Normally when I resort to posting repeats from the archives, I am full of apology, dissembling, vows to Do Better Next Time. This time, though, I am revisiting some old friends, and I do so without apology. It is only mere coincidence that I do this right before Lloyd and I head to Block Island with my parents, brother and sister-in-law for a long summer weekend—the first long summer weekend out of New York I have taken in 16 years of New York City living!—but again, this is no stopgap measure. Sour cherry season is in full swing here, but it won’t be for long. As my head was filled with visions of more pies, maybe another cake, possibly some cherry jam, I received a message from Stephanie the Yarn Harlot, asking for assistance with the Montmorency cherries in which she was drowning. Not long after, I received another message from my Blogathon buddy Eric, who suggested that what the world needs now is cherry pie, sweet cherry pie, cherry pie’s the only thing that there’s just very little of...erm, sorry about that. At any rate, I’m not the only one feeling the spirit of the season, and thus I decided to reprint what has now become one of my favorite stories from my month-long stay in Arkansas in 2004 (good grief, has it really been three years?!), the Tale of the Accidental Pie. It’s an amusing story, and as pies go, it’s a very nice pie (and one that can be made year-round), but it just can’t replace the One True Cherry Pie, the one made with those fleeting fresh sour cherries, so of course I have to reprint that one, too, as well as recipes for both.
Happy weekend, dear friends. I will be back on Monday night, just in time to share my plans for the six pints of currants in the fridge. 
Part One: The Tale of the Accidental Pie (originally published July 17, 2004)
Dear friends,
As promised, today I am kicking off Tales Out of Eureka Springs with a story that has been told so many times that I almost feel compelled to turn it into stanzas, much like The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Luckily for you, I will not. I will simply call it the Tale of the Accidental Pie and leave it at that. I could stop being pretentious and just refer to it as cherry pie, but I won’t because this is not my idea of a cherry pie. On the other hand, it’s good enough to deserve a name of its own.
The road to the Accidental Pie began with a food adventure that ate up close to an entire damn day. Part of the point of a writers’ colony is that in exchange for the money you send to them (or the money that your fellowship underwriters send to them), they will take care of your room and board. At Dairy Hollow, we want for nothing. The cook fixes us dinner on weeknights. All other times, we are invited to use the kitchen and to take whatever food we want. If we want something the Colony doesn’t stock, we are invited to write it on the board on the fridge and they will pick it up for us on their next supermarket run. If you are lucky enough to stay in the room with that giant superb kitchen, i.e. me, you can take the food from the main kitchen back to your kitchen and cook it yourself. I have to remind myself that the Colony will buy me anything to eat that I want, that I don’t have to spend my own cash on it. The problem is that I like the whole process of shopping, and unless I tag along on market runs, crying “buy me this! buy me this!” like a six-year-old, I won’t be able to indulge the shopping bug. Said bug has only been made worse by a phone call two days before my departure, from a pal of mine who is also staying at the Colony, who says brightly, “Oh, you’ll love Eureka Market! They have everything you can get at the health food store in New York, but they have a sign saying ‘Pie cherries are in!’” I can feel myself getting giddy at her words. Pie cherries are a rare jewel, in season only for about eight weeks in the summertime. I will have access to pie cherries in Eureka, and a grand kitchen in which to bake them. On my arrival in town, I can’t get myself to Eureka Market fast enough. “We can get them for you,” says the store manager, a very nice young man. “We don’t usually stock them, but we can get them. We have to order them by the case. Can you use a whole case of them?” Well, golly. I can probably make about two pies, which will still leave pints and pints of cherries, but heck, I can make cherry jam out of them.
It is my first Friday at the Colony, June 18. I head to the kitchen to grab some cereal, when Jan, the assistant director of the Colony, tells me that I have a message: Eureka Market has called and the pie cherries have arrived. Off to the market, via two trolley lines, I go. “I’m here to pick up some pie cherries,” I announce brightly to the young woman at the counter. “Oh, you must be Jen,” she says, and hands me a small, densely packed case. It is an odd shape for a case of fresh fruit, but I’m not overly concerned. I can’t wait to open the case and bury my nose into it, to smell that bright bracing fragrance, just aching to be turned into pie. I rip the case open.
What we have here is a case of two parties making assumptions and neglecting to define terms. If you scroll down a bit, you will see what I consider pie cherries. What I consider pie cherries are fresh, raw sour cherries, a/k/a tart cherries, Montmorency cherries, morello cherries, etc. If you click here, you will see what the market staff considers to be pie cherries. As canned cherries go, they are a fine product: organic cherries, canned in organic pear juice, no added sugar, but they have two strikes against them: they are canned, not fresh, and they are sweet black cherries, not tart reds. I have a case of them. 12 cans. It’s not what I want, but the market people are so nice and apologetic, and after all this is a special order for me, that I agree to take them, and see what magic can be worked with them. I decide to pick up “a few more things,” which translates to a little bottle of arrowroot (just in case I can make pie from those cherries, after all), a pint of raspberries, a quart of little red new potatoes, half a dozen rapidly ripening and softening nectarines, a bag of almond meal, a quart of vanilla yogurt, a pint of heavy cream (in glass bottle) and a quart of whole milk (ditto) from Hosanna Hills Farm. And, of course, a case of 12 cans of cherries. I have just spent $70 and encumbered myself with 30 pounds of groceries, not counting the box of cherries. It is entirely fitting that I am living in America’s Largest Open-Air Asylum.
This pie really had the odds stacked against it, and yet it came out on top, like the scrappy underdogs of Chariots of Fire, or Meatballs, or Disney Presents The Strongest Man in the World starring Kurt Russell. I would call it the Little Pie That Could, but I won’t. For starters, it was a pretty big pie.
The Accidental Pie was a two-fold accident. Not only did I have the wrong kind of cherries, I also had a crust that should have been straightforward but left me near-to-weeping in confusion. I should have just told the truth and begged off prettily, but I had told one of my fellow writers of my plans, and she looked so ecstatic at the thought of cherry pie—on her last dinner at the Colony, no less!—that I vowed to do it. I had promised Karen a cherry pie, and cherry pie would we have. Measuring revealed that once the pear juice was poured off, 1 15 oz. can = 1 cup of cherries. I used four cans. As I do with my “regular” cherry pie recipe, I took a cup of them, put them in a saucepan, shook a couple tablespoons of sugar over them and turned on the heat. Eventually the cherries began to cook down, fall apart and bubble. I tasted them and threw in a little more sugar. Because the liquid looked a little low, I threw in some of the merlot I brought back from dinner. If I had to guess, it would have been about 1/3 cup, although a more accurate unit of measurement would be “glug...hesitate...glug again.” When it looked about right to me, after maybe 5 minutes, I put 2 tablespoons of arrowroot into a custard cup and made a slurry out of it. Again, I couldn’t remember if that was how much I usually used; it just seemed like a nice round number. I’d like to say that I have an instinctive knowledge of the basic principles of kitchen science, but let’s be honest: dumb luck was on my side. I added the arrowroot slurry to the boiling cherry-wine syrup. It turned to mucilage in about 20 seconds. Through the fog of panic I reminded myself that this was what it’s supposed to do, because I have another three cups of cherries going into that pie, and that arrowrooty paste will help to gently thicken the juices that are exuded by the rest of the cherries in baking. I turn the paste into the bowl of cherries, stir, stir, stir, and add almond extract, a trick I learned from my teacher Nick Malgieri at Peter Kump’s New York Cooking School. Cherry pie needs almond extract; I believe this with the fervor of one who has just found Jesus.
But I am getting ahead of myself, describing the filling. I did something dumb, namely try something new on a crowd of strangers. I was so convinced that this pie would need all the help it could get that I had the bright idea to make the almond pie crust from Sherry Yard’s The Secrets of Baking. Normally when I make cherry pie, I forgo my old standard flaky pie crust for something called pate sucree, a sweeter, cakier dough. So I didn’t think it would be as much of a stretch to use a more cookie-fied recipe. Chef Yard’s recipe calls for all-purpose flour, pastry flour, almond meal, butter, egg and a full cup of sugar. “It has a tendency to crumble,” she warns. There’s a funny object there, that tendency. I was already in an advanced state of nerves from opening up the pastry flour from the health food store and discovering that it was, in fact, whole wheat pastry flour. Wait, that’s not what I bought! Ohhhh...there it is, running up the side of the package in the thinnest Bodoni font imaginable: “Whole-Grain.” I reached into the bag and made a fist: well, it sure feels like pastry flour, low-protein flour made from soft wheat. What the hell, between the butter and the almonds, no one will be able to tell. The resulting pastry chilled to rock-hardness in the fridge, as pastry doughs do...only it stayed that way after I took it out. This dough does not have a tendency to crumble. It has a mandate. Despite my careful flouring and reflouring of the marble, despite my gentle and persistent loosening of the dough from the work surface with my bench scraper, it would not behave. Split, rip, shatter. I had to apply the mud-pie technique, patting sections of it into the pan, patching and patting until I was sure that all the air that had been incorporated into that lovely dough would be mooshed out, leaving only heaviness and soddenness behind. With great care and effort, I rolled out another sheet, cut some strips for a lattice, and banged everything into the freezer, where they would await the completed pie filling.
Feel free at this point to sing to the tune of “Bang Goes the Drum and You’re in Love.” On goes the oven. Out comes the shell. In go the cherries. Out come the lattice strips...and here everything falls apart, literally and figuratively. I cannot lift the strips off the pan without their breaking into three pieces. Those few pieces that do leave the sheet tray intact crumble upon being placed on the pie. Finally, in a voice that my mom and I jokingly refer to as “That’s it! No tip!,” I announce to an empty kitchen: “That’s it! We’re having streusel!” And I whale on these strips, ripping them to shreds, flicking them off my fingers and onto the surface of the pie, not so much as to cover the whole surface, but enough to be considered proper topping. On goes the egg wash, in goes the pie.
And my word, but doesn’t that crust bake beautifully? For a split second I’m afraid it’s burning, but no, it’s just baking to the deep brown that comes with a lot of sugar in the dough, plus the presence of milk solids in the butter. The cherries are dark and shiny in their bubbly juice. Did I manage to cheat the universe? I’m still not convinced. As with pudding, the proof of the pie is in the eating.
To dinner the pie goes, to be served with Blue Bunny vanilla ice cream. There are four of us at dinner, three women, one man. Karen, for whom I made the pie, opens her eyes wide at first bite. “This is such a wonderful crust!” she cries. “It almost tastes like blueberry pie,” says Alison, and she’s right, it does. Forrest eats without making a sound, eventually concurring that it’s a successful pie. Everyone looks happy as they eat it, except for me. I look relieved.
Dear friends, for your consideration, the Accidental Pie is below, as well as a picture of the real pie cherries I bought at the Greenmarket this morning, the ones that will be turned into real cherry pie tomorrow. Will there be a picture of Real Cherry Pie? Oh, of course. Will there be recipes? You bet.
Part Two: Accidental Pie: Epilogue (originally published July 18, 2004)
Don’t worry, dear friends. Having gone on for the equivalent of 10 pages about the Accidental Pie yesterday, I see no need to subject you to more of it. But I do remember making a promise to bake a real cherry pie this morning, and to show you the result.
Tvindy had asked if I still preferred the classic recipe to the Accidental Pie. While I will always have affection for the A.P. for providing me such a lark of a story, I’m afraid that when it comes to eating, it just doesn’t stand a chance against the Real Cherry Pie. I never liked cherry pie as a kid, and now I know why. Too many cherry pies are made with commercial cherry pie filling, which does use proper pie cherries, but also uses excessive amounts of sugar, corn syrup and thickeners. Some brands even use red dye, which leaves a nasty aftertaste and is completely unnecessary when you consider that the skin of the pie cherry has more than enough pigment to turn your pie the most dreamy shade of pink imaginable.
I love the whole process of making this pie. I love that even though I can go a full year between making cherry pies, when the time comes to do it again, I can pretty much do it from memory. If I am good and organized, pie crust will have been made the day before and left to rest in the fridge. Take it out, let it soften slightly at room temperature, dust the pastry cloth, roll out the dough, turn it into the pie plate, roll out some more, cut out the lattice strips, put it all back in the freezer. Sit down and watch one of your Danger Man DVD’s while you pit 2 quarts of cherries. Juice will run all over everything. Your fingers will get sticky with juice that is not so much sour as tart, fragrant and floral and berried and gently mouth-puckering and intensely cherry.
Wash your hands. Turn your cherries into a colander over a saucepan. Add sugar to the juice and cook it over a medium flame. Stop stirring just long enough to get your pie shell and lattice strips from the fridge. When your sugar is dissolved, stir in a cup of those pitted cherries. Lick the bead of juice that has spattered onto your wrist, and thank the universe for the concept of Spoils for the Cook. Watch the cherries give up their juice to the sugar syrup, which bubbles like mad. Stir in your arrowroot slurry and watch the whole lot stiffen up. Add a bit of almond extract and a bit of butter, then the rest of the cherries. Watch everything slacken up again, ready to thicken the rest of the juice that will seep out of the cherries during baking. Cherries in the shell, lattice on the cherries, egg wash on the lattice, everything into a nice hot oven. 50 minutes later, your pie is done, juices bubbling over, the sign that everything has got hot enough and the arrowroot will continue doing its job. You know you have to wait to eat it, that very few things are actually made to be eaten right out of the oven and cherry pie is definitely not one of them, and yet you wonder if you can just dispense with your tomato and mozzarella sandwiches and just eat pie for lunch.
No, it’s no contest. Accidental Pie fills me with affection. Real Cherry Pie fills me with love.
Part Three: Pie recipes, Accidental and On Purpose (originally published July 21, 2004)
Time to break out your rolling pins and your 9” Pyrex pie plates. If you have a pastry cloth, flour it. If you don’t, just flour your countertop. It is time for pie.
Accidental Cherry Pie
Cookie-style pie dough of your choice, enough for a double crust**
4 15-oz cans pitted cherries in juice (I used Columbia Gorge from the health food store)
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup full-bodied red wine, such as merlot or cabernet
2 tablespoons arrowroot
2 tablespoons cold water
almond extract, to taste
egg wash, made from 1 whole egg and 1 egg yolk
coarse sugar, such as turbinado or demerara (optional)
**Cookie-style pie doughs, also known as pate sablee, tend to be very delicate and crumbly and require patient handling. Keep your work space well-floured and return your dough to the fridge if you find it unworkable. I used the almond pie dough recipe from Sherry Yard’s The Secrets of Baking, which calls for 6 ounces of cold unsalted butter, 1 cup of sugar, 1 1/4 cups of cake flour, 1 cup of all-purpose flour, 1/2 cup of almond flour, 1 large egg and 1/8 teaspoon salt. In place of the cake flour, I used whole wheat pastry flour from the health food store. Real cake flour has a lower protein content, which will make the crust even more tender. Because this is a copyrighted recipe, I will not reprint Chef Yard’s instructions here, but if you would like some assistance with this, feel free to e me.
Roll out about 2/3 of your crust and fit it into your pie plate. Roll out the remaining 1/3 and either cut it into strips for a lattice or break it up for streusel. Put the shell and topping in the freezer while you prepare the filling.
Arrange an oven rack at the bottom third of the oven and preheat oven to 350 degrees (Gas Mark 4). Drain the cherries into a colander and rinse them. Put the sugar and wine into a saucepan and heat, stirring, until the sugar is dissolve. Let the syrup come to a boil. Measure 1 cup of the drained cherries and add to the syrup. Cook for about 5 minutes, or until the cherries have given up a substantial amount of juice. Mix arrowroot and water into a slurry and add to the cherries, stirring constantly. Continue boiling; the arrowroot will go from cloudy to clear and the syrup will get very, very thick. Take syrup off the heat and add almond extract (start with about 1/2 teaspoon and add more if you need it). Stir in the rest of the cherries. Taste for seasoning; add more extract if it pleases you. Take the pie shell and lattice or streusel from the freezer. Pour the cherries into the shell. Top the pie with the lattice or streusel, brush the crust with the egg wash and scatter with sugar if you so desire. Place the pie on a baking sheet lined with parchment or a Silpat, and bake for 10 minutes at 350. Turn heat down to 325 (Gas Mark 3) and bake for an additional 40-50 minutes. (Check the pie after 40 minutes. If the edges start to overbrown, cover with aluminum foil or a pie crust shield.) Let cool completely before cutting.
Cherry Pie on Purpose
Sweet pie crust dough, enough for a double crust**
2 quarts fresh sour cherries
3/4 cup sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons arrowroot
2 1/2 tablespoons cold water
almond extract, to taste
2 tbsp. butter
egg wash, made from 1 whole egg and 1 egg yolk
coarse sugar, such as turbinado or demerara (optional)
**Although I like to use flaky, less-sweet pie crusts for most pies, with cherry pie I like to use a sweeter, “cakier” crust known as pate sucree. Both my pate sucree recipe and the original version of the pie filling come from Nick Malgieri’s How to Bake. Again, this is a copyrighted recipe so I don’t want to print it verbatim, but if you need a pate sucree recipe, just e me. My filling varies a bit from Nick’s: I use a few more cherries, I omit the cinnamon in Nick’s recipe as I’m not a big fan of cinnamon in cherry pie, and I have substituted arrowroot for the cornstarch in Nick’s recipe, as I like the translucency of arrowroot in the finished filling. (Arrowroot does tend to thin out a bit on reheating, so if you’re a fan of reheated cherry pie, you may want to stick to the cornstarch.)
Roll out about 2/3 of your crust and fit it into your pie plate. Roll out the remaining 1/3 and either cut it into strips for a lattice (this dough is much sturdier than the other, so making a lattice should not be difficult). Put the shell and topping in the freezer while you prepare the filling.
Arrange an oven rack at the bottom third of the oven and preheat oven to 400 degrees (Gas Mark 6). Pit the cherries (save the pits, rinse them and dry them in the oven; they make great pie weights, much better than dried beans) into a bowl. When all the cherries are pitted, drain them into a colander set over a saucepan. They should give up about 1/2 cup of juice in the course of the pitting. Place the saucepan over heat, add the sugar, stir to dissolve and let come to a boil. When the syrup is boiling, add 1 cup of fresh cherries and cook for about 5 minutes. They will give up a lot of juice. Make a slurry with the arrowroot and cold water, add to the syrup and stir. Again, this mixture will get very thick. Add the almond extract, butter and balance of cherries. Stir and taste for seasoning. Take shell and lattice strips out of the freezer and place pie plate on top of a lined baking sheet (use parchment or a Silpat). Add the filling to the shell, top filling with a lattice, brush with egg wash and sprinkle with sugar if desired. Bake for 10 minutes at 400, then reduce heat to 350 (Gas Mark 4) and bake for an additional 40 minutes (check after 40 minutes; if edges are getting too dark, cover with aluminum foil or a pie shield). The pie is done when thick juices are bubbling from the top of the pie—yes, if they are bubbling over the edge of the crust, this is a good thing! Let cool completely before cutting.
**An addendum, three years later: While I still think that Nick’s pate sucree recipe can’t be beat, this year’s cherry pie was made with what has become my new standard pie crust, which comes from Apple Pie Perfect by Ken Haedrich, and is, in my opinion, is about as perfect a pie crust as can be had. It is made with 1 3/4 cups (about 8 1/2 ounces) all-purpose flour, 1 3/4 cups (8 1/2 ounces) unbleached pastry flour, 2 tablespoons granulated sugar, 2 teaspoons kosher salt, 1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, 2 egg yolks and as much ice water as it takes to hold it all together (approximately 5 fluid ounces).