September 13, 2011
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Apple Pie Quest
Seeking an Iowa Icon
“Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet.”
In its 1960’s heyday, Chevrolet loaded their advertising with patriotic icons. Times changed. Baseball is now fighting to remain America’s number three sport, hot dogs now trail nachos in concession stand sales and Chevies went the way of Cedar River levies, unable to cope with the floodwaters of imported automobiles. Apple pie is thus the only All American super symbol to survive into the 21st century untarnished. Ironically, it isn’t even American.
Apples probably originated in Kazakhstan and pie evolved from the Babylonian “filo.” Crusaders would bring pastry-making back to Europe and the Pilgrims took apple seeds to New England. Pie quickly conquered the American frontier for very practical reasons: its crust required less flour than bread; it could be baked over an open fire, in simple Dutch ovens; and its fillings stretched meager provisions of pioneer life.
Pie making evolved considerably in Iowa. By definition, pie crust is a concoction of flour, fat, and water. Most all nineteenth century Iowa pie recipes used rough flour mixed with suet. When hogs replaced cattle as the primary livestock, our pies began using lard instead of suet, and finer flours. Today, Iowa pie makers argue over the type of fat, the quality of the flour and the purity and freshness of the stuffings.
“When I first moved to Iowa five years ago, everyone I met was rendering lard, for a better pie crust. I began wondering where on earth I had come,” recalls Organic Gardening editor Ethne Clarke.
One of the people Clarke noticed rendering lard was Karen Strohbeen, TV’s “Perennial Gardener” and an artist who deconstructs American pie.
“We had been using Julia Child’s recipe for pie crust, which calls for “shortening” for a flaky crust. But available shortenings, like Crisco and margarine, left an icky flavor. So we began rendering our own lard from Niman Ranch leaf lard. We would spend an entire day gathered around an outdoor pot, cooking it down. But it really improved the flavor, and the color of the crusts,” Strohbeen explained.
A search for the holy grail of Iowa pie must travel through the Iowa State Fair’s apple pie competition. This year’s contest was attended by two legendary cooks. Louise Piper of Garner and Dianna Sheehy of Audubon have won more blue ribbons and national accolades than anyone else the last three decades. So many ribbons that neither was competing in this year’s contest. Piper was ineligible because she won the previous year, but she came to check out the state of the art.
Sheehy won so many major competitions in 2007 that she decided to take the whole Fair off. She judged this year’s contest. These two champions hold opposite beliefs in the great pie crust debate. Piper prefers soy oil and milk crusts. Sheehy’s first choice is pure rendered lard.
“I know that most people believe in lard and I think lard is best for yeast bread and cookies. But my soy oil recipe works for me in pies. I found it years ago in a Betty Crocker book and I readjusted the salt, but outside of that I have been using it ever since,” Piper told us.
She was seated with eventual 2008 champion Lana Ross of Indianola and other contestants. Someone compared Sheehy’s sitting out the contest competition to Tiger Wood’s not playing golf tournaments.
“It’s an opening for all the rest of us,” Piper said, with the others nodding in agreement.
Even Sheehy has no idea how many blue ribbons she has won.
“Someday, I’m going to count them. There are hundreds and hundreds of them,” she admitted.
Twice Sheehy has been a top ten finalist in Proctor & Gamble’s national pie making championships – her rhubarb pie was first runner-up in 1989. In 2007 she won both divisions of the Iowa State Fair’s cinnamon roll contest, the Fair‘s glamour cooking event. No one had ever done that before. Sheehy thus competed against herself for the overall prize.
“She won $5,000 for that. I told her to be sure to spend some of it on herself, she had surely earned it. You know what she did? She put all her prize money toward an antique Allis Chalmers tractor that her husband wanted,” said ISF Food Center Superintendent Arlette Hollister. “
Sheehy might be an old fashioned cook, but she’s a modern day farmer.
“I grew up on a farm and married a farmer and we’re trying to keep the family farm going. It isn’t easy. My husband is a full time oversized trucker. We also do drainage tiling in the fall and spring and custom backhoe work year around. On weekends we crop farm – beans, corn and hay. It’s crazy but if you’re a small family farmer it takes all that just to keep things going,” she said, before explaining that she came to the ISF directly from a 5000 mile round trip delivering a Vermeer Rock Trencher to the Canada’s Northwest Territory.
Sheehy is also the chef behind a bona fide food extravaganza. When former Democratic National Committee Chairman and super lobbyist Charles Mannatt hosts associates from around the world at his Audubon County lodge each fall, Sheehy prepares feasts to show off the bounty of Iowa.
“We always make ten different pies at those suppers: Audubon cherry, rhubarb, apple, North 40 berry, pecan, pumpkin, caramel pecan, French silk chocolate, coconut cream and sour cream raisin. There is even a pie eating contest,” she recalled.
Though her pie making techniques are traditional, they’ve also altered with changing times.
“When I first started competing, my grandparents butchered and rendered my lard. When they died, I started getting lard from Milt Sheeder, a farmer in Guthrie Center who has hormone-free and antibiotic-free meat. Good lard is important. I‘ve been coast to coast representing Iowa in Crisco‘s national pie making championship, so I don’t have anything bad to say about Crisco, but I prefer good lard when it’s available,” she said.
“I am known for “North 40 Berry.” It has wild blackberries that I pick in the woods, mixed with red raspberries from farmers’ markets. I have won a lot of firsts and overalls for that pie. This year, I am sponsoring a “North 40 Berry” pie contest,“ she said.
“My personal favorite pie is rhubarb, probably because I can just open my back door and pick it. I like peach pie, but my peach tree doesn’t always produce enough fruit. Plus, birds love the peaches on the top of the tree. I like cherry pie, but I don’t have cherry trees anymore, so I pick them at friends’ places in Harlan and at the Beaver Creek Apiary. My apple tree is laden down with apples this year, so that will be keeping me busy,” she explained in early August.
Sheehy admits that standards are changing in apple pie.
“I don’t understand a lot of what’s happening. To me, an apple pie should taste like apple pie. A little cinnamon brings that out, but half a dozen spices, especially nutmeg, disguise the apple flavor. If you don’t use too much spice, I can tell you exactly what kind of apple you used. I don’t understand all spice in an apple pie, unless you’re trying to make Jamaican jerk apple pie.
“I don’t understand, or like, Granny Smiths in a pie. Jonathan’s are the only apple I use. Plus, they’re native to Iowa. The closer you stick to your roots, the better your pie will taste.”
Dianna Sheehy’s Pie Making Tips
1.) Work with cold ingredients. The colder something is, the less active and the less likely to disrupt a recipe.
2.) Don’t overwork your dough.
3.) Start your oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for fifteen minutes in order to properly cook the bottom crust.
4.) Brush some milk lightly on your top crust and sprinkle some sugar on it before you bake.
5.) Don’t do a crumble crust for a serious fruit pie competition. Double crusts are the essence of fruit pies.
6.) Use fresh and local ingredients, as fresh as possible. If you can pick them and use them immediately, do that.
7.) Freeze freshly picked fruits for use year around, but never freeze apples, they will keep in the refrigerator all winter.
8.) Wrap a strip of aluminum foil around the outer crust for part of the baking time. That protects the edges.
9.) Use good lard, or don’t use lard at all. If you can render your own lard, do it. If you can’t, find a farmer who does and buy from him. Much of the lards being sold in supermarkets are inferior to vegetable shortenings.
Dianna Sheehy’s Apple Pie
Crust
2 cups unbleached flour
1 tsp. salt
Three fourths cup good rendered lard
1 egg
Half cup water
1 tsp. cider vinegar
2 tbsp. butterStart with cold lard, cut and fold into flour and salt. Beat egg and blend in the water and cider vinegar. Add just enough liquid so the dough is rollable. Divide into two portions and chill for two hours.
Filling
6 and a half cups peeled and sliced Jonathan apples
Half tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice
Two thirds cup sugar
2 tbsp. flour
Half tsp. cinnamonPrepare the pastry. Spoon the filling into pastry-lined 9 inch pie plate. Dot with 2 tbsp. butter and cover with top crust. Make slits. Fold top crust over bottom crust and crimp the outer edge. Cover edges with aluminum foil. (Remove foil the last 15 minutes of baking.)
Bake at 400 degrees F for 15 minutes, reduce temperature to 350 degrees and continue baking for 40 minutes, until crust is golden brown
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