Denise Gee - Southern Casseroles: Comforting Pot-Lucky Dishes

To my sweet brother and sister-in-law,
DEMPSE & ANNE McMULLEN,
whose comforting home, food,
and generous spirit are always
nourishment for the soul.

Text copyright 2013 by Denise Gee.
Photographs copyright 2013 by Robert M. Peacock.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-4521-2985-3
The Library of Congress has cataloged the previous edition as follows:
ISBN: 978-1-4521-1228-2

Designed by Supriya Kalidas
Food and prop styling by Denise Gee

Chronicle Books LLC
680 Second Street
San Francisco, California 94107
www.chroniclebooks.com

To my literary agent extraordinaire, ANGELA MILLER, for championing the art of storytelling.

To BILL LEBLOND and AMY TREADWELL, for believing in my voice and vision. And for SUPRIYA KALIDAS for guiding my creative spiritand love of good foodin such a cool and stylish way.

To REBECCA SHERMAN, for always being there to help me get my publishing projects not just up on their feet, but running.

To JOY & KIRK KIRKSEY, for sharing some cool casserole wares for photography.

And to my husband, ROBERT PEACOCK, whose love of food and family truly shines.

Table looks almost too pretty to be molested! Uncle Noah Webster hollered from the foot, sitting high on the sugar barrel. Grannys table was seated round with her grandchildren.... You brought your chicken pie, Miss Beulah said, relieving her of the apron-covered dishpan. And Jacks exactly who I made it for, said Aunt Beck. If I made my good chicken pie, hell come eat it, I thought, every dusty mile of the way.

EUDORA WELTY, LOSING BATTLES (1970) / When Miss Eudora was reminded of this passage while being interviewed for A Cooks Tour of Mississippi , she said of that chicken pie, I always heard it was a Methodist dish.

One of my earliest memories from girlhood in Natchez, Mississippi, is watching my grandmother clean the kitchen counter around her Thermador double-oven range with six gas burners, a nearly commercial-grade unit that amazes me now in its uniqueness. Most of my friends houses had the usual oven and range setup. Not ours. Nannie liked to cook, selling her jellies and jams all over the world (with Bob Hope and Lucille Ball being fans). That was quite a feat before the Internet. Her cooking prowess was recognized through word of mouth, which says a lot. So did her cooking style.

Nannie was usually cleaning the area from having just put together the nights meala casserole of some sort, one sitting in the oven, about to do its thing. The aromas of a little garlic or smothered chicken and onions or wild rice or shrimp were woo-worthy. Id stare through the ovens glass door, watching ingredients bubble and steam as they came together in three- or four- or five-part harmony. Sometimes the casserole was put together from scratch; other times, when time or temperament was short, it resulted from a can of this, a pound of that, a few dashes of this, and imagine that. Whatever it was, it had to rest a while before we could dig in. Salads were madealmost always wedges of iceberg with homemade blue cheese or green goddess dressing. In those cases, if the casserole was fairly self-contained, wed put it all on one plate and have at it, but if the casserole risked becoming one with the salad, wed use one of the many gratin dishes kept stacked in the cupboard. If, on the other hand, the casserole was a good mix of vegetables and proteinthink chicken pot pieyet challenging to eat on a flat surface, we often grabbed any number of blue-and-white soup plates to beautifully cradle the hearty mix. Buttery garlic bread was the last to come out of the oven: a slice of that would be plopped atop the plate, and off wed head to the dining room or, if All in the Family was on, to sit in the TV room with the Bunker clan of Queens, whose accents and actions seemed almost exotic in our part of the world.

Inspired by the acclaimed cookbooks of my cousin, entertaining and design guru Lee Bailey, as well as my grandmothers own homespun cookbooks, I ultimately became a food editor at Southern Living magazine. It was there that I tasted almost every casserole known to manoften as many as twelve in a day whenever a big story or contest warranted. At the time, most of us were trying to get away from our Becky Home-Ec-ky reputation, much to the chagrin of some elder editors, and many of us were courting chefs for more inventive recipes to feature. But to my own chagrin, whenever Id leave the South for a meeting or event, one of the first things mentioned would be our regions love of casserolesprimarily of our fondness of one ingredient: How can you stand to eat all that creamed soup? I developed a defense mechanism, always replying that I didnt share that fondness. But I was a hypocrite. Whenever I craved a taste of home, invariably Id make a casserole, one that sometimes harbored said cream of mushroom or celery soupdespite knowing, as Nannie knew, how to make a basic white sauce or tomato sauce and create a dish from the ground up.

After years of keeping my secret love of casseroles in checkdespite the many times I could have been outed over my glee to see a green bean casseroleI found myself 1,000 miles away in Iowa. It was there that my Southernness, which Id always squirreled away, along with the accent Id fought early on to conceal, was put under the spotlight. I could be talking about the most inconsequential thing, but sometimes it seemed as if I were reading a poem by Eudora Welty. And whenever Id make a dish for a potluck, invariably thered be oohs and aahs, but soon I realized my friends werent just being polite in saying, What amazing flavor. They really meant it.

But it was while drinking mint juleps with Southern friend and Better Homes and Gardens colleague Paige Porter in our Des Moines home, with snow on the ground, that I realized that over timeand perhaps out of homesicknessI truly had embraced my Mississippi roots. It wasnt just OK to be Southern. It was actually kind of special. And that was nice. (Though I must admit, I still had my challenges. While our kitchen was being remodeled, I was once asked by a colleague if I needed to borrow a deep-fat fryer: Dont you all make hushpuppies or something for dinner every night? she asked.)

After my mothers death, my brother and I divvied up some of Nannies kitchenware, which my mother had taken with her to retirement in Florida. At first I thought shed taken them there out of spiteshe didnt cook and knew we did. It was only after Mamas passing that I realized shed wanted them for sentimental reasons.

Nannies old Wagner Magnalite aluminum casserole pots and Le Creuset casseroles and ramekins, which had been boxed up for so many years, brought back many wonderful memories. I cherish them, as I do her recipes and my friends recipesespecially the casseroles, which embody so much love and flavor and family in every bite. And now that Ive dug my heels into Texas, Im enjoying flavor to the nth degree. With this book, I aim to share the glory of the second coming of the casserole.