A Commonplace Book of Pie

A Commonplace Book of Pie

by Kate Lebo

with illustrations by Jessica Lynn Bonin

Copyright 2013 by Kate Lebo

Illustrations copyright 2013 by Jessica Lynn Bonin

All rights reserved

ISBN 978-0985041670

First (1) edition

A Chin Music Press original

Chin Music Press, Inc.

2621 24th Ave W.

Seattle, WA 98199-3407

USA

www.chinmusicpress.com

“Lemon Meringue” originally appeared in the summer 2013 issue of Gastronomica magazine.

Printed in the USA.

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication data is available.

Contents

Dedication

Before You Begin

Pie is best

What's your favorite?

Rules of Thumb

Facts of Pie

Recipes

Notes on Pie

How to Eat Pie

What phrase best describes your thoughts on pie?

Thank you

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”

− Carl Sagan

 

The difference between superlative pie and a wish for cake is crust. Understand that pie is a generous but self-centered substance. It likes attention, not affection. Do not hug your crust. Do not rub its back or five its high. Don't fuss with refrigerators every step of the way. Keep the water and butter cold, and remember what a wise baker once said: The goal is pie.

a)   hot

b)   cold

c)   with whip

d)   a la mode

e)   all of the above

Apple Pie

Banana Cream Pie

Blackberry Pie

Blueberry Pie

Cherry Pie

Chocolate Cream Pie

Coconut Cream Pie

Cranberry Pie

Key Lime Pie

Lemon Meringue Pie

Lemon Shaker Pie

Lingonberry Pie

Mincemeat Pie

Mud Pie

Mumbleberry Pie

Orange Cream Pie

Peach Pie

Peanut Butter Pie

Pecan Pie

Plum Pie

Pumpkin Pie

Raspberry Pie

Rhubarb Custard Pie

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

Vanilla Cream Pie

  1.   Share your pie.

  2.   Never promise to make pie and fail to deliver on that promise.

  3.   Do not cut pie while it is still hot or the filling won't set properly. It is okay to break smaller pieces of the crust off for taste-testing purposes.

  4.   Do not put a butter crust pastry pie in the refrigerator. Refrigeration ruins pastry and introduces off-flavors.

  5.   Do refrigerate your pie, regardless of pastry type, if it contains significant quantities of dairy.

  6.   When making crust, the butter must be cold. This bears repeating.

  7.   The butter must be cold.

  8.   The water you use to make pie dough must be icy cold. Ensure frigidity by filling a cup with water, adding three ice cubes, and freezing it while preparing the flour and fat.

  9.   When serving pie, do not smash your crust between a chef's knife and fork, or gouge it with a spoon, or balance it on the blade of a butter knife. Use a pie server.

10.   Pies can take four hours to make. Forgive the pie maker her tardiness.

 

“We ought to make the pie higher.”

− George W. Bush

“Rilke was devoted to polishing furniture. Jackson Pollock baked pies.”

− David Markson

 

 

Contrary to popular opinion, pumpkin pie-lovers are adventurous, quizzical, good in bed and voluminously communicative. No need to ask a pumpkin pie-lover if he'll call ahead for reservations. He'll arrive at the restaurant early, order a drink and have the waitstaff in his fan club before you get off work. By the time you arrive he might even have the hostess's number. Do not trust him to say the right thing to your parents; do trust him to charm your friends. Consider for a moment a can of Libby's pumpkin puree, how a pumpkin does not have a choice, but if it did, it could become a porchlight or a smear on the street. It could be hollowed and hallowed and filled with soup and served in a bistro to people who do not smash pumpkins. It could rot, unsold, in the field, or fill this can of future pie. Do you see now why pumpkin pie is not boring? If it were, more people would know how to talk to bartenders.

 

 

Only one woman alive today would say her favorite pie is mincemeat. She makes hers with green tomatoes and mixed assorted meat-stuffs. Her grandchildren hide her slices in their mouths and spit them into milk glasses when she gets up to answer the telephone.
No thank you. Now is not a good time.
She wanted to be a writer. She took photographs and painted, wore Isadora colored scarves that covered her hair like hair, was the most beautiful woman in town and justifiably vain. She likes to imagine her movements as gusts of wind blowing her children around the world, her little boats.

 

 

Children are born to devour what's set before them, especially on factory tours. In Crayola factories, wax cools in cylindric wrappings while plastic-eyed field trippers fill their goggles with inedible hue. But what does this have to do with pie in the sky, antioxidants, or the favorite breakfast of certain birds? Blueberries burst beneath teeth and heat all the same, so you'd never know the pale of their innards. The blueberry pie-lover knows. To him, a pert slice and a little lemon is the difference between wanting to view paradise and viewing it.

 

 

The Swedish have a word for hunger that sounds like ice before it's scraped off a windshield and, when held in the mouth, glints like a metal tooth. The lingonberry pie-lover is like this word, so he collects antique orthodontia and cultivates peculiar hungers. The scent of gasoline evaporating from asphalt, the sneer of grass on a good dress. Being told no or slow down when in proximity of food makes the lingonberry pie-lover capable of aggravated misdemeanors. I don't suggest testing this assertion.

 

 

People who love chocolate cream pie move through this world in a swarm of music. Their cars leak basslines; their exhaust sings from the dark of the pipe. Periodically they experiment with the softness of their genders and find them lacking every time, wear skirts to feel the hair on their thighs and pants to bind their bodies into the clean lines of a park bench. They invite you to sit down. The chocolate pie-lover would like to convince you that her height is three inches above the crown of her head. She isn't lying, exactly. She's creating the truth, believer by believer, just as you would if you too had a voice as big as a church.

 

 

Legend has it lemon meringue pie was invented by the Sisters of the Holy Names the day after their first night in Portland, Oregon. On the day of the invention of lemon meringue pie, clouds gathered overhead, all threat and no spit, just a cluster of gray over sun. Back east, the sisters had heard tales of Exodus-style rains, flooding until the future courthouse and city hall were specks of marble flotsam only God could pinch from the froth. Sister Maria in her tent, contemplating a month of daylight darkness ahead, remembered the seven lemons in her trunk. She squeezed them into yolks and sugar, then poured the filling into an improvised crust of crackers. Taking inspiration from her new home's dour weather, she beat sweetened egg whites until they puffed like clouds and gently piled them over the bright yellow filling, obscuring it from view.

The sisters loved her creation and fought for the biggest pieces. Sister Maria disliked the sound of raised voices, so she walked into the woods to leave the din behind. As she peered through dripping firs for a glimpse of construction further upriver, she thought about God and said, “You don't want pie in the sky when you die. You want something here on the ground while you're still around.”

Years later, unbeknownst to them both, Muhammad Ali would say the exact same thing after winning a fight in Miami. The sisters campaigned to make this aphorism the motto of the school for girls they planned to construct, and though Home Economics is considered unfeminist and unfashionable these days, some still think that St. Mary's Academy for Girls should complement their rigorous math and science courses with a lesson on how to whip the perfect whites.

 

 

We have formed our impressions of this most American pie on canned filling. Which is more American? Processed fruit in explosive syrup, or sweating in the sun while balancing on a slender ladder? Each July the cherry pie-lover gathers hard red fruits in her dress until the moment she needs her right hand for balance, then lets go, spills her harvest in the grass where birds can eat the mess. She likes sun hats, tolerates baseball, and does not go to church, but prays when she is afraid of failure or death.

 

 

If you love peanut butter pie, you are either Dolly Parton or someone who loves her.