Pie song

Song to Pie

Pie.
Oh my.
Nothing tastes sweet,
Wet, salty, and dry
All at once so well as pie.

Apple and pumpkin and mince and black bottom,
I'll come to your place every day if you've got 'em.
Pie.

Roy Blount Jr. in "Save Room for Pie: Food Songs and Chewy Ruminations"

Deep-fried pie

"I drove back to Gene's Barbeque, had a pile of fried catfish and black-eyed peas, and then was offered dessert.

"'Want some deep-fried pie?'

"'Never had it.'

"'You'll love it. Chocolate pie. We wrap it in pastry and deep-fry it crispy. Why are you smiling, sir?'"

Paul Theroux in "Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads"

Peaches in pie

Georgia Peach Pie

from Cheryl Day and Griffith Day's "Back in the Day Bakery Made with Love"

1 extra-flaky pie crust

2 1/2 pounds peaches, peeled, pitted and cut into 1/4-inch slices

2 tsp. grated lemon zest

2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice

1/4 cup packed light brown sugar

3 Tbsp. cornstarch

1/2 tsp. fine sea salt

1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp. ground allspice

1/4 tsp. ground ginger

1 large egg, lightly beaten with a pinch of fine sea salt for egg wash

coarse sugar or raw sugar for sprinkling

Roll out one disk of dough, fit it into a 9-inch pie pan, and refrigerate for 30 minutes, then "dock" the bottom of the crust and return it to the refrigerator. 

Roll out the second disk, cut into lattice strips, place on a baking sheet and refrigerate.

Put the peaches in a large bowl, add the lemon zest and lemon juice, and toss gently.

In a small bowl, mix together the brown sugar, cornstarch, salt, cinnamon, allspice and ginger. Gently toss the peaches with this mixture.

Pour the filling into the prepared pie crust. Use the chilled dough strips to form a lattice over the filling crust. Put the pie on a rimmed baking sheet and put in the refrigerator for 15 minutes to set the crust.

Meanwhile, position a rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Remove the pie from the refrigerator and brush the pie crust with the egg wash. Sprinkle with coarse sugar. 

Bake for 15 minutes, then reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees F and bake for 45 to 50 minutes, until the crust is golden brown and the fruit is bubbling. 

Remove the pie from the oven and cool on a wire rack for 2 to 3 hours.

The pie can be stored at room temperature for up to 1 day or refrigerated for up to 2 days. Makes 8 servings.

for the extra-flaky pie crust:

2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 Tbsp. granulated sugar

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. fine sea salt

1/2 cup ice water

1 Tbsp. cider vinegar

1/2 pound (2 sticks) cold unsalted butter cut into 1-inch cubes

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

In a measuring cup or a small bowl, combine the water and cider vinegar. Set aside.

Toss the butter in the flour mixture to gently coat it. Then use a pastry blender to cut the butter into the flour. You should have various-sized pieces of butter, ranging from sandy patches to pea-sized chunks, with some larger bits as well. 

Drizzle in about half of the ice water mixture and stir lightly with a fork until the flour is evenly moistened and the dough starts to come together. 

If the dough seems dry, add a little more ice water 1 to 2 tablespoons at a time. The dough will still look a bit shaggy at this point. If you grab a small piece of dough and press it slightly with your hand, it should mostly hold together.

Dump the dough out onto an un-floured work surface and gather it together into a tight mound. 

Using the heel of your hand, smear the dough a little at a time, pushing it away from you and working your way down the mass of dough to create flat layers of flour and butter. 

Then gather the dough back together with a bench scraper, layering the clumps of dough on top of one another. 

Repeat the process once or twice more; the dough should still have some big pieces of butter visible.

Cut the dough in half. Shape each piece into a disk and flatten it. Wrap the disks in plastic and put in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour, or overnight, to rest.

The dough can be stored for 3 days in the refrigerator or up to 1 month in the freezer. If frozen, defrost in the refrigerator overnight. Makes 2 9-inch pie crusts.

A veggie diet

"Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread and pumpkin pie."

Jim Davis

Pie necessity

"We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie."

David Mamet

Georgia peaches

"Peach pie was one of the reasons I was so excited to have a stop in Georgia on the Tour of Pie, and the peaches did not disappoint.

"I was in town for the month of July and the sweet, juicy peaches were at the height of the season. I was staying with Kay and Patrick, the generous parents of my old college friend and Atlanta native Sean, who had volunteered his parents' guest room after hearing about my travels. 

"In late July, Kay invited a few of her friends over for a pie party. Each of the ladies brought their own peaches. I provided the crust ingredients, and they all learned how to make peach pie. Sipping on iced tea and eating a warm slice of Georgia peach pie was the perfect way to end my visit."

Teeny Lamothe in "Teeny's Tour of Pie: A Cookbook"

Summer pie

There is nothing like hours of Garrison Keillor live on stage to inspire strawberry and rhubarb pie days later. And so strawberry and rhubarb pie it is.

Second-term pie

Whether we are better or worse financially, philosophically, socially or emotionally, we still need pie. And pie is what we have, without the meringue.

Sweet Potato Pie
from White House executive chef Cristeta Comerford

Dough

1 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. lemon zest
2 egg yolks
2 1/2 cups flour

Filling

3 sweet potatoes
4 sticks cinnamon
5 star anise
1 orange, quartered
2 Tbsp. melted butter

Custard

3 cups crème fraiche
4 whole eggs
1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt

Honey meringue topping

3 egg whites
2 cups honey, reduced by half

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

For the pie dough: Cream the sugar and butter. Add the dry ingredients and gently mix. Incorporate the vanilla extract, lemon zest and egg yolks. Form into a ball and let rest in the refrigerator.

Roll the dough to fit a 12-inch tart pan. Top with parchment paper and cooking beads and bake blind for 12 minutes. Set aside to cool.

For the sweet potato puree: Bake the whole sweet potatoes and all the aromatics on a sheet tray at 350 degrees F until tender. Scoop the meat and pass through a chinoise. Set aside to cool. In the meantime, mix the custard base and fold into the cooled sweet potato puree.

Pour into the cooked tart shell and finish cooking until set, about 35 minutes.

For the honey meringue topping: Whip the egg whites until stiff and incorporate the hot reduced honey. Top the cooked sweet potato pie and broil until the meringue gets a toasted color. Makes 8 to 10 servings.

Passion for pie

"On Thanksgiving, I discovered pie. Until then, I had only known apple pie, but Neda's grandmother baked rhubarb, sour cherry, pumpkin, and peach, taking each out of the oven just when the fruit was bubbling around the edges. Not surprisingly, it became my favorite holiday and the beginning of a lifelong passion for pie."

Donia Bijan, in "Maman's Homesick Pie: A Persian Heart in an American Kitchen"

A is for apple pie

"A is for apple pie. The nursery rhyme lives with us from our earliest years and culinary memories. As does the scent of autumn apples steaming in a pie; pouring hot, silky, vanilla-flecked custard over thick gluey-appled pastry triangles; pushing a clot of thick yellow cream on to the sugared pastry top with your fingers; or dropping a cold scoop of the best homemade vanilla ice cream over the summit, the hot beating the cold into melting submission.

"Apple pie is the alpha and omega of pies - well, at least of sweet pies - and there are, I'm sure, as many versions as there are cooks, but that is the joy of it.

"From cheese crusts and spices to crumble tops and gooky molasses-sugared tops punctuated with scrunched walnuts; from the plainest pie to the traditional winter welter-weight warmer, apple hat; from rhubarb and apple to apple and quince, apple and raisin, blackberry and apple."

Tamasin Day-Lewis, in "Tarts with Tops On or How to Make the Perfect Pie"

Sweet or savory

"Is there anyone who doesn't inwardly melt at the sight of a golden glazed pie crust, with its little cottage chimney of steam wafting the scent of buried juices, the auguries of delight of what lies beneath?

"There is something so recondite about making a pie, and yet its image is dainty-dish, nursery-rhyme redolent of comfort and simplicity, 'as American as apple pie', 'as easy as pie'.

"The image of the pie is somehow quaint, romantic, one we feel nostalgic for; it is old-fashioned, welcoming, the cosiness we imagine when we are homesick, lovesick.

"The prinking and crimping and rolling and baking, the making and shaping by hand, the crafting of the crust are all about feeling, smelling, touching and tapping."

Tamasin Day-Lewis, in "Tarts with Tops On or How to Make the Perfect Pie"

Talking about pie

"The expression as easy as pie, meaning very easy indeed, is a curious one. Why should a pie be easy, after all? It seems that the ease of the pie is in the eating rather than the making of it, as in the similar expression nice as pie. Both originate in nineteenth-century America, where likening something to a particular pie is also archetypally American - as American as apple pie, in fact.

"Something described as pie in the sky is essentially a good idea but unlikely to amount to anything in reality. The phrase comes from a trade union parody of the hymn 'The Sweet By and By' that was often sung during the years of the Great Depression early in the twentieth century...

"Moving back across the Atlantic, to have a finger in every pie is an expression commonly used to describe a person who has an interest in many things, especially business-related. It would be easier to understand if the phrase read 'a finger in making every pie,' which would rid us of the image of somebody going around poking their finger into other people's peach crumble, thereby suggesting an interfering meddler. The expression has been in use for over four hundred years and is applied to anybody with wide and varied business interests. It is also used by some people to describe themselves in an attempt to appear mysterious and interesting when in fact they've probably never had their finger in anybody's pie."

Albert Jack, in "What Caesar Did for My Salad: The Curious Stories Behind Our Favorite Foods"

Why ask why?

Peach pie.

Easy as pie

It is often easier to eat pie than it is to slice and serve pie intact. The filling is sweeter than I would have liked. But it is nothing a small scoop of vanilla ice cream afterward can not temper.

Hard to resist

"Then the Tour started. And it was impossible to resist. It always is. It sits there like a slice of key lime pie or the last piece of fried chicken, mocking will power. Cycling may punish you later, but it's so seductive in the present. That is what the sport knows, why it perseveres, despite its repeated, maddening mess-making..."

Only in The Wall Street Journal perhaps can a sports writer compare the Tour de France, "already stuck in a queasy fog," to key lime pie and fried chicken. Oddly enough, though, the references work.

Pie it is

And so pie it is.

Strawberries for cheap

I get a full flat of strawberries for cheap from the farmers' market, intending to share with people back at the house, relatives who had come to visit on a Sunday afternoon.

Since they leave unexpectedly before I return, however, I find myself with a whole lot of strawberries. Their loss is my gain. Just as well, I say, and dig into dessert books on the desk for inspiration.

From "The Grand Central Baking Book," for example, by Piper Davis and Ellen Jackson, I figure out how to devise a terrific filling for fresh strawberry pie.

From Jennie Schacht's "Farmers' Market Desserts," I am tempted to try a strawberries and cream cake roll.

And from "Rustic Fruit Desserts" by Cory Schreiber and Julie Richardson, I toy with the idea of a rhubarb cream cheese pie with fresh strawberries. The options, it seems, are endless.

Gloppy, soggy pie

Slate has a piece on pie. It is wicked, meant to turn readers off the sweet treat. But, of course, it has the opposite effect on some of us.

Among the highlights:

"Unlike the tart, which sits low and topless in a shallow pan with a svelte layer of topping, pie requires a hefty piece of bakeware with outward-sloping sides, practically dooming the pastry to collapse.

"And unlike a torte - a short and modest cake combining fruit and nuts in balanced proportions - most modern pies rely on giant reservoirs of loose filling or inches of piled custard and whipped cream.

"A slice of strawberry tart with coffee is the perfect overture to a postprandial drink, a late conversation, or a night of love. Eat an oozing slice of strawberry pie, and it's time to look for Tums and go to bed."

Lunchtime pie

"Nobody makes strawberry chocolate pie the way you do. Wednesday is my favorite day of the week because I get to have a slice of it. I think about it as I'm waking up. You could solve all the problems of the world with that pie...

"Just a pie? It's downright expert. A thing of beauty. How each flavor opens itself one by one, like a chapter in a book.

"First a burst of exotic spices. Just a hint of it. Then you're flooded with chocolate, dark and sweet, like an old love affair. And finally strawberry, the way strawberry was always supposed to taste but never knew how.

"In fact, I tell you what, forget all the other stuff I ordered. Just bring me the damn pie. That's all I want. I don't care if it's not a well-balanced meal. Just bring me the pie..."

Joe (Andy Griffith) talking about Jenna's (Keri Russell) special strawberry chocolate oasis pie in the film "Waitress."

Why ask why?

Pie, pie, three-berry pie.

Though the crust is store-bought, the lattice is not. The filling, consisting of strawberries, blueberries and raspberries, is totally summer.