by Rick Bragg
Other people, people who had the misfortune not to be poor, coveted our cheese. My brother’s friends always asked my mother for a toasted cheese sandwich, which was three times as thick, buttery, and cheesy as a pedestrian grilled cheese. Sometimes, getting fancy, she spread on some fig preserves, or a little grape jelly. She doctored hot biscuits with a triangle of the cheese. It melted beautifully, creamily. She used it to make the best macaroni and cheese, which we consider a vegetable here. She mixed the cheese into creamy grits, and delicious scrambled eggs, and excellent molten, bubbling scalloped potatoes, which might be one of the most decadent dishes I have ever tasted. She laid it on hamburgers, a quarter-inch thick, and cut it into cubes to mix into the batter for Mexican cornbread and hush puppies.
She loved good black- and red-rind cheddar, which we called “hoop cheese,” loved its sharp taste, “but cheddar don’t melt good, and ever’body knows it.” In some dishes, she added a little sharp cheddar to the mild American cheese for contrast.
But the best thing she made, my big brother believes, was a kind of cheese-and-sausage pie, a simple and admittedly greasy thing she made for her children every time she picked up the commodities, to celebrate their largesse. Sometimes our other, close-in kinfolks gathered on the days the commodities were distributed, like it was Labor Day or Independence Day, and my mother and aunts made a half-dozen pies, sometimes more. There are worse things to rally around, I guess, than a loaf of good mild cheese.
It may seem an odd thing, but word would spread, and people would even bring their own pie shells and pork sausage; my mother was the arbiter of the cheese, and so a very valuable member of the clan. They would bring a hand-cranked ice-cream maker, and would flavor the ice cream, sometimes with a can of peaches in heavy syrup, or fruit cocktail. They brought guitars, and played the music they had grown up on—gospel, mostly, like Hank Williams’s “I Saw the Light.”
The pies came out of the oven four at a time.
To hear my big brother talk about them, you would think it was the best time of his life. I think that has less to do with cheese than with other things; it was a time when he was surrounded by people of great strength and toughness and warmth, when all you had to do to make something of your life was bow your back to it, and things still made some kind of sense.
“I miss them pies,” he said.
I suppose, strictly speaking, we broke the law just by spreading the bounty of that cheese to our kin, which the government guidelines specifically forbade, as if that block of cheese were a piece of road equipment. She never sold an ounce of it, but she cut off one-pound blocks and gave it to her sisters, closest friends, or anyone unlucky enough not to be poor, so often and so regular that they, too, began to count down the days of the month to cheese day. In time, she spread our allotment so thin that the cheese ran out long before the month did, and a great sadness descended on our little corner of the earth.
It never occurred to her, she told me, to ask for more. For a people who made illegal whiskey in the pines, and sometimes went a whole lifetime without paying any federal taxes on anything, we were oddly honest about dealing with the government as to cheese. We waited patiently in line, took our allotment—no more, no less—and moved on, being sure to say “thank you.”
Besides, the holders of the cheese kept close, close track of it: one box per household.
When the lawbreaking happened, it happened, if not by accident, at least under extenuating circumstances. My mother always took Sam with her, in his Billy the Kid outfit. He had finally gotten tall enough so his guns did not drag in the dirt. He always had some tiny pieced-together toddler-sized wagon with him back then, and he insisted on taking his wagon to town with them, to help with the transport. “Sam come into the world workin’,” my mother said.
It was July 1959, just a few days before I was born. My mother was taking in ironing then, to pay the light bill and buy groceries, and the little frame house held in the heat like a chicken house. I’ve asked her if, considering I was about to come into the world, she might have tried to get some rest, maybe even gone to sit in the shade sometimes, for her sake and mine. She only shrugged; everyone worked then, till their time. I guess I should just be proud that she was not sipping on a Budweiser and smoking a Marlboro; I have friends whose mommas did, and, come to think of it, none of them became astronauts.
The trip to town was always respite, I am told—the cool air rushing through the car window heaven-sent. The city of Jacksonville administered the distribution of the commodities then, in the red-brick city recreation center across from the police station and jail; some days, we could get commodities and go see my daddy or one of my uncles or any one of several kin, all at the same time.
That day, the man in charge was Ernest Jones, who had given up farmwork and gone to work for the city. Ernest knew my people, knew the fat-legged little boy with the six-guns and the cowboy hat, and knew their situation. It was clear, too, that the young woman was expecting.
Every recipient got an empty box at the start of the line—or brought a box from home—and it was filled at the table as the person slid it along. Ernest and my mother chatted for a minute, and as she moved on down the table he eased a second loaf of cheese into the cardboard box.
“I can’t…” my mother said.
“Sssssshhhhhhh,” Ernest said. “We had some extry.”
She still protested, afraid of what people might say, so he tried, halfheartedly, to hide it under the sacks of rice and meal. He did a poor job of it, though, and she just stood, horrified.
“You’ll get me in trouble, you don’t go on now,” he said kindly, and, feeling like everyone was staring at her, she finally moved on.
“Momma always said if she was ever gonna steal anything she would steal a hoop of good cheese,” my mother said, thinking back to that day. “She said that to ever’ body.” So no one would believe this was not premeditated, since the whole world knew the Bundrums were a cheese robbery waiting to happen.
To make things worse, three-year-old Sam insisted on dragging the commodities in his wagon. It was too heavy for him to pull, what with a ten-pound allotment of cheese in it, so she took out the illegal, second block of cheese, cradled it in her arms like the precious bundle it was, and hurried to the car. With her free hand, she helped Sam pull the wagon, hoping the cheese wardens would not inspect it. It may seem silly now, but it was not silly then.
As they lurched away, she heard an ancient, quavering voice call her name. It was one of the old women who frequented the recreation center, which had a piano for psalm singing, a few card tables for Rook and bridge, and good chairs in which to visit and gossip about the heathen, the inebriate, and the unfortunate. My mother just kept moving, cradling her illicit cheese like a newborn, and tried to keep her back to the old woman.
The old woman called for her to stop. “I want to see the baby,” she said.
Apparently, her vision was not superb. My mother just walked on, faster. We jumped into the car and fled, all of us—my mother, my brother, and I. I already had a criminal record, and I do not believe my skull was yet fully formed. I think that might be some kind of gold standard, even for us.
I finally came into the world on the twenty-sixth. I weighed, oddly enough, just slightly more than a block of cheese.
There was no celebration, no gathering of the clan, when I came home from the hospital. There was not one damn pie to mark my arrival. Not only had I been confused with cheese, I was regarded, universally, as being of lesser value. I guess I should be grateful I had yet to be born the day of the cheese larceny. If my mother had been forced to choose which one of us to leave behind, I am not confident it would have been the second block of cheese.
“It was real good cheese,” she said.
* * *
• • •
When I moved away from home and out into the wider cheese-eating world, I was amazed by the snobbery I encountered as to cheese. If you want to see a gourmet’s fa
ce fall, make him a sandwich with American cheese. “Is there no Gruyère? Sacrilege!”
“Some people don’t know what’s good,” my mother explained.
When the government decided to stop the distribution of the surplus food, in the early 1970s, it greatly affected our lives. When the cheese disappeared from her pantry, many of the recipes we had come to love all but faded from existence. There was simply no suitable substitute for commodity cheese, at least not one that was available to us.
You could still buy sharp cheddar in the country stores, but not a milder cheese of this quality. The store-bought cheese in the supermarkets was flatly inferior, and expensive. Even if you could find a deli or a butcher who sold good American cheese, an inch-thick stack of it cost as much as a steak. Today, a five-pound block of good cheese would cost more than your light bill.
“You can’t make bricks without straw,” my mother said. “Well, you can, you know, like they did in the Bible, when the Hebrews was in bondage, and Ramses told Moses to make bricks without straw, and…”
I told her I knew the story.
But now and then, when we are talking about my mother’s cooking, my brothers and I will get to reminiscing about those recipes, and it is almost pitiful to see grown men trying to taste something again, from thin air. The thing my big brother most missed, I believe, was the cheese-and-sausage pie.
“I will cook it all again,” she promised, “soon as I can find some cheese.”
But after about forty years, you begin to wonder. I have tried to bring her a passable substitute, off and on, but she knows at a sniff it is not worthy. We do not have good delis in the small towns and out in the country. In the grocery stores here, the closest to quality American cheese is not even labeled American cheese; it is the sliced but not individually wrapped Kraft Old English cheddar slices, which are really just barely sharp American, and sold beside the sliced but not wrapped American slices, which are also solidly edible on sandwiches and in some recipes. Do not make the mistake of buying the cellophane-wrapped cheese film, which is mushy and may not even be actual food.
But if you live in a place with a good deli, the cheese man will find you some firm, mild American cheese, close enough. Taste it first, however, before you take it home, to make sure it does not taste of suntan lotion or baby oil or something you might use to lubricate your car. It should be mild, but you should know it is cheese. I found some at a good deli and took it to my mother, and in a while that old smell drifted through the house again. Most of the people—the guitar pickers and ice-cream crankers—were missing, but it was the closest I had felt them in some time. You have to do something nice for your big brother now and then, to make up for that time you caught him hung up in a barbed-wire fence and hit him with a rock.
Here is a breakdown of just a few things you can do with good American cheese, once you get over your snobbery:
Cheese-and-Sausage Pie
WHAT YOU WILL NEED
½ cup ketchup
¼ cup yellow mustard
1 pinch black pepper
1 pinch garlic powder
1 pinch onion powder
¾ pound quality American cheese
1 pound fresh pork sausage
3 frozen pie shells
HOW TO COOK IT
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
In a small bowl, mix the ketchup, mustard, pepper, and garlic and onion powders.
Cut the cheese into long strips, about ½ inch wide and ¼ inch thick. Set aside.
Crumble the fresh sausage into a skillet, and fry until it is done but not too crispy. Drain the cooked sausage as much as possible, and place it on a paper towel. This is the one time in this whole book of recipes when there is more pork fat available than you probably need.
Gently, gently, brown the thawed pie shells, as if you were making any other pie. When the edges of the shell turn a light brown, take them out. You can roll out some homemade pie shells if you want to, my mother said, “but that may be a lot of trouble for this kind of thing.”
With a spoon, spread a thin layer of the sauce mixture onto the bottom of the cooked pie shell, just enough to barely, barely cover. “Don’t use too much or it will be soggy. But it’ll also help keep the sausage grease from seeping so much into the pie shell.”
Onto the surface of the sauce, sprinkle the cooked, crumbled sausage until the surface is well covered, but do not overdo. “Don’t use too much or it will be greasy….Well, it’s gonna be a little bit greasy, I reckon, but…”
Then crisscross the strips of cheese across the top, leaving a gap of about ¼ inch between them.
Place the pies in the oven, and bake until the cheese melts, bubbles, and begins to brown. You have to let it brown a little—this is where the magic is. Remove from the oven, and let sit for at least 5 minutes. Do not let greedy children near them while the cheese is still hot. We know the results of this from grim experience.
Cut into four pieces.
NOTE This dish is especially good for breakfast. For breakfast, forgo the sauce altogether, and substitute fresh sliced tomatoes. You can top the cheese-and-sausage pie with a fried egg, maybe two, or with a layer of soft-scrambled eggs. Serve with buttered grits, salted and peppered to taste, or fried potatoes. For lunch or supper, just abandon any pretense of being healthy; have a second slice, and later try not to think about the fact you just ate half a sausage pie.
Macaroni and Cheese
WHAT YOU WILL NEED
4 strips thick-cut bacon
1 small onion
1 leek or green onion, slivered
About 8 ounces uncooked macaroni (any shape, but my people are suspicious of anything more esoteric than elbows)
½ cup or so whole milk
2 tablespoons butter
1½ to 2 cups grated American cheese
1 pinch black pepper
1 pinch cayenne pepper
¼ teaspoon salt (less if bacon is salty)
HOW TO COOK IT
Cut the bacon into pieces no wider than ½ inch. Dice the onion fine. Fry the bacon, and add the finely diced onion and leek or green onion as soon as the fat begins to turn translucent. You want the bacon to be cooked and just beginning to go crisp, but not crumbling. Set aside.
Boil the pasta until it is still firm but done. If I used the term “al dente,” someone here would slap me stupid.
Drain the pasta.
Stir into the pasta about half the milk and the butter and return to the stove over low heat; then stir in the cheese, bacon, onions, black pepper, and cayenne. Salt to taste, and stir in the remaining milk until you get a perfect, cheesy consistency. The cheese and other goodness should not pool in the bottom of the pan, but cling to the macaroni.
Serve quickly: it will set up like particle board when cold.
This, of course, is not a traditional method unless you are preparing it for 5-year-olds. But we like it.
You can finish it in a more traditional way, of course, and bake all the moisture and much of the taste from it. You can pour it into a baking dish, top with some grated cheddar or even a sprinkle of something fancier, and bake, uncovered, at 450 degrees for about 10 minutes, and then broil another 5 or so.
My mother sees that as unnecessary. It just bakes the macaroni dry, bakes the taste right out of it, she believes. I know this is sacrilege, and may seem unsophisticated. We do not give a damn.
“People who say they like dry macaroni and cheese cooked in the oven are just puttin’ on,” she believes, “ ’cause they seen it that way in a magazine.”
If you feel somehow cheated by not having oven-baked macaroni sprinkled with breadcrumbs, think about your childhood, when your momma spooned it right out of the pot. Which one, truthfully, did you like better?
Grilled Cheese Sandwiches with Pear Preserves or Muscadine Jelly
The jelly will liquefy, which is why preserves, of any kind, might be best for this.
WHAT YOU WILL NEED
2 slices
bread, your choice (all we ever had was white bread when I was a boy, but this works with wheat or honey-wheat or sourdough)
Butter
1 slice American cheese, ¼ inch thick
Pear preserves or muscadine jelly (or preserves or jelly of choice)
HOW TO COOK IT
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Butter the bread generously, on both slices.
On the bottom slice, buttered side up, place the cheese slice and about 1 tablespoon—no more—preserves or jelly.
Top this with the other slice, buttered side down. Top that with one thin pat of butter—“a little extry,” as my mother says—and place in the oven on a baking sheet. When the bread browns, the cheese melts from the sides, and the pat of butter on top has disappeared into the bread, it’s ready.
Let cool a minute or two, since the cheese, butter, and jelly or jam will be like molten lava.
If it goes soggy, use less butter and jelly next time. “I’d rather have a lot of butter and put up with a little bit of soggy,” my mother said. Some people like to place something on top of the sandwich to press it down. We don’t.
Eat it and be glad to be alive, and do not tell your doctor.
NOTE This can also be prepared on top of the stove. The bread will be less crunchy.
NOTE If you prefer a more traditional grilled cheese, make yourself one, but eat it with a dab of jelly or preserves on the side. I like strawberry. I’m just sayin’. Scramble some eggs to go with it, and maybe a few slices of thick-cut bacon, and some grits, for a light breakfast.
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SOMETIMES THE PIES JUST CALL YOUR NAME
Pecan Pie