There’s a reason I don’t deep fry, and it’s not the calories. Ok, more than one reason, and you can include the calories. The heat, the mess – before, during, and after – and then what to do with the leftover oil. I’m sure my San Antonio grandmother, Minnie Lee, would sit up in her grave and berate me at the thought of life without fried chicken or fried okra or fried catfish, or that hallmark of southernness, fried hush puppies. She was a Louisiana girl, and I can still hear her soft, lilting voice as she talked to those little balls of cornmeal in the skillet, saying “Hush! Puppies,” as they spit and sputtered in the hot bacon grease. Mostly, though, I remember her perspiring in the heat and wiping her brow with a tissue she kept in a pocket of her apron. The heat would have been particularly intense because there was no air conditioning in her kitchen, only a big ceiling fan that pushed the air around.
