The universe is a dark place, dear readers. A howling, godless wasteland in which we are adrift, tossed about like rudderless boats among the wreckage of other lives. The howl of a bleak monad on an even bleaker bridge echoes in the chasms of an indifferent world. Given such desolation, we can do better than debate the meaning of ethics in a world without punishment or salvation. We can do SO much better. We can make fresh cherry pie. It's true that pitting fresh cherries is labor intensive. It takes time and effort, and those without the benefit of a cherry pitter will suffer more than those with one. What is this, other than further proof of the way that an indifferent universe doles out its sweetness and benefit? But you already know this. You have resigned yourself to a life of pitting cherries with a chopstick. Of cajoling your reluctant partner to man up and grab a chopstick of his own. Of defiantly resisting the siren song of those bags of frozen pitted cherries, relying on the sweat of your brow to make your sweet reward. Really, in a world like ours, what else do you have to do?Fresh Cherry Pie
1 batch pie dough (enough for a top and bottom crust)
5 c fresh, pitted sweet or sour cherries (goddamnit! I can't find sour cherries anywhere in NorCal!)
1 c raw, organic sugar (keep it vegan, y'all)
1 t salt
juice from 1/2 lime
2 T margarine 4 T tapioca flour/starch
Preheat oven to 450. Line pie pan with half of dough. In a large bowl, toss cherries with sugar, salt, lime juice, and tapioca, then dump the lot into pie pan. Dot cherries with little chunks of margarine. Roll out remaining dough and arrange into a lattice topping. Sprinkle pie with a bit more sugar. Bake at 450 for 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 and bake for 40-50 minutes more, or until crust is golden and the pie juices are thick and bubbly. NB: Fresh berries release a veritable boat load of juice when baked. After 30 or 40 minutes, if your pie looks like a lake of fruit juice, let it cook longer. The tapioca thickener should catch up with the liquid and thicken up nicely. All we have is each other, dear readers. And fresh cherry pie.
Also, how badly do I need to re-do my blog design? Bad, right? I know.
2 comments:
I am sitting on my deck in beautiful Michigan, happy with 4 quarts of fresh michigan sour cherries reposing in the refrigerator. Alas, no instant tapioca in the house, which all the pie recipes called for.But I have tapioca flour, left over from last Thanksgiving's apple pie. A google search for cherry pie with tapioca flour only turned up a couple of hits. One, from 2005, said don't try it. The other hit was your blog, from just this morning! And the intro about the universe made me laugh out loud. I read it out loud to my family and they laughed too. So thank you! I'm going to make that pie!
Ha! Thanks, Lucy! Tapioca flour works perfectly well in this recipe. I think the main difference is the pie has to cook a little bit longer. No biggie.
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