Pie has a civilizing effect on people. Mash a hot slice into the toothless mouth of a howling wino and they'll instantly relax and pledge to bathe immediately. Force-feed a morsel to a crooked banker and they'll never securitize another stated income loan again. The guys at the shooting range will switch their bullets from lead to copper, fools will read, readers will exercise, and dogs will grow thumbs. Pie is the brain tonic of baked goods, for its peerless grace will always inspire, even after you've frantically licked your plate clean like a rabid baboon.
While its consumption does wonders for the gobbler, the physical preparation of pie edifies the culinarian even further. Our fast-paced world of marketing hustlers and canned sandwiches is relentless in its attempt to erase the personal touch of the small craftsman, forever pushing speed and comfort over thoughtful complexity in its race to sell as much cheap slop as possible. Before long dinner will be piped into every household through a national system of pneumatic tubes, delivering canisters of hot, vitamin-enriched melted cheese at the hour of your choosing, all for a reasonable monthly fee paid electronically to AmeriTrough Inc, a Halliburton-Kraft Foods joint venture. The sifting, cutting, mixing, rolling, and baking that pie production entails is revolutionary in its antagonism towards this dismal trend.
One can also trace the evolution of Western civilization by following the development of pie from its origins in antiquity. Though stuffing bread with assorted ingredients had been practiced for centuries, the Greeks were the first to combine fat with flour to make pastry crust as we know it today. Usually filled with meat, these primitive pies were eaten on epic sea voyages celebrated for their heroism, violence, death, and glory. Baking in Athens was the work of female slaves, whose daily toil provided for a vast intellectual class that leisurely theorized about democracy and ethics. The Romans picked up where the Greeks left off, adding various spices to the pies they brought to Europe via their expansive highway system, establishing law and order as they went through savage barbarian lands courageously plundering everything in sight.
The barbarians had the last laugh, however, and by the time the Empire had collapsed into ruin, the isolated communities of Europe were left to carry on the legacy of pie as local circumstances dictated. The strange and inbred nobility of the medieval era took time out from killing each other to cram everything from dead birds to organ meats into pie shells, which were often used as tough, disposable casings for the real meal inside. The crusts were thrown out and gathered by local church officials to give to the poor, who in turn thanked Providence for the half-eaten scraps and the fortuity of being lepers in so charitable a dungeon.
Eventually a small religious sect in England, where the word pie was first recorded, decided to take their baking skills to America, where they discovered that filling pies with the native berries of their new environment was almost as much fun as lighting people on fire. Pie culture reached its peak in 1909, when Ben Turpin made history as the first person on film to be hit in the face with a pie.
To continue the march of human progress you'll need the following:
2 1/3 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup rendered lard*
6 tablespoons cold water
4 cups rhubarb
1 2/3 cups sugar
2 tablespoons butter
Preheat over to 400 degrees. Slice rhubarb into 1-inch pieces. Combine with sugar, 1/3 cup flour and a dash of salt. Toss until well-mixed. Let stand for fifteen minutes.
Meanwhile, sift two cups of flour and one teaspoon of salt into a large bowl. Cut room temperature lard into the sifted flour with two knives or a pastry blender until the lard is reduced to the size of small peas. Sprinkle one tablespoon of water over a small area of the mixture, toss with a fork, and push to the side of the bowl. Repeat until all of the water is used and the mixture is thoroughly moistened. Form into two balls. Flatten each ball with the edge of your hand on a lightly floured surface until about a 1/2-inch thick, then roll until 1/8-inch thick. Put one pastry into a 9-inch pie tin, cut the other into strips. Fill the tin with the rhubarb mixture. Divide butter into eight small pieces and distribute evenly across the top of the filling. Crisscross pastry strips across the top of the pie, about one inch apart, pinching the ends into the edge of the lower pastry. Bake for 50 minutes. Makes one pie.
Now your kitchen has reached maturity. The very nature of pie making is authentically meditative, for the baggage of life's distractions are naturally discarded when the mind is focused on chores of the present. Ego sheds itself as one suspends obsession with past follies and future challenges, redirecting mental energy to completion of the task at hand. Following through to its sweet conclusion empowers the spirit with the reminder that tangible victories, however small, are indeed attainable. By the time the pie is out of the oven your brain will have repatterned itself upon a foundation of selfless devotion to process and diligent finesse. May every kitchen serve as an incubator for insight and a base for the reclamation of our fading culture.
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*Vegetable shortening can be substituted for lard in a pinch, but lard is vastly superior. Vegetable shortening won't make your pie nearly as flaky and is often derived from hydrogenated vegetable oils, which contain trans fats. Lard is often bleached or treated with chemical preservatives, so be sure to buy leaf lard, the least porky tasting hog fat on the market and least likely to be laden with chemicals. If you can't buy rendered leaf lard, you're going to have to render it yourself, by following these simple instructions:
Cut about two and half pounds of fat into 1/2-inch cubes. Remove any visible chunks of pig tissue. Place into a large pot, add about 1/2 cup of water. Simmer for about one hour, stirring regularly. By then the water should have evaporated and the fat will be melting. Bits of tissue will start to form and float to the top. When these "cracklings" drop to the bottom of the pot, turn off the stove and strain out the cracklings by pouring the liquid fat through a mesh sieve into jars or a metal bowl. Allow the rendered lard to cool until white and solid, several hours or overnight. Now bask in the thick scent of your freshly porkened house.
