THE COOKBOOK TEST #0080: POT PIES: COMFORT FOOD UNDER COVER

INSTALLMENT #0080 (PAID) POT PIES FOR THE PATRIARCHY / 'MOM IN THE KITCHEN' / THAT'S PORKED UP / OLD RELIABLE

Dear Subscribers/Readers,

When I hear the words "pot pie,” I immediately think about the superb leek and chicken pot pie that I've been making for about 20 years. Even though it's not included in this week’s book, it's so foundational to my love for this food and such a reliable recipe that I'll share it here regardless.

But if you make me dig a bit and remember the first time I became acquainted with pot pies, it would be the small Swanson chicken pot pies that my friend Tim's parents would heat up for us at his family's rustic lakeside cabin in central Wisconsin. 

They were just simple little mass-marketed food nuggets, but something about breaking through that crust into the piping hot meat-and-gravy interior was magical to 12-year-old me, and a trace of that magic remains.

It's hard not to feel a rush of memories flood back when I taste a Swanson’s pot pie even now: bottle rocket fights, king of the hill fought out on a tethered raft in the lake, games of Sardines played out in the woods in the dark, games of Karate Champ at the bar (this was Wisconsin in the '80s, kids were a regular presence in bars), a near-death experience by way of falling through thin ice, and long summer days spent wandering the woods and playing with BB guns and wrist rockets. That's a lot of stuff to hang on a humble food item, but fortunately pot pies are emotionally load-bearing foods. 

They contain multitudes, in both literal and figurative ways. The jacket text of POT PIES: COMFORT FOOD UNDER COVER more or less agrees with this proposition, although in language I find dodgy:

Pot pies are the ultimate comfort food, conjuring up images of Mom in the kitchen and a milk-and-cookies kind of world. Now at the turn of the century, Diane Phillips brings pot pies back into our lives. And like us, they've grown up, developed a sophistication and a range of tastes and styles.

Ah, yes. Have you, much like me, developed a sophistication and a range of tastes and styles? Do you also remember Mom in the kitchen? I hope so, because author Diane Phillips manages over the course of her book introduction and her first chapter introduction to put Mom in the kitchen several more times and also feature Dad carving up a turkey in classic American White Guy fashion. 

As someone who grew up in a more-or-less "traditional" family, I don't begrudge Pot Pies for starting its narrative journey on familiar cultural ground, but I am irritated that while it travels to nominally multicultural destinations (the Moroccan chicken pot pie, the Tostada Grande pot pie, the Seafood Ragout pie) it maintains the White People in Normal Gender Roles straight-jacket throughout the text.

This is from page 163, most of the way through the book, in service of introducing the concept of vegetable pot pies:

Mom's exhortation to "eat your vegetables" was made because she wanted you to grow up big and strong, or maybe it was to get rid of that gray plate of limp broccoli. 

And after an in-depth discussion of kids disliking vegetables, she wraps up as follows:

Also, we'll grill vegetables and top them with a spinach and ricotta crust that will make your meat and potatoes man beg for more.

MEAT [enthusiastically]: Oh, hey, would you happen to have any more of that pot pie...? That crust was so good!

POTATOES MAN: It really was excellent.

But, seriously: Reacher notwithstanding, the meat-craving carnivore he-man must certainly have seemed out-of-date even when this book came out, yes? [1]

I know, it was the year 2000, a simpler, more traditional time before the widespread advent of cryptocurrency, copyright destroying artificial intelligence and really good killer war drones, but still: there's no reason a book about pot pies needs to be normalized on cues that wouldn't be out of place at a John Birch Society meeting in 1954.

at your service,

James

POT PIES: COMFORT FOOD UNDER COVER
DIANE PHILLIPS
DOUBLEDAY | 2000 

After writing the introduction to this newsletter my subconscious got working and I woke up a couple mornings later wondering: How often does Pot Pies actually reference and endorse traditional gender roles? Whenever I looked around for "mom in the kitchen" patriarchy stuff, I found it pretty easily. 

But what if I looked for these references thoroughly and systematically? Here goes:

Dust jacket: "...Mom in the kitchen and a milk-and-cookies kind of world."

Page 3: "Remember coming home from school and doing your homework in the kitchen? Mom was usually there preparing dinner, and the smells from the stove soothed and relaxed you after a long day."

Page 3: "... where Mom made chicken and vegetables covered with pie dough, we'll cover chicken and vegetables with chive mashed potatoes."

Page 3: "The family table can once more become a meeting place to nourish and sustain us. Mom would be proud."