Harris Miriam - Magpie: sweets and savories from Philadelphias favorite pie boutique

Copyright 2015 by Holly Ricciardi

Photography 2015 by Steve Legato

Published by Running Press,

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2015937006

E-book ISBN 978-0-7624-5805-9

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Designed by Susan Van Horn

Edited by Kristen Green Wiewora

Prop styling by Carrie Purcell

Food styling by Carrie Purcell and Holly Ricciardi

Typography: Archer, Hera Big, and Brandon Text

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To Greg, for ignoring the possibilities of the fool in me and for believing in the possibilities of greatness in me.

contents

I flipped the sign in Magpies storefront window to Open for the very first time on September 1, 2012. It was a characteristically steamy, late-summer Philadelphia morning. And it was perfect.

Perfect timing for the opening day of a season-centric pie shop: smack-dab on the cusp between summer and fall, that amazing moment just before the lush summer tide of berries and stone fruits recedes, when the most flavorful corn and tomatoes are still abundant, and yet the first wave of early-variety fall apples is already sweeping in.

Reading through that opening-day menu is like watching a movie-camera slow-pan shot of a long banquet table laid out with an all-pie, end-of-summer extravaganza.

But that final blush of summer was going, going, gone, and by October 1, fall was upon us, and we had a completely different menu. Just one fruit pie remained the same, the (page 237).

All within our first month of businesshow crazy is that? What kind of lunatic opens a restaurant with full knowledge that the menu will have to be overhauled on a monthly basissometimes even more frequently (hello and goodbye, sour cherries!)to keep pace with the ebb and flow of fresh, local, seasonal produce?

Well, I was born and raised in a small town in the south-central Pennsylvania countryside. Pare away a few layers of trendy jargon, shrug off the food-fetishism, and whats nowadays touted as locavorian, seasonal, farm-to-table cuisine bears strong resemblance to the way my family back home has been provisioning, cooking, and eating for generations. (This is not the place to get into it, but as far as nouvelle nose-to-tail cuisine is concerned, Ive got just one word for you: scrapple!)

Back there in Carlisle, my hometown, extended family literally extended in all directions. Living within blocks of one another were my grandparents, great-aunts, uncles, and lots of cousins. Even my great-grandparents lived two blocks away. The house I grew up in was catty-corner to my grandparents backyard, which had a grove of fruit trees and a big kitchen garden. In town, my grandfather owned and ran a grocery and butcher shop while, for decades, my great-grandmother sold her famous pies and cakes at the Carlisle Country Market.

So, yes, to go along with my country upbringing Ive inherited some serious baking genes. My mother, at an early age, took on the self-appointed role of baking protg to her grandmother. Mom grew up into a formidable bakereven raising five children and working full-time as an overnight switchboard operator at the local hospital, she made everything herself. No exaggeration: in addition to home cooking all of our meals, my mother made any and all sweets herself. She didnt serve dessert after dinner every night, but she routinely baked whatever suited the season, anything that was in harvest or struck her fancy. In addition to typical Americana sweets like sugar cookies, oatmeal cookies, zucchini bread, banana bread, and fruit crisps and pies, there were the south-central Pennsy staples like apple dumplings, whoopie pies, and (page 176). No treat was ever store-boughtnot the caramel popcorn balls doled out at Halloween, not the peanut butter eggs at Easter, and certainly not the two dozen different kinds of cookies at Christmas.

And the holiday feasts! In my family, the dessert lineup is always in equal proportion to savories. (Take a moment to picture that: a great big turkey/ham/roast, plus a dozen or so traditional sidesall matched pound for pound by a parade of pies and other treats.) When I was a kid, my grandparents shared the holiday cooking, with my grandfather (being a butcher) preparing the meats and my grandmother making the side dishes (her candied sweet potatoes, which could double as dessert, are an inspiration for my , page 142), and my mother focused primarily on the dessert spread. These days, my mother has taken full charge of holiday meals. She has four daughters helping out (to the extent she allows), and the dessert menu maintains its spectacular proportions.

To me, there is no other food that celebrates the seasonthe here-and-nowlike pie does, and no other food that makes us feel the way pie does: loved.