Can she bake a cherry pie...?

With any holiday approaching (Easter is on its way), many families will be preparing a feast of all their favorite dishes to serve as the family gathers. Our family is too geographically spread out these days to gather this Sunday, but I remember with great love when we crowded around my mother’s table on holidays to enjoy all the foods our family loved. Before my mother’s table, it was our grandmother’s table that hosted our holiday dinners. This year will be just the two of us, but that’s okay because we both have wonderful memories of years past to feast upon.

Also, the truth is I am not a great cook. My mother was a very good cook (if you liked Southern food). My grandmother was a great cook. She really was. She wasn’t a fancy Julia Child cook and the only written recipe I ever saw her follow was one for carrot cake when that became popular in the 1970’s and one of her church friends shared the recipe. My grandmother made amazing cakes—chocolate, applesauce, coconut, pineapple —without any written recipes. She never owned a measuring cup—other than a china tea cup with a broken handle that she used to “measure” out her flour and sugar. She never owned measuring spoons—the hollow in her palm helped her with those measurements.

I never mastered her cake making abilities even though I tried to write down some of her recipes when I got older as I watched her bake. She couldn’t tell me the number of cups or tablespoons but I watched her and tried to estimate. I came close (sort of) but the taste was never the same, never as good. I should have paid more attention but I don’t think it really crossed my mind that one day these great family cooks, my mother and my grandmother, would no longer be here. Yes, I miss them both. All the time and not just for their cooking abilities.

My grandmother could also make a very good pie though it seemed she preferred a cake to a pie. The only packaged dessert I remember her making was chocolate pudding—not the instant kind but the one you cooked. My grandfather loved chocolate pudding. He was a tall and lean man but he would eat the entire chocolate pudding between lunch and bedtime, a few scoops in a bowl at a time. For a number of years she made chocolate pudding for him every day. Love makes you do things like that.

For some reason one of the few desserts I can count on turning out edible is a pie. I can make a very good apple pie. I can make an outstanding cherry pie. This is thanks to James Beard and his American Cookery cook book and his recipe for Tart Cherry Pie.

When Tom and I were young with no children in tow yet, we had one amazing summer where the cherry trees where we lived were loaded with cherries. We picked cherries, cherries and more cherries and pitted them (an arduous task but worth it) and that is when I learned to make a cherry pie.

I am not a genius at making a pie crust (though I have been told that a splash of vodka is the secret ingredient) so I have been happy to discover Pillsbury refrigerator pie crusts. They get good reviews, including my own. Still, learning to make a really good pie crust from scratch remains on my personal bucket list.

That summer of abundant fresh cherries did not come again so how was I suppose to make a cherry pie? One thing I will share is that you cannot, you must not, you shall not, EVER use canned cherry pie filling. No. I gag to even think about it.

But you can use canned tart cherries. Packed in water. No sugar or goopy filling mix added. Just plain cherries. It will take at least two cans though my preference is three as I like a packed cherry pie.My favorite brand that I have found readily available in most grocery stores is Oregon.

Over time, and aging, I have reduced the amount of sugar. The original James Beard recipe calls for 1 to 1-1/2 cups of sugar. I use about 1/2 cup of sugar and find that plenty sweet, but we are a household that likes tart cherries.

This is a pie that will bubble up, making its own delicious juice so I strongly advise that you cook it on a cookie sheet lined with aluminum foil, unless you enjoy cleaning your oven afterwards (I don’t).

So today, here is my adapted James Beard Tart Cherry Pie recipe:

3 cans of tart cherries (packed in water)

1/2 cup sugar

4 to 6 tablespoons of flour

Open the cans, drain the juice from the cherries into a saucepan. Combine with the sugar and flour. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Let it cook just a minute or two. Add the cherries and again, bring to a boil. Cool. When completely cool, pour the cherries into the pie crust and top with the second pie crust. You can lattice the top if you wish but just a solid crust works just fine as long as you cut a few vents for the steam to escape as it cooks. Bake at 450 degrees for 15 minutes and then reduce the oven heat to 350 degrees and bake 25 or 30 minutes longer. Remove the pie from the oven and cool on a rack.
For some reason I do not know, cherry pie is usually served cool (or almost cold) rather than hot. Of course there is still the option of adding a scoop of ice cream though I have never cared for that myself but my husband Tom loves this addition.

So there you go. If you are looking for a new dessert to add to your Easter table or if you have pondered why you could never make a tasty cherry pie, you can try this recipe and tip your hat to the marvelous Mr. James Beard. And perhaps a small hat tip to me! This same recipe works really well with fresh cherries; you don’t have to drain the cherries obviously, just mix your fresh (pitted) cherries with the sugar and flour and put into your bottom crust. Proceed with the rest of the recipe.

When I was in college, I visited my grandparents and wanted to impress them with some of my new cooking skills. I offered to cook some cabbage for our lunch. My grandfather loved cooked cabbage! I chopped the cabbage and lightly sauteed it, making sure to keep a bit of a crunch to the cabbage. My grandfather tasted it, ate his serving, but grinning, said as he left the dinner table, “I believe what you have made here is coleslaw, not cabbage.” In his well-versed love of southern dishes, cooked cabbage should not have a crunch.

I wish my grandfather—and other family members— were still around today so I could bake them a cherry pie. I think they would agree I have come a long way since my cabbage cole slaw days!

I am wondering what foods might be on your holiday table, now or from your past family feasts.