Pineapple Pie—Always in Season

Not long ago our friend Rich was lamenting the fact that he could no longer find pineapple pie in bakeries. For several years he had been able to buy them from a supermarket in Brainerd when he and his wife vacationed there.

Last year, however, the bakery manager told him that they were no longer making pineapple pies. People like me were probably part of the reason why the store stopped offering them. I have never bought one. I like a lot of different pies—apple, pumpkin, sour cream raisin, cherry, blueberry, lemon, custard, chess, banana cream, and pecan to name a few—but I had never even tasted pineapple pie.

My favorite pies are seasonal treats. Though we can buy frozen sour cherries throughout the year, a cherry pie made with fruit picked the same day tastes better to me than one filled with cherries picked last summer, even if they were flash frozen and packaged with care.

There was a cafe in Saynor, Wisconsin in the early 1960’s that featured a cherry pie that attracted customers from many miles around. If my memory serves me right, the restaurant was called Grandma’s Kitchen. I discovered it my first summer while working at the new radio station, WERL, at Eagle River, Wisconsin. All of us at WERL wore at least two hats that summer. I was both a disc jockey and a sales representative, which is how I discovered this wonderful pie.

I stopped in to sell some advertising and left with a stomach full of the best cherry pie I had ever eaten. The lady who owned Grandma’s Kitchen had a standing order for fresh sour cherries from an orchard in Door county. When the cherries started arriving, she began baking pies. People who knew of her cherry pies would start calling after the Fourth of July to ask if cherry pie was on the menu, and she would share the latest update from the orchard.

I do not have her pie recipe. It was a single crust pie that most cooks would call a tart. When I asked how she made it, she told me she just used fresh sour cherries with a little sugar and thickening. She served it with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream, which added sweetness. It was wonderful.

The secret almost certainly was the fresh cherries. Other fruits with short bearing seasons like blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and rhubarb (if you want to call it a fruit) present the same challenge and opportunity. If you want to make a pie that your guests will rave over, pick a couple of quarts of wild blueberries on a cool morning and bake them into a tender crust in the afternoon.

But I think that some fruits taste as good or better canned than fresh. Pineapple is one of them. I like fresh pineapple, but it irritates my mouth. Fresh pineapple contains bromelain, an enzyme that breaks down protein. This explains why pineapple tenderizes meat, but it is also the reason why eating fresh pineapple can make your mouth burn.

Canning pineapple destroys the bromelain but preserves the flavor. So when Rich told me about his pineapple pie predicament, I offered to try making one. The result was better than I expected.

Canned pineapple is always in season and even better, you don’t have to pick, peel or chop it to make the filling for a delicious pie. All you need is a can opener and about ten minutes.

INGREDIENTS:

3/4 cup granulated sugar plus 1 T for garnishing the crust
3 T cornstarch
1 twenty ounce can crushed pineapple in its own juice
1 T lemon juice
1 T milk

PROCEDURE:

First make the dough for a nine-inch double crust pie. Here is a recipe.

Line a nine-inch pie plate with a crust. Preheat the oven to 425º.

Mix the sugar and cornstarch together in a medium saucepan. Stir in the pineapple and the lemon juice. Put the pan over moderate heat and keep stirring the mixture until it thickens and starts to boil. Reduce the heat and continue cooking and stirring for another minute.

Remove the pan from the heat and allow the filling to cool slightly while you roll out the top crust. Pour the hot filling into the pastry-lined plate. Moisten the edge of the bottom crust with a finger dipped in water. Cover the filling with the top crust and seal it to the bottom. Trim and make a decorative edge by pinching the dough with your fingers or using a table fork.

Make a few slits in the top crust to allow steam to escape. Paint the top crust with a little milk and sprinkle it with sugar.

Bake the pie on a center shelf in the oven for 30 to 35 minutes until the crust is lightly browned.

Cool on a rack and serve chilled or at a cool room temperature.

Sweet Potato Biscuits

Susie, one of our nieces, mailed me a cookbook that she thought I would like. She was right. Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine by Norma Jean and Carole Darden is filled with family recipes, reminiscences and stories of a remarkable African-American family.

Inspired by a chance remark from a guest at a dinner party, the two sisters began a journey that took them back to places they remembered from childhood where they were welcomed by relatives and friends who shared recipes and memories. Their grandfather, Charles Henry Darden, was born a slave. In 1868 at the age of fourteen he appeared in Wilson, North Carolina where he supported himself by traveling door to door and repairing things for housewives and homeowners.

His lack of family and references at first worked against him, but his diligence, honesty and thrift impressed the parents of a girl he fell in love with and married. So began the history of the Darden family that Norma Jean and Carole record in their book. Charles Henry or “Papa” Darden soon opened a shop to sell produce from his garden and the wines he made as a hobby. The first recipe in the book is for his Strawberry Wine.

There are hundreds more from aunts (and some uncles) scattered across North Carolina, Alabama, Virginia and from the Sampson family in Ohio where their mother was born. Here is one for sweet potato biscuits from Aunt Annie, Papa and Momma Darden’s oldest daughter.

Sweet potato biscuits are a staple in the south. The husband of one of our nieces grew up in North Carolina. He tells me that super markets there sell packaged sweet potato biscuits, though he says they don’t taste as good as homemade ones.

I vaguely remember eating sweet potato biscuits on at least one occasion in Atlanta or possibly in New Orleans many years ago and wanting to try making them myself. The little book from Susie inspired me, and now I know how. You really should try them.

They are delicious hot from the oven or warmed in the microwave and slathered with butter.

INGREDIENTS:

1 sweet potato (large enough to make 1 cup mashed)
1/2 tsp. salt
Water
2 cups all-purpose flour + extra for kneading
3 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
3/4 tsp. salt
3 T brown sugar
Dash of cinnamon
8 T (1/2 cup or 1 stick) butter
2/3 cup buttermilk

PROCEDURE:

Peel a medium sweet potato, cut it into six pieces and boil them in a two-quart saucepan with a half teaspoon of salt until the pieces are fork tender, about twenty minutes. Drain and mash them thoroughly.

Preheat the oven to 400º and melt a stick of butter. Wash your hands, as once again you will be handling dough. Grease a cookie sheet large enough to hold two dozen biscuits or use parchment paper cut to fit the cookie sheet.

Beat the melted butter into a cup of mashed sweet potato in a large mixing bowl.

Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon into a medium bowl. Add three tablespoons of brown sugar and thoroughly blend the sugar into the flour mixture with a fork.

Stir a third of the dry ingredients into the sweet potatoes and beat until the batter is smooth. Beat half the buttermilk into the batter, then add the next third of dry ingredients and beat until smooth. Beat in the rest of the buttermilk, then stir in the last of the dry ingredients to make a dough that just starts to come away from the sides of the bowl. If necessary, stir in a little more flour to get the dough to the right consistency.

The dough will be sticky, so generously flour your work surface and hands. Using a spatula, scrape the dough from the bowl and turn it to cover the outside with flour. Flatten the dough slightly with your hand, then roll it to a generous half inch thickness. Use a cookie cutter or water glass to make biscuits two and half or three inches in diameter. Space them about an inch apart on the baking sheet. Gather the trimmings, press them together and roll the dough again until you have formed all the biscuits.

Put the baking sheet on a top shelf in the oven for fifteen to eighteen minutes until the biscuits are lightly browned. Serve them hot from the oven with plenty of butter.

NOTES: These biscuits have more sugar than ordinary baking powder biscuits, so they tend to brown too much on the bottom. The challenge is to bake them so they are done but not too dark on the bottom. Baking them high in the oven on parchment paper seems to help.