Baking Louisiana

Hitting on a concept for the cover of each Country Roads issue is a mysterious process that entails a lot of arm waving and, usually, some forays down blind alleys before we settle on something that works. After all, for a magazine, what is a cover but a face? A reflection of the self to which the world looks, expecting to discern the content and character of the entity it represents. Glance at the cover of any favorite magazine and consider how much it tells you about the nature of the experience promised on the pages that follow. In the choice of subject matter, color palette, background, setting, font choice, and selection of words themselves, you can read the sum of the editors’ and art directors’ hopes and dreams. Those people will have thought long and hard not just about the mission of their magazine and the content of that particular issue, but also about the season, the region they represent and how they want people to feel about it. They’ll have tried to delight the people who look forward to every issue. They’ll have thought about those who occasionally read their magazine and need encouragement to pick up a copy, and also about the ones who walk past a stack and never give it a second glance. They’ll have worried about what their mothers will think and, since most creative people are quite neurotic, probably also global warming, not getting enough vitamin D, and whether they left the oven on. No, the cover of one’s magazine is hardly something to be left to chance—much less daft, brain-farty flights of fancy. Hence the hand-wringing. There’s too much at stake.

So, confronted with the challenge of conveying in a single image not only that July’s Country Roads is our annual “Cuisine” issue, but that it's also the one that celebrates the culinary genius of our 2017 Louisiana Small Town Chefs Awards winners, we tried a number of things. The idea of a homemade pie, artfully crafted and baked with love, seemed to convey the home-grown goodness we found while getting to know our Small Town Chefs candidates. Between the artistic talents of our creative director Mike; and his partner, Mary—a prodigiously gifted artist and baker, we knew we could produce and photograph a gorgeous pie. But how to make it a reflection of our region?

Then, a bolt from the blue (OK, the Internet), came in the form of an incredible cast-iron skillet in the shape of the state of Louisiana, crafted by an artist named Alisa Toninato of FeLion Studios and based in Madison, Wisconsin. What better vehicle to express the creativity of the state’s small town chefs than a golden, crusty, blueberry pie baked into the very shape of Louisiana? Much to Alisa’s credit, when she received a random email from some magazine publisher wondering if he could borrow her one-of-a-kind Louisiana skillet to bake a pie in, she was happy to comply. A couple of days later a heavy package arrived from Madison, Wisconsin, and slowly, the snowball that is our cover design project began to gather speed. Designs were drawn, pastry made, fillings concocted, but try as we might, we simply couldn’t get the Louisiana pie to look, well, pie-ish enough. Perhaps it was something about the irregular shape of the state’s outline. Or maybe pies are just meant to be round. Eventually we settled on a more traditionally shaped pie, which preternaturally gifted Mary baked complete with hand-carved magnolia blossoms (Louisiana’s state flower, you'll have noticed). It might not be in the shape of Louisiana, but we think it looks spectacular. I hope you do, too

And Alisa’s Louisiana pan? On a June weekend it came home with me, giving our kids the excuse to visit a local blueberry patch that they’ve been waiting for since school let out. After eating their fill they brought home their haul, with which we made a Louisiana-shaped blueberry pie so rich, sweet, and luxurious, the irregular borders of Alisa’s beautifully crafted skillet could scarcely contain it (indeed, by the time it emerged from the oven there was a fair bit of molten blueberry lava spewing from the Rigolets). But no matter; we ate it with ice cream, sitting on the back porch late on a firefly-lit, cricket-singing Louisiana Saturday night. Sure, the best-laid plans don’t always work out quite the way we imagine. But homemade Louisiana-shaped blueberry pie makes a pretty good consolation prize. You might even say it’s like having your pie, and eating it, too.