Deep in the darkest reaches of my basement, something daunting lurks: a wheelbarrow load of winter vegetables. Carrots glint in the glow of a bare bulb and alien-esque celeriac lurks on a nearby table. They all lie in wait, demanding to be sauteed. It's enough to make a Southerner sweat in a New England December.
Perhaps you are one of those people who cans beets with one hand while whipping up a rutabaga omelet with the other. Where I come from, I never saw a parsnip; there is no winter, only a half-hearted chill wind for a couple of days between summers. Where I come from, one doesn't have a root cellar, but a storm cellar. So I looked at all those dusty vegetables waiting to be cooked, I scratched my head and I ran for the cookbooks.
I found there many a volume, some of them even explaining how to disarm celeriac.
But the recipes were glum as a March turnip. So I turned to a barely explored gift from my mother, the compiled recipes from First Baptist Church of Abilene, Texas.
I grew up with Southern cooking in several incarnations, from the fatback-enhanced green beans of Arkansas to the boudin-boosted gumbo of New Orleans and the chili-cheese dip of Fort Worth, Texas. My system does not respond to boiled turnips. Even with salt. I needed something involving jalapenos. So I flipped the pages of Protestant cuisine, and a funny thing happened.
I can never go back: now I know what's actually in Mexican Chicken Casserole, not to mention Funeral Beans, Turkey Crunch Casserole and even Mildred Renicker's Orange Jell-O Cake. I've come to the startling realization that the South might have prevailed in the Civil War had Campbell's Soup been around to supply barrels of Cream of Chicken to facilitate the recipes of the Army of the South. Robert E. Lee might have delivered a plate of Emmeline Hightower's Gourmet Grits to Ulysses S. Grant instead of signing a surrender at Appomattox Courthouse.
This culinary adventure has been an unexpected tour of the sausage factory. I did not necessarily want to know that Doritos underpin Enchilada Casserole, nor that Cheez Whiz might figure in the vaunted Chili Egg Puff. These items are not ingredients—they are bulletproof extrusions, the end result of processes also integral to building Fords. Frankenstein would be proud of such stitching together of that which does not belong. (And look how he ended up.)
And yet, casserole throwdowns notwithstanding, the South has it all over the rest of America when it comes to good eating. Where else would someone have thought to baste a chicken with 7-Up? It's simply best, perhaps, not to know these things once you've moved on to more conventional food preparation.
I am not entirely certain how to recover from having drawn back the curtain to reveal the Velveeta Wizard, yet I must soldier on. The Baptist cookbook yields its share of incredibly appetizing choices, which helps—there's a Crawfish Etouffee that would make a Thibodeau blush, near though it may be to Venison Casserole El Dorado and its seven ounces of name brand corn chips. The Grits Souffle is a lightning strike meeting of high and low. The stove will be firing up shortly to give that last one a go.
Besides, the wilder end of Southern cooking often turns up unique tastes not to be sniffed at, so why not embrace the inspired results of cooks rustling up some grub under pressure? Walnut Surprise Armadillo Cake often delivers on the surprise in pretty tasty style.
And there is still the matter of all that celeriac. I hope to revisit that subject soon, armed with new knowledge gained from midnight sessions in the kitchen laboratory. I keep thinking there ought to be a way to work Miracle Whip, Velveeta and Jell-O into some kind of "Parsnip Souffle a la Interstate 10."
I think I am on the verge of something huge, something to revolutionize the devouring of root vegetables in every corner of the Yankee world. At least the corners where they sell grits.
