Seasonal Chef: Blueberry-Peach Picnic Pie

If there is—and pardon my saying so—something missing from the Prospect Heights dining scene (not to mention further afield), it’s pie. I am not saying that the fior de latte gelato at Franny’s doesn’t make Flatbush Avenue feel like the Italian Alps, or that I haven’t gone to just for the doughnuts. But a stroll through Grand Army Plaza on Saturday morning, with picnic plans for Sunday, was enough to bring out my rolling pin. I mean, look at those peaches and blueberries! Dark purple berries, highlighted by juicy, sweet-tart peach slices, all cooked to this side of jam; is there anything better?

Making pie for a picnic is risky. It could slosh. Crumble. Or be not perfect (tough crust, too soupy, too dry, the pitfalls are everywhere). And when it comes to pie, only perfection justifies the endeavor: Buttery, delicate, golden-brown crust and so much fruit the thing just screams “July!!!” What’s more, mine was going to be a birthday pie, so it had to be pretty enough to hold a candle.

Before pie panic—or the heat wave—could discourage me, I’d embarked on my project. I mixed up the crust the night before, in the cool of the late evening, following a food processor recipe from neighborhood food writer . In her most recent cookbook, In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite, she shares her Perfect Piecrust, but precedes the recipe with the statement that she plans to “move on to the next obsessive round of piecrust testing.” Well, not me.

I’ve never made a crust that made everyone so happy—including my toddler, who crafted smushy, utterly delicious little jam thumbprint cookies from the scraps while I rolled out the pie early the next morning to beat the heat. The crust was just salty enough, with no sugar needed, and it was easy to work with, even in an un-air-conditioned kitchen. It also has more European-style butter in it than I usually use, which I believe must be the key. It baked up perfect on the bottom and perfect on the top, and I am not moving on.

For the filling, I usually wing it, adding barely enough sugar and a tiny bit of starch to thicken the juices. Since this pie would be traveling however, I felt like getting the ratio from, well, somewhere. So I checked the index of Amanda Hesser’s Essential New York Times Cookbook, and perhaps not so surprisingly, there it was, among the 1,400 recipes she vetted for this weighty tome: Blueberry Pie with a Lattice Top. I used her filling ratio, adding 3 peeled peaches since, as mentioned, I like pies to hold too much fruit and be barely sweet enough. After mixing berries, peaches, lemon juice, sugar and cornstarch, I let the whole thing sit while I rolled my crust.

Once the rolled crusts were chilling (chilling a few times was also from the Times recipe: a great way to keep the pie crust not only tender but pretty), I turned a critical eye on the fruit. It tasted great, but there was already enough soupy juice in the bottom of the bowl to make me nervous about getting to the picnic in one piece. So I poured most of that syrupy goodness into a little saucepan and simmered it until thick, then folded it back into the fruit. The process took about a minute, and it’s also going into my ultimate recipe from now on, since it allows you to pack a whollop of fruit into the pie without ending up with an oven overflow.

To get to the point: now is the time for fruit pie, and I am here to say that the blueberry-peach pie I made last weekend was the beginning of the rest of my pie-baking career. Try it out, take it to your next al frecsco meal, and you’ll see what I mean. A picnic-worthy, homemade pie that looks gorgeous and tastes even better than it looks: this is why we have July.

Blueberry-Peach Pie

 
Adapted from In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite (crust) and The Essential New York Times Cookbook (filling). The crust recipe, doubled from Melissa Clark’s, is enough for a double-crust pie. If you make a lattice crust, gently roll the scraps into rounds, press a finger in them and fill with jam for a dozen or so delicate thumbprint cookies. They’ll bake in about 10 minutes at 400˚.

Makes one 9-inch pie

Melissa Clark’s Perfect Piecrust:
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon kosher salt
20 tablespoons (10 ounces) unsalted butter, preferably high-fat, chilled and cubed
4 to 10 tablespoons ice water
Milk, for brushing

Blueberry-Peach Filling:
5 cups blueberries
3 peaches, peeled (see Note) and sliced
3 tablespoons cornstarch
¾ cup sugar
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon butter

1. In a food processor, whirl the flour and salt. Add butter and pulse to form chickpea-size clumps. Drizzle in ice water, a tablespoon at a time, pulsing just until the mixture begins to come together. Press the dough together, divide it in half and flatten each half into a disc. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate at least 1 hour.
2. Preheat the oven to 400˚. Place a rack in the bottom third of the oven, with a pizza stone on it if you have one. Combine the filling ingredients, except the butter, in a bowl and let sit for 10 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, roll out one disc of dough 1/8 inch thick and fit it into a 9-inch pie plate (I use Pyrex). Chill. Roll out the second disc to 1/8 inch thick, transfer to a baking sheet and use a knife or ravioli cutter (for fluted edges) to cut the dough into long, ½ inch wide strips. Chill on the baking sheet.
4. Drain most of the accumulated fruit juices into a small saucepan. Simmer, stirring, until thickened, 1-2 minutes. Scrape the juices back into the fruit. Fill the pie with the fruit and dot with the butter.
5. Lay lattice strips spaced evenly across the pie, then fold every other strip halfway back. Lay a strip perpendicularly across the pie, then bring down the folded-up strips and fold up the other strips (so that the perpendicular strips are actually woven through the horizontal ones). Repeat to form a lattice. Trim the overhanging dough to 1 inch all around, and roll it up, pinching to create a crimped crust. Chill the unbaked pie.
6. Lightly brush the crust with milk and bake in the bottom third of the oven until the crust is golden brown and the fruit is bubbling at the edges, 40 to 45 minutes. Cool thoroughly and serve with vanilla ice cream.

Note: To peel peaches, plunge them in boiling water until their skins loosen, about a minute. When cool enough to handle, slip off their skins.