Conversion Experiences

The white bean and collard green casserole/gratin was not the first John T. Edge recipe I’ve seen that involves Ritz crackers. A few years back he contributed an article about a Southern potluck dinner to Food and Wine, featuring a broccoli and wild mushroom casserole that’s topped with Ritz crackers. Basically it’s a fancified version of a broccoli casserole made with cream of mushroom soup, except without the cream of mushroom soup. Instead you use real wild mushrooms and make a roux. I cannot tell you how much mayonnaise is involved in this recipe because you would never eat it if you knew. Both times that I’ve made this dish (for parties, always devoured), I’ve had to avert my eyes while adding the mayonnaise. That basically sums up my feelings about most Southern cooking. Avert your eyes, and your taste buds will be rewarded while your arteries pay the price.

I Want to Believe

In the write-ups for both recipes, Mr. Edge makes reference to the dishes being akin to something you might see at a church basement supper except with better ingredients (he didn’t say that part about the better ingredients, that comes just from me).

I should say right now that I’ve never been to a church basement supper, but I know the kinds of dishes one might expect to see there. I was baptized a Methodist, attended a Baptist kindergarten, and went to one week of bible day camp when I was six, but that’s about the extent of my religious education. Beyond the occasional Easter Sunday, we were not regular churchgoers (depending on who you ask. My mother claims we went more than that, but I think she’s thinking of her own childhood).

The closest I’ve come to a church basement supper was going with my friend Camille to her bible study class when I was 10 or 11. Camille sold me on the idea based on the food. She said—she promised!—that they always had great food at bible study. But the one time I went, there was nothing to eat but plain brown rice with not a grain of salt.

The point, as the bible study teacher explained, was to eat what starving little children in other countries had to eat, so we could appreciate our blessings. I think it was shortly after that that I realized I didn’t believe in God. If not for that plate of bland and clumpy rice, I could be a Christian today.

Love the Sin, Love the Sinner

As an adult, I’m not the vehement atheist I was at 16, but I’m not definitely not a believer in the Christian sense. Probably if I went to a real church basement supper, I would be appalled by the food. But since I haven’t, the idea holds a powerful allure for me, in the same way that the idea of Ritz crackers in place of bread crumbs does. Most likely this is because that kind of food—topped with Ritz crackers, involving a cup of mayonnaise, baked in a 9 x 13 Pyrex dish—is very hard to come by in my local, seasonal, organic San Francisco world. Sin in the South is widely conceived of as what goes on in San Francisco; sin in San Francisco is widely conceived of as a cup of mayonnaise and a box of Ritz crackers.

There but for the grace of plain brown rice go I.

Make your own:
Broccoli and Wild Mushroom Casserole
White Bean and Collard Green Casserole