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"Miss Mamie" cooks fried chicken

By Daisy Carrington | dcarrington@am-ny.com

3:48 PM EST, January 29, 2008

Thirty years ago, Norma Jean Darden was a model at Wilhemina agency, more concerned with keeping her size 4 figure than with mastering hush puppies. That was until a Vogue editor suggested she write a cookbook. What followed was a culinary expedition through the South that uncovered both her family's history and some delicious recipes.

"We didn't know [our grandfather] was a slave until we started the book," said Darden, who co-wrote the food memoir with her sister, Carole Darden, in 1979. "By then, my family was very middle class. They could read and write, so there was no reason to mention relatives who couldn't."

Though Darden wasn't interested in food during her days as a model ("I was trying to avoid it!" she crowed), she has since embraced the cuisine of her ancestors. In the last ten years, she's opened up two soul food restaurants in Harlem: Miss Mamie's and Miss Maude's.

"Since I've been here, I've gone from an 8 to a 10, settled at 12, and now I'm getting ready to pop out of these clothes!" she confessed with a giggle.

During her tenure in Harlem, Darden has seen her fare share of change. In a mere matter of years, the neighborhood has transformed from run down to glitzy. "Who would think that we would get a high rise?" she exclaimed. "In this neighborhood! When I first came here, people were living in [Central Park], and you couldn't walk on that side because someone might jump over and take something."

Since Darden has opened up shop, she has cooked for every mayor at Gracie Mansion (with the exception of struggling presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani), as well as several ex-presidents. When George W. Bush was running for Texas governor, his former roommate even hosted a fundraiser at Miss Mamie's.

"When they said he was going to be the next president, we certainly didn't believe that one. I thought, he's such an uninspiring speaker; he'll never get [former Texas governor] Ann Richards out of office. Shows you how wrong I was."

Q&A with Norma Jean Darden

You grew up half in the South and half in the North. Which has changed the most? The South is radically different. Who thought that white people in South Carolina would vote for Obama for president? That wouldn't have happened 40 years ago. This society is coming to the point where anybody can be anything. Where RuPaul, a black kid, can be a white woman! Holy cow, I mean the Ku Klux Klan must just be beside itself.

How soon after you opened the restaurant did it start to get crowded? People came in right away, and I wasn't prepared. The New York Times came even before I opened, and we didn't know how much food to cook in any given day. It was hysterical. We would say, well we don't have much speed traffic here, so we'll probably get 50 people today and then get 200.

Was it difficult being a black model in the 70s? When I started, Mademoiselle wouldn't use any black people; Vogue wouldn't; Harper's Bazaar wouldn't. All of that happened in my lifetime. I started a black agency, where we could only do things went in Jet and Ebony. Then there became this crossover, and that has happened in every field. We are finally working towards Martin Luther King's vision, where people are not judged by the color of their skin but the content of their character.

Recipe: Fried chicken Serves 4

Ingredients

1 2½ - to 3-pound chicken, cut into serving pieces
salt and paper to taste
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon dry mustard
¾ teaspoon grated nutmeg
½ teaspoon garlic powder