S WEET AND S AV O R Y RECIPES FOR THE LOVE OF PIE CHERYL PERRY & FELIPA LOPEZ of Pie Corps WITH LYNN MARIE HULSMAN , PH OTOGRAPHY B Y TARA STRIAN OCONTENTS 7 | A CKN O WLEDGMENTS 9 | INTR O D U CTI O N 13 | THE BASICS: BEFORE YOU GET STARTED 14 | INGREDIENTS 19 | THE TOOLS OF THE TRADE 22 | TECHNIQUES 29 | FORMS 36 | THE CR U ST 51 | THE S WEET 53 | FRUIT 71 | CUSTARD AND CREAM 85 | MOUSSE AND PUDDING 93 | NUT 99 | THE S AV O R Y 101 | CHICKEN 108 | BEEF AND LAMB 126 | PORK 137 | FISH 144 | VEGETARIAN 172 | THE HYBRIDS 193 | IND EX 9 INTRODUCTION “Pie makes everybody happy” -Laurie Halse Anderson, The Impossible Knife of Memory WHY PIE? It’s the essence of hand-made. It’s not like cake, there’s no mix for it. Once you learn the basics, you’re there. Anything locally available to you is potentially pie. Pie is not a trend, but a con- stant. Our pie is the best of the best because of our philosophy of learning how to do it right, and using the purest, most wholesome ingredients available. WHY NOW? You might have read that “pie is trending.” While it’s true that people on the streets are talking about, and seeking out pie, we believe that pie is too essential to trend. We think America has simply experienced an awakening, and begun to recognize this idea. In exactly the same way Americans have been called to pull out the knitting needles, the gardening gloves, and the beer- brewing equipment, they’ve been converted to embrac- ing the basics. More and more people are preparing and eating whole food, hand-made with a minimum of pomp and fuss. Pie is the quintessential “slow food” because it’s always better made in small batches and by hand. WHY US? We’d like to introduce ourselves: Our names are Cheryl Perry and Felipa Lopez, and we dedicate our lives to pie in all its glorious forms. If you’re wondering, “Why pie? Why now?” let us fill you in on an open secret: It’s always been pie. Pie is an elemental food. Truth. End of story. You cannot argue the point. Both the crust and the filling of a good pie denote the very essence of the word “handmade.” Pie is filling, pie is nourishing, pie is comforting, and pie is an adventure. It’s a dish that evokes home and hearth. People’s reaction to pie is visceral; pie makes people feel good. Pie makes people feel loved. That is why we at Pie Corps devote ourselves entirely to sustaining, developing, upgrading, and promoting pie and pie alone. Here at Pie Corps, we’re on a mission: To offer the finest qual- ity, handmade, soul satisfying, savory, and sweet pie to the people of Brooklyn and beyond. More than that, we want to teach people to make it for themselves, and for their loved ones. We’re chang- ing people’s thinking when it comes to pie. We’re flying the flag of 10 • IntroductIon “insist on the best.” We are pie-oneers, perfecting ways to make life tastier, one bite at a time. We at Pie Corps are part of a large group of people, banded together for one common goal, and that goal is the love of pie. Why? Because everyone loves pie. We’d invite you to join The Corps, but you’re already one of us. Welcome home. WHY PIE IS OUR MISSION? We want to share. We want you to know what we know. We want to remove all fear around pie-making. We’ve heard it time and again from our customers and from the students in our in-house pie-making classes, “I don’t make homemade piecrusts. There are so many ways it can go wrong.” We agree. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you can mess it up. Don’t be afraid of the truth. Making a perfect crust is a whole lot of science, with a little dash of art. There’s a right way to do it and a wrong way. Why do we do it our way? Because it’s the best way. We want to share what we’ve learned through decades of trial and error with everyone who loves pie. Which, as you know, we believe is everyone. FOR THE LOVE OF PIE Our partnership fell into place as naturally as rain. When we met, we were drawn to each other because we both love food. We mean love it. We both love cooking and beautiful ingredients, and basically knew instantly that we wanted to have a food busi- ness together. We opened Pie Corps with the intention of exciting, engaging, and enticing the palates of pie enthusiasts to the next level by introducing them to the concept of sustainability, and the joy of eating fresh, whole, seasonal foods. A LITTLE ABOUT CHERYL We both hail from strong food families. I started out early, cook- ing for my Russian-Jewish family. My grandmother only cooked traditional Eastern European food, but she did it the best way, and made everything with quality and love each time. That singularity of vision pushed me to branch out on a journey to explore all types of cuisine and investigate the techniques that I didn’t learn at my grandmother’s elbow. For me, perfecting pies under the roof of a business I owned was a quest: I owned the contemporary American restaurant Dish for six years, and was an instructor at the Natural Gourmet Insti- tute of Health and Culinary Arts for about fifteen years, along with maintaining a consulting practice dedicated to advising food- related start-up businesses for over five years, but that was not enough. Even with over 20 years of professional experience under my belt, I knew I wouldn’t feel like I was a real chef until I mastered pie. The hallmark of a truly great chef is pastry, and the pinnacle is pie. I’ve been an avid pie maker for most of my career, but I never felt I had it in my bones and muscles until I spent one entire glorious summer, from May to September, at my country house upstate making a pie a day for anyone who would eat it. I can now say, without reservation, that I know the best way to make pies, and I love doing it that way every time. A LITTLE ABOUT FELIPA Felipa comes from a family of Cubans and Puerto Ricans boast- ing many great cooks, including her grandmother, who on the day she died at age 102, cooked herself a pork chop and sat down with a cup of café con leche and ate before taking herself to the hospital, where she died with a belly full of her own home cooking. Her dad, a professional chef, took her to markets when she was a girl, and taught her how to choose the best foods, herbs, and spices at the peak times. He also taught her how to stock a kitchen. She always has the ingredients to make any ethnic dish I or our friends ask for. Want Pad Thai? Fine! She has the lemon- grass and fish sauce. Chicken tikka masala? No problem. She has cumin and ghee. Her father would ask her what cake she wanted for her birth- day, and her response was always the same: lemon meringue pie. She’d sit on a kitchen stool and watch him use a fork to hand- whip egg whites into a tall, creamy topping. She learned to make empanadas, and fill them with what was at hand, cooked with a Cuban influence.“‘It’s like Thanksgiving in a pie,’ Gayle said after tasting this flaky, 100 percent Vermont butter-crusted package of handmade goodness filled with roasted turkey, sweet potatoes and fresh rosemary.” —Oprah Magazine12 • IntroductIon So now she naturally stuffs hand pies and pielettes with carnitas, picadillo, and bacalao, while I tend to lean on foods from my child- hood and can make a brisket pie, or the slab pie version of a blintz without thinking. Together, we make pies hailing from all ethnic backgrounds: We especially love French and Indian influences. In a way, Felipa’s path to pie-making mirrored mine: She devoted time to teaching herself to make fruit pies over the course of a long vacation. She already knew savory cooking from the dishes her dad and grandmother taught her. She wanted the skill to put all of the delicious, in-season fruit grown locally into the perfect pie. In addition to her passion for all things culinary, Felipa prac- tices as a New York City- and Brooklyn-based acupuncturist. After establishing her practice in 2006, it dawned on her that she wanted to incorporate a “food as medicine” emphasis into her healing arts. This began a foray into the world of lacto-fermen- tation and traditional nutrition. She’s discovered a multitude of new ideas around eating, creating balance around what we eat and drink, and how we nourish our bodies. Making pie for Pie Corps combines many of her culinary interests, including the subtlety of balancing dynamic flavor with wholesome, real local foods that feed not only the body, but the spirit as well. THE PIE CORPS SHOP IN BROOKLYN Pie Corps is a small pie company with a big reach. We began humbly, perfecting our pies using country house guests as testers, and then peddling our pastries at an upstate farmers market. Before we knew it, we couldn’t keep up with the demand. Our devoted fans confirmed what we already knew to be true: People want pie. Next, we expanded to markets local to New York City, such as The Hester Street Fair and the New Amsterdam Market. Fizzing with nerves about opening a new business in a soft economy, but confident in the quality of our mission and our wares, we opened our hearts on Lucky Ant, a crowd-funding site not unlike Kick- starter, and laid bare our dream. In the blink of an eye, supporters pitched in enough for our first industrial oven. Before long our pies had earned us enough to set up a brick-and-mortar shop. We chose Brooklyn. We knew in our souls that it was the place. We planned to be Pie-oneers, and to grow with the neighborhood. Our goal for opening the shop in Greenpoint was to create a home base in our community so that we could serve, connect, and teach. We like to keep things local, and our tribe is in Brooklyn. The way we embrace our community is the way we cook and serve food. On a more primal level, it’s the way we cook and eat. We’re modern women who believe the old ways are the best ways when it comes to food, friends, and family. For us, excellence and purity surpass any passing trend. From the time we open our doors in the morning at 8 a.m. to serve Egg and Mushroom Hand Pies and Salmon, Dill, and Goat Cheese Quiche alongside steaming Red Eyes and Lattes, to the time we serve our last heaving slabs of Fresh Seafood Pie and delicate Honey Lavender Tarts and shut the doors at 8 p.m., our shop hums with convivial conversation and passion for pie. Our singular goal paid off: Not only do we have a booming business at our café, but we supply pies to the grocery store, Union Market, restaurants such as Café Lalo and Brother Jimmy’s BBQ, the grab- and-go vendors at LaGuardia airport, and the major supermarket chain Whole Foods. “Pie is multicultural. Everybody understands it as a meal, and everyone understands it as a snack.”40 • The CrusT CHOCOLATE CRUMB PRESSED CRUST MAKES CRUST FOR 1 (9-TO 10-INCH) PIE This crust gets used in a variety of delicious pies at the shop. It’s our go-to chocolate crust. Some people look at pressed crusts, or crumb crusts as they’re sometimes called, as an easy alternative to a traditional rolled crust. While that’s certainly true, we don’t see using our Chocolate Crumb Pressed Crust as a shortcut, but rather as a way to provide a different experience altogether. A classic choice for many single-crust pie recipes, crumb crusts have a sturdiness that stands up to moist and creamy fillings such as mousses and puddings. Since these fillings need no baking, you’ll need to blind bake this crust for 15 minutes before assembling your pie. For egg-based custards, the crust bakes along with the filling as a whole pie. This crust requires no rolling; just blend the dough and press it into the pan. Easy peasy! 2⁄3 cup chocolate wafer crumbs (from about 14 cookies, such as Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers) 1⁄4 cup light brown sugar 1⁄4 cup (1 1⁄2 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips 3 tablespoons (a little more than 1⁄4 stick) unsalted butter, melted Line a rimmed half-sheet (13 x 18-inch) baking tray with parchment paper. In the bowl of a food processor, combine the crumbs, brown sugar, and chocolate chips; pulse together until finely ground. Drizzle in the butter and pulse until the crumbs begin to stick together, scraping down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula as needed. Pour the crumbs into a pie plate. Using a glove, or piece of plastic wrap, press the crumb mixture up sides to the top of the plate then evenly over the bottom. Chill the crust for at least 30 minutes. For no-bake pies, you will need to bake the crust before using. Preheat oven to 350° F, then line the crust with parchment paper and fill with pie weights or dried beans. Bake it on the prepared tray for about 15 minutes until it is crisp. Cool it on a wire rack before filling.Next >