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South Beach meets the South

For Miami's pretty people, rural Florida might as well be Mars. An artist introduces them to the sights and tastes of a state they never knew.

By TAMARA LUSH
Published May 25, 2005

MIAMI - "I knew Florida was, um, agricultural, but when you think of Florida, you don't think of the South."

That's George Perez, 43, a Miami home inspector, talking. He's standing in the middle of an art gallery in Wynwood, the hip arts district that has sprung up among derelict warehouses.

Surrounding Perez are a dozen photographs of a Florida he doesn't know: alligator trappers, boar hunters and men in cowboy hats.

Perez is flummoxed, as are others in the gallery. Hunters? Here? In Florida?

"When you think of Florida, you think of a big, giant Mickey Mouse in the center, and South Beach on the bottom," Perez said. "What's on the top, nobody really cares."

Artist Julie Kahn is out to educate the George Perezes of Florida. Last week in Miami, she gathered a panel of experts (including occasional St. Petersburg Times columnists Diane Roberts and Bill Maxwell) to discuss "Cracker Culture in a Fast Food Nation." The same day, more than 500 people saw the photos she made over six years.

She calls the exhibition "Swamp Cabbage," after an Old Florida dish of hearts of sabal palms, which can be found in just about every part of the state.

Unlike many of the Miami hipsters, Kahn is familiar with rural Florida. As a child, Kahn traveled from her hometown of Miami to rural Fellsmere, northwest of Vero Beach, where her father owned land.

"My memory was imprinted by the secret landscape of Florida," she said.

After living a nomadic life and obtaining a Harvard graduate business degree, Kahn returned to Miami. In 1999, a friend invited Kahn to a wild game supper in Christmas, a small town between the Space Coast and Disney.

Kahn discovered that the Florida of her childhood was hanging on by its fingernails.

To explore "Cracker culture," Kahn looked at its food traditions. Crackers - homesteaders who lived in rural Florida before Mickey Mouse came to the Sunshine State - came by their nickname from the sound of the whips they used to herd cows through dense palmetto thickets.

In recent years though, the word has taken a negative connotation, becoming synonymous with "bigot" or "redneck."

Armed with still and video cameras and an adventurous appetite, she went on boar hunts and deer stakeouts. She nibbled smoked alligator and inhaled smoked mullet dip.

She received a grant from the Florida Humanities Council and moved to an orange grove in Central Florida. There, she observed people who live off the grid and on the land. She also met men who wore suits and ties to the office but lived to hunt on the weekends.

Kahn found that Cracker culture and its traditional foods are being supplanted by chain restaurants and subdivisions, and by waves of immigrants bringing their own flavors to Florida.

"Things were disappearing, practically after I photographed them," she said.

For the exhibition, Kahn invited a half-dozen self-proclaimed Crackers to cook rural specialties in the heart of Miami. Nearby, a homeless shelter and a junkyard buzzed with activity; other galleries blasted British trip-hop and served chardonnay.

Inside Kahn's tasting at the Food Culture Museum, one cook spread mullet dip on saltines as a woman walked in with a silky afghan hound on a leash.

Enticing hickory-laced aromas wafted from a pork smoker. A police car wailed by.

The mind, and all five senses, reeled. Are we in Florida?

Kahn played with the tension: She served Busch Beer in tall cans and asked people to choose a button to wear before entering the tasting. Tourist. Native. Resident. White Trash, Redneck. Cracker. Alien.

Most Miamians chose "Resident."

"This is totally a part of Florida that I feel no connection to," said Miami native Nancy Gelles, 58. "It reminds me that there's a lot more to this state. This is like a whole other cultural experience."

Some city folk were squeamish about soft shell turtle and venison chili. The cooks noticed the high anxiety.

"Some of these people here came to meet the Clampetts," said Billy Jones, 33, of Citrus County. Jones, who helped cook batches of moist Heritage Pork, spat tobacco juice on the concrete.

"Cracker culture isn't dying where we come from," he said.

Jones, a native Floridian, had never been to Miami until that night.

Red state? Blue state? Between Jones and Perez, one had to wonder: Do we all live in the same state? A place where ropa vieja and fried gator tail are served with equal pride?

"That's one of the precious things about Florida, that diversity," Kahn said.

Tamara Lush can be reached at 727 893-8612 or lush@sptimes.com

"Swamp Cabbage" photo exhibit by Julie Kahn runs through June 29 at Locust Projects, 105 NW 23rd St., Miami; (305) 576-8570.

4 to 5 pounds of venison or lean sirloin tip roast, diced into 1/4-inch cubes

1 pound wild boar meat or Italian or breakfast sausage, ground and browned

1 to 2 onions, diced

1 green pepper, diced

15 jalapenos, seeded and diced (use less for milder chili)

1 tablespoon granulated garlic

1/4 cup ground cumin

2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

Pinch cayenne pepper

Pinch black pepper

4 10-ounce cans stewed tomatoes

2 cans spicy chili beans

Grated cheese (optional)

Sour cream (optional)

Rice (optional)

Put the first five ingredients in a large pot, cover and simmer on low for three hours. When the meat is cooked through, add garlic, cumin, Worcestershire, cayenne and black pepper. After three hours, add tomatoes, crushing them by hand as they go into the pot. Add beans and cook throughly, about 15 minutes.

Top with cheese and/or sour cream. Serve over rice, if desired.

Source: Troy Daughtrey, Fort Myers.

1/2 sweet onion

4 smoked mullet

Mustard to taste

Mayonnaise to taste

Lemon or lime

Ground black pepper

Hot sauce

Saltine crackers

Chop onion in a food processor. Separate fish flesh from bone and add mullet to processor. Pulse until pureed. Add about a teaspoon of mustard, then 3 or so teaspoons of mayonnaise, just enough to make the mixture come together. Add fresh lemon or lime juice, pepper and a few dashes of hot sauce to taste. Serve on crackers.

* Troy Daughtrey, a Fort Myers firefighter, says his dip has the consistency of a spread. His daughter does not use a food processor and her dip is chunkier.

Source: Troy Daughtrey, Fort Myers.

[Last modified May 24, 2005, 16:07:39]