To have been brought up in a home with at least one good cook is a blessing.
Michelle Broussard Cart was especially blessed with three talented cooks contributing to the family's meals growing up in New Iberia. Her mother, Dot Beyt Broussard, specialized in hot breakfasts and big Sunday dinners, while her father, Sam Broussard, excelled at the barbecue pit. “Nanny,” Agnes Williams, of St. Martinville, the family's longtime housekeeper, brought her rice-and-gravy skills to weekday meals.
Cart and I recently got together to make one of her favorite Nanny recipes: meat pies. The recipe was originally created for a single 9-inch pie, which Cart adapted for making bite-sized appetizers. As she taught me small pie assembly tricks, she regaled me with stories of a well-fed childhood and reminisced about "Nanny," who she considered to be the best cook in the world.
Cart’s mother was a great cook who enjoyed feeding people. She believed in a full breakfast every day, starting with fruit like sliced bananas in milk, ready-to-peel orange segments or grapefruit halves lovingly sectioned with a serrated grapefruit knife. Bacon, sausage and scrambled eggs were served with a rotation of pancakes, Bisquick cinnamon rolls, French Market doughnuts and Cart’s father’s cornbread with milk.
Sunday breakfasts were hot doughnuts from Landry’s on Center Street followed by a large dinner with cousins. Cart’s mother used the fine china to serve a full meal starting with a salad, typically a green salad, a wedge salad or that quintessential Southern favorite: the cheddar pineapple salad (canned pineapple ring with a dollop of mayo in the center topped with grated cheddar cheese). A meat and starch main dish would be accompanied by various vegetable dishes, typically something made ahead and taken out of the freezer like stuffed bell peppers or cabbage rolls.
Breakfasts, suppers and Sunday dinners were mostly taken care of by Cart’s mother, but weekday dinners were Nanny’s purview. In 1957, before Cart was born, Williams had been hired as a housekeeper and cook working six days a week for the Broussards. For decades, she prepared daily sit-down lunches which were often large affairs as the family trucking business grew and employees of Sam Broussard Trucking Company would join the family for these home-cooked meals.
Beyond cooking and cleaning, Williams took care of Cart and her siblings when their parents were out of town, treating them as if they were the children she never had. She continued to work for the family into the 1980s when Cart left home for college, often returning to learn a few of Nanny’s cooking skills including how to smother pork chops, make a gravy and fry chicken (sizzle in 2 inches of hot Crisco, flip once, then cover until done).
Williams passed away many years ago, but her legacy of hard work and delicious home-cooked food lives on in her recipe below.
Cart’s tips for making Nanny’s meat pies
1. Quadruple the recipe and freeze a stash of unbaked pies to have appetizers at the ready. Pies can be baked from frozen by increasing the baking time.
2. Freeze hand pies in layers separated by wax paper and placed in a gallon-sized zippered plastic bag or durable storage container.
3. Instead of sealing her hand pies with a fork, Cart uses a 3½-inch pastry cutter to seal the edges.
4. The recipe is readily converted into a single pie. In this case, Cart recommends Mrs. Smith’s 9-inch deep dish flaky pie crusts which come in a package of two preshaped frozen pie crusts in tins. Use the second crust to create the top crust. Add canned peas and mushrooms to the meat mixture to make a meal of the pie. Serve with mashed potatoes on the side.
Meat Pies
Serves 6-8. Recipe is by Michelle Broussard Cart, adapted from a recipe by Agnes Williams.
1 pound ground beef
1 onion, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, crushed
2-4 tablespoons flour
1 (14.5-ounce) can beef broth
Salt to taste
Red pepper to taste
Black pepper to taste
Garlic powder to taste
Pillsbury premade refrigerated double pie crust in a box
1. In a skillet, brown ground beef.
2. Add onions and garlic; cook until transparent.
3. Drain excess oil.
4. Add 2 tablespoons flour and about half a can beef broth (¾ cup).
5. Add salt, red pepper, black pepper and garlic powder.
6. Add more flour and/or beef broth until you get the consistency you would like.
7. Add more seasonings if needed.
8. Roll out one pie crust.
9. Using a spoon, put small scoops of meat mixture about 2 inches apart on the pie crust, fitting as many as you can, leaving about an inch of space around the outer edges.
10. Roll out the second pie crust and lay it on top of the crust with the scoops of meat mixture. Pat together between the scoops.
11. Using a round biscuit cutter, cut circles around each scoop to form small pies.
12. Pull away the excess dough and reserve to make more pies.
13. Seal the edges of each small pie with a fork and prick holes on top of each. Arrange pies on a baking sheet. Reroll excess dough and make as many pies as possible.
14. Bake at 350 F for about 20 minutes, or until brown. Alternatively, after step 7 the meat mixture and pie shell can be used to put together a single larger pie.