Alpha Bakers -- Perfect Nectarine Galette

Summer is my busy season. While the schools are out, the libraries are full of children. Children gaming, children playing, children bored and causing mischief, children seeking summer reading books of all shapes and sizes (and publication dates). I run daily programs several times a day, and the library also serves as a summer meals site, serving food supplied by the Department of Education to anyone ages 0-18. I have a very supportive staff and a team of summer volunteers, but my limited training skills combined with their youth (many are no more than twelve) means that supervising them is actually the most exhausting part of a summer (well, that and waiting for a new full-time custodian to be appointed after our wonderful custodian's retirement at the beginning of  July (sigh)). 

The summer meals are served on a drop-in basis, with no signups or scheduled attendees. Because of this, it can be hard to predict exactly how many meals we will need, and there are sometimes shortages or overstocks. While most of the leftovers have to be disposed of pretty quickly, sometimes we hit the accidental fruit jackpot. A few weeks ago, I found myself looking at a large surplus of hard nectarines, and a peach galette on the Alpha Baking schedule. This thing pretty much planned itself. 

The fruit is macerated in sugar and lemon juice, and the resulting juices are then caramelized and returned to the fruit with cornstarch (tapioca starch as usual in my case). The whole is then piled onto a round of pie crust, which is folded up around it and the whole is baked and delicious. The pie crust Rose recommends is her flaky cream cheese formula, but I wanted something a little different, so I used the cornmeal crust recipe from the Four and Twenty Blackbirds book.

The caramelized juices were particularly nice. The nectarines don't get as soft as peaches would (I also didn't peel them), but as fruit salvage it was more than satisfactory.

Alpha Bakers -- Sour Cherry Pi

Adventures in pie this weekend. March 14 was Pi Day (3.14), always a fun day to celebrate. The Alpha Bakers were making Rose's Sour Cherry Pie, and since that is one of my favorite pies in the world, I was completely on board. I even knew exactly which Russian grocery to visit for my frozen cherries. Of course, it was all the way out on Kings Highway, and before I knew it I had just gotten lazy, and was scouring my local fancy bodegas for jarred cherries. Didn't find them, although I know about forty places where they can be found, so I changed things up and bought frozen sweet cherries and a plum or two to make Rose's Cherry Sweetie Pie. Despite uninspiring plums and a potato starch that thickened a bit too much, the pie was a more than reasonable stopgap for Pi Day. My co-workers, volunteers, and the kid who'd ventured out early for tutoring were pleased.

I had made two batches of crust--one of Rose's cream cheese crust and one of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds butter crust. To fill the second one, I used the bodega blueberries and a peach or two. Out of season fruit. Less than inspiring. Still, I had a bit of crust left, and so I finally caved, picked up a jar or two of sour cherries in syrup, and made two little Sour Cherry Pies, reducing the sugar to 50 grams. Those I ate all by myself. See that flakiness in the pie crust? Now I just want to keep on making pie forever. This always happens. One pie is just not enough.

Pie Frenzy

Last weekend, Stacey of BKFarmyards, a "decentralized urban farming network" that I've done some data entry for, invited me to represent Lily & Fig at a pie bake-off fundraiser at Jimmy's No. 43. Jimmy's is a basement bar, though a well-lit one, and the pie-off was in a back room, giving the whole affair an interestingly ilicit aura.

Pssst...back here...you want some pie, little girl...?

In fact, there was even a little girl, Jimmy's outgoing daughter Georgia, who, despite proclaiming her general indifference to pie, fell in love with the kosher salt garnishing Four & Twenty Blackbirds' 'Salty Honey' version, so I guess we did some mild dealing and corrupting of youth.

The event was one of my first forays into the wider world of Brooklyn foodie-ism, and my pie was in some very good company.  I didn't get to taste everything, but I did get to meet some seriously accomplished pie bakers and urban gardeners, including, in addition to Emily and Melissa of the aforementioned Four & Twenty Blackbirds, Allison Kave of First Prize Pies, Betty Brooklyn (whose individual Short Rib and Stout pies carried off the People's Choice Award), Kat of Piety Bakery, Brooklyn Honey, Rooftop Farms (winner of the Best Savory), the SCRATCHBread team (who filled hollowed out bread with an incredible combination of orange cauliflower puree, mushrooms, greens, and grapes), Lauren of Pie in the Park, and many more, including the makers of some truly unforgettable goat meat pies dribbled with savory jus.

And my pie? Well, it was good. Knowing what I know now, I might have gone in a different direction, but for my rookie bake-off, it was a good effort. I went savory, and created a new recipe that I'd never tried before.

Over a bed of roasted Vidalia onions, I layered red and Chioggia beets in a concentric pattern. A savory custard filled out the pie, and I scattered toasted pine nuts and goat cheese on the top.

 In retrospect, I would have mixed the goat cheese right into the custard, but all in all, it was a success. I think, though, that things would have gone even better if I had played to my strengths, made a custardy or fruity pie that I could love to pieces, rather than a very pretty beet pie that I couldn't be totally sure of (and I am kind of indifferent to beets, except that I do like cooking them). Still, this is all hindsight. I was proud of my pie, though it won no awards.

The bake-off did bring out my latent competive pie streak though--now I just can't wait to enter MORE BAKE-OFFS. And WIN. Or, you know, bake some more pies. Like I did this week. Seeing all those beautiful pies filled me with so many ideas, and so much desire to perfect my crust and crimping technique. Tough to do on such a hot an humid week, but I did manage two more pies, a double crust rhubarb pie and an old fashioned custard pie from the Joy of Cooking.

 The rhubarb pie was good, but the custard pie was the real star. I cannot stop eating it. It is like those little egg tarts from Chinatown bakeries except better because I put cherries in. It is really irresistable. Matt, for some unaccountable reason, has been very able to resist both of these perfect pies. More for me.