A Passion For Pie

FOODIE ROBINSON SERVES UP SLICES OF STATE’S BEST

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Listening to Little Rock author Kat Robinson, one might think she grew up in a tiny Arkansas backwater. She has the accent laced with syrup, she has the connection to the old ways of the Ozarks, and she has the passion for pie - all kinds of pie.

“I can’t remember a time when pie wasn’t part of my life,” Robinson says. “When I was a kid, there was always pie. It’s just something ingrained in the culture.”

For Robinson, that included raisin pies with butter and sugar, fried pies found next to the cash register at every small-town convenience store and sweet potato pies that were the favorite at every family gathering.

“Everybody brought dessert,” Robinson says.

“And that meant almost unilaterally pies.”

By definition, she says, pie requires only a crust.

Everything else is optional - as long as that fi lling was fresh or frozen or canned at home. “We didn’t have canned-cherry-pie-fi lling pies. It just wasn’t done.”

Of course, Robinson became something of an expert on pies. She studied them, both in terms of food history and culture - “the universal idea of something being contained in crust goes back further than we have written record,” she says - and even before she became a writer for the Arkansas Department Parks and Tourism, she had learned every place in Arkansas that had good pie.

The result is “Arkansas Pie,” a recently released book she calls “more of a book about an adventure or a quest than a cookbook.

When I was writing food stories (for the Arkansas Times) I had a lot of people tell me, ‘You should write a guidebook.’ People were constantly contacting me: ‘I’m in this city. Where can I go to eat?’

“I thought about writing a book about several diff erent kinds of cuisine,” she adds, but pie finally bubbled to the top.

Collecting the best pies from around the state wasn’t as easy as it sounds, Robinson says in the book’s introduction.

“On research days ... I’d be up early in the morning and traveling,” she writes, “andby the end of my travels, I would have sampled anywhere from four to nine pies. The regular routine was to photograph the tar out of the pie, take a bite or two and then request a box to take the rest home.

... There was one weekend where over a 36-hour period, my photographer and I checked in at 26 pie locations. We ended up with more than a dozen pies worthy of inclusion in the book - but we had to try them all.”

The best ones, Robinson concludes, were “the ones I craved days and even months later, the ones thatcame to me in my dreams.”

Were there any bad pies?

“One place in Searcy attempted to serve me a Pepperidge Farm puff pastry turnover thrown in the deep fryer,” she says. “And a couple of places had egg custard pie that was more liquid than jiggly. Those places are not included in the book.”

Among the “pies of legend,” including those served at the Cliff House Inn in Jasper and Neal’s Cafe in Springdale; the innovators, among which are those at the Greenhouse Grille in Fayetteville and 302 on the Square in Berryville; and the signature pies of Arkansas - chocolate meringue pie at the Country Rooster in Green Forest and key lime pie at Rolando’s Restaurant in Fort Smith - are 13 recipes. Robinson shared three for Christmas entertaining.

Company’s Coming Pie Cliff House Inn Jasper

6 egg whites

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

2 cups sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 sleeve saltine crackers, crushed

1

/2 cup chopped pecans

Topping:

1 small container whipped topping

3 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons crushed pineapple

Beat egg whites until fluffy.

Add cream of tartar and sugar.

Beat 25 minutes or until stiff.

Stir in vanilla. Stir in crackers and pecans by hand.

Spray two pie pans withnonstick spray. Divide mixture evenly between pans. Spread mixture in pan, forming a crust. Bake at 285 degrees for 25 minutes or until done.

Combine topping ingredients. Pour into pie shell and serve.

Possum Pie Kat Robinson

1

1 /2 sticks of butter

2 cups flour

2 cups crushed pecans, separated

One 8-ounce package cream cheese, room temperature

1 cup confectioners’ sugar

12 ounces Cool Whip, divided

1 box milk chocolate instant pudding

1 box chocolate fudge instant pudding

3 cups milk

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Cut butter into flour to make crumbly pastry dough. Add 1 cup crushed pecans. Press into two 8- or 9-inch pie pans or one 13-by-9-inch casserole. Bake 15 minutes or until flourstarts to brown. Remove and cool.

Cream together cream cheese and confectioners’ sugar. Add 6 ounces of Cool Whip and beat until fluffy.

Spread over bottom of both pies.

Blend together both pudding mixes with milk. Pour in on top of the cream cheese mixture and allow to set.

Spread remaining Cool Whip over the top of both pies and sprinkle with pecans.

Makes two pies.

Bourbon Chocolate

Chunk Pecan Pie

The Greenhouse Grille Fayetteville

6 medium eggs

2 cups brown rice syrup (or corn syrup)

2 cups brown sugar

1

1 /3 cup bourbon (Jack Daniels)

4 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chunks

2 pie crusts, blind-baked

2

2 /3 cups toasted pecans

Beat eggs until smooth.

Slowly add syrup and brown sugar. Pour in bourbon and mix thoroughly.

Place chocolate chunks across bottom of pie shells.

Pour batter over the chocolate. Top with pecans.

Place on sheet pan and bake in preheated 350 degree oven for 45 to 50 minutes or until center is firm.

Makes two pies.

Life, Pages 9 on 12/19/2012