January 23, 2010 was National Pie Day, and I missed it. There are fewer things I will say with less pride, and today I am making amends – for myself, for my country and for the men who, however fictional, will never lose sight of the better things in life (clicking on that link, by the way, will take you to my friend Paul’s incredible, pie-based, award-winning new video game, The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom, available on Xbox Arcade next month).

My relationship with pie wasn’t always given short shrift. In fact, it’s one of the essential relationships in my life.

In summer of 2005, I was just discovering my own taste buds – not only was I not much of an eater, I was almost nothing of a cook. When Boykji offered to teach me how to make pie crust from scratch, I wondered if this lesson would be too lofty a goal for a regular canned chili eater. In what I would consider a major turning point for my personality, I not only accepted the challenge but also committed myself to baking three pies in one evening.

Not only did I learn how to make a great pie crust that night, I gained a lifelong appreciation of cooking from scratch. Like most things involving the kitchen, homemade pie crust is far easier than most people think. The recipe is almost nonexistent, the whole process takes fifteen minutes, and as long as you have a decent teacher your results will outmatch any factory-made pie crust in existence. If you don’t believe me now, just wait until February, when I write a full story on pie crust as part of Cathy Erway’s Eating In Challenge. Making a crust with nothing but your own two hands, a fork and a rolling pin is also incredibly rewarding – not just the first time you do it, but every time after.

Declaring my first three pies successes, I spent the rest of that summer exploring the wide world of home baked pie. Taking full advantage of the fruits of the season (and the bounty of produce that is the Berkeley Bowl), I took on a new type of pie every week, setting aside one night to learn more about baking and spending the next afternoon testing my skills out on my intensive Russian language class. While baking does exist in parallel to chemistry, there’s no substitute for practical experience, good company and the inspiration that comes with learning how a process feels, rather than how it’s measured. I remember more than anything else a pleasurable calm in preparing my ingredients, knowing that the time invested was just as rewarding as the payoff.

After digging up these photos, I understood that missing the neighborhood celebration of National Pie Day at K&M was a breaking point in my life. As if chasing multiple stories, taking some rough shifts at the day job and working nonstop on my book proposal weren’t enough of a drain, recent sickness and anxiety had thrown everything into a dizzying, exhausting mess, leaving me to re-evaluate how much New York living I can really handle. I should have taken the 23rd as a cue to take a step back and smell the softened butter; instead, I holed up in my apartment to stress and hammer out more prose on the wood piles of North Carolina.

I decided to edit this error in my ways by setting aside the better part of an afternoon for my own belated celebration of National Pie Day. With three sticks of butter softening on the counter, I dusted off the cookbook that my college roommates had given to me as a graduation gift and invited one of my best friends over to learn from me how to make a flour pie crust from scratch. Her excitement at tasting that crust right out of the oven would have been enough to make my day, but I too had new territory to cover.

The recipe I ultimately settled on, mile high strawberry pie, called for a graham cracker crust, so I threw a stack of crackers into a Ziploc freezer bag, pushed all the air out, sealed it, and began crushing the crackers into fine crumbs with a rolling pin. Not only does this trick make a molehill out of a mountain, it’s incredibly fun!

After mixing the crumbs with melted butter, sugar and pinch of salt, I grated the zest of a lemon into the bowl for some extra punch. Ten preheated minutes later, I had a fully baked and beautiful crust for the taking. As one concession to the modern pulse, I used my roommate’s electric mixer to beat egg whites, sugar, heavy cream, lemon juice and frozen strawberries into a light and sweet “mile high” filling.

While the recipe calls for this pie to be chilled, I bet that freezing it overnight would yield a much better result, and I think it’s safe to claim that my gamble has paid off. While I can’t really taste the zest in my crust, a slice straight out of the freezer has a refreshing and ephemeral quality that places it on the level of a good icebox pie. It’s no coincidence that icebox pie ranks just as highly on my list of best memories, and while I’m already behind trailing deadlines as I write this paragraph, if just one of you out there decides to bake your own pie after reading this, I’ll be able to add this day to that list.

Happy National Pie Day!

Recipe for Graham Cracker Crust from Pie Pie Pie
1 1/2 cups crumbs
1 stick unsalted butter, melted
2 tablespoons sugar
Pinch of salt

Crush crumbs and mix with sugar and salt in a bowl. Add melted butter and stir vigorously until all crumbs are moistened. Pat mixture into a 9-inch pie pan hands. Preheat oven to 325F and bake for 8-10 minutes. Allow crust to cool completely before adding filling.

Recipe for Mile High Strawberry Pie from Pie Pie Pie
4 egg whites
Pinch of salt
2/3 cup sugar
1 1/4 cups sliced, frozen strawberries, thawed but not drained
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 cup heavy whipping cream

Beat egg whites and salt at moderate speed with an electric mixer until the mixture forms soft, foamy peaks. Add sugar while continuing to beat until the mixture forms stiff, firm peaks. Add lemon juice and strawberries with any thawed out juices, then beat at high speed for about two minutes, or until the mixture is thick and fluffy, and forms billowy, slightly droopy peaks when the beater is lifted. Be careful not to overbeat.

Place pie in the freezer immediately, and serve when frozen.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at 3:25 pm and is filed under New York.