It may seem odd that warm summer months have me thinking of hot skillets popping with grease and the platters of crispy morsels that emerged from them.
But in the Southern-fried kitchen in which I was reared, summer was the season for high frying. The skillets, sometimes several going at once, held the bounty of the warm months — fried green tomatoes, fried okra, fried yellow squash, a mess of fried fish (if we were lucky), fried chicken (if we were luckier) and even frog legs (memorable, but a rarity).
My dad would laugh and say that “anything that’ll hold flour” was a potential quarry for the frying game. And flour was the key to my mother’s pre-fry preparation, which was extremely simple and almost always the same: a good sprinkling of seasoned salt, then a dusting in a mix of flour, salt, and pepper, usually contained in a flat pan or aluminum pie tin. No crumbs or cornmeal, no beer or seltzer batters, no dips in buttermilk or egg. The simplicity of the dredge expressed her perfectly; it was pure and it was right.
Then into the depths of a skillet — cast iron, nonstick, or both — sometimes an electric model plugged into an outlet on the countertop. She mostly used oil, but in early days (and even after, for the best crunch), she sometimes used mounds of Crisco shortening that dwindled like melting icebergs.
The end result: Plates lined with grease-soaked paper towels, piled with golden-coated delicacies that we gathered around and munched in wordless appreciation.
The okra, my dad’s pride and joy that he insisted on planting every year, ended in crunchy little crusted wheels, a slightly charred taste, and seeds that popped exquisitely in your mouth. The tomatoes (my mom’s favorite), pinkish-green and slightly deflated from their turn in the hot skillet, took on a unique sweet-sour flavor, flaking with the clinging remains of a salty dredge.
It was the yellow summer squash, littlenecks bowed, that made me weak-kneed. To this day, just the thought of them makes my mouth water like no other food, fried or otherwise. Sliced into thin rounds to cook, their frying aroma wafted with the allure of movie-theater popcorn, and they ended up a delectable mix of melt-in-your-mouth buttery, nutty and salty. The squash exemplified what the word “golden” tasted like. I would eat until my little hand hit a paper towel.
That a turn in hot grease could transform a vegetable into something akin to a potato chip was an added bonus. The frying appeal was even almost good enough to disguise a range of mystery meats to a finicky young girl. But no amount of crunchy coating could enthuse me for much more than a bite of fried turtle (“tastes like chicken”).
The kitchen, on a high-fry day, was 20 degrees hotter than the rest of the un-air-conditioned house, the sink and counters were covered with sliced vegetables and fish or chicken in various stages of cleansing, cutting and flour dredging. At the stove, my mother’s hands caked white with her special coating, held a table fork (for almost everything except the okra) poised over hot snapping skillets, instinctively knowing the right moment to spear and turn, when to cover the pan of chicken, when to retrieve the squash before it got too brown.
The frying conditions were no picnic, the skillets had to be monitored and tended nonstop, so no escaping to a cooler spot. My mother was sweaty and vigilant in shorts and a loose sleeveless T-shirt. In order to communicate in the kitchen, made deafening from the noise of crackling skillets and roaring box fans, we had to yell to each other as if we were on a busy airfield.
My mom took on the frying challenge with hardy gusto, even honoring requests, such as my nephew asking for a Sunday dinner of fried fish, fried potatoes, fried green tomatoes and fried okra for him and his girlfriend on a 90-plus degree day.
I will be the first to say, my mom was made of far sturdier stuff than I. My own frying episodes are met with reluctant infrequency. If I’m going to fry, it will be for a special occasion (like fresh summer squash), and I’ll tend one single skillet and do my best to diffuse the lingering heavy greasy odors the day after with open windows and aromatherapy. But while it’s sometimes easier — and healthier — to shred zucchini, grill squash, and stew okra, I will occasionally relent and return to my roots and fry … “anything that’ll hold flour.”
And the process will remain the same: the seasoned salt, the pan of flour, the watching and waiting (and a little sweating) with a fork held aloft, ready to plunge into a shimmering hot pan of memories and crisping summer squash.
Rebecca Howard grew up in Kansas and has written for the Los Angeles Daily News, the Los Angeles Times and LA Parent Magazine, and currently writes the food blog, “A Woman Sconed.”
Flour-Fried Summer Squash Recipe