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The Comfort of a Pie -- and Seven Recipes

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I daub the top of my pie with milk before I put it into a 425-degree oven. The milk will help the crust to brown so that it will look as delectable as it tastes. There are other ways to treat the top of a pie. Some cooks smear it with a mixture of flour and shortening, which will cook into an extra layer of flaky crust. Others sprinkle their top crust with sugar.

Leftover Crust

One of the pleasures of a pie is the uses of the leftover crust. I make pinwheels or, if I have a generous amount of dough to deal with, turnovers. I make my pinwheels with ease, rerolling the little mound of dough, knowing it will not be tough from too much handling because I have been generous with my shortening. On the irregular piece of pastry I slather butter, which I sprinkle generously with sugar and cinnamon. I roll it like a jelly roll and cut it into 3/4" pieces. Although the pinwheels go into the oven after the pie, they will come out first, and oh, the joy we will have eating the crisp, sweet, aromatic treats that have been a tradition in my family for at least four generations.

For turnovers, I cut the rerolled pastry into irregular shapes, drop a dollop of jam onto each, fold them over onto themselves, seal the raw edges with my fork, prick their tops two or three times, and pop them into the oven. The uncooked turnovers are heavy. They come out of the oven light and crisp, their browned crust drizzled with the seeping sticky syrup of the hot jam. They are for immediate eating, as are the pinwheels, serving to appease the hankering of children and spouse who have been drawn to the kitchen by the teasing aroma of the cooking pie.

Fillings

One of the wonders of the lowly pie is that the choice of fillings seems limitless. For the most part my pie making follows a seasonal pattern. In February I make cherry pie. I make pineapple pie in late winter, using pineapple canned in its own unsweetened juice, and the look and taste of the golden filling seems to bring sun to cold, overcast days. I make rhubarb pie in the spring when the stalks of that old-fashioned "pie plant" are new. Only summer brings the possibility of a blackberry pie. The best apple pies are made in midsummer when the first green apples appear in the market, or in the autumn with newly picked Cortlands from a nearby orchard. And a mincemeat pie, made with Aunt Dotty's homemade mincemeat rich with venison, apples, raisins, and brandy, is only for Christmas dinner.

There are one-crust pies that I consider seasonal, such as pumpkin (or squash). But all one-crust pies -- custard, chocolate cream, coconut cream, lemon meringue -- are superior when served in a pastry shell rather than in one of the sweet crumb crusts.

A pie can make a meal, too. There is Ham and Egg or Cheese and Onion Pie. Or pies made with leftover turkey or chicken or pot roast.

But my best beef pie is not made with leftovers. For my Meat and Potato Pie I cook cubes of lean beef in water with chopped onions and a bay leaf all day in a slow oven. When the meat is fork-tender I thicken the gravy and add cubed, cooked potatoes. Although Meat and Potato Pie, which came to our family by way of our English grandmother, was probably intended to be a two-crust pie, it has long been traditional for Butler family cooks to bake its crust in flat sheets. This "pie" comes to our table as a bowl of meat and potato cubes in rich gravy, accompanied by a napkin-lined basket heaped with squares of flaky crust. We crumble the crust over the serving of meat and potatoes on our plate or eat the squares as we would crisp crackers. I invariably make it when the snow lies around the door and the thermometer is plunging -- what discomfort can a winter night hold when there is Meat and Potato Pie for supper?

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From Yankee's Recipe Database, these pie recipes come from our readers' kitchens.

RECIPES