Pat Willard - Pie Every Day: Recipes and Slices of Life

RECIPES AND SLICES OF LIFE

by PAT WILLARD

ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL 1997

Published by
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of
WORKMAN PUBLISHING
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014

1997 by Pat Willard.
All rights reserved.
Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Limited.
Design by Nancy Loggins Gonzalez.
Illustrations by Judy Pedersen.
Line drawings by Billy Kelly.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint their recipes:

Mississippi Mud Pie from As Easy as Pie by Susan G. Purdy, 1984 by Susan G. Purdy, reprinted by permission of Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster.

Sweet Potato Pie from Soul Food by Sheila Ferguson, 1989 by Sheila Ferguson, reprinted by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE FOR A PREVIOUS EDITION OF THIS WORK.

eISBN 9781565128132

I would like to express my deep appreciation to Carl G. Sontheimer, president of the Cuisinart Cooking Club, Inc., for an afternoon of fine conversation and for granting me permission to adapt recipes from the clubs magazine, The Pleasures of Cooking. I would also like to thank the current editors at Farm Journal for permission to use recipes from their 1965 cookbook, the Complete Pie Cookbook.

This book wouldnt have been written without my moms good cooking skills, the years of teaching (and eating) given to me by Andy Birsh, and all the friends and relatives who gave me recipes and kindly let me stuff them with pie. For their constant support, I would especially like to thank Dan Cullen and Mary Chris Welch, Kathleen Cromwell, my sister, Sue, my brother, Joe, my editor, Shannon Ravenel, for her patient guidance through the intricacies of the English language, and finally, and very deeply, Sallie Gouverneur, who didnt laugh when I told her Id been thinking a lot about pies.

Thank you all with love.

How it began

Self-help to overcome your fear of making pie crusts

Pies to meet the morning light

Quick pies for days when friends drop in

Afterschool and baby treats

Fancy little hors doeuvres and party nibbles

Hefty main dishes and perfect solutions for leftovers

Knock-em-dead creations and labors of love

Apple pies to soothe you to sleep

IN HONOR OF MY POP, JOHN J. WILLARD, AND CHRISS MOM, SALLY SEIDMAN

MARCH 1996

WITH LOVE TO CHRIS

To know the right woman is a liberal education.

ELBERT HUBBARD, FROM THE ROYCROFT DICTIONARY AND BOOK OF EPIGRAMS

When I got married, I moved to a small town in Ohio called Ravenna where my husband, Chris, was a reporter for the county newspaper. Before I married I was writing a novel and working as a community organizer down in Atlanta, Georgia. But afterward, when all the boxes and hand-me-down furniture were packed into the small attic rooms of our first apartment, I had to find a job. After months of applying for the few jobs that fit my background, I settled in as the morning waitress at the BarTen Restaurant. It was considered one of the best positions in town, and I got the job only because the newspapers photographer was a favorite customer and had vouched for my worthiness. I liked the job because it rescued us financially, but more because it gave me time in the afternoons to write. My shift started at seven, when the farmers came in for eggs, and coffee fortified with whiskey, and ended shortly after two, when the county judge from the courthouse across the street finished his turtle soup.

Unlike the afternoon and evening waitresses, I was expected to do some food preparation and to help cook breakfast when Senia or Anna, the cooks (both well into their seventies), were busy preparing the days specials. In my family, being a good cook was considered a natural part of life, so in no time I was skillfully poaching eggs, flipping hash, and folding omelets. I liked being in the kitchen early in the morning and watching the hungry men and women smelling of dirt and hay plow through the breakfasts I made for them. While Senia and Anna told me stories about their lives, I fell into the quiet, peaceful rhythm of the work. Between the good talk and the simple food we served, by the time my shift ended, I felt, on most days, ready for the writing I was doing at home. But what I really longed to do, from the first day I began at the BarTen, was to learn to make pies the way Betty made them.

Betty was the midday waitress. She arrived at ten with her husband and unmarried son trailing behind her, all bearing trays of freshly baked pies. She had the best station in the restaurantthe one in front by the bar where all the lawyers and businesspeople liked to sit. She left promptly at two, when her husband came back to pick her up. Dressed in a neat white pantsuit, her white hair a flurry of curls, Betty smoked and gossiped through the workday. A good Christian woman with a husband who had his own trucking business, she didnt much need anyones approval. She was not well liked by the staff because she had a rigid authority about her; cool and efficient, she gave the impression that she was a waitress above the pack. Betty grew to like me despite my college degree and sometimes strange opinions, but mostly, I think, because she knew I wasnt after her son the way she was convinced the evening waitress (a tramp, if Betty ever saw one living and breathing) was. When I finally got to know her well enough to ask her how to make a pie, she chalked up my ignorance to being a young city bride and wrote down the recipe for an all-purpose crust, including as a bonus the trick for a creamy custard filling.

It was as if I had just been given the secret to a long and happy life. The recipe was written surreptitiously on the back of a check (so that the others in the kitchen wouldnt see) and slipped to me at the end of my shift while I was putting on my coat. On my way home, I stopped at the grocery store and bought lard, eggs, and cornstarch. I forgot about everything else except what I was about to do. I kept thinking about the banana cream pie I was going to present to my husband that night, envisioning the swirling mass of meringue peaks on top and my husbands blissful face when he cut into it. At a time when we were still trying to find our footing together, the idea struck me as an essential equation that went something like this:

My husband loves pies + I learn to make pies = We will be forever one

So I hugged my bags of groceries and secret recipe and hurried home. For the rest of the afternoon I worked on that pie. At first, the dough stuck to the rolling pin, but eventually I rolled it out and got it somehow into the pie plate that I had received as a wedding present but had not taken out of the box until that day. The filling thickened, the bananas were ripe. Everything, it seemed, was coming out right.