Apricot raspberry rose galette

Killing time in South Brisbane recently on a recent trip to my hometown, I spent a delightful half hour browsing the aisles of Triton Food Brokers, a treasure trove of imported European grocery items and bulk foods in an unassuming stretch of Montague Rd. In amongst the baklava, and olives, haloumi and marzipan, pastizzi and pomegranate molasses I found edible rose petals for $1.50 and bargain barberries (a find for an owner of multiple Ottolenghi cookbooks who has up til now just been subbing in cranberries because she thought he made them up). I wasn't sure when I'd use the rose petals, but paging through a cookbook I got for Christmas, I came across this recipe for apricot raspberry rose galette. It was fated as I've been trying to make the most of summer fruit before disappearing for a month into winter. A galette is basically the lazy person's pie (half the rolling and no crimping or complicated lattice work) but better still, its open top allows you to see the glorious colours of the fruit within. And this is one of the prettiest palettes you'll see - orange and red and pink. The crust is made with cornmeal, which gives it a nice texture, a lovely contrast with the jamminess of the fruit. A fitting farewell to summer.

Pear tart

By and large I cannot be bothered with pastry. It's all to do with the rolling out really. The flour that goes everywhere. The dough that does not spread in a perfect circle, or any sort of circle at all. So I was excited to come across this recipe for a tart in which the pastry is just pressed with your fingers into the tin, baked for a bit, then packed with pear slices and a filling of butter, sugar and eggs that transforms in the oven into a silky, sweet custard. In many ways it's like the winter equivalent of Nora Ephron's peach pie - easy to make, even easier to eat. I took a couple of slices on a walk last weekend with my cousin, where they were enjoyed with a view of the harbour... as well as by the kookaburra who swooped and snaffled the last bite.

Nora Ephron's peach pie

Nora Ephron was a writer. Though she wasn't a food writer, all of her work, in one way or another, features food - from her screen adaptation of Julie and Julia (about how Julia Child became Julia Child), to perhaps her most-well known script When Harry Met Sally (whose most memorable scene takes place in Katz's Deli) to an early novel of hers I read just a few weeks ago, titled - memorably, perfectly - Heartburn. The book is the account of a marriage ending. Its heroine is a food writer who discovers her Washington journalist husband is having an affair while she is pregnant with their second child. It's funny, it's heartbreaking, it has recipes. Just like life.

To all those people who think making pie is hard (and that includes me), this recipe is for you. It's so simple, it's not even written in recipe form in the book, just unfolds in a few sentences. And in actuality, it really is that easy. No need for rolling pins, resting times, or chopping more than three pieces of fruit, it really is a marvel. Ephron's heroine makes hers at a lake house in West Virginia over summer, a time you're so hot and lazy you really can't be bothered to cook at all. It's the sort of thing that is perfect holiday house food - no need for fancy ingredients, or heavy reliance on an unfamiliar oven. The crust is crisp and buttery, the filling oozy and extravagant with the juicy sweetness of ripe peaches. Nora knows her stuff.

Heartburn is said to be a thinly veiled account of the end of Ephron's own marriage - to Washington Post journalist Carl Bernstein, memorably portrayed by Dustin Hoffman in All The President's Men. Heartburn itself was made into a film in 1986, with Meryl Steep and Jack Nicholson, and is every bit as delicious as this pie. 

Though she'd achieved so much in her career, Nora Ephron died too soon in 2012. She is survived by her husband, writer/producer Nick Pileggi, and her two sons, Jacob and Max. In addition to her screenplays and novels, she wrote a lot of essays. In one - much earlier in her life - she reflected on dying and, as ever, came back to food. The New York Times included it in her obituary of June 26, 2012:

Ms. Ephron’s collection “I Remember Nothing” concludes with two lists, one of things she says she won’t miss and one of things she will. Among the “won’t miss” items are dry skin, Clarence Thomas, the sound of the vacuum cleaner, and panels on “Women in Film.” The other list, of the things she will miss, begins with “my kids” and “Nick” and ends this way:

“Taking a bath

Coming over the bridge to Manhattan

Pie.”

Nora Ephron's peach pie
From Heartburn by Nora Ephron, first published in 1983

I am going to just print the recipe exactly as it appears in the novel because it is perfect. A Cuisinart is a brand of food processor. Any will do. Only when transcribing the recipe did I see that it called for the peaches to be peeled. I didn't do that and was so pleased with my pie I couldn't imagine it could be any better. I'm sure Nora would approve of my minor (unconscious) adaptation.


Last summer they came to visit us in West Virginia and Julie and I spent a week perfecting the peach pie. We made ordinary peach pie, and deep dish peach pie, and blueberry and peach pie, but here is the best peach pie we made: Put 1 1/4 cups flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 cup butter and 2 tablespoons sour cream into a Cuisinart and blend until they form a ball. Pat out into a buttered pie tin, and bake 10 minutes at 425°. Beat three egg yolks slightly and combine with 1 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons flour and 1/3 cup sour cream. Pour over 3 peeled, sliced peaches arranged in the crust. Cover with foil. Reduce oven to 350° and bake 35 minutes. Remove the foil and bake 10 minutes more, or until filling is set.

Rhubarb raspberry pie

For me, baking is therapy. If I need to work through something bothering me, or just forget about it for a while, I find myself in the kitchen. There's a particular level of problem you're working through with a pie. Especially the kind with a lattice crust. Though the individual components are all easy enough, there's a process involved. 

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, l love pie. Every trip I've ever taken to the United States features some photo of me looking ridiculously happy in a diner with a piece of pie in front of me. I'm particularly partial to berry pies but somehow am always suckered in by cherry, even though they inevitably disappoint - gloopy and oversweet. But the colour! It calls me. The solution to perfect pie lies in this combination of rhubarb and raspberry. Brilliant red, both sweet and tart simultaneously. Stupendous.

Don't be deterred by the difficulty implied in the lattice crust. It's just a little fiddly is all, and if you want to simplify things, just plonk the second bit of pastry on top and call it a day. It will still taste just as good and look incredible. In the end, you will not only have achieved greatness (even the most imperfect pie is still wonderful), you get to feed friends. And yourself. And feel better.

Mulberry pie

About this time last year my mum called me to tell me she'd had a bumper crop of mulberries. She'd freeze them for my next visit, she said, so we could make pie, a favourite dessert of mine from childhood. For anyone who grew up in Brisbane like me, mulberries will be a major memory. The sprawling trees were found in most backyards, their leaves fed the silkworms we had as our first pets, their berries stained school uniforms and little fingers purple... no matter how many items of clothing you ruined you could never resist. They were delicious. Sweet, fat and juicy. Perfect for pie. Mum never used a recipe so in her absence I cobbled together one from two excellent sources - Bill Granger for pastry, and Smitten Kitchen for filling (those Americans know what they're doing with berries). Technically I suppose this is more of a galette than a pie as it's free-form and open, but I was teaching my dad how to make it and I knew he'd never be bothered rolling out two lots of dough, let alone sealing and crimping a crust. The proportion of pastry to fruit is better too, and without a lid you get to see the berries in all their beauty. I'd been up to Brisbane many times since Mum died, but not been able to face the freezer. But a new crop of mulberries had appeared on the tree since last November. It was time. Mum picked these berries. I made the pie. So it was a joint effort. I like to think we did it together.
 

Raspberry rhubarb pie

I've long aspired to be one of those people who can just whip up a pie. But to do that you have to either have grown up in small town America, or practice, and much as I'd like to, I just can't make a pie every day, or even every week. My freezer (and stomach) is only so big. This means that every time I make a pie, I will fret about rolling it out, either tackle the dough too soon, or apply pressure in the wrong places and end up with pastry that needs to be pieced together. The problem with pie, is that whatever triage you have to do to get the thing in the oven, however wonky it seems when it goes in, it always comes out looking pretty impressive. Especially this one. If ever was the time to try a lattice top, this is it - the pink/red pop of the fruit spectacular against the lightly golden pastry. And it tastes even better. The rich, buttery crust balances the sweet/tart of the rhubarb and raspberry beautifully. With a dollop of cream or a puddle of ice cream it's enough to make you forget the trauma of its making. Pie will never be effortless (for me, anyway), but it's always worth making the effort.

Salted butter apple galette

In the United States, Thursday is Thanksgiving. I wish I could be there. Wearing a coat. Eating lots. Being thankful. But alas, here I am, a few million miles away, battling scorching temperatures and a sinus infection. But I have pie. Well, galette to be exact. So I'll be there in spirit - and in dessert - with my American friends and family. For those of you who find the prospect of making pie intimidating, a galette is the solution: all the taste of a pie, with none of the fuss. Here, a quickly-made dough is rolled out, topped with a couple of thinly sliced apples arranged helter skelter and brushed with salted brown butter infused with vanilla. Serve it with whipped cream with a little maple syrup folded through. Air-conditioning and antibiotics optional. Happy Thanksgiving!

Cherry pie

My friend Amy and I have known each other since we were babies. We grew up with mothers who were excellent cooks, and sandwiches in our lunchboxes made with wholemeal - and often homemade - bread, so naturally our form of rebellion was not so much cigarettes or binge drinking as Sara Lee frozen desserts. Which is why it's so hilarious that I found myself making pie at her place last weekend. And not once but twice - as the first time I mistook the sugar for salt and vice versa, resulting in a dough that would - if my error had not been spotted - have derailed forever our homemade efforts. To be honest, I've always been a little afraid of pie dough. Somehow it always seemed like science, and that's never been a strong suit of mine. To minimise risk, I'd always made it in the food processor and the first batch I made - more play doh than pie dough - I did that way. But when it became clear that a second batch was needed, the food processor was under suds in the sink and the clock was ticking (Amy's four year old, who'd enthusiastically assisted in the mixing of the fruit filling, was expecting THE WORLD'S BEST PIE - no pressure there - before bed) so I hastily threw flour and chilled butter into a bowl, along with some sugar and salt (in the correct proportions) and ice-cold water and did what all the books and blogs tell you to do. Don't handle it too much. Leave big streaks of butter. Don't worry if it seems dry. And you know what? It worked. Pastry that was flaky, beautifully browned and buttery. Though I love cherries, it's not a flavour of pie I'm usually drawn to as they've a tendency to be gloopy. Not this one. We demolished it as soon as it was out of the oven, and not just because there was a four year old up way past her bedtime.

Apple brown betty

 

If Hans Christian Andersen's right and to travel is to live, then I've been doing a lot of living lately. This Easter long weekend, I was in Tasmania, where my friends have a lovely kitchen with a view of the Hobart city skyline, a backyard full of apple trees (four different varieties!) and a twelve year old who makes the most incredible vanilla bean ice-cream. And on Sunday, these three things came together for dessert.

Though I love bread, I've never been terribly excited by its dessert possibilities, which are usually variations of soggy-sounding puddings. But this - the superlative brown betty - is made with fresh crumbs (rather than stale slices) tossed with (rather than soaked in) butter, brown sugar and cinnamon. When they're popped into the oven atop of a layer of fat apple slices, they crisp. While cooking, they crackle, and, when bitten into, crunch - a lovely contrast with the tender apples beneath, and the silkiness of the ice-cream melting into a milky pool beside it.

There are many different recipes out there - the brown betty dates back to the 1800s - but this one uses a combination of apple slices and puréed apple, which gives the filling a nice body and added texture. And the layer of crumbs on the bottom of the dish handily soak up any excess water from the fruit. It's best eaten with Edie's vanilla bean ice-cream but if you don't have the very good fortune to know Edie, then the stuff you buy at the supermarket (or make yourself!) will do nicely.
 

Salty honey pie

I didn't mean to post - or bake - another pie so soon. But this weekend was the first one off I'd had in the last three weeks and I wanted to celebrate. I'd been invited to my friend Elizabeth's place for dinner on Friday night, I'd offered to bring dessert, and this recipe had been calling me ever since I got my hands on The Four & Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book early in the new year. Other than a dip in the ocean (which I also indulged in), what better reward could there be?

Salty/sweet is a truly magic combination. Here, the creamy custard of the honey filling is offset by fat flakes of sea salt so that the two flavours mingle in your mouth and draw you back for more, like siren song. That's what happened to us on Friday night. After consuming modest slices, we each went back in for just one more sliver...

Be warned: this pie is not for the faint of heart. There's a serious sugar component which is less a hit as it is a knockout punch. If this pie were a person (in contention for an Oscar next week), it would be Jennifer Lawrence's character Rosalyn in one of my favourite films of last year, American Hustle: seductive, surprising... and crazy dangerous. Don't make it in the science oven.

Stone fruit skillet streusel pie

 

In another life, I'd live in the country and I'd make pie. There'd be no deadlines, no peak hour traffic, just berries and quiet and time to work on the perfect crust. But in this life, the one I have right now, I have a new cookbook, and old friends to feed pie I make from it. Part of the reason I love travelling in the States so much I'll wager, is my proximity to pie. On this recent trip, I managed to eat quite a lot of it (though it's never enough).  

I didn't get to the east coast this time round - my nightmare travel scenario are those images on the news of people sleeping in airports below banks of screens of cancelled flights so I deliberately avoided any area with snow, which proved wise given the polar vortex - but next time I do, I'll be sure to stop in at Four and Twenty Blackbirds, a pie place in Brooklyn, run by two sisters from North Dakota. They just published a cookbook, named for their store, and this weekend, in the midst of a mountain of work, it seemed a good time to christen it. This particular recipe had many things going for it. One, it was made in a cast-iron skillet, my all-time favourite piece of cooking equipment. Two, it involved summer fruit, which is currently at its peak here in the southern hemisphere. And three, anything with a streusel topping is a sure-fire crowd pleaser and an easy out for an over-stressed pie maker, who doesn't have the time for double crusts, fancy crimping or lattice tops.

Having returned from my trip more than a week ago now, I can't quite blame jet lag, but I confess I completely botched the crust by mistaking my 1/3 cup measure for my 1/4 one when parcelling out the dry ingredients. When the dough was chilling in the fridge and I was washing up, I realised I'd made a mistake but was reluctant to waste what I'd made. So I persevered with dough that was obviously too dry. Though it was significantly less malleable than it would have been in the correct proportions, it still tasted great, the cornmeal adding a wonderful texture to something so traditionally staid. And the filling! Oh my. You could use any combination of stone fruit you like but I've got a particular fondness for plums and nectarines, especially when their juices turn dramatically red and bubble up through the cracks in the crumbly streusel. Whatever the life you have or aspire to have, pie is possible. Right now. What are you waiting for?

Chocolate pecan pie

This trip has been about people. And because of it, I’ve got to see some amazing places*. Last week I flew from the swamp to the high desert to see my friend Robin. Robin and I met a year ago in the woods in New Hampshire, at an artists’ colony, which is kind of like camp for grown-ups. But with better food. We bonded over lots of things, but mostly fiercely over our joint obsession with the chocolate pecan pie. Maryel, the chef at the colony, had prepared it for Thanksgiving, and, after going back for seconds (and maybe even thirds) we begged her for the recipe. Unfortunately I left that recipe back in Australia, not realising that it would be the perfect dessert to make for Christmas dinner with Robin and her boyfriend Don til I arrived in Santa Fe. So I winged it with help from the internet and my memory. And it worked out just fine - sweet, gooey, and all the shades of brown, which seemed appropriate in a place with that particular palette. Where that colour encompasses rust on a pick-up, the golden glow of farolitos lining the roads and rooftops at night, the warm cinnamon of the adobes, and the deep, dark brown of the Stetson I bought to keep the desert light at bay.

* And eat the most amazing things. In New Mexico: enchiladas with blue corn tortillas and green chile, Mexican hot cocoa with cinnamon, and the world’s largest, stickiest (and possibly most delicious) cinnamon roll.

Chocolate pecan pie
Adapted from this recipe, but inspired by memories and Maryel

As difficult as this is, you want to let this cool to room temperature before eating. 

3 tablespoons butter, melted

3 eggs, beaten

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 tablespoons flour

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 cup dark corn syrup

3 tablespoons strong coffee

1 1/2 cups pecan halves

1/2 cup chocolate chips

1 (9-inch) unbaked pie shell (I used this recipe)  

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Melt butter in a small saucepan. While butter is melting, add beaten eggs to a medium sized bowl. Stir in brown sugar, flour, vanilla extract, corn syrup and coffee until combined. Add butter when just melted.

Mix in the pecans and chocolate morsels. Stir together and pour mixture into pie shell. 

Place on a sheet tray and bake for 50 to 60 minutes.

Crack pie

It all began innocently enough. I asked my friend Susan, who was down visiting for the weekend, to pick something for me to cook her from the long list of recipes I'd bookmarked to try. She sat there listening patiently, unexpressive, maybe even a little bored, as I reeled off about six or seven things before her eyes widened and she sat up a little straighter in her chair. "That one." I looked back at my list for clarification. "Crack pie?" 

Where to start? Maybe with a warning. Do NOT make this pie unless you have six or seven people coming over to eat it. Maybe eight. Because once you start, I'm not kidding, you will not stop. You will not be able to eat without examining the sticky beauty of every forkful and quietly mouthing "oh my god". You will not be able to put said forkful in your mouth without reaching for another. You will not be able to rest until... It. Is. All. Gone.

This genius recipe comes from Christina Tosi, the maverick baker behind Momofuku Milk Bar in New York. She makes ice-cream from cereal milk, cake from candy bars and gives as much careful consideration to the naming of her creations as she does their development. When I was there, a couple of years ago, I sampled one of her compost cookies - a crazy composite of oats, potato chips, chocolate, butterscotch, pretzels and coffee, that defies description... in the best possible way. Tosi clearly specialises in highly-addictive sweets that are near impossible to pin down in taste. The best Susan and I could come up with for the crack pie was that it was like a cross between an Anzac biscuit and the coveted corner piece in a tray of caramel slice - chewy, gooey, caramelised, and... dangerous. 

Given my proclivity for sweet stuff, it's kind of amazing it took me so long to make this. The reason was the recipe called for just one tablespoon of non-fat milk powder and my local supermarket only sold the stuff in 1 kilo packets. I sent Susan back to Brisbane with a ziplock bag filled with white powder which looks suspicious enough without having to explain to an airport security screener it's for crack pie. Six pies worth to be exact. Obviously, I still have quite a bit left. To say the least. So if you want some, come on by, I'll be your dealer.

Blackberry cobbler

Though I love berries, I’ve only ever really been able to cook with them when I’ve been overseas as their cost here in the less-than-hospitable growing climes of mainland Australia discourages me from using them for anything much more than a garnish. That’s til I fortuitously found myself in Tasmania again last week at the height of blackberry season. Though this time I was down there for work, I was lucky enough to be able to squeeze in a weekend with my Hobart friends beforehand. So on Saturday afternoon, we piled in the car with gumboots and empty containers in search of free berries. We didn’t have to go far. 

When it came to deciding what to make with our huge haul, there were a number of important criteria: something quick (when you spend the afternoon painstakingly picking berries one at a time and braving thickets of thorns to do so you deserve some instant gratification), something delicious (naturally), and something whose preparation benefited from multiple pairs of hands (as I had two small, eager, purple-stained assistants). 

Cobbler is less fiddly than pie, needing only a top crust and no refrigeration period (or rolling!) before assembly. It requires nothing more than a few everyday ingredients and best of all, is assembled in a pleasingly slap-dash fashion by grabbing handfuls of dough, smooshing them into flat patties and placing them patchwork-style on top of the fruit. That there are gaps, all the better, as the berries bubble up through the cracks while cooking, oozing sweet, dark juices. In half an hour, we had dessert. And the satisfaction of having earned it.

Warm apricot pie

I'm from Brisbane, and I live in Sydney but of all the Australian state capitals I think Hobart might be my favourite: the steep hills dotted with sweet timber houses, Mt Wellington looming large over the city, the seemingly infinite amount of water all around... There's amazing food, Antarctic icebreakers moored in the harbour, dusty op-shops bursting with treasures, and gardens barely able to contain their abundance of flowers and fruit. It's home to both an internationally acclaimed art museum, described by its founder as a "subversive adult Disneyland" and a CWA (Country Women's Association) shop selling a vast range of locally-made knits, jams and preserves. And then there are my friends, who I visited this weekend. Though the excuse for the trip was to visit the recently-opened MONA (sadly the CWA shop was shut!) no shiny new art museum stocked with thought-provoking pieces - however impressive - can compete with the pleasure of spending time with them, their delightful daughters, and the girls' various pets (three chickens, two cats, two guinea pigs and too many guppies to count). On an appropriately grey and blustery Saturday morning, we went for a long walk on the beach at Storm Bay, collecting shells and entertaining elaborate fantasies of houses on nearby Betsey Island (alas 15,000 pairs of penguins have beaten us to it - the island is their breeding ground and so is, appropriately, a nature reserve). 

On the way back, we detoured to pick apricots in the backyard of some friends of theirs. The tree was so laden with fruit that the branches were literally dragging on the ground. In no time we'd filled a huge bucket (and eaten more than a few while picking) without looking like we'd even made a dent.  

So while Sunday was a day of jam and chutney making, Saturday night was all about pie.  Soft orange pillows of fruit wrapped in buttery pastry, served up before bed time with some cream freshly whipped by the industrial grade Kitchen Aid mixer snapped up for a bargain at a garage sale on the way home.  Only in Hobart.

Apple pie

  

You have to start somewhere and this seems like a good place.  I’ve spent a lot of time in the United States over the years and perhaps this is why.  Pie is uniquely American and comes in as many varieties as there are states in the union, maybe more.  Over the years, I’ve tried to sample as many as possible and been shuttled around by various friends and family (good sports, all, particularly the gluten intolerant ones) in my pursuit of the perfect slice.  The truth is I like them all – marionberry, rhubarb and strawberry, blackberry, apple, key lime, cherry, loganberry, pecan, peach, blueberry, lemon meringue….  though I think they always taste best when consumed with a bottomless cup of stale coffee in a dingy diner on the side of a highway.  On a rainy day. 

Generally, I enjoy eating pie more than I enjoy making pie.  This is largely due to my crust rolling technique, or more precisely, lack thereof.  No matter how many online tutorials I watch or tips I read in recipe books, I never seem to be able to roll out pie dough without swearing as I watch it spread into a shape that in no way resembles a perfect round.  Each time, I manage to piece it together into a sort of crazy frankenpie, and somehow in the baking process it magically transforms into a smooth, perfect whole, making me forget all the pain I went through in its construction. 

A gift given to me on my last trip to the US was Adrienne Kane’s opus The United States of Pie.  This apple pie is the first recipe in the book.  By the time I get to the last I hope to have conquered the crust, once and for all.