The Rankin Ledger

by Cynthia Wall
Publication Date: 11/1/08

Gwen McKee (left) and Barbara Moseley are celebrating their 30th year at Quail Ridge Press with good recipes and new cookbooks.
As guests enter, Gwen McKee and Barbara Moseley are dressing a cake.
That's right a cake.
The Cherry Chocolate Cheesecake, (page 256 in their newest cookbook), sits adorned in its chocolate icing, shiny red maraschino cherries spaced at intervals around its base.
Gwen holds a can of whipped topping, aiming its nozzle at the small spaces between the cherries.
A couple of squirts and she stands back. Not right.
She removes the whipped cream.
So this is what happens when an idea doesn't quite work the way she wanted.
"That's right," Barbara said. "You improvise."
That readiness to try, back up and try again, has put the two on the cooking map with their series of Best of the Best cookbook series.
Together they've published some 90 cookbooks and dozens of other titles.
Gwen and her husband Barney founded the publishing company, Quail Ridge Press, 30 years ago.
It's a story they don't mind repeating, still laughing at the highs and lows along the way.
It started with one little cookbook that wasn't a match for University Press of Mississippi where Barney worked. In 1978, he brought it home to Gwen and suggested she publish "The Twelve Days of Christmas Cookbook." She published it and sold it despite her lack of marketing experience.
"We were living tight, check to check, that was the one thing," Barney said.
To get started, Gwen sold one of the grandfather clocks she had collected, using the money to incorporate and buy an electric typewriter and office supplies.
The small volume sold. Gwen began editing and publishing other cookbooks.
Soon, her friend Barbara Moseley was missing her golfing partner.
"I said, 'If I come over and help you to get it done faster, can we can get on a golf course?" Barbara said.
Three decades and thousands of miles later, the golfing partners are the front women for one of the best known cookbook series in the nation, "The Best of the Best." In all, Quail Ridge Press has some 200 titles in it's line.
Barney retired in 1987 and joined the company full time.
"We had just gotten the Best of the Best series going," Barney said.
"It seemed to indicate we might be able to make a living off it."
The Best of the Best was one of those crossroads Barney said people take. Friends kept asking for Gwen's favorite recipes from the cookbooks she'd published. Those questions generated the idea to pull the best recipes from Mississippi's cookbooks and compile them into one.
Mississippi's Best of the Best birthed the series in 1983, followed by Louisiana and Texas.
Today, with all 50 states represented in the series, the company has expanded it focus to non-cooking titles, mostly regional.
But cooking is central to this business and it's never far from thought. With a full kitchen in its Brandon offices, recipe experimentation is key.
"We've had people send us recipes from day one," Gwen said.
"We research constantly," Barbara said, mentioning the Internet and waving a hand toward regional cookbooks on a shelf in her nearby office. "Our favorites are probably the older ones."
"Our motto is to preserve our American food heritage," Gwen said. So they focus on the kind of recipes passed down in many families. "We also like to include the new things, "Gwen said. "They didn't have muffin mix way back then."
Those shortcuts make cooking faster in today's kitchens.
Their kitchen experiences started the old fashioned way.
"We were '50s girls," Gwen said.
"In the kitchen, we picked it up by osmosis," Barbara added.
That first dish? "Probably spaghetti," Gwen said.
Her cooking repertoire expanded when she married and found herself entertaining friends in Chicago, where Barney finished school.
"People expected me to know how to make gumbo," said Gwen, a Louisiana native.
"I'd get on the phone and say 'Mama, how do you make gumbo?'" she said and laughed, adding, "I had to take two buses and a train to get frozen okra" in Chicago.
Pralines were another favorite. "I used to make them and sell them in the board rooms in Chicago," Gwen said. "My mother used to send me the pecans."
Barbara, a self-described country girl, said she probably started cooking vegetables. They're still her favorite today. "We have a vegetable garden, a small one," she said. "Mother's in her 90s and still has to have a vegetable garden."
Their work now focuses on passing that knowledge on to other cooks in a simple to understand format.
"We focus on writing to make recipes read as simply as we possibly can," Gwen said.
And the recipes? They've tested thousands and thousands -roughly 17,000 in fact. Each of the 41 Best of the Best state books has more than 300 recipes collected from 50-100 cookbooks from that state or region (some states share a cookbook).
"Sometimes we try a recipe and it doesn't work," Gwen said.
"Sometimes we can change one thing and it works."
They seek recipes with simple ingredients and cooking processes, not the complicated things high end chefs do, but tasks most cooks can replicate in their kitchens.
Their recipes, said Barbara, are "the ones ladies are going to take to church."
Catching the various regional flavors has been the trip of their lives - literally.
The pair have traveled to every state in the nation, following an itinerary that leaves room for exploration, they've tasted every regional dish they could find.
How many? "I can't even fantom that," Barbara said.
The trip moved from the streets of the states to the studios of QVC in 1997. There, the pair said, they often prepared the foods the night before a show in their motel room. Today, food stylists help.
Gwen points to the Pink Meringues. "I've been doing Pink Meringues a long time," she said. "These have traveled a long way."
Traveled as in suitcases through airport security to various book signings, QVC showings and other meetings.
Barbara laughs. The pair often flew with a suitcase full of food, she said. In recent years, she said, they've learned to avoid taking dips.
Even airport security personnel who knew them couldn't let them board with something you can stick your finger in, she said.
With October, and the official celebration of their 30 years in business, over, they're now concentrating on improving the books they have and adding to them. Sunday, they'll be on QVC to debut "Best of the Best Fast and Fabulous Party Foods and Appetizers," their newest cookbook.
Nov. 13-15, they'll again offer their Holiday Hurt Sale, discounts on slightly damaged and overstock titles, from their offices on Brooks Drive in Brandon.
Then it's on to other things, a biography of former Choctaw Chief Phillip Martin and a collection of historian Forrest Cooper's Mississippi historical columns.
And, Barney said, possibly more Best of the Best in the Fast and Fabulous series.
For Gwen and Barbara, there's always another cookbook to explore. So with this history, so they have few recipes they've repeatedly make at home.
"We spend so much time trying other recipes, it's hard to do things over and over," Gwen said.
"Party Foods and Appetizers," includes a few of those time-tested recipes, like the Pink Meringues, and new ones, too. Try them today or order the book Sunday.

Voted-Most-Popular Pink Meringues

Ingredients:
3 egg whites
1 and one-half ounces raspberry Jell-O
three-fourths cup sugar
one-eighth teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon white vinegar
1 (6-ounce) package semisweet chocolate chips
one-half cup finely chopped pecans or walnuts

Directions:
Beat egg whites until barely stiff. Add gelatin gradually, then sugar a little at at time. Beat in salt and vinegar until stiff peaks form.
Fold in chips and nuts. Drop small teaspoonfuls on foil-lined baking sheets. Bake 20 minutes at 250 degrees. Turn off heat and leave in oven 2 hours. Makes about 80.

Savory Pepper Jelly Cheesecake

Ingredients:
1 cup crushed Ritz Crackers or crushed pretzels
1 stick butter, melted
2 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
1 and one-fourth cups sour cream
2 eggs
2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese
1 tablespoon minced garlic
one-half cup chopped green onions
1 teaspoon white pepper2 teaspoons Worcestershire
1 jar green pepper jelly
1 jar red pepper jelly
1 cup toasted pecan chips

Directions:
Combine crackers with melted butter; press into bottom of springform pan. Combine cream cheese, sour cream and eggs in a bowl until smooth.
Stir in cheese, garlic, onions, pepper and Worcestershire. Pour over crust. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until cheesecake is set and firm in the middle. Allow to cool on wire rack. Refrigerate until serving time.
When ready to serve, remove from springform pan and transfer to serving platter. Make an outer ring of green pepper jelly and fill center with red pepper jelly. Top green jelly outer ring with toasted pecans. Cut into wedges. Serve with Ritz Crackers..

Veggie Ranch Pinwheels

Ingredients:
2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
1 (1-ounce) package dry ranch salad dressing mix
2 green onions, minced 4 (12-ounce) flour tortillas
1 (4-ounce) jar diced pimentos
1 (4-ounce) jar diced green chiles
1 (2 and one-fourth ounce) can sliced black olives (optional)

Directions:
Combine first three ingredients; spread on tortillas. Drain vegetables and blot with paper towels. Spread equal amounts of remaining ingredients on top of cream cheese. Roll tortillas tightly; chill at least two hours. Cut into 1-inch pieces. Makes three dozen.

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