The Ugly Pies of Winter 2011

One reason we have been loath to blog lately is that we cannot get excited about the way our pies are looking when they come out of the oven. We hesitate to use even the word 'homely' to describe these pie gargoyles. We cannot even bear to photograph them.

We were also in the tropics on January 23, National Pie Day, and we hope you all dedicated yourselves to observance of this sacred day. We ate a tiny slice of apple pie from one of the local Hawaiian bakeries as part of our fest.

As we recall, we've produced a couple of good lookers, pie-wise, since we last blogged at you. For Thanksgiving - the Mince, the Apple - but you've seen one pretty pie, you've seen them all, and we don't have any more tricks up our sleeves that improve those two models. And there was a nice potato-cheese-rosemary-leek gallette right after New Year's. But these were followed by a couple of bizarre-looking quiches, a funky looking lumpy blueberry pie, and...

What were we thinking? We had it in our heads to try out a recipe we found online during the summer for Chocolate Cherry Pie. In concept, we thought it sounded luscious and decadent. It called for whole pitted cherries and chunks of good dark chocolate. Our pals at Trader Joe's had the cherries, frozen, for a song, and we sacrificed one of our TJ 70% chocolate bars for the project. The idea, we think, was that the chocolate would melt to make a velvety coating with the cherry juice, and it would be all wine-dark and beautiful, and need no other embellishment.

It was enough to put one off pie-bakery for quite awhile. Although it tasted pretty nice when it was warm from the oven, it was a little gooshy. The frozen cherries did not cook down - this made the upper crust lumpy and the inside wet. When it cooled completely, the chocolate hardened back up into hard stringers throughout the filling. The cherries had no distinctive cherriness at all. POPS, weirdly, said he didn't think even ADDING MORE CHOCOLATE would improve the pie. Worse, we had the uncomfortable and unappetizing notion, looking down at the dessert plate, that we were eating a pie made with whole Kalamata olives. Yikes! Somebody call the law!

It all seems like a bad dream now. Next time, if there is a next time, we will make a compote on the stove of some of the cherries, and add this "jam" to the rest of the fruit. Using fresh cherries and mashing them a little to promote more thorough cooking of the fruit would be a good idea. Have you got any other ideas for ways to improve the outcome?

We have stepped back from the abyss since then to our old familiars. We also found some nicely designed ceramic pie dishes, about 6 inches in diameter, at the Crate and Barrel outlet ($3.50 each) that motivated us to get rolling again. It's time to start using the frozen fruit we squirrelled away in summer - we've never needed a taste of summer more than we do in February. We tried the compote approach with this weekend's pies made from frozen blueberries, and it seemed to help break down the whole berries. The compote just by itself, made with a spoonful of raw honey and a half teaspoon of fresh lemon juice, is irresistable. But that pie wasn't pretty. POPS reminds me that, maybe a lattice top will allow a lot of liquid to boil off so these frozen berry pies are a little less liquidy inside. Good tip - he's smart, and he's cute, too.

Pie Spy In Los Angeles

When you’re in LA, treading those boulevards of dreams, and you want to sit down and have something sweet, where ya gonna go?

Your Pie Spy visited several iconic establishments throughout the city, some of them better known for other selections than for pie. This turned into a mini urban pie safari. The featured stops along the way included these:

Musso and Frank (www.mussoandfrankgrill.com)

The Original Pantry (www.pantrycafe.com)

Clifton’s Brookdale (www.cliftoncafeteria.com)

And Pea Soup Andersen’s, on the way home, in Buellton (www.peasoupandersens.net).

There was no pie at the Pacific Dining Car, none at the Nickel Diner, or Rincon Criollo, or Tender Greens, or – understandably – at the Formosa Café.

Obviously there are many, many more pie venues in the big city than these, but there were other missions on the urban safari besides eating all the pie we could. It can get overwhelming if you don’t bite off small pieces.

Among these pies, Musso and Frank's apple pie (pictured above) was notable for being the thickest and being served on the prettiest china. Not a fancy restaurant, but it was a standout for the ambience. The fare at M &F is traditional, and maybe even plain. But eating pie where stars have dined – maybe even at our table! - has its own sparkly charm.

The Original Pantry’s apple pie (shown above) came warm and dressed with cinnamon sauce, which wasn’t mentioned on the menu, but turned out to be an interesting embellishment. It was $3.95 a slice, or $1.25 extra if you wanted ice cream with it. (But pretty good without!) That place is always hopping, and you might decide well before you’re hungry to go there – there is often a line out the door.

Clifton’s Brookdale had cherry pie as well as apple, but Pie Spy was tired of apple pie by the time we got there. The cherry (below) was the winner in the price category, at a bargain-licious $2.39 per slice. Tart fruit and buttery pastry. Home/cafeteria cooking that is hard to find in our own part of California. You gotta go to Clifton’s to experience the crazy décor as well as the pie. Notice the moose head and the fancy forest wall decoration, with tree trunk in the right foreground.

And let us not forget Pea Soup Andersen’s. It has been there by the highway so long that maybe you don’t even notice it anymore. Choices of food stops along the road are generally not very good for you. Pea Soup Andersen’s, however, is a welcome alternative to the burgers, pizzas, and chicken buckets. The eponymous soup is vegetarian and very, very delicious, full of protein, and just eating it makes us feel calmer. The copper-topped tables and the non-truck-stop lighting also make you feel more civilized. If you’re not into green soup, try the salad, and if you’ve had enough pie for one week, order a chocolate milk shake. Then you will have the courage to keep on driving. The pie was warm, but as you can see from the picture below, it was a little bit oozy. We neglected to inquire about the makeup of the pastry, but I believe it is vegetable shortening–based. In my opinion it is not quite as good as homemade pie, but even so one should be grateful that pie is anywhere to be had out there on the freeway. And we were very grateful!

The inaugural SoCal Pie Spy mission was a big success. When I can get back into the skinny jeans, I'll be ready for the second phase.

Pie Spy - Fat Apple's Restaurant & Bakery

A road trip to Berkelely on the last Friday of January necessitated some Pie Spying.

In San Francisco Magazine's January issue, we had read a short blurb about Fat Apple's. Fat Apple's is a breakfast-lunch spot - actually two spots: the home location at 7525 Fairmount Avenue in El Cerrito, and 1346 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way in Berkeley. They have a range of salad, soup, sandwiches, and hot entrees, but what really hooks us is the full bakery case. Fat Apple's makes scones, cookies, pastries, cakes, and you-know-what, under the masterful watch of Hildegard Marshall, the founder and owner.

At the Fairmount Avenue location, the skylit, barrel-vaulted interior (a former grocery store, our hostess told us) is dominated by a very large, square oven situated in the very middle of the building. The oven is probably close to 15 feet on each side. Our hostess explained that this oven runs 24-7 during the holidays, when the place pumps out pies non-stop (especially pumpkin). Although it was well past the peak of lunch hour (and traditional bakers' hours) when we visited, there were still at least a dozen workers visibly hustling around the place. By the way, pie crusts are made with butter, and also with love and skill.

There is a diner counter and tables for 80 or so people. Reproductions of Wayne Thiebaud pictures, as well as other, temporary exhibits by artists, adorn the walls.

Fat Apple's most widely acclaimed favorite pie is the ollalieberry, shown below:

You can choose from several flavors of pie, if ollalieberry is not what you came for. There was a slice of lofty lemon meringue going by as we ordered lunch. The chocolate creme pie looked as dense and dark as chocolate mousse. The apple pie was puffed up, and my imagination ran wild. Just for the sake of research, we ordered a slice of the cherry pie after a filling lunch of spinach salad and a portobello mushroom sandwich (both pretty good).

Pie by the slice is $4.25. You could purchase a whole fruit pie there for $17.00 (and be very happy).

The pie slice comes unadorned with whip or ice cream. Which is good, because usually I forget to request that these be deleted. Despite the neon-red color of the filling, I could tell this was no institutional pie. The cherries were tart, firm, and still individually imbued with flavor. The red matrix in which they floated was pleasantly sweet and a little bit thick, but never gooey, chemical, or dominating. It was definitely more cherries than red gel. I could tell that the crust had been made with butter because of the distinct flavor note as well as the flaky, light texture as I broke it - in my delicate way - with the fork. I had to increase the shutter speed on my camera, because this piece was of the stealthy, now-you-see-it-now-you-don't variety. It disappeared in what seems like a flash!

The finishing touch to our Fat Apple's experience was the receipt. Pie Spy finds wisdom in unexpected places. Be sure to read below the bottom line. That's what I'm talking about.