Four-and-Twenty Mushrooms, Or Berries, for that matter
Latvia is paradise for pie. I guess most people would refer to the things I make here as tarts, but for some reason we say “pie.” Or “pirog”—also a term that barely fits, since a pirog is generally a closed pastry of some sort. But terminology aside, Latvia is a paradise for whatever you want to call these things and for those who like to eat them.
First of all, there is an excellent butter situation. Half of the butters sold in the stores are 82.5% milkfat, and they go for about a Lat for 200 grams—in US terms, that’s about the equivalent of $2.50 for two sticks, which is a pretty fair price in my book. I put butter in everything here, and everything is better for it. And returning again to linguistic notes, the Latvian word for butter is marvelous: sviests—it rolls unctuously off the tongue.
Secondly, there is plenty to put inside of pies here without even considering blackbirds. I do two broad categories of pie: berry and mushroom. On the mushroom side of things, chanterelles, as reported last entry, are plentiful and easy to find in the forests and markets. By August, their price drops to ridiculous lows in a reflection of the market’s derision for these lovely fungi when there are boleti to be had. For the pie pictured above, we picked half of the mushrooms ourselves, and paid two Lats for another liter of them ($8.00 a pound) to round things out. You can see the boletus bonanza in the pics provided here, though, to get an idea of what’s to be had for a bit more cash.
On the berry front, the variety is endless, and constantly changing as the summer progresses. The woods are absurdly productive of wild berries—like nothing I know about anywhere in North America. When you think about it, this makes it somewhat less of a mystery why primitive homo sapiens would leave the warm mediterranean and come up this way to challenge the neanderthals for dominance.
When we first arrive in Latvia in early July, you can still find wild strawberries in the woods—tiny little berries with an intense aroma and a winey complexity of flavor. Wild blueberries—just like in Maine—are in full swing. There are also wild raspberries and blackberries. As the season advances and wild strawberries and raspberries pass, the lingonberries ripen. All of it is free for the picking or, on lazy days, available at the market.
To the above, you can add cultivated berries: tens of varieties of sweet, tender strawberries (a completely different beast than the hard, tasteless, commercial stuff you get in US supermarkets), raspberries, blackberries, a cultivated version of the wild strawberry, and blueberries reminiscent of NJ. And to top it off: currants and gooseberries, which for some absurd reason are not readily available in the States. Black currants, in particular, are amazing in a pie. The pie above features black currants and blackberries.
So how do I wrap all of this abundance in a pie? For the crust, I use a version of the ingenious Cooks Illustrated vodka crust. Anyone who makes a traditional pastry crust of the sort I learned from my dad knows that two factors are are of crucial importance: the butter should stay cold, so that it remains in little chunks that roll out into layers, and there should be only enough water to hold the dough together. Too much encourages the creation of tough glutens—basically turning the flour into the sort of glue you used (and ate) in kindergarten.
The Cooks Illustrated gang, bless them, discovered that vodka sticks flour together, like water, but actually discourages the creation of glutens. And, if you keep it in your freezer, it helps to keep the butter nice and chilly as you work the dough. And it largely evaporates in the oven. Brilliant!
I’m not sure how much my technique corresponds to theirs—they use a food processor. I basically do a standard crust and substitute frozen vodka for half of the water. 1.5 cups of flour, mixed with a couple of tablespoons of sugar and a teaspoon of salt. Then cut up a stick (or 100 grams, over here) of cold butter, cutting it into the dough with a fork. Then cut in the water-vodka mixture a couple of tablespoons at a time. The operative term here is cut—I use the side of the fork against the bowl (or pot, in this case) to break up clumps of wet dough, which makes for an even mix requiring the minimum of moisture to stick together.
Thirty minutes in the fridge is enough of a rest for this dough—longer rests are another standard anti-gluten strategy, but that’s not really needed with the vodka crust. I usually work on the berries while the dough rests. If the end goal is to be a mushroom pie, then I usually saute them up far in advance, so that they will be relatively cool by this point and not melt my crust as I as assemble the pie (see the last entry on that).
About the berries: in the States, berry pies are tricky business because of the fruit’s excess of juice. With wild berries, this is not a problem. All you need to do with a wild berry to prepare it for en-pie-ment is to wash it and add some sugar. If I’m using currants, I usually mix them with blueberries, blackberries, or lingonberries, and throw in a tablespoon or so of flour to help soak up some juice.
I don’t own a rolling pin here, but I’ve learned over the years to use a wine bottle. The bottles get all covered with flour and look like you’ve just pulled them out of your cellar, covered with mould. Very impressive.
To assemble the pies, I use an egg-white wash, both to protect the crust from getting soggy and to glue everything together so that the juices don’t run all over the place.
The two pieces of equipment that I purchased here in Latvia, years ago, are my French non-stick tart pan and my little Turkish electric oven (our dacha doesn’t come equipped with its own). The silicone pan-liner came along from the States—it’s light enough to travel—and it will travel on to St. Petersburg in a few weeks time with us.
After baking, all that’s left to do is eat. I have to admit that I’m a little vain about my pies. Men in this part of the world cook only rarely, and they bake really rarely. I like to shock people with the pies. Women are always asking for the recipe—no one knows how to make an American pastry crust at all around here, for some reason. Sometimes, though, I pull one out and get no reaction. Those people get crossed off of my list.
