapped in clingfilm at the cash register being sold for a dollar Toto, Im not in Kansas or Crystal Palace anymore Im in nirvana. Im in the deepest of the Deep South and I never want to leave.

I have been in love with all things American for as long as I can remember. There is not a moment in my life when I was not watching American TV, eating American food, travelling the States, listening to American bands it shaped me more than just during my formative years. Im still as obsessed with the entire culture, history, politics, cuisine and language of this nation. When I was three, my family and I moved to Sarasota, Florida. From Singapore, to Thailand, to Indonesia and Belgium, we bounced around a lot, so the small town of Sarasota, Florida, was another stop on our itinerant youth. Sarasota is the home of the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, which churns out the towns second biggest export, after Tropicana Orange Juice. It was the juice that brought us here, as my dad worked for the company. My mum likes to remind us how on hot, dry days you couldnt go anywhere without being smothered by the marmalade-y, burnt orange cloud hovering over the sleepy town. Both nauseating and nostalgic kind of like thinking about an ex-boyfriend or remembering teen haircuts. When we hopped off the plane in the steamy, stormy, Sunshine State, that was it. I had found a place where Barney the Dinosaur played on repeat (teaching me everything I know today), where the Magic Kingdom was only an hour away and where slices of pie were the size of a young child. The sun bleached my light-brown hair and our sponge-like brains and chameleon accents became full-on U.S. of A. Mummy was now Momma, trainers now sneakers and me, Miss America a title given me by my dentist, which Ive decided to have etched on my gravestone.

America became home and the food became my go-to cuisine. Everything we ate had a story, a reason for existing that went so much deeper than the need to eat. Patelis Pizza, our favourite local haunt, was started by an Indian family who, after realising a gap in the market, stuck an i on the end of their name and proceeded to make some of the best pizza around. If thats not the American Dream, I dont know what is. It was the same with the Amish cafeteria my mum loved to go to, for their ENORMOUS pies. I think the rule is, if the whipped cream isnt at least triple the height of the pie, youre not doing it right. Clouds of white, pillowy cream, sweet, salted, roasted peanuts and the shortest pastry no wonder by the time we zipped back to Europe my cheeks were more hamster-like than ever.

And this is what I was so drawn in by and what I love so much about American food.

Every single dish has a story behind it, a reason for being that runs deeper than any other cuisine I can think of.

One of the greatest things about American food is the roots that ground it in the past and connect it to the present. I am an out-and-proud, full-blown history nerd studying it through school and university, and now I genuinely dread the idea of a probably paying $5 for something named after the New Orleans dock workers people who used to ask for scraps at the back doors of restaurant kitchens after a shift, too broke to go inside and order something. If youre making a lobster roll, you are cooking the exact ingredient that was so plentiful in the early days of the Maine settlement, that it was used as bait to catch cod I almost cried with despair when I discovered this. Imagine all those lobsters. For COD?!

This food is not just traditional, or old-fashioned, or typical. It is a living connection to the past. More so than art, or music, or architecture everybody eats.

Like James Beard said Food is our common ground, a universal experience. He also said that Too few people understand a really good sandwich, so, clearly, he was a genius. There is nothing else that someone from the tiniest village in Thailand to a businessman in Austin, Texas, has in common more so than food. Everybody enjoys food in one way or another, and it is this that, I think, showcases what peoples lives were really like, and are really like. You can tell a lot about someone from the company they keep. You can tell even more from what they eat for lunch with that company.

So who am I, right? Like, who is this chick? Im not American, Ive got no family there and, apart from always being on the look-out for a guy with a green card, Im not about to move there right this second. Although if anyone knows of a job opening

Well, all I can say is that if the US wants to get rid of me, they better call security because Im going to be like the crazy ex-girlfriend at the wedding. Sticking. A - Round. I lived in the States as a kid and went back to work at Walt Disney World in Florida when I was twenty. I have travelled more parts of the US than I can honestly remember and have spent an embarrassingly large amount of time reading about, listening commute longer than two minutes without my Stuff You Missed in History Class podcast. Almost every single American dish, right down to the exact variety of potato used or grape harvested, isnt just there by chance. If youre eating a po boy sandwich, youre to and generally studying up on all things American. So I like to think Im quite clued up. Lets say I wouldnt be able to take on a tenured teaching post in US history, but I would pick it as my special subject for Mastermind. Somewhere in between.

I am so truly an Americophile that there is nothing to me that would be dreamier than packing up, moving to a cabin somewhere deep in the Smoky Mountains, cooking, reading and writing about the US for the rest of my days.