Accidental Buttermilk Pie

What do you do when the dairy delivers a half-gallon of buttermilk by mistake?

Answer: Make buttermilk pie.

This was my wife's inspiration. Although, if you had nailed my feet to the floor and doused me with hot coffee, I probably could have remembered there was something called "buttermilk pie."

I love the flavor and consistency--somewhere between lemon meringue and coconut custard. It has the flakiest crust and just a bit of ever-so-crunchy caramelization on top. That's because you start the pie cooking at 425 degrees, then lower the temperature.

The recipe comes from Martha Stewart's Pies & Tarts. This book came out before people started to tire of Martha as knowing too much and I definitely recommend getting a copy, not just for the many excellent recipes (I take my wife's word for it--she's the baker in the family) but for the really dolled-up photo of a very young Martha published as an inset on the cover, just below a gorgeous heart-shaped raspberry tart. (Even then, Martha was getting her photo on the cover whenever possible, it seems. Is it fair to say she was using her looks to get ahead?)

We normally associate buttermilk pie or anything else with Southern cuisine. But apparently Martha--a Polish girl from New Jersey--knew a good thing when she tasted it.

For the pate brisee pie shell:

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon granulated sugar

1 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

1/4 to 1/2 cup ice water.

Put flour, salt and sugar in the bowl of a food processor and chill. All ingredients must be cold before proceeding. Then add the pieces of butter and process for about 10 seconds, or until the mixture resembles coarse meal.

Add ice water, drop by drop, through the feed tube with the machine running, just until the dough holds together without being wet or sticky. Do not process more than 30 seconds. Test dough by squeezing a small amount together. If it is crumbly, add a bit more water.

Turn dough out onto a large piece of plastic wrap. Grasping the ends of the plastic wrap with your hands, press the dough into a flat circle with your fists. Rolling will be easier if the pastry is chilled as a ball. Wrap the dough in the plastic and chill for at least an hour.

Use vegetable cooking spray to lightly butter a pie plate or tart pan. On a lightly floured board, roll out the pastry to a thickness of 1/8 inch. Place the pastry in the tart pan or pie plate and press it into the bottom edges and along the sides. Trim pastry using scissors or a sharp paring knife. Crimp or decorate the edges of the pastry, if desired, using your favorite method. Chill the pastry-lined pan until ready to use.

For the filling:

1
1/2 cups granulated sugar

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

4 eggs, lightly beaten

1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly

1 cup buttermilk

zest of 1 lemon

1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

freshly grated nutmeg to taste

For the glaze:

1 egg yolk with beaten with 2 teaspoons water

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Combine the sugar and flour in a large mixing bowl. Add the beaten eggs and mix well. Stir in butter and buttermilk. Stir in lemon rind and juice, vanilla and nutmeg, and pour into the pie shell. Brush the edge of the pie crust with the egg glaze. Place the pie in the center of the oven for 15 minutes. Lower the heat to 350 degrees and continue to bake for approximately 40 minutes, until the filling is set. Remove from the oven and serve at room temperature.

You'll like this so much you'll want the dairy to deliver buttermilk by mistake more often.

Sweet Potato Pie

Really, all I wanted from my wife the baker were a few tips for making a sweet potato pie.

We have all these sweet potatoes harvested from the garden and sweet potato pie was pencilled in as dessert for our choucroute dinner. But as so often happens, making this pie would not be as easy as--well, pie. We first had to have a discussion.

My idea was to make the pie in Bill Neal's classic Southern cookbook, Biscuits, Spoonbread, and Sweet Potato Pie. What could be more authentic, I reasoned,
than a pie from the legendary Bill Neal and a book with sweet potato pie right in the title?

But my wife was not convinced. As she so often does in these situations, she first wanted to check Bill Neal's recipe against the one in The New Best Recipe, the tome from Cook's Illustrated that my wife considers her recipe bible. Sure enough, she started picking Bill Neal's version apart, piece by piece. Too much molasses. Not enough egg. Dry sherry--huh?

My wife thinks I'm crazy not to be in love with The New Best Recipe. My main beef is, the authors seem to be less interested in authenticity than in their own idealized vision of how certain foods should be. Using their personal bias as a starting point, they then weed through recipes from hither and yon, adjusting and changing them as they go until they arrive at something that more or less matches their preconceived notions.

Apparently, that suits my wife just fine. And being a man of a certain age, I've learned that beating your chest is useless. The female species is always right. It's wiser to just submit.

Hence, sweet potato pie from The New Best Recipe, wherein the authors seek "to create a distinctive sweet potato pie, a recipe that honored the texture and flavor of sweet potatoes while being sufficiently recognizable as a dessert. Neither a custardy, pumpkin-style pie nor a masked-potatoes-in-a-crust pie would do."


For the pie filling:

2 pounds sweet potatoes

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

3 large eggs, plus 2 large egg yolks

1 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon salt

2-3 tablespoons bourbon

1 tablespoon molasses

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2/3 cup whole milk

1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar

Prick the sweet potatoes several times with a fork and place them on a double layer of paper towels in a microwave (I bake my sweet potatoes at 325 degrees in the oven). Cook at full power for 5 minutes, turn each potato over and continue to cook at full power until tender but not mushy, about 5 minutes longer. Cool 10 minutes. Halve a potato crosswise, insert a small spoon between the skin and flesh and scoop the flesh into a medium bowl. Discard the skin. (If the potatoes are too hot to handle, use paper towels as a wrapper.) Repeat with remaining sweet potatoes. You should have about 2 cups. While potatoes are still hot, add butter and mash with a fork or wooden spoon. Small lumps of potato should remain.

Whisk together the eggs, yolks, sugar, nutmeg and salt in a medium bowl. Stir in bourbon, molasses and vanilla. Whisk in milk. Gradually add egg mixture to sweet potatoes, whisking gently to combine. Set aside.

For a pre-baked crust:

1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting the work surface

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

3 tablespoons vegetables shortening, chilled

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch pieces

4-5 tablespoons ice water.

Process flour, salt and sugar in a food process until combined. Add shortening and process until mixture has the texture of coarse sand, about 10 seconds. Scatter butter pieces over flour mixture, then cut butter into flour until mixture is pale yellow and resembles coarse crumbs, with butter bits no larger than small peas, about 10 1-second pulses. Turn mixture into a medium bowl.

Sprinkle 4 tablespoons ice water over mixture. Use rubber spatula and folding motion to mix. Press down on dough with broad side of spatula until dough sticks together, adding up to 1 tablespoon more ice water if dough will not come together. Flatten dough into 4-inch disk. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate at least 1 hour or up to 2 days before rolling.

Remove dough from refrigerator and let stand until malleable. Roll dough on lightly floured surface into a 12-inch circle. Transfer dough to a 9-inch pie plate by rolling the dough around the rolling pin and unrolling it over the pan. Working around the circumference of the pie plate, ease the dought into the pan corners by gently lifting the edge of the dough with one hand while gently pressing it into the pan bottom with the other hand. Trim the dough edges to extend about 1/2 inch beyond the rim of the pan. Fold the overhang under itself; flute the dough or press the tine of a fork against the dough to flatten it against the rim of the pie plate. Refrigerate the dough-lined pie plate until firm, about 40 minutes, then freeze until very cold, about 20 minutes.

Adjust an oven rack to the lower-middle position and heat the oven to 375 degrees. Remove the dough-lined pie plate from the freezer, press a doubled 12-inch piece of heavy-duty foil inside the pie shell and fold the edges of the foil to shield the fluted edge. Distribute 2 cups ceramic or metal pie weights over the foil (my wife used some pennies in addition to her pie weights). Bake, leaving the foil and weights in place until the dough looks dry and is light in color, 25 to 30 minutes. Carefully remove the foil and weights by gathering the corners of the foil and pulling up and out. For a partially baked crust, continue baking until light golden brown, 5 to 6 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees.


While the crust is still warm, cover the bottom with 1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar and the pie filling. Pour pie filling over the brown sugar. Bake on the lower-middle rack until the filling is set around the edges but the center jiggles slightly when shaken, about 45 minutes. Transfer pie to a wire rack and cool to room temperature, about 2 hours, before serving with your best whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

The brown sugar creates an unexpected layer of flavor at the bottom of the pie. We knew the pie was just right when our friend Pete, a West Virginia native who has an unerring taste for home-cooked food, sat bolt upright at the dinner table and nearly dropped his fork.

"Dang, that's good!" Pete exclaimed. "How did you do that? Mine is almost always flat."

Well, my wife would say it's all about The New Best Recipe, Pete. And I ain't gonna argue. (Bill Neal, wherever you are, eat your heart out.)

Sour Cherries?

Yes, I know. This is hardly sour cherry season. That's still more than a month away.

What you see here is the pie my wife made with the last of the sour cherries we picked last year.

That would have been the 30 POUNDS of sour cherries that we picked ourselves at our favorite cherry grove--Butler's Orchard in Germantown, MD--then pitted by hand.

We've found that you have to jump all over the brief sour cherry season. We stay tuned for the e-mail bulletins from Butler's. As soon as they announce the sour cherries are ripe, we beat a path to the cherry grove. Usually, it's already crawling with other customers filling their buckets. You have to pull the kids out of the trees, or just beat them over the head with your bucket.

Then, after a few short days of harvest, the sour cherries are gone.

After pitting the cherries (quite a task), my wife divided them into freezer bags, just enough in each bag to make a pie or cobbler. We've been eating our way through them slowly all year. Finally, almost one year later, we arrive at the last pie.

Remember, I am not the baker in this family. Past scones, muffins or shortcake I'm pretty much lost. No, the distinction of professional-quality baker goes to my wife. And she's been working her way toward the perfect pie recipe for years, trying to get just enough solid consistency in the filling so it doesn't all run out in the oven, and just enough softness in the crust so that you can cut it with an ordinary kitchen knife. (We've retired the jack hammer.)

For this pie, my wife has settled on the lattice-top dough recipe and the filling recipe straight out of The New Best Recipe book from Cook's Illustrated.

"I haven't had to tweak anything," she says. "That's why they call it The Best Recipe. Everything's already been tweaked. I love it!"

All I know is, this is a helluva pie. We eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Then it's gone...