Pie Plant + Pie

Yesterday afternoon at the allotment:

Our russet apple trees have been freshly underplanted with sweet woodruff, English bluebells, Monarda and Brunnera, and the beds with new potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, and two kinds of sorrel: Red-Veined and De Belleville. I am trying to germinate Indian Sorrel (R. vesicarius), although that will not cope with the open conditions of our allotment; it will have to be grown somewhere warm and steamy. The first wave of radish and salad leaf seeds has been sown. Radish-wise, we’ve gone for Black Spanish Round, Zlata, Malaga Violet, and French Breakfast and, as usual, we’ve planted too many leaves: Mizuna, Wasabina, Red Giant Mustard, Celtuce (for its stems), Butterhead, and Mâche lettuce will feed the muntjac as well as us.

The pond edges have been planted with Ligularia to provide shade for frogs. Its leaves are shaped like serrated hearts; it is a passive-aggressive Valentine of a plant. Slugs adore Ligularia, and frogs like slugs, so I am keen to see who wins this particular battle. We picked a lot of rhubarb (some of it ours and the rest from the giant plant on the abandoned patch next to us), fresh mint to make tea, and a few plumes of bronze fennel. Nathan Young of 365 Days of Nigella describes the latter as resembling squirrel tails. He’s right.

As I write this, a rhubarb and raspberry slab pie flavoured with Chinese five-spice is in the oven. My obsession with pie never really abates, but of late, it has redoubled its hold; blame this on a commission to write about pie for a national magazine and an upcoming interview with Stacey Mei Yan Fong, author of 50 Pies, 50 States, for this newsletter. I've read a pdf of Stacey’s book (and will probably read it at least twice more because— *spoiler* — I love it), but my interview prep causes me to reconnect with an old favourite: Cathy Barrow’s Pie Squared. Her recipe for a‘Mostly Rhubarb and Just a Little Strawberry Slab Pie’ stood out. The headnotes tell of an abandoned rhubarb plant (aka ‘pie plant’) next to her childhood home that fed everyone in the neighbourhood. Rhubarb must be regularly harvested. This plant rewards generosity and abhors selfishness, so share it, keep it fed, and it’ll keep cropping. If your plant looks tired with a congested crown that has pushed its way upwards like a gnarly triffid and produces only thin, weedy stems, its root can be dug up, split with a spade, and replanted. How many new plants result largely depends on how large the crown is before division. I love dividing rhubarb roots. You can use a machete, hatchet or axe, and the sound as the root cleaves is satisfyingly primitive.

a rhubarb crown

This is an adaptable recipe; I subbed the strawberries for store-bought raspberries and flavoured them with a little Chinese five spice instead of nutmeg, the latter a pairing more commonly championed by Edna Lewis and cited by Barrow. The pie is crowned with a ‘Brawny Lattice Topper’ where wide pastry strips are so closely-woven they cover most of the top. My pie has a solid pie crust. I’m feeling lazy.

Here is my pie, just out of the oven. I’m so happy with it- thank you, Cathy Barrow.

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Here are links to more of my writing about pie and rhubarb.