texasmesquite

Chess pie led to cookbook author’s love affair with Southern food
Carol Currie • published September 21, 2008 12:15 am
Source: Citizen-Times.com

Jean Anderson’s book, “A Love Affair with Southern Cooking” (William Morrow, $32.50), is the book of a lifetime for her. A native of Raleigh who has an impressive resume as a writer for Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, Gourmet and other magazines, Jean has written several other cookbooks, but she has poured out her lifetime’s knowledge of Southern food into this one.
During her years in New York as a magazine editor and freelance writer, Jean was the one sent out on assignment for Southern food stories. She talked to home cooks, creative chefs, bakers and barbecue experts, fishermen and farmers, and put it all together in this book that came out in October of last year and won the Beard Award for Best of 2008 in the Americana category.

“A chess pie was the reason I fell in love with Southern cooking,” said Anderson. “I was 5 years old, in first grade. I remember as if it were yesterday: going down the cafeteria line and seeing this wedge of pie that was like nothing I had ever seen. The filling looked like comb honey, and it was crusty on top. I grabbed a piece of that pie and dove into it.”
It was an epiphany, Anderson said. She was instantly addicted. She stayed on the lookout for the pie in the lunchroom and every time she saw it, she grabbed two pieces of pie and chocolate milk.
“The school dietitian called my mother and said, ‘Jean it not eating a balanced meal,’” Anderson said.
As soon as Anderson could read, she started looking for recipes for other types of chess pies: lemon, brown sugar, molasses pie, vinegar pie, pecan pie (really a relative of chess pie), peanut pie, buttermilk pie and Jeff Davis pie (lots of cream).
Wasn’t it unusual for one so young to be so into pie research? I asked Anderson. No, she said, hers was an academic family, and she was encouraged to find out things for herself.
Nothing of her love of Southern cooking came from her mother, Anderson said. A Midwesterner, her mother made things like Boston brown bread, which Jean hated, lamb and boiled parsnips, which her school friends hated.
What Anderson preferred to do instead was be invited home by her friends whose mothers made fried chicken, squash pudding, pork chops and mashed sweet potatoes. Even in her childhood, she was mentally tucking away tidbits that would serve her well when she became a food writer.
She also stored away a vast knowledge of Southern food traditions and products, and she adds their backstories to her cookbook, including information about such well-loved brands as Pepsi-Cola, Moon Pies and White Lily flour.
Anderson, who lives and works in Chapel Hill now, remembers that when she lived in New York, she donated chess pies each year for an annual benefit for Gramercy Park.
“They always sold out faster than I could make them. One year I made 10 dozen, and they sold them for $10-$15, which I thought was an exorbitant amount. After all, they are terribly, terribly easy.”