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I know.  I know.  I tell you all these funny stories about food, but I know what you’re really wondering.  “So, Bakerina, how does it feel to be back at the box factory?”

Funny you should ask.  It feels rather like “Bookshop,” a sketch from Monty Python’s Contractual Obligation Album.  I used to work in a bookshop and I was afraid of my life turning into this, but life at the box factory imitates Python more than the bookshop ever did.  This little vignette encapsulates perfectly the day I had today.  In fact, this little vignette encapsulates perfectly every day at LuthorCorp.

The scene thus far: Terry Jones is the customer, John Cleese is the proprietor.  Jones has already tortured Cleese by requesting “David Coperfield” and “Grate Expectations” by Edmund Wells and “Rarnaby Budge” by Charles Dikkens, “the well-known Dutch author.”

Customer:  I wonder if you --

Customer (indignantly):  I can’t buy that!  It’s torn!

Dear friends, tonight’s Tale Out of Eureka Springs comes from the journal I kept while I was there, an effort to document everything I was making in that nifty kitchen.  Without further ado...

I made a vegan lemon curd last week.  Part of my demo will involve the preparation of three different lemon curds:  a low-fat one from Sally Schneider, no butter, one egg, one egg white and gelatin to make up the difference; a “regular” one from Sherry Yard, three eggs, four egg yolks, half a stick of butter; and a rich one from Pierre Herme, not quite as many eggs but 3/4 pound of butter.  In discussing this with the Colony staff, the assistant director and the maintenance guy, both of whom are vegans, asked me if it would be possible to prepare a vegan curd.  Because Jan and Sean are lovely and kind people, I did not share with them the questions that came to mind, questions that in the books-on-tape version would be voiced by Lewis Black.  “A vegan version of something primarily made of butter and eggs?” I said I would see if it could be done.  Lo and behold, I found a vegan website in the U.K. that had a recipe for vegan lemon curd.  Odds my bodkins.  12 ounces of sugar (yipes), the juice of 4 lemons, 4 ounces of vegan margarine, 4 eggs’ equivalent of egg replacer.  I went to the health food store and bought the marge that Jan recommended, and a box of something called En-Er-G egg replacement. 

The recipe basically tells you to cook everything together for 20 minutes, and to use a vegetarian gelling agent, like agar agar, if the mixture doesn’t thicken.  I am not practiced enough at using agar agar.  My experience with it reveals a substance that gells very, very gently, and then overnight hardens aggressively, turning your fussed-over and cossetted vegetarian custard into a Spaldeen ball, or a Pensey Pinky eraser.  I decided to just try it as written, no worries about the thickener; if all else fails, I thought, we’ll just call it lemon sauce.

Since the lemons were small, I used 6.  Weighed out the sugar.  Weighed out the marge, which is as probably as close to butter you will get as a vegan, but which to me tasted like nothing but salt.  Read the packet directions on the egg replacer, 4 tablespoons powder, 4 tablespoons water.  The resultant mix looked like frothy egg whites, or, more accurately, like meringue powder, that staple of cake decorators. Watching all this stuff melt together, it hit me that there was nothing in here to give it much color.  There was a pale, pale yellow from the marge, but not enough to offset the white of the egg replacer, or the general beige tone that the sugar conveyed on the lemon juice.  At least it will be lemony, I thought, from the lemon juice.  And at least it will be sweet, from the 3/4 pound of sugar.

Twenty minutes later, we did indeed have something lemony and sweet, and thick enough to be called curd.  We also had something grainy, thanks, I’m guessing, to the starches in the egg replacer meant to emulate the behavior of egg white.  Left exposed to air, the top surface developed a palpable crackle, again, much like the way icings made with meringue powder do, when your teeth hit that thin surface of sugar, only to break through it and sink into intense sweetness.  I wonder if more lemon juice would have made the difference, or maybe some lemon zest grated into it.  I wonder if I will need to add agar agar after all, to offset the additional liquid from the lemon juice.  I wonder if this is a lost cause I’m embarking on.  I know that Jan and Sean were thrilled when I came down to the office bearing my pot of vegan lemon curd, pleased and happy that I had made the effort for them.  I have no idea whether it tasted good to them or not.

I made another curd for me and the other writers, a traditional one from Sherry Yard’s recipe in The Secrets of Baking, on Thursday.  I was going to use it for shortcakes, but I ran out of time to make biscuits, so I whipped some cream, folded the curd into the cream and gave it one more good beating into something that was a bit more liquid than whipped cream but a little fluffier than pudding.  Forrest and I ate it for dessert, piled gently into bowls, laced with fresh raspberries.  This is a bright, bright yellow curd, although I can’t tell if it’s bright from the yolks of the eggs of the Araucana hens kept by the guy who sells those eggs to Bill’s Pharmacy [yes, dear friends, I bought my eggs at the pharmacy, and yes, there will be elaboration on this in a future post], or if it’s from the butter from Hosanna Hills Farm, where the cows are fed on pasture rather than on grain and hay.  When you cook the eggs and lemon juice and sugar to 160 degrees, the mix assumes the consistency of sour cream and the whisk just begins to leave tracks.  When you pull this mix off the stove and whisk cool butter into it, you can begin to see it thicken even further; you can see its future as a spread for your toast, or a filling for your lemon tart.  This is a curd you don’t have to figure out.  It just is.

A sidenote:  Because so much of the baking here has been a combination of the eggs from Bill’s and the butter from Hosanna Hills, I don’t know what the answer is when people say (as they said tonight about the brioche) “what makes it so yellow?  is it the butter or the eggs?” I’m sure it’s both, but we’ll see, won’t we, when I test the other bread recipes, the eggless one and the 2-egg one.  Either way, it makes me think of the article reprinted on the Hosanna Hills website, where they explain that the color of the butter is the result of pasturage, and that as a result, your baked goods will assume a color not seen since your granny’s day.  Now I know why the Hesses are so dissatisfied with what we’re eating.  The thought of eating Land O’Lakes ever again is laughable.  Even the French Normandy butter I buy at Rosario’s, which is delightful butter, seems a pale imitation of this stuff.  I think of the line from Something Happened, the list of the flavorless food on which we are feeding, the observation that 250 million people eat every day never knowing what real food is.  “That’s what Paradise is...never knowing the difference.”

Below:  The famous eggs from Bill’s, the famous butter from Hosanna Hills Farm, a piece of regular supermarket USDA Grade AA unsalted butter, for comparison & contrast’s sake.  Not to belabor the point, but as you look at that butter, just remember that there is no annatto or other coloring agent in the farm butter.  It all depends on what the cows are eating, and it varies from batch to batch.  In the four weeks I was there, I have seen this butter in shades of brilliant yellow, rather like buttercups, and in shades of near orange, almost—dare I say it?—egg-colored.  How does it taste?  That is for another time, another post.

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.

Do not be shy about e’ing any questions you may have.  We now return you to your regular program of food rants, wilfully obscure song lyrics and inside jokes found funny only by your Bakerina.

Dear friends, I know that I promised you pie recipes tonight, Accidental and On-Purpose Pies, but I don’t want to put everyone into a sugar coma in my first week back.  I have retrieved my Sherry Yard book and will be able to share tomorrow, honestly.  In the meantime, I thought it was time to give the savories their due.  Behold.

Or, rather, behold after I do a bit of whorish self-promotion New pictures of Eureka Springs are up, right here.

Cafe Main Street is a diner, country-kitchen-style as opposed to O’Mahoney-style.  Across the street is the Auditorium.  Second City plays next week, Leon Russell after July 4th weekend, Ani DiFranco at the end of August.  I have been thinking all week of beans and cornbread.  As you drive into Eureka Springs you begin to see signs on the highway:  FRIED CHICKEN.  CATFISH.  BEANS AND CORNBREAD.  BEANS AND CORNBREAD.  BEANS AND CORNBREAD. You see a sign more than three times, and you begin to ask questions.

I have yet to determine whether this is an all-over the midwest dish, or an all-over-the-south dish, or just where the idea of pairing beans and cornbread started.  I wonder how many variant forms of beans are served, and where to find them.  From what the Colony staff tells me, around here the beans are brown beans, a/k/a baked beans.  I’ve spent days in my room , fixing frittatas for lunch, feeling peckish around 3 p.m., wondering if beans and cornbread would be too filling for low tea.  I decide that they are.

Saturday, June 19 is my first Saturday in Eureka.  I decide to ride the trolley into town, taking advantage of the chance to see the other side of the Historic District Loop, a change of pace from the flat stretch of Spring Street I’ve been walking for three days.  We ride up the winding part of Spring to the Crescent Hotel, and back down Prospect to a new set of candybox homes, including one with a sour cherry tree out front.  I want to hop off the trolley and offer cold hard cash to the owner of that tree for those promising, glistening cherries.  We pass a monster-sized ‘cue shack called Bubba’s; I inhale deeply and remind myself to not be taken in by the first hit of smoke I find, but to wait and get a recommendation from the trolley driver (which, it turns out, we are not supposed to do).  Even in a strange place 1,300 miles from home, I am a stubborn fresser.

There is a quandary when I arrive at the diner.  Beans and cornbread are not considered breakfast, and lunch service doesn’t begin until 11.  “Let me ask him,” the waitress says, and disappears into the kitchen before I can say no, that’s all right, look!  you have biscuits and sausage gravy!  Ham and redeye gravy!  Grits!  But she comes back and says, “He must love me this morning, because he says they’re ready to go.” Five minutes later, out comes my breakfast, and ohhhh, I’ll never finish that big bowl of beans!  They are soupy beans, lots of bean liquor, little bits of lean bacon in them.  The cornbread has the telltale bottom crust of cast-iron baking, and a dark pecan-colored just-shy-of-burnt caramelized top.  I nibble at it.  If this is a mix, I do not want to know.  It tastes like the real thing, sweet stone-ground yellow cornmeal, egg, milk, and yes, a little sugar, which normally I can’t abide, but here there’s just enough to enhance the cornmeal’s sweetness, and to plane off the bitter edge of the hull.  The beans are full of that dark savory-sweet brownness that I love in baked beans.  These beans are not quite as sweet as my beloved State O’Maine baked beans I get in Vermont, but they do make a good foil for the cornbread.  I don’t know if what I’m doing is acceptable beans and cornbread etiquette, but I crumble the cornbread into the bowl, mix it into the bean liquor, and I eat that whole big beautiful bowl.  I will not be hungry again for another eight hours.  When the waitress takes my bowl ("get that out of your way, hon?"), I say to her, “I didn’t think I had a whole bowl in me, but --” and here she and I say in unison, in identical tones of wide-eyed pleasure, “they’re reaaal good.”

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.