Book Review: Sweety Pies

Here is a Cookbook review I did in the Chronicle for a cookbook with great pie recipes. You know, it is usual that I haven’t written about pies that much. I am THE PIE LADY. Probably because I have no wish to reveal all my recipes,  but after all I could just SHOW THE PICTURE, I don’t have to TELL YOU HOW I MADE IT!  A few of the recipes I make are from this book though!

Note the PROFESSIONALISM of my writing when I am doing it for COLD HARD CASH.

Sweety Pies

By Patty Pinner

The Taunton Press (2007) 171 Pages

There is nothing else on Earth like the pink glaze of a Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie clinging to the last shard of flaky, fluted crust, or the piles of breathtaking meringue crowning a tart Key Lime Pie.  A home baked pie is one of the things that actually make people happy, yet eating one is an experience that grows increasingly rare for most Americans. The art of pie-baking is in danger of being lost; how many times have you heard someone lament that they “just can’t make piecrust”?

In the small, Mayberry-like town of Saginaw Michigan, before the Second World War, pie baking was considered an essential womanly art: one of the many “strings to a woman’s bow”. The pillbox-hat-wearing, church-going, soul-food-cooking ladies of Patty Pinner’s childhood took their pie-making very seriously, and Ruth Pinner made sure that her daughter mastered the art. She passed along to her daughter not only her own skills and recipes, but also the best recipes of her friends and relations, which Ruth had diligently collected over the years.

In this captivating book, Patty Pinner remembers these mothers, aunts, neighbor-ladies and friends in colorful vignettes, and gives each woman’s premier pie recipe. Along with each recipe are truly inspiring photographs of each pie: no cookbook I have ever come across has managed to catalog so many varieties. Buttermilk Pie, Fresh Raspberry Pie, Peanut Butter Cream Pie, Rice Pie, Pumpkin-Coconut Pie, Tangerine Meringue Pie, and 64 other kinds, each one a particular woman’s tour de force.

The recipes are clear, simple, and easy to use. Pinner also gives her mother’s excellent, extraordinarily rich and flaky pie-crust recipe, as well as useful instructions on the shaping and decorating of pies. If your life suffers from inadequate amounts of home-baked pie, this book is the remedy.

Carrot and Fennel Stock

Fennel fresh from the Garden

Back to the “Things to do with Carrots” series! The fennel and the carrots are ready at the same time here in Central Texas, and I have learned how to make this work to my advantage. When you pull up a Fennel plant, the bulb (the part most desired for salads) is but a small fraction of it; there are usually layers of tough, unsightly bulbiness on the outer shell, and then, the fronds and the stick-like tubular parts they grow on. After cutting the Fennel bulb(s) that are lovely and delicate enough for salad out, the rest on the fennel plant (minus the roots) is ready for the stockpot and the recipe for Carrot/Fennel Broth from Didi Emmons book Vegetarian Planet.

This is a fairly simple recipe, but it is priceless in it’s ability to use up the “waste” parts of the fennel plant, as well as whatever unsightly or just overly abundant carrots you have. The stock that results has a delicate but unmistakable flavor that works wonderfully in any recipe calling for stock. Since Mr. Hungersauce is a vegetarian, I usually need a pretty good supply of vegetarian stock to improve soups and rice and various other things.

Step One: Sautee

I like my stocks super-strong, so I use about twice as much of everything as this recipe calls for, and simmer it in LESS water for LONGER.

Cats love the aromas of fennel and dill. This is Molly.

THE RECIPE:

1 T olive oil

2 fennel bulbs or equivalent, cut up in 1 inch pieces

6 medium carrots, cut into 1 inch pieces

2 white onions, chopped

1 head of garlic, skin left on and cut in half horizontally

2 teaspoons fennel seeds

 a gallon of water

1 cup white wine

Heat the olive oil in the stockpot over low heat, and add the fennel bulbs, carrots, onions, garlic, and fennel seeds. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the water, bring it to a boil, and cover. Simmer on lowish heat for an hour. Strain the stock, let it cool, and jar it up for storage in the icebox (good for a week) or the freezer (good for a year).

All done and ready for the freezer