Chess Pie is fave Southern dessert. I never knew why. I find it plain and too sweet, but Neal tells us that in Tennessee, the women make a half dozen of these pies and layer them one on top of the other creating a kind of layer cake pie. Now if I had seen that, I might have just been moved enough to make six or eight.
Chess Pie
1 recipe Pie Pastry
1 1/4 cups sugar
Salt
7 tablespoons butter at room temperature
3 large eggs
1 large lemon, zest finely grated and juice strained
Recommended equipment: An electric mixer, 9-inch pie pan.
Preheat oven to 325F
Beat the sugar, a pinch of salt, and butter together until light. Add the eggs one by one, beating well after each addition, then add the zest and juice of the lemon. Pour the mixture into the partially baked shell and cook about 35 minutes on the middle level of the oven until the custard is set. The top should be lightly browned but not puff.
If you make Chess Pies stacked like a big cake, send up a picture!!
Bill Neal died at 41. His early demise has perhaps prevented him from being a household name like an Alice Waters or Emeril Lagasse, but his stamp on Southern cuisine is unmistakable. Ironically, my favorite book is not a cookbook at all but a gardening book. Gardener's Latin: A Lexicon was nearly finished when Bill Neal died and showed that his love of food was rivaled by his love of language. In 2004, Moreton Neal wrote about her ex-husband in a memoir filled with recipes, Remembering Bill Neal: Favorite Recipes from a Life in Cooking.
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