Naomi's Masterpiece

While Sam was whipping up his salmon and corn chowder, Naomi spent the hour making and baking a pie for dessert.

The first thing Naomi learned how to make as a child was pie dough - her mother taught her. Her mother must be a wonderful woman, as Naomi's piecrust is, hands down, the best I've ever tasted. It is very short and buttery with a little hint of sweetness, tender as a love poem and flaky as a teenager.

Into the pie shell, she put blackberries and golden raspberries, gently suspended in a delicate custard. If there is a better berry for pie than blackberries, you'd have to convince me of it, and the golden raspberries added a bright note of color to the wonderful flavor of ripe, jammy berries.

Naomi has shared her recipe with me and given me permission to share it with you. Make your own masterpiece while the wild berries are still ripe on the canes around here. And don't forget to thank Naomi's Mom.

Naomi's Berry Pie

Pastry:

8 Tablespoons all-purpose flour* (*Note: Naomi uses a regular table spoon, rather than a measuring spoon, also heaping the spoon, so it works out to about 1.5 cups flour)

3/4-1 stick unsalted cold butter, cut into pieces (use the rest to butter the pie dish)

A sprinkling of brown (or white) granulated sugar (hers was "hippie sugar," the coarse kind)

1 egg

Measure the flour and sugar in a bowl. Add the butter and work it quickly with your fingers until it looks like crumbs. Whisk the egg and add it with few strokes to the butter/sugar/flour mixture. After mixing, wrap in plastic and put in the fridge for 30 minutes or freezer for 10 minutes. Roll out to line a pie plate. Blind bake by pricking the bottom of the crust with a fork in several places and bake for about 15 minutes at 400 degrees F. Turn the oven down to 375 degrees.

Filling:

1 egg

2 egg yolks

1/2 cup heavy cream

Sugar (the amount depends on the sweetness/tartness of the berries, roughly 2 teaspoons over the fruit and 1 Tablespoon in the custard mixture. Less for strawberries or sweeter fruit)

Cinnamon to taste

Lemon zest

Fill pie base with berries (blackberries and raspberries, or other combos as you wish). Mix custard mixture and pour over and around fruit.

Bake at 375 degrees F until it smells ready and pie crust is browning, about 25-30 minutes more. Remove from oven and let rest for a few minutes until the custard is well set. Serve warm, or at room temperature. It's swoony-delicious either way. I speak from experience.

Low Guilt Pie

There I was reading Cookiecrumb's latest tirade against the twin evils of white sugar, refined flour and fat, and I thought, "She's right! Summer fruits, when they are ripe and perfect, don't need the sugar embellishment. Let me try a pie with no sugar whatsoever."

So, I cut up one big peach, two or three nectarines and a small handful of strawberries, seasoned them with nothing but freshly grated nutmeg, and encased them in a Star Dough pastry. The entire prep took about 10 minutes, no more.

Slid it into a 375 degree oven for about 20-25 minutes, until the crust browned and the fruit softened and was artfully tipped here and there in black.

I cut a slice of galette as soon as it emerged from the oven and cooled enough. It did taste fresh but I have to admit that I missed that sweet hit. For me, it was like low-fat cookies, sort of a letdown. I agree with Cookiecrumb that you don't need to embellish fresh fruit but, given that you are going to cook it, I'd say go ahead add a driz of honey or a spoonful of sugar. This galette would have benefitted from just one tablespoon of sugar, adding a hint of sweetness without masking the fresh ripeness of the fruit.

Our strategy is to give at least half of what I bake away to the neighbors, which promotes good neighbor karma while we get a taste of the goodies without the calories of eating the whole thing. I'm going back to Full Guilt Pie - in moderation.

Elna's Pie

Making this pie reminds me of First Husband's mother, a cute little bantam hen of a lady who first introduced me to strawberry pie. My first thought was, "Jeez, won't it just taste like jam?" I was not enthusiastic.

I can still recall my delighted surprise when I found that the fruit is not cooked, just gently enrobed in a flavorful glaze that holds the fruit together in the crisp, buttery crust. Since there is simply no way to improve on fresh, ripe strawberries, she had me from the first bite.

I hadn't made one of these in years, so I was a little shaky on the method but I had lovely strawberries and fresh raspberries just begging to be made into dessert, so I dove in. Elna would not have approved of deviating from her all-strawberry theme and she'd have served it with whipped cream; I opted to delete the cream, to reduce the sugar substantially and to experiment with different berries. I think she also used food coloring to enhance her glaze - mine was lightly pink while my memory of hers is deeply red.

The result was a great pie for a warm day, one that highlighted the fresh flavors of berries at their peak. It's not a quick pie to make, requiring separate baking and cooling of the shell, lengthy maceration of the berries, separate cooking of the glaze, and chilling of the finished creation but none of the steps is really difficult and the taste is well worth the effort. I simplified the recipe by using Star dough for the crust, baking and cooling it according to the package directions. The rest I did pretty much by Elna's directions; no need to mess with a winner.

Strawberry-Raspberry Glaze Pie, adapted from Elna's recipe

6-8 cups stemmed strawberries and raspberries

3/4 cup sugar + 2 Tablespoons

1 Tablespoon corn starch

2 Tablespoons lemon juice

A baked, cooled pastry shell

Leave small strawberries whole or cut up larger ones. It's prettier if you leave all the berries whole and arrange them in the crust, pointy side up. In a bowl, sprinkle the strawberries with the 3/4 cup of sugar and let stand for one hour, stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar as the juice forms. Drain and reserve the juice. Set the berries aside.

To the juice, add water to make 1-1/2 cups. In a small, heavy bottomed pot, mix corn starch with remaining sugar. Add juice mixture and boil, whisking, until the glaze turns clear and thickens. Off the heat, stir in the lemon juice and let it get cold.

Drain strawberries again so berries only go into the crust and add the raspberries now (they are so fragile that it's best not to macerate them), then pour the glaze over. You may not need all the glaze - just stop when you feel the pie will hold together. Chill well.

Serve with whipped cream, if you like.

The Secret Ingredient

Cooks these days are experimenting with all kinds of wacky combinations and finding that really delicious tastes result - one standard example, chocolate caramels with smoked salt on top. Who woulda thunk it?

Last week, I was reading about Cookiecrumb's savory clafoutis and Molly's apricot tart in the same day.
I left a jesting comment on Cookiecrumb's blog about adding bacon and nectarines to a clafoutis, only half seriously, but then when I was reading about the fruit tart, I thought, "Man, nectarines would be great in a tart like that - and why not bacon, too?" So, I set to work to combine those two individually-delicious-but-odd-together ingredients in a tart similar to Molly's but with a Cookiecrumb flair.

I expected the bacon to add salt and texture to the tart but what it actually added was smoke. As it cooked with the fruit, the bacon softened (even though I crisped it first in a pan) and the salt was lost in the sweetness of the tart, but the smoky quality remained and it really was a fun undertaste (is that a word?) that sneaked in around the fruitiness and sweetness. I still wanted a little saltiness, so I tried adding fleur de sel to my next bite of tart but it was not a success, too aggressively salty and raw.

As with all experiments, some parts work- and the rest blow up the lab! Another time, I'd still add the bacon as my secret ingredient but with more realistic expectations.

Apple Smile Pie

Apple pie. Heaven in a buttery crust, especially when this time I thought to add some of the anise seeds that last summer Cookiecrumb taught me are delicious. They had been growing right outside my door but I never tasted them until she urged me to do so.

Thanks, Cookiecrumb, they have enhanced lots of meals at our house, most recently this apple pie!