Greg Vore

‘How to Build a Better Pie’

It’s been said that simple foods are the most difficult to master. Take, for example, pie. Its familiar, comforting, iconic character comes with countless questions, even for baking hobbyists: How do you make a perfectly flaky crust? What kitchen tools are absolutely essential? How does one thicken a fruit filling? Luckily, just in time for prime summer pie season, comes the chef Millicent Souris’s new cookbook, out today, titled “How to Build a Better Pie.”

While Souris explores the virtues and versatility of the American classic — she favors leaf lard for its transparent, clean finish; believes almost anything can be baked with crust; and loves marrying fruit with fresh herbs — there’s one topic she won’t budge on. “I don’t think you elevate pies by making them look really pretty,” Souris says. “I think you elevate them with the integrity of ingredients.”

Her collection of easy-to-use recipes range from traditional — sweet bourbon pecan and savory chicken pot — to highly original, like her paltry fruit, a pie born from the same notion as its humble beginnings at a time when, Souris says, “few ingredients were stretched to feed more.” During Hurricane Irene last summer, Souris had six nectarines — lush and fragrant, but on the verge of spoiling — sitting on her kitchen counter. Rather than let them go to waste, she created a thrifty, practical recipe to turn the fruit on the fringe into something rich, indulgent — a sum far more enjoyable than its individual parts. “Pie is as humble as you want it to be,” Souris explains. “And the best part is making something out of nothing.”

To celebrate the publication of her cookbook (there will be a party, open to the public, tonight at the Brooklyn Kitchen from 6:30 to 8:30), Souris created a special pie recipe for T: “This is an easy pie that doesn’t require a lot of oven time. The cracker crust tastes like the best shortbread you’ve ever made, and it works wonderfully with any summer fruit. But I’ve got my eye on strawberries at the moment.”

T’s Easy Summer Pie: Strawberry Lemon Curd by Millicent Souris
For a 9? glass pie plate

Saltine Vanilla Wafer Cracker Crust

½ sleeve saltine crackers (16)
16 vanilla wafers
1 stick unsalted butter
¼ cup granulated sugar
1 egg white (save the yolk)
1 tablespoon kosher salt.

Melt butter in a small pan. Pull from heat before it browns and let cool. Toss the crackers and wafers in a food processor and pulse until crumbs begin to form. Gradually add the butter, sugar, salt and egg white. Turn the food processor off, and turn the mixture into the pie plate. With a level, steady hand lightly press the crust into the plate. Evenly tap the crust across the bottom of the plate and up the sides about half an inch. It should be even in thickness. Place crust in refrigerator to rest for at least 20 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Once the crust has rested, bake it in the preheated oven for 15 minutes. Pull and cool. While the crust is baking, make the lemon curd.

Lemon Curd
Yields 2 cups

Juice zest of 3 lemons
½ cup unsalted butter (2 sticks)
1 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
pinch of kosher salt.

Fill a medium-size sauce pot about a third way with water and heat. Use a bowl that will fit atop the pot, or nestle down a bit, without touching the water. Cut the butter into small chunks and toss in the bowl with the sugar. Place on the pot so it starts to melt as you zest the lemons, keeping the zest separate to add at the end. Whisk the melting butter and sugar together and add the lemon juice, whisking together well.

Lift your bowl and make sure the water is gently simmering (not boiling). Gently beat the three eggs in a separate bowl. Add the eggs to the bowl over simmering water, whisking everything together. Once the mixture is combined, use a rubber spatula to continuously scrape the bowl around the sides (especially the bottom) so everything cooks evenly. The mixture will thicken in 7 to 10 minutes, and should become more cohesive as it firms up along the edges of the bowl.

Add the lemon zest and salt. Mix. Turn into another bowl and place cling wrap flush across the top of the curd (this prevents a “skin” from developing). Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Strawberry Topping

1 pint strawberries (the smaller the better)
2 tablespoons raw sugar
Zest and juice of one lemon
½ teaspoon salt
3 sprigs of tarragon, or 4 sprigs of mint, or 4 sprigs of chervil
A scraped vanilla pod (optional).

Hull the strawberries, then cut in half lengthwise (if they are bigger than the tip of your fingers). Toss them with the raw sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice and salt. Pick the herb of your choice and chop. Gently bruise the stems and toss the them, the herbs and vanilla pod with the fruit. Let the mixture macerate at room temperature, while everything else cools.

After 30 minutes, fill the crust with the curd. Refrigerate again until the curd settles and tightens.

Cut the pie into 8 slices, soaking the knife into hot water after each slice and wiping it clean. Plate the slices, then take a spoonful of the dressed strawberries to top the pie. Finish with a drizzle of strawberry juice and enjoy.

“How to Build a Better Pie,” $24.99. Go to amazon.com.

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Tina Rupp

Gesine Bullock-Prado, bakery owner, multiple-cookbook author, blogger, and sister of actress Sandra Bullock, offers pastry recipes and tips in “Pie it Forward.’’

I like baking, and I generally like baking books even when they’re fussy. So I took an instant shine to the new pie book by Gesine Bullock-Prado (bakery owner, multiple-cookbook author, blogger, and ex-Hollywooder; she’s Sandra Bullock’s sister). “Pie It Forward” is a loose wordplay on “pay it forward,” being grateful for something good, and paying it forward to others. The book has gorgeous photography, and there are cute little sidebars offering advice: say, how to salvage overwhipped cream. I was half in love with it before I ever started a recipe.

Then I took it into the kitchen.

Our first foray, a Key lime mascarpone cream pie, is a smash. The tart dough comes together simply, thanks to condensed milk and a food processor, and the flavors are bright and creamy. We smile and dig in, not knowing that this effortless experience is unique. The rest of the testing, it turns out, will be plagued by omissions and distortions, ranging from trivial to monumental.

Continue reading below

“Not-so-traditional” apple pie calls for an express puff pastry and 13 apples, which seems like a lot. Still, I follow the recipe, down to the absorbent “Crust Dust” (a 50-50 mix of flour and sugar for absorbing extra liquid in fruit pies). The puff pastry more or less does its job, but the apples run and flood the pie, overwhelming the Crust Dust in a mudslide.

A more traditional puff pastry, in a pear-frangipane pithivier, is made with some nontraditional short cuts (a mixer), but the rise and lamination are both good. However, Bullock-Prado forgets to tell you to egg-wash the finished product before sliding it in the oven. If you think of doing it yourself, you’ll get a confection that looks just like the picture. If not, you won’t (I tried both ways).

A bruleed maple custard tart calls for ½ cup sugar to coat a tiny 8-inch tart. Skeptical, I use only ¼ cup, and still end up with a layer of brulee so thick it cannot be penetrated. In the serving, the thick caramel shards crush the custard underneath.

I persevere. Chocolate orange souffle tartlets start with a disastrous, wet chocolate-cookie tart dough using almost ?
cup liquid and directions to “add the liquid and pulse till just combined.” I throw out the soggy, unrollable results and start again, using half the liquid. The second dough is rollable but fragile, and, channeling a Zen monk as the minutes tick by, I eventually contrive to fit it into the tartlet rings. As for the filling, there is twice as much as needed, so I improvise and make it into a separate souffle.

For a savory change of pace, I try a pork pie recipe, which is like a culinary Murphy’s law: everything that can go wrong, does. Fussy instructions for pre-baking puff pastry in muffin tins are impossible to execute. One item in the ingredients list is never called for in the recipe, and one item that isn’t listed turns up in the instructions. The timing is off, and so are the yields (too little pastry, way too much filling). I make it work, but it takes some MacGyvering.

My most tragic encounter with “Pie It Forward” is not actually the book’s fault. It involves a strawberry-rhubarb lattice crumble pie calling for so much butter and sugar I think, initially, the mistake is mine. Still, I slog on, through 4½ cups of flour, 4½ sticks of butter, 2 cups of sugar, and the fact that the huge pile of crumble topping is nowhere to be seen in the pie’s final photograph.

It all goes into a 9-inch pie pan which, 50 minutes later, I attempt to remove to a cooling rack. With a wobble and a whoosh, the entire 4-pound pie slides to the floor, landing facedown. When I recover sufficiently to start scraping it up, I notice — with a sense of insult compounding injury — that the now highly visible interior is still sloppy and underdone. Would it have set up had the pie been given its proper cooling time? Possibly. We’ll never know.

In baking, the devil is in the details (except for when it’s lying in an 8-foot splatter at your feet). The funny thing is, this tremendously appealing book is filled with detail, wit, and good advice. But rather like that metal cooling rack I was aiming for, sometimes it’s just not there when you need it.

Try BostonGlobe.com today and get two weeks FREE.T. Susan Chang can be reached at [email protected].

Because of a reviewer’s error, an earlier reference to the puff pastry indicates that the author says to make it in a mixer or food processor. The dough is made in a mixer.

baking with Bill & Sheila

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Does chief pie taster David have the best job in Wales?

WHEN it comes to job satisfaction, David Jackson really takes the pie.

The 40-year-old ex-chef and food science graduate has an unusual – but some would say vital – role in everyday Welsh life.

While many of his friends are confined to the office from nine ’til five, David can normally be found travelling the length and breadth of the country – tasting pies.

To give him his proper title, David is chief pieologist for Caerphilly-based food and pie suppliers Peter’s.

You’re probably aware that we are the pastry pioneers with ‘game changers’ like our hit Premier Pepperoni Pizza slice, Premier Cheesy Bean slice or Premier Chicken Fajita slice with “Discovery” Seasonings – boy, do they taste good!

You may have heard (or tasted) our simply delightful new range of premium pies, pasties, rolls and slices. These are deliciously deep filled and have a ‘perfect crunch’ puff pastry lid with a melt in the mouth experience, and the best deep fillings in our 40-year history. We like to call them our ‘Premier’ range.

However, there is another equally impressive side to Peter’s … that involves some 900 products! From pie and pastries to bacon and beans, from chips and peas to meats and cheese, from flap jacks and cookies to desserts and drinks, we supply goods fresh as a daisy to fast food outlets, fish bars, restaurants, cafes, sandwich shops, independent retailers, schools, hospitals and hotels throughout the country.

A typical working day can see David conduct taste panels at breakfast and lunch with as many as eight or a dozen pies on offer.

It means buying lunch has now become a dim and distant memory.

And such is the value of his work that David’s bosses are now looking into insuring his tongue and taste buds for a massive five-figure sum.

David, from Rogerstone, Newport, said: “It’s a typical comment when you go away on holiday.

“People say: ‘What do you do?’

“When I say I’m a pieologist it kind of stops them in their tracks and it gets a giggle.

“It’s a pretty rare role. You have great fun with it and meet interesting people and customers.

“At the end of the day, it’s a hoot and you can’t take it too seriously when your job is to develop the next great pie.”

David’s job sees him work with food retailers to watch food trends, work on recipe development, plan products – and, well, eat.

And despite his pie-heavy diet David says it hasn’t had too adverse an effect on his waistline over the years.

“Obviously with the great job which I have you have the great opportunity to try a different trouser size every year,” he said.

“We have a fairly fixed diet. And it’s a balanced diet because you have a pie in each hand!

“I have actually lost weight during the last two years but you do have to be careful with your diet.

“Normally we don’t swallow a lot of what we are tasting. We are trained to professionally taste rather like the wine tasters.

“Though every once in a while, yes I will admit, you eat the whole product.”

The work he and his colleagues do has reportedly brought in millions of pounds of extra business over the last few years.

It means there is a high price on David’s mouth and his bosses are now looking to insure his tongue and taste buds, though premiums run above £10,000.

David said: “Because we have had such great success in recent years, and brought in £20m worth of business from product development, the business investigated the potential for insuring my taste buds and tongue.

“I understand the costs around it are not all that terrific and the premiums are rather steep and going into five figures.”

Recently, David has been devouring a beef and coca-cola pie as well as thai green and red chicken pies, which are all in development.

He said: “For more than 30 years we have had a pie made from steak and kidney and chicken and mushroom. But we always have to keep an eye on the market.

“The really interesting part of the job is looking at trends in food.

“There’s a big trend for food with spiciness and a lot of British, patriotic products with the Olympics and Diamond Jubilee this year.

“Just last week we were tasting a coca cola and beef pie.

“It had a coca cola-based sauce with prime British steak and a little hint of chilli just at the back.

“My taste buds have taken a bit of a battering.”

Alongside pies, David’s other big passion is racing cars which he has done recently with some success in his Caterham 7 sports car at the Castle Combe circuit.

“I have had a few wins so the pies aren’t slowing me down too much,” he said.

“I have always had an interest in cars since I was three-years-old and I have been fortunate enough to fulfil my dream and buy a Caterham.”

And asked if there was any job he would swap for his own, there was only one thing David could possibly think of.

“Yeah, beer tasting at Brains,” he said.

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Recommended Reading

• dessert
• Cornmeal Apricots Cake brings out the flavors of summer
• Baking fit for a Queen
• 'How to Build a Better Pie'
• Sweet as Pie
• Rhubarb Sour Cream Pie
• Cottage cake like Grandma used to make
• Lemon cake with lemony sugar wash
• You can't go wrong with lemon and herbs in super-easy chicken bake
• Cookbook Review 'Pie It Forward' is all about what's inside a sweet crust
• Japanese cake with roots in Portugal
• Google+1