1 October 2009

Eggplant, Garlic, Kohlrabi, Leeks, Lettuce, Purple mizuna, Onions, Peppers, Very hot peppers, Potatoes, Tomatoes

This is an American tale. A tale about hopes and dreams and hard work. A tale about adversity and perseverance. A tale about resourcefulness. A tale about redemption. A tale about pie.

I have the sneaking suspicion that many of you mistook my frequent references to the annual pie contest for a sort of running joke, a little dig at Americana, an ironic comment on our insubstantial rural nostalgia. But sometimes a pie contest is just a pie contest. Which is to say, no joke.

This past Sunday we held our fifth annual pie contest and for the fifth time Greg Smith (farm pick up) made a pie to enter in it. I say “made a pie to enter in it” rather than “entered a pie” because serious structural flaws prevented him from actually entering last year’s effort in the contest. Which knocked him out of contention right from the start.

It was a tough year to compete anyway, since he would have been up against the reigning champion, Jan Satin (Delmar), who came to the contest with something of an edge. She grew up on a farm in Indiana and made pies with her mother every morning. While I do not believe she has maintained quite that baking pace in recent years, I get the feeling that pie making still feels as basic to her as tying a shoe lace does to the rest of us. Unsurprisingly, she repeated as pie champion—and then graciously retired from further competitions.

Jan’s retirement and lousy weather this year presented Greg with the opportunity he had been waiting for. Because, you see, despite all that baking over the years, Greg had yet to win the contest. The three pies that had made it to the farm, including a notable rhubarb raisin one two years ago, had failed to impress the august judging panel enough to earn Greg the title he so clearly coveted.

Many bakers would have given up. Not, perhaps, given up baking pies all together. I don’t mean to suggest that the judges took vehemently against Greg’s pies and begged him to desist permanently for the good of America’s culinary reputation. But it would have been understandable if he had decided that three tries were enough and that he didn’t need to suffer another year of disappointment. He could have withdrawn and nobody would have questioned the decision. Even though he had not won, he had certainly demonstrated his pie making mettle.

But Greg refused to quit. He preferred to risk acquiring the status of permanent loser rather than walk away from the challenge. He chose to wade again into the flaky fray, knowing full well—better than anyone else—that to do so was to court defeat, which had proved in the past such a willing sweetheart. He understood right to his buttery fingertips that it is not whether you win or lose, it is whether you win, and by god you cannot win if you don’t play the game. And so he sallied forth once more, pie tin and rolling pin in hand, and made a fifth pie.

This pie held together. Very nicely actually. Flaky crust, well browned, sturdy but not tough, and a fruit filling with just enough substance to ooze slowly even from a thin slice, a filling in that happy place between gelatinous and soupy. But what really got the judges’ notice was the choice of fruit for that filling: Concord grape. And what inspired Greg to make a grape pie? The best of reasons: he had grapes—from his own vines no less (locavores take note). As the saying goes, if god gives you Concord grapes, make grape pie. And so at long last, in a hard fought contest, Greg finally achieved a victory a half decade in the making and became the Alleged Farm pie champion. At least until next year, when you all have the chance to try and unseat him.

You could start practicing right now with a vegetable pie, perhaps onion and tomato or a leek quiche. Or maybe, following Greg’s lead, you feel like making something a little surprising and will whip up a kohlrabi tart (let me know if you do).

Or maybe you will use the hot peppers in a pie, which could give you a surprise because they are quite powerful. The smaller, paler ones, Lemon, create a quick burn of some intensity. The Fatali creates a quick inferno. So why am I handing out these things? Well, for a start you can cut your heating bills by eating them. And they taste good.

The garlic tastes good too, at least the part unaffected by the disease (or diseases—I am not sure what’s wrecking the crop). Which, I am afraid may be a small part of each head. So why am I handing out these things? Well, it’s these or no garlic at all, and I figure even a small amount of garlic is better than none. I apologise if you get a completely useless head. We try to pick ones that look good, but it’s hard to tell for sure without pulling apart the heads and peeling the cloves, which we are not going to do.

I apologise too if your potatoes are not keeping. We cull every bad one we find, but I fear that the late blight got into potato the patch (it has been a rough year for the vegetables). Infected tubers rot in storage, especially if they are wet, and they can cause their uninfected neighbors to rot too. We try to get them as dry as possible before we hand them out and they seem to hold much better if you keep them in a spot where they get good air circulation. An even more effective technique is to eat them soon—in a pie, for instance.