Wild blueberry pie is my absolute favourite pie, hands down. It is the one pie that I rarely make because wild blueberries is just so expensive. I don't go around foraging for wild blueberries so the only way that I get these intensely-flavoured berries is at the farmers' market. To fill a regular size pie, I need to purchase about $20 worth of fruit! If I am to buy my berries from grocers, I'll likely need to pay twice as much, oh my. I only bake wild blueberry pie for people I'm really really fond of. Hey, does it mean I'm quantifying my love with money?
About three years ago, I semi-gave up on making pies. I could make a decent pie but to be considered truly excellent, I want my pies to have flakey buttery tender crust, no spillage, no soggy bottom, and fruit filling that miraculously suspend in barely set juices when you cut the pie into neat slices. After numerous attempts coming up short of perfect, I moved on to other baking projects.
When I first met B, we often chatted about differences between Canada and the US. Thanksgiving holds much bigger significance south of the border. Until recently, B didn't have a chance to spend Thanksgiving with his family for years and he reminisced his family tradition of one pie for every family member. His pie of choice is chocolate cream pie. Chocolate cream pie is easy enough to make. I don't see it as "real" pie baking because it is cookie crumb crust filled with chocolate custard and whipped cream. When B visited me last year during American Thanksgiving weekend, I made him a show stopping chocolate cream pie for that sentimental reason. The combination of Rose Levy Beranbaum's deluxe chocolate crumb crust (held together with melted bittersweet chocolate) and Pierre Herme's chocolate pastry cream and billowy whipped cream was hard to beat. It was such a pleasure to watch him savour every bite that I was persuaded to return to pie baking.
A few months ago I purchased Lucinda Scala Quinn's cookbook, Mad Hungry Cooking For Men & Boys. The title was interesting enough but that was not my reason for the purchase. I have long been an admirer of her work at Martha Stewart Living so it was a no-brainer for me to order her latest cookbook. Despite the gimmicky title, I enjoy immensely reading her anecdotes of what men and boys like to eat and learned a few things for sure. Specifically, under the dessert chapter in large fonts was the declaration Men Love Pie. Well, I certainly didn't know that before! I had to test her theory.
This year, I'm more drawn to the eat local lifestyle than ever before. I frequent farmers' markets, pick-your-own farms, road-side vegetable stands, and of course my weekly CSA share. My love for locally grown fruit and vegetable doesn't stop even when I travel. Sweet corn in Illinois, strawberries in Florida, okras in Texas have all made their way into my market tote this summer when I traveled. And of course sour cherries. I buy them whenever I see them at markets. During the brief sour cherry season, I squirreled away bags of carefully washed and pitted cherries into my freezer. I didn't even know what I wanted to do with them until I realized if I want to come out of my pie baking retirement, they would be my perfect comeback partner.
B swoons at all things cherries. I figure even if my comeback cherry pie falls short of being fabulous, he would still love it because of all the cherries. And that I bake him a pie from scratch. Fortunately, I did not need to find out. The cherry lattice pie with flakey cream cheese crust (recipe from Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Pie & Pastry Bible) came out textbook perfect. That weekend, things got a little tense at my house as B and my little brother T both vied for "just another slice of pie". They tied with half a pie each and I managed to steal two bites from B's plate. Lucinda is right about men and their love of pie.
After the success of cherry lattice pie, I mentioned to B about the superiority of wild blueberry pie and the special place it has in my heart and my kitchen. Of course it would be mean to bait a boyfriend with only talks of such tales. With our first anniversary coming up, it would be as good an occasion as any to bake him a wild blueberry pie. After all, it is wild blueberry season in Ontario.
I put a lot of thought into making this pie every step of the way. The cream cheese and butter were cut into the flour until pea-size pieces. I worked the dough gently but with confidence to a gorgeous marbling of fat. I did not lose patience and allowed the dough to rest in the fridge. I carefully picked through all 6 cups of tiny berries to remove all leaves and stems. I rolled out the dough and sealed the pie so precisely to avoid any chance of spillage during baking. Once the pie was assembled, I stored it in the freezer to avoid too much maceration and let the dough relax some more. Then B and I went out for dinner to celebrate our anniversary.
By the time we returned home, it was too late to bake the pie even for late night dessert. You see, pies are not spontaneous. It needs to spend a long time in the oven and even a longer time out of the oven. My thickener of choice is cornstarch. A pie is done baking when the juice bubbles but for the juice to jell and suspend all the fruit filling, the pie almost need to cool down to room temperature. After some careful consideration, I turned on the oven and baked it anyway. The timing would work out perfectly for an extra decadent breakfast the next day.
For the next couple of hours, my house smelled absolutely divine. B and I hovered over the pie in anticipation but knew better than to give in to temptation. As we were about to call it a night, little brother T was ready to head back to his apartment. Of course the wild blueberry pie didn't go unnoticed. After all, I did tell him that I would make it that weekend. When he looked at me expectantly with a plastic lunchbox in his hand and asked "is it ready yet?"...I simply couldn't disappoint him.
You see this picture? That was the aftermath. As soon as I sunk the knife into the pie, I knew it. Way too early. I did manage to remove a reasonably neat slice for T (after all, T is one of the few people I'm really really fond of so I can't possibly deny him of wild blueberry pie) but the sight of all that midnight dark juice gushing out from the pie into the empty cavity made me cry. And I cried a little inside every time I turned to look at the pie. Juice that was meant to thicken for maximum juiciness within each individual slice. After all that hard work....excuse me while I go cry some more.
Perhaps I'm a little melodramatic. Here is another look at the pie all plated and pretty with a thick dollop of Greek yogurt. You can see that the fruit filling is a far cry from dry. Had I not shown you the disaster photo, you're probably none the wiser. B reassured me of the deliciousness of wild blueberry pie and that I was not exaggerating when I set him up with all that talk of berries and baking and money and love and yummy pie. Oh, and he now knows I like him enough to bake him a wild blueberry pie.
