THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 13, 1995 TAG: 9501130517
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GUY FRIDDELL
LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines
It wasn't my intention to return soon, if ever, to chitterlings.
But a local reader, retired dentist B.T. Garnette, has a bone - or chitterling - to pick with me.
In a mid-December column, I noted that as Virginia becomes more urbanized, the number of chitterling-eaters diminishes.
It is at low ebb now.
Garnette phoned to say that customers will fill any place that prepares chitterlings properly.
I had attended in December a chitterling breakfast at Richmond's Commonwealth Club, which is renowned for that delicacy. I didn't touch it. Never have. Too chicken.
Garnette knows chitterlings. His mother, for years a cook at Norview Elementary School, was such a chef that, around Christmas, people bought chitterlings for her to cook. He delivered them.
Chitterlings, he said, are a big event for many people, and among fine places to sample them is the Carolina Restaurant in Norfolk at Church Street and Johnson Avenue.
Chef Bill Davis told me Thursday that his customers devour 20 to 30 pounds daily. On the side, he serves collards, corn bread, candied yams, homemade potato salad - on all of which I dote. Why, I'd buy chitterlings just to get those on the side.
Few people today have the time or patience to give hog intestines a turning inside out, a thorough cleaning and protracted boiling. I don't know any dish that gets as much attention as do chitterlings, thank goodness.
When they're done, Chef Davis adds salt, vinegar and hot sauce.
Nowadays, chitterlings are sold frozen in 10-gallon plastic vats that include the hog's maw. Davis cooks only the pure chitterlings, which is cheering.
When he was young, he said, people dropped by slaughterhouses, ``and they'd give you all the chitterlings you wanted along with the maw. After they found we liked them - and I emphasize the `we' - they started charging for them.''
A slaughterhouse worker told Davis how chitterlings got their name. In slavery days, the chitterlings were the only part the slaves received.
One of them noticed that their portion of the pig looked all crinkly, like the ruffles down the master's shirt front. The ruffles, Davis said, were called chitterlings.
(To confirm the story he'd heard long ago, Davis checked with a friend at Norfolk Packing. Whichever came first, I was overjoyed to hear the derivation.)
Garnette said that when he started eating chitterlings as a child, he had no idea what they were. By the time he found out, he liked them.
He prefers them boiled to fried in batter. And yet, he said, he can eat only batter-fried oysters.
``Do something for me,'' he said.
``Name it!'' I said. (After all, he had led to my learning the origin of the word chitterlings.)
``Just try two teeny forkfuls,'' he pleaded.
``I'll think about it,'' I said. by CNB