Heirloom Tomato Hand Pies with Bacon, Cheddar & Thai Basil Jalapenos

A couple of weeks ago I head the real pleasure of working with the menswear collective MUTINY DC, along with creative director Morgan Hungerford West and photographer Justin T. Gellerson to develop a summer heirloom tomato pie recipe.

I've been keen on Green Tomato Pies this summer, inspired by Richmond chef Travis Milton and the rave reviews I'd heard of his fried pies at the Appalachian Food Summit. When MUTINY suggested using the unripe summer fruit in hand pies, my mind went to savory and to fond memories of this Tomato Bacon Jalapeno Pie I made for a Buckeye Banjo party a couple of years ago.

Subbing in Gordy's Thai Basil Jalapenos gives this recipe its D.C. bearings and complicates the flavor. The result is an adult take on the classic BLT sandwich--my favorite way to enjoy fresh tomatoes--ripe and green--from the backyard garden.

If you end up having leftover filling, save it and scramble it with eggs the next morning for a killer breakfast.

The other delight of this project, was that the folks at Etto generously let us work in their handsome kitchen, meaning I got to bake these pies (and cook the bacon!) in the beautiful wood-fired oven. Ever had bacon cooked in a brick oven? It's practically DOUBLE SMOKED. I highly recommended it.

Heirloom Tomato Hand Pies with Bacon, Cheddar, and Thai Basil Jalapenos

Makes 8-10 hand pies, depending on size

Ingredients

Nothing in the House Pie Crust*

3/4 lbs. heirloom tomatoes, half green/unripe and half ripe (meaty varieties are best), diced

1/2 tsp. sea salt

1 1/2 c. sharp cheddar, shredded

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 c. Gordy's Thai Basil Jalapenos, diced and drained

4 oz. bacon, cooked and diced or crumbled

2 Tblsp. fresh basil, julienned and then halved into small strips

1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper (optional)

1 beaten egg + 1 tsp. milk/cream for egg wash

Flake sea salt, for dusting

Directions

1. Prepare Nothing-in-the-House pie crust as per the directions. Once chilled, roll out dough onto a floured surface and cut into rectangles of equal size. Place cut crust on parchment paper on a baking sheet and return to chill in the fridge while you prepare the filling.

2. Place diced tomatoes in a colander and place in a large mixing bowl or kitchen sink. Sprinkle tomatoes with salt and toss, then let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes while the juices drain.

3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a large mixing bowl combine cheddar, minced garlic, drained jalapenos, cooked bacon, basil, cayenne pepper, if using, and the drained tomatoes. Stir with a wooden spoon to combine.

4. Remove cut dough from the fridge and mound filling in the center of half of the cut rectangles. Brush edges of dough with cold water and place a matching piece of dough on top. Press the edges with a fork to seal. Brush hand pies with egg wash, sprinkle with flake sea salt, and cut a steam vent in the top of each with a fork.

5. On a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, bake hand pies for 35-40 minutes, rotating baking sheet halfway through. Filling will be bubbling and crust will be golden brown when done. Transfer pies to a cooling rack and let cool slightly. Serve still warm.

*Tad suggested using a partial lard crust, and I agree that it would be a great complement to the filling. You can replace half the butter in this recipe with leaf lard, or use your favorite butter/lard pie crust recipe.

See MUTINY DC for the original post. Photos by Justin T. Gellerson

White Nectarine Frangipane Tart with Homemade Puff Pastry

There's a part in one of my favorite films, Agnès Varda's The Gleaners and I, when she becomes obsessed with the idea of filming her own hands. In a documentary about people who harvest leftover crops from fields, dumpsters, and markets, this could seem tangential, but through Varda's eyes it becomes strikingly relevant, personal. She says, "I can with one hand, film the other one. I like the idea that one hand would always be gleaning, the other one always filming. I like very much the idea of the hands. The hands are the tools of the gleaners, you know. Hands are the tool of the painter, the artist."

I've had a complicated relationship with my own hands. Growing up, I was proud that I could reach an octave + 2 on the piano, but as I got older, I felt these double-jointed extremeties to be a little too large and unfeminine, oddly shaped and overly wrinkled, not to mention constantly cold. A few inconsiderate comments about them from a guy friend in college left me longing for the hands of a Victorian lady--small and smooth and delicate, or at least her gloves so I could hide my own big paws.

A palm reading by my friend Margaret helped me to come around. She pointed out my spatulate fingers, indicating wit and intellect, saw the intersecting lines and size as shape of my hands as those of a maker, an artist, a baker. She helped me to realize that they suit me and are important tools and carriers of memory.



Like Agnès Varda, I too am drawn to "the idea of the hands." They are storied entities, holding so much in their lines and wrinkles. You can tell so much about a person from their hands-- for a quite literal example, I think of the scene in Little Women when Professor Baier runs into Jo on the street. He says, "You know, when I first saw you I thought, 'ah, she is a writer."" When Jo asks how he knew, he points to the ink marks on her hands. My hands are the body part which bears most of my scars-- tissued memories of cleaning mortar off bricks at our old house, the unexplainable white line that helped me to remember my right from my left, the countless burns from baking and callused guitar string fingers. They're also the part of ourselves that we probably see the most, not through the lens of a photograph or mirror, but as they exist in the real world. Our hands are a constant presence in our field of vision. I could pick mine out of a line-up anywhere, but I could I do the same with my ankle? The back of my neck? I'm not so sure. They are such familiar agents and symbols of the self.

One of the most compelling things about baking for me is its tactile nature, of being able to bring something into existence, to shape it in my very hands in all of its stages. I'd been putting off making my own puff pastry for awhile. It seemed too daunting, too time consuming, too much butter (joke)! But some experiments in a wood-fired oven got me thinking about it again, and yesterday I found myself with the air conditioning back on in our house, a full day with nothing planned, and enough butter for the task, so the time was nigh.



For my first experimentation, I used Ashley Rodriguez of Not Without Salt's recipe for a puff pastry shortcut on Food52. It's not the full-on deal in which you work a butter packet into a flour packet, but it takes less time and effort has given me the confidence to go all the way next time. It also makes a BEAUTIFUL, puffed and buttery dough with thin flaky layer upon flaky layer. Maybe not quite as many as you'd get with the more time consuming method, but enough to make me give a little yelp of joy when I opened up the oven... and every time I've taken a bite.

I adapted a Martha Stewart recipe for an Apricot-Pistachio Tart into a White Nectarine-Frangipane (almond) Tart. This was largely because there were no apricots to be found at the farmers' market, and I happened to have a surplus of almonds at home, but you could really make this with any stone fruit (or apple or pear!) and any variety of nut. The beauty of this recipe's simplicity is that it opens up so much opportunity for variation. Put your hands and your imagination to work.



White Nectarine Frangipane Tart with Homemade Puff Pastry
Adapted from Martha Stewart's New Pies and Tarts

Makes one 17x9-inch tart

Ingredients
1 recipe homemade puff pastry (you can also use store-bought)
1 cup + 1 Tablespoon unsalted, raw almonds, toasted
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 large whole egg, plus 1 large egg yolk for egg wash
1 teaspoon vanilla
Pinch of salt
All-purpose flour, for dusting
4-5 white nectarines (1 1/4 pounds), pitted and cut into 1/4-inch thick slices
1 Tablespoon heavy cream, for egg wash
2 Tablespoons turbinado sugar, for dusting
1/4 cup nectarine, apricot, peach, or plum jam
1 1/2 Tablespoon water

Directions
1. Prepare homemade puff pastry as per the directions. On a lightly floured surface, roll out and trim dough to a 17 X 9-inch rectangle. Transfer to a parchment-lined rimmed baking sheet and chill in the fridge while you prepare the filling.

2. In the bowl of a food processor, pulse to combine 1 cup almonds and the granulated sugar. Add butter and process until a paste forms. Add the whole egg, vanilla, and salt and pulse to combine.

3. Remove pastry from the fridge and using an offset spatula, spread almond paste evenly over the dough, leaving a 3/4-inch border. Arrange nectarines in 3-4 vertical rows over the almond mixture, alternating direction in which the slices face. Fold in the edges of the dough and use your index finger to create a scalloped border. Refrigerate or freeze the tart until firm, about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

4. Whisk together egg yolk and cream and brush over the edges of the chilled tart shell. Chop remaining tablespoon of almonds and sprinkle them and turbinado sugar over the tart. Bake until the crust is deep golden brown and puffed, and fruit is juicy, about 35 minutes. Let cool.

5. Meanwhile, place jam and water in a small saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring, about 2 minutes. Pass through a fine sieve into a bowl and brush the glaze over the nectarines. Serve tart warm or at room temperature.

Related recipes:
Apple Galette at MAV's
Peach Pie with a Sweet Basil Glaze
Whole Wheat Plum Crumble Tart

Raw Vegan Coconut Cream Pie with Mango

I came back to D.C. in peak summer to find that our air conditioner is not working. This isn't the first time, and honestly it hasn't been that hot here. But the summer weather does make the prospect of rolling out all-butter pie dough seem like a daunting and altogether unpleasant task. In these situations of heat and humidity, I generally turn to an icebox pie (which I suppose this pie is a form of), but I've had this recipe for a raw, vegan, gluten-free, no-refined sugar Coconut Cream Pie in my back pocket for awhile now, so I thought it an opportune time to give it a go.

A few notes before you tackle this recipe--the ingredients are a little on the expensive side and you'll  need to be within striking distance of a Whole Foods or specialty grocery to get your hands on some of them. For the young coconut meat and coconut water, I recommend the Exotic Superfoods brand, which you should be able to find in the freezer section of most Whole Foods stores. You'll also want to eat the pie within a day of making it, as it does not keep especially well. That being said, this is a incredibly refreshing and exotically flavorful pie, especially considering that it is raw, involves no animal products, and contains no gluten or refined sugars! Because my blender is not the most powerful, the texture of my filling was akin to rice pudding, which I have no problem with, but a better blender could get it even smoother. Either way, this is a little tropical island kitchen treat, air conditioning or no.

Raw Vegan Coconut Cream Pie with Mango
From Carla Cabrera of The President Wears Prada

Ingredients
For the crust:
2 1/4 cup dried shredded coconut
1/3 cup extra virgin coconut oil
2 dates, pits removed
1 Tablespoon maple syrup or agave
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
1 cup finely diced mangos, to line the crust

For the filling:
2 cups young coconut meat
1/2 cup diced, peeled baby zucchini (the flavor is too strong with larger zucchini)
1/2 cup raw cashews, soaked 30 minutes then drained
1/3 cup extra virgin coconut oil
1 1/4 cup fresh young coconut water
1 1/2 Tablespoons vanilla extract
2 Tablespoons maple syrup or agave
1/2 cup mango, diced, for decorating the top and sides
Fresh mint sprigs, for decorating the top (optional)

Directions
For the crust:
1. Place all crust ingredients except mangos in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse until the coconut oil is evenly distributed and the mixture is beginning to bind together. Scoop crust mixture into a deep 10-inch pie plate. Using a spoon, push the mixture up the sides to form a pie crust, approximately 1/4-inch thick. Chill for 30-60 minutes. Spread diced mangos on bottom of crust just before pouring in the filling.

For the filling:
1. Place all ingredients except mango and mint in a blender (I initially used a food processor, as pictured, but the blender achieves much smoother results) and process until smooth, repeatedly scraping down the sides of the blender. Mixture should be smooth, silky, creamy and thick. Pour into mango-lined chilled crust.

2. Chill for at least 4 hours or overnight. Shortly before serving, decorate the pie with additional diced mango and mint sprigs. Serve cold and eat immediately, as this only keeps well up to 1 day.

Related Recipe:
Gluten-Free Chocolate Coconut Pie

Nothing in the House on Food & Wine

It was such a delightful surprise when I got an e-mail from writer Kristin Donnelly, asking to feature Nothing in the House in Food & Wine's Blogger Spotlight! Our interview-- about pie's duality as both transcendent symbol and humble dish, sources and tips for working with vintage recipes, and essential baking tools--ran last week and can be found here.

Thanks so much to Kristin, Jennifer, and everyone else at Food & Wine--I'm flattered to be included and really enjoyed the opportunity to put down some thoughts on these questions. Another big thanks is in order to my friend Elena of Biscuits & Such, who tipped them off to me (check out her feature here).

Photo by Jess Schreibstein of Witchin' in the Kitchen

Apricot Kuchen from The Joy of Cooking's Megan Scott

To complete the second half of this aforementioned blog trade with the Joy of Cooking, Megan Scott, 4th generation baker and writer in the Joy of Cooking family, brings us a lovely post on her evolving relationship to the classic cookbook, thoughts on taking comfort in an ugly pie, and a beautiful recipe for Apricot Kuchen.

Megan grew up in rural North Carolina where she ate the fruits of her grandfathers' gardens and her grandmothers' and mother's kitchens. This early exposure to home-grown, home-cooked food and its relationship to family, culture, and heritage was the start of an interest that quickly became a passion.

Now she works alongside her husband, John Becker, to bring the knowledge and empowerment of cooking to home cooks everywhere through the Joy of Cooking. Together, they maintain the book, its official website and social media presence, and the Joy of Cooking app. They are currently working on a proposal for the next print edition of Joy, with the hope of keeping the book relevant for modern cooks without succumbing to trendiness or resorting to kitsch. They seek to build on the incredible resource that John's father, grandmother, and great-grandmother created, bringing an understanding and love of cooking to new generations. Now, from Megan...

The first cookbook I ever bought for myself was the Joy of Cooking.

I don't come from one of those families where the Joy of Cooking is passed down or gifted through the generations. In fact, I don't think I knew much of anything about the book before I bought it. I understood that it was meant to be comprehensive, and at the time, that was enough for me.

My mother is a Southern Living fan. She owns every last one of their yearly cookbooks. My grandmothers don't use cookbooks at all. When they aren't cooking from memory alone, they use recipes written on index cards. The women in my family are incredible cooks, but apart from some basic kitchen training, none of them actually took me aside to teach me how to cook.

I can hardly blame them. They were always, it seems, in the process of getting dinner ready, several children under foot, a phone squeezed between ear and shoulder, and a to-do list a country mile long. When did they have time to teach me?

Many in my generation and in generations before me have similar stories to share. Whether or not you come from a long line of incredible cooks, chances are no one taught you the finer points of getting a meal on the table.



Learning to cook can be a nerve-wracking experience. Although it seems like ages ago, I remember what it was like to not fully understand the concept of sautéing or to stand, bewildered, before a chicken with a ball of string in hand, clumsily attempting to truss it without losing my cool. 100 years ago, a mother might have transmitted these skills directly to her daughter. Today, most of us face the challenges of cookery alone.

In this regard, my copy of Joy was like an experienced and infinitely patient friend who lived in my kitchen. No matter how frazzled or unsure I was, the book was a steadying presence. It is easy to forget those early days now that I can step into my kitchen and prepare a meal on the fly, but I was not always so confident.

The Joy of Cooking saw me through my first roast chicken (which, as I recall, I also managed to stuff and truss without incident), my first batch of apple butter (that, for lack of a food mill, I strained through some unused, but probably not food-safe window screening), and my first pie crust.

Those exploratory years in the kitchen, armed with little more than thin and dented hand-me-down pots and pans, a stove with two working burners, and my trusty cooking bible, were formative. By the time I met John Becker (Irma Rombauer's great-grandson), who would later become my husband, a love of cooking and food had been imprinted on me.



When John and I started working on the Joy of Cooking in earnest, we didn't have an agenda. We knew painfully little about the book even though we had both learned to cook from it. Like a cathedral built over centuries, its various wings built in different styles and by different architects, Joy is a product of different ages, sensibilities, and generations. It took us quite some time, and several hundred recipe tests, to even begin to see patterns. The book is, in a word, vast. 

Now that we are more familiar with the book's contents and history, we are able to see the bones underneath and to hazard an ambition or two. We consider ourselves to be stewards more than authors. Our job as we see it is not to re-write, but to revise, updating the out of date, culling the obsolete, adding the new and necessary. Most importantly, we want to translate into a text the sense of empowerment and liberation that comes with learning to cook. We want to enable others to experience the elation we felt after our first successful forays into the kitchen and to allay some of the uncertainty and fear that can cloud a budding cook's enthusiasm.



This is a tall order, and we know it. Which is why we have devoted ample space to pie. Pie is encouragement in food form. Long before I made a pie that was beautiful, I made many ugly, delicious fruit pies. And truly, there is a great deal of solace in an ugly pie. While beautiful pies are a baker's pride, homely pies are like Whitman's barbaric yawp--startling and magnificent and liberating.

And to think--there is an entire genre of pie that fairly exults in homeliness--the rustic fruit dessert. While I am not a scholar on the subject, I imagine the inception of the buckle and the pandowdy, the brown betty and the crisp, to be one of frugality and subsistence. The image of a bonnet-clad pioneer comes to mind. She is drowning in apples or peaches or blackberries but precious little else. Perhaps a bit of flour, some lard, maybe just maybe a little sugar, and no time to spare. This is my own fiction, of course, but I like to think the truth is not far from this.

Possibly my favorite rustic dessert is the buckle. A buckle is a cake with so much fruit in it that the top buckles or sinks slightly. It is a devilishly good concoction, and the sort of thing one makes when inundated with lush summer fruit.

The recipe below, while not called a buckle, is in the same spirit--loads of fruit, a simple cake batter, and a streusel topping. It resides in that delicious no-man's land between cake and pie, making use of the best of both. "Kuchen" is simply the German for "cake," but the designation belies the splendor of this simple dessert--at once pudding-like where cake meets fruit, and crunchy on top thanks to the sugary almond streusel.


Apricot Kuchen
Makes one 9-inch round kuchen

Position a rack in the lower third of the oven. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 9-inch springform pan or 9 × 2-inch round cake pan.

Prepare the streusel topping first. Combine in a small bowl:
1/3 cup turbinado or granulated sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour or rice flour
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
Blend these ingredients until crumbly. Add:
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/3 cup chopped or sliced almonds
Set aside.

Peel, pit, and slice, then spread evenly in pan:
1 pound ripe apricots (about 3 cups sliced)

Whisk together:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
Grated zest of one lemon 

Beat in a large bowl until fluffy:
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar

Beat in:
1/2 teaspoon almond extract

Beat in one at a time just until blended:
2 large eggs
Stir in the flour mixture just until incorporated.

Scrape the batter into the pan and spread evenly. Scatter the streusel on top. Bake until the topping is golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake (avoiding the fruit) comes out clean, 40 to 45 minutes. Let cool to room temperature on a rack.

Words and photos by Megan Scott

"Old Fashioned" Peach Blackberry Pie for The Joy of Cooking

The Joy of Cooking was one of the first cookbooks I learned to bake from growing up, so I was thrilled and rather honored when Megan Scott, 4th generation writer and baker in the Joy family, asked me to write a guest post for The Joy of Cooking blog.

Finding myself in Kentucky for the month of July, living in a house surrounded by blackberry bushes, I worked up this "Old Fashioned" (as in bourbon & bitters) Peach Blackberry Pie. To accompany the recipe, I wrote a little about the connection between pie and place, and the ways we ground ourselves in new environments.

You can find it all on The Joy blog here, and stay tuned next week, when Megan will share a guest post and recipe with Nothing in the House.

Related recipes:
Peach-Blackberry Cobbler
Peach-Pecan Pie
Peach Pie with a Sweet Basil Glaze

Green Tomato Pie

"The pie connoisseurs who have been enumerating and classifying the different brands of pie in print of late have been guilty of a grievous omission in leaving out green tomato pie. Like sweet potato pie, the green tomato articled is indigenous to the southern section of the great pie belt, but there it is in high favor. There is no geographical reason why it should not become equally popular up North. The tomatoes distinguishing it are sliced and stewed in sugar in a way very taking to the sweet tooth, but they must first of all be green. Pie is still hopelessly unfashionable, but now that the doctors have come out with a denial that it is unhealthy, it bids fair to be in for a new lease of popularity, in which green tomato pie deserves to be included."

From "Don't Forget Green Tomato Pie," Washington Post, March 12, 1901 (p. 6)



Over one hundred years later and Green Tomato Pie may still be in need of this rallying cry. Fitting squarely in the family of "nothing in the house" or desperation pies, with apple pie-like seasoning, Green Tomato Pie is a kissing cousin to the mock apple, mincemeat, and funeral pie varieties. But it is decidedly its own unique entity. Green Tomato Pie, made from unripe tomatoes, is earthy and masculine, teetering on that savory-sweet divide, erring just towards the dessert side of things. It's one of those pies you don't see often on restaurant menus, and when you do you know you're somewhere special. It's more likely that when you encounter it, it'll be homemade, offered at an Amish market, a potluck, or in a "pie belt" kitchen in late summer, when the tomato vines are hanging heavy, gardens and kitchen counters overflowing with fruit. 

Appearing in cookbooks in the late 1800s, Green Tomato Pie seems to always have had a rural identity, with its footing in the Midwest and the South. Some claim it as an Amish or Mennonite recipe, but it has other lineages that may or may not overlap, African-American and prairie among them.


This version is an amalgam of a few different recipes I've come across, including Travis Milton's, the chef at Richmond, Virginia's Comfort and the man behind the Appalachian Food Summit's green tomato hand pies, of which I've heard such rave reviews. I also incorporated some ingredients from Nancie McDermott's Green Tomato Pie, as well as the Mennonite recipe my dad uses, which includes apples and raisins. 

This recipe really showcases the sorghum and molasses flavor--if you're not a fan of those ingredients, this may not be the pie for you (or you can opt to substitute with brown sugar or maple syrup). The sorghum does make it a little runny, which I don't mind, but if that's a pet peeve of yours, that might be another reason for a sugar substitution or adding a little additional thickener. This would also be a great pie to bake in a skillet, as Travis does, and serve with buttermilk ice cream and a glass of rye.

Green Tomato Pie

Inspired by a few recipes including Nancie McDermott's and Travis Milton's

Ingredients
Nothing in the House pie crust
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup white sugar
1/3 cup sorghum or molasses (I used sorghum)
4 Tblsp. cornstarch or all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 cups (about 3 1/2 lbs) green tomatoes, thinly sliced into wedges (make sure these are unripe tomatoes, not ripe green heirloom tomatoes!)
2 Tablespoons unsalted butter, cold and cut into small chunks
2 Tablespoons fresh squeezed lemon juice or 1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar
Egg wash (1 large egg whisked with 1 Tablespoon whole milk or heavy cream)
Turbinado sugar, for dusting

Directions
1. Prepare Nothing in the House pie crust as per the directions. After chilling the dough for at least 1 hour, roll out half of the crust and fit into a 9-inch greased and floured pie pan or a greased 9-inch skillet. Place pan and unrolled crust back into the fridge while you prepare the filling.

2. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. In a medium bowl, combine the sugars, sorghum or molasses, thickener, spices, salt, and sliced green tomatoes, stirring everything together with a wooden spoon until  tomatoes are coated and everything is well-combined.

3. Pour the filling into the pie crust and arrange them so that they're mounded slightly in the center. Scatter the butter pieces over the filling and sprinkle on the lemon juice or vinegar.

4. Roll out the remaining pie crust and cut and arrange into a lattice or crust design of your choice. Seal and crimp edges. Brush crust with egg wash and sprinkle with Turbinado sugar.

5. Bake pie on a baking sheet (this is to catch any drips) and bake for 10 minutes at 425 degrees F. Lower heat to 350 degrees F and bake 40-50 minutes more, until the crust is golden brown and the juices are bubbling throughout. Once baked, let cool on a wire rack for at least 30 minutes. Serve slightly warm or at room temperature.



Related recipes: Apple Fried Pies
Cracker Pie aka Mock Apple Pie
Funeral Pie
Grandma Good's Green Tomato Pie
Savory Heirloom Tomato-Ricotta Galette

Sweet Cherry Pie with Cornmeal Streusel

After emerging from the north woods and a brief stint back in D.C. to trade my spring sweaters for summer sun dresses, I headed to Berea, Kentucky, where I'm living for the month of July. I'm here on a research fellowship with the Berea College Appalachian Sound Archives, studying the collection of East Kentucky banjo player, songwriter, hotel owner, postmaster, sheriff, and mother of six, Nora E. Carpenter.

As I'm in the process process of constructing a picture of who Nora Carpenter was, I'm also getting my bearings in this place--learning the trails and best blackberry picking spots around the house where I'm staying, finding the best rural ice cream stands and swimming holes, checking out the bars and donut shops and record stores in nearby cities, and trying to make friends--making sure that I keep my head just enough out of the archives.

Berea is a unique place, with its concentration of local artisans and craftspeople, not to mention its number of famous local residents including bell hooks and Jean Ritchie. But in many ways, Berea College seems to be the life pulse of the town, with its radical history of race and gender equality, belief in community and cultural diversity, and emphasis on integration of intellectual and manual labor.

Though things are a little quiet on campus now, with school out of session, I've been taking advantage of some of the school's resources, in particular the Berea College Farm. The farm is one of the oldest student-operated educational farms in the country, and is abundant with over 500 acres of cattle, hogs, chickens and eggs, goats, fish, honey bees, grains, fruits, vegetables and herbs.

Many of the products from the farm can be purchased at the Berea College Farm Store a block from downtown. They sell meat and produce, flowers and herbs, fresh baked goods, and a new favorite indulgence of Crank & Boom Ice Cream, made in nearby Lexington.

So when I set out to make a pie--another practice that always helps ground me in the place where I am--I bought most of the ingredients from the Farm Store and other local producers. I've been trying out the Kentucky-milled all-purpose flour from Weisenberger Mill as well as a red heirloom cornmeal from nearby Salamander Springs Farm.

Though no sour cherries (my favorite) were to be found, this sweet cherry and cornmeal combination is auspicious-- the sweet and smooth flavor and texture of the cherries pairing perfectly with the grit and grain of the cornmeal. And of course, these pie slices were topped with some of that Crank & Boom-- of the Bourbon Honey variety.

 Sweet Cherry Pie with a Cornmeal Streusel
Adapted from The Four & Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book

Ingredients
Nothing in the House pie crust, halved
1 small baking apple, peeled and shredded
5 cups sweet cherries, pitted
2 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
3 Tablespoons cornstarch (potato starch may also be used)
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
2 dashes Angostura bitters

For cornmeal streusel:
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup cornmeal (I used Salamander Springs' red heirloom cornmeal)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup salted butter, cold and cubed

Directions
For the crust:
1. Prepare half of the Nothing-in-the-House pie crust as per the directions. Chill dough at least 1 hour before rolling out and fitting into a greased and floured 9-inch pie pan. Place pie plate in fridge for about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

2. Once you've let the pie crust chill, prick crust with a fork all over the bottom. Line crust with parchment paper and pie weights or dried beans and bake for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, remove weights, and bake 3 more minutes. Let crust cool completely and once cool, place in fridge while you prepare the pie filling.

3. Preheat (or leave on) oven to 425 degrees F. To prepare the streusel top, stir together the flour, cornmeal, and brown sugar in a medium bowl, Sprinkle in the butter pieces and toss to coat. Rub the butter into the dry ingredients with your fingers until the butter is incorporated and the mixture is lumpy but not homogenous. Place in the fridge to chill for at least 15 minutes while you prepare the filling. 

4. Place shredded apple, pitted cherries, lemon juice, brown sugar, cornstarch, sea salt, cinnamon, cardamom, and bitters in a large bowl and toss until well mixed. Pour the filling into the refrigerated pie shell and evenly distribute the chilled streusel on top. 

5. Brush pie crust with an egg wash and sprinkle with Turbinado sugar, if desired. Place pie on a baking sheet on the lowest rack of the oven. Bake for 20-25 minutes, then reduce heat to 375 degrees F and continue to bake until the crust is a deep golden brown and the filling juices are bubbling throughout, about 30-35 minutes longer.

6. Remove pie from oven and let cool completely on a wire rack, about 2-3 hours (if you can wait that long). Serve slightly warm or at room temperature. We enjoyed ours with Crank and Boom's Bourbon Honey ice cream.



Related Recipe:
Sour Cherry Pie

Curtains for NPR Kitchen Window

Bang Bang Pie's Shaker Lemon Pie from Outside the Pizza Box: Chicago's New Pie Scene

I came back from the woods to the sad news that NPR's Kitchen Window had folded. The blog, which was edited by Bonny Wolf and featured weekly stories and related recipes, was not only a great writing outlet for me, but it was something I looked forward to every week. With its illuminating pieces by respected food writers on a single theme, highlighting a specific ingredient, or exploring traditional foodways, it was a trusted source of great food writing and great recipes. I'm going to miss it (though I'm glad to still be able to work with Bonny via her excellent site, American Food Roots). 

Fig-Pistachio Tarte Tatin from The Pies of Late Summer

In celebration and a bit of mourning over the end of Kitchen Window, here's a little round-up of some of the stories and photos I did for them. Don't stop there though--the Kitchen Window archive remains alive, and there you can find an examination on sorghum's move into the mainstream, a collection of recipes from Tasmania, a meditation on a meal celebrating early African-American cookbook authors, and much more. I hope it remains up in perpetuity.


Beignets from Fat Tuesday: The Many Different Doughnuts of Mardi Gras

Speculoos Icebox Pie from Belgian Sweets Not Just for 'Sinterklaas'

Peppermint Pattie Tart from Get Freshly Minted This Holiday Season

Blueberry Buckle from Cobbled Together: American Fruit Desserts

Apple Slump (or Fruitlands?)

I'm now out of the woods and catching up on posts and pretty much everything else in my (digital) life. I have a number of film shots of baked goods to share from the spring and am excited about continuing to do more. For now, though, I'll start here with a Rhode Island Apple Slump.

As I mentioned earlier, this NELP, my friend Becky and I co-led the "Transcendental Kitchen Society," a 5-class workshop exploring transcendental ideas with a feminist lens, and examining the intersection between creative space and domestic space/daily work and intellectual work (read some words from Becky on the class and other feminist pursuits at NELP here).

At all of our meetings, we engaged in some type of creative domestic work while discussing readings and ideas. For this particular class, in which we talked about Louisa May Alcott's Transcendental Wild Oats, a parody of her father Bronson Alcott's highly idealistic cooperative farm, Fruitlands, we made an Apple Slump.



The connection between the text and the dessert appears in the final sentence of the story. Sister Hope--the analog for Mrs. Alcott and female protagonist who ends up taking on most of the domestic work of the commune while the men spend time "thinking"-- acknowledges the failure of the Fruitlands and wittily comments,  "Don't you think Apple Slump would be a better name for it, dear?"

A fruit slump, cousin to a pandowdy and British steamed pudding, consists of fruit simmered in a skillet, which is then topped with biscuits/dumpling dough and cooked until the dough is baked through. It's then inverted, with the fruit being spooned over the biscuits-- a cooked shortcake, of sorts (for more on slumps, grunts and pandowdys, see this New York Times article from last year).

This particular recipe comes from Becky's 1947 edition of The United States Regional Cook Book edited by Ruth Berolzheimer. As many recipes of the era, the directions are not especially detailed or proscriptive--I added in a few details here, but it is meant to be approximate-- there's not much danger of failure. The apple slump's deliciousness exists in that tension between soft and doughy biscuits and the dark and rich caramelized apples.



Rhode Island Apple Slump
Adapted from The United States Regional Cook Book c. 1947

Makes 8-10 servings

Ingredients
For the apple filling:
3 pints apples, peeled and chopped into slices
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup water
2 teaspoons cinnamon

For the baking powder biscuits:
2 cups all-purpose flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 Tablespoons unsalted butter, cold
3/4 cup whole milk

1 cup heavy cream (optional)

Directions
1. In a 9-inch cast iron skillet over medium-low heat, simmer apple slices, brown sugar, water, and cinnamon until liquid is reduced and apples begin to soften.

2. Meanwhile, prepare the biscuits. In a medium sized bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt. Cut in the cold butter, until mixture is the consistency of cornmeal and peas, then pour in the milk and bring dough together into a ball. Roll dough out onto a floured surface about 1/2-inch thick and cut into circles with a biscuit cutter or jar top.

3. Once apples are soft, place cut biscuits over the dough, cover skillet, and cook over medium-low heat until biscuits are baked through but still soft and apples are completely cooked and caramelized, approximately 20-25 minutes.

4. Remove biscuits from skillet and spoon caramelized apples over top. Serve with cream and enjoy warm. We warmed the cream in the skillet after the apples had been scooped out, so that it took on some of the caramelized flavor. We then drizzled it over everything.



While the slump cooked, we also created a "dance" composed of actions from experimental recipes the workshop the students wrote for an assignment. Rachel Pernick's wonderful graphic representation of that dance is pictured above.

Related recipes:
Apple Pie with Salted Caramel Glaze
Apple-Raspberry Pandowdy
Peach-Blackberry Cobbler
Surry County Peach Sonker with Dip