Last year’s crowning glory, the Southern Tomato Pie

Here at Sassafras, we think about pie constantly. We eat, sleep and breathe it. And to tell you the truth, we just can’t get enough of it. But, we know our pies, and we are ready to venture out and taste what the rest of Portland has to offer.

This is where you come in – want to know your pie. Do you make it with fruit? Vegetables? Meat? Cheese? Shortening or butter crust? Top crust or not? We want to know!

Make your favorite pie(s) and bring it to the Portland Pie Off this Sunday, August 16th, and show us what you’ve got. Oh, and just so you know, we were the winner last year, and we are honored to be a judge this year.

This is your chance to become a pie champion. To be the pie queen or king of Portland. And to take our crown!

Pie not your thing? Well come anyway – once the judging has finished, all of the pies will be available to the public for eating. Yum!

Who else is talking about the pie-off?

-The Portland Pie Commission
-Betsy at OurPDX
-The Mercury’s Blogtown
-PDX Food Press
-LeLo in NoPo
-On Upcoming
-Gary Walter

Rainier cherries at the Montavilla Farmers Market

I never knew there was a difference between the florescent-colored red maraschino cherries that you find in cocktails and a real bourbon-soaked cherry until I was at The Country Cat with my friend Joanne a few years back. She insisted on ordering a Manhattan with “real” cherries, and that I taste one of them right when the drink was delivered. They were amazingly good, and strong.

That experience reminded me of another, when a friend from West Virginia (we were living in Bend at the time) pulled a mason jar out of the top of her closet. The jar had a liquid in it the color of dark grape juice. When I asked her what was in it, she said, “moonshine. With plums.” Scared as I was, I tasted it – and it was very good. From what I can recall, it tasted like a fruity wine, and we finished the whole jar that evening (with friends, of course).

Getting to the point: I want to start putting up some fruit with liquor as the preservative. There are all kinds of ways to preserve the incredible fruits and vegetables coming out of our farmers markets these days, yet I think liquor should be one method that gets more attention.

This weekend I bought a whole bunch of cherries. They were $3.75/lb for both Bing and Rainier, so I got about 3 pounds. I asked the vendor how best to preserve them – do they freeze? how long do they last? what can I do to keep them?  His answer: eat them. Eat them all, and then you’ll get your fill of cherries for the season. They just don’t keep well frozen.

I wasn’t happy with his answer, so I’m gonna mix these babies with bourbon and keep them for weeks to come, like Maker’s Mark does. Here is my recipe:

Bourbon-Soaked Cherries

Yields 6 jars

Equipment and ingredients
1 canning kettle with rack
6 mason jars with new lids and rings
5 pints of cherries with stems removed (any fresh variety will work)
750 ml of your favorite Bourbon

1. Fill canning kettle with water and bring to a boil

2. Turn jars upside down and immerse them on the kettle’s rack

3. Pull jars out of the hot-water bath (use tongs or a dish towel) and fill with cleaned, unpitted  cherries

4. Pack each jar to the rim with cherries, leaving a 1/2 inch of space at the top

5. Pour whiskey into each jar, also to the rim, leaving some space at the top

6. Place canning jar lids over jar openings and screw rings tightly around lids

7. Allow jars to cool by setting them on a dry towel away from drafts. (cold air can crack the jars)

8. Once the jars reach room temperature, store in a dark, cool place for at least a few months. They will keep for years to come!

Serve in a Manhattan, over pound cake with whipped cream, or with a grilled pork tenderloin. Yum!

PDX-WCR Web site

I went to the third meeting of PDX-WCR recently, and all I can say is WOW. So many inspiring, passionate women in food were there to learn more about how to market themselves and their businesses in a down economy.

I generally know a good amount about social media, having been a web designer, but I had no idea how much goes into marketing yourself and getting noticed. Lizzy Caston, of Lizzy Caston Communications and Lota LaMontagne of LAD communications provided so much information to those of us who are blindly feeling our way through this process.

Thank you, ladies, for your fantastic presentation. And thanks to Suzame for keeping us all organized as well as Susan for offering her space!

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle book cover

My new favorite book is Animal, Vegetable, Miracle from Barbara Kingsolver. I have always been a person that loves food, but I am starting to appreciate more and more that these days, farmers are the rock stars, not chefs.

I am incredibly lucky to live in an area that grows a lot of its own food. If the entire world were to plunge into a deep spiral of financial troubles and that finite resource we call gasoline were to dry up, Oregonians, for the most part, would still be able to eat!

Sure, it would be harder to get things from farm to table, but we could all grow food in our back yards, too, to supplement the crisis because we get so much rain. In the sunny desert, it may be beautiful, but as this book mentions, those cities are just living on borrowed water. And time.

Did you know that a recent issue of Inc. magazine is touting the global water crisis as the next big thing, just like “plastics” was in the movie “The Graduate?” Getting access to potable water is getting harder every day – about one in six people in this world have no access to clean and safe drinking water.

If we continue to follow the current trend, by the year 2025 two thirds of the people in this world will not have sufficient access to clean water. Hence the opportunity to create machines that desalinate, divert, and filter the water we do have.

Local food systems, in addition to conservation of all that we have (water, energy, etc.), is imperative in this continually evolving world. I plan to make it my mission to educate people just how important this is, just as Barbara Kingsolver is doing.

Tomato Pie made with local heirloom tomatoes

**Note: This post was originally published on August 8th, 2008.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, we love tomatoes.

Unfortunately, our season is much shorter and later than other places in the country, so while the peak of the season is here for most, we are still waiting for our little backyard patches of green to turn to red.

However, you can find some wonderful heirloom tomatoes now (that have been grown in greenhouses) in specialty grocery stores everywhere.

I am really looking forward to Thursday’s virtual Tomato Fest with Deb over at Dinner Tonight and Margaret at A Way to Garden. I have just stumbled upon these sites and could not be more excited about it!

One idea for those tomatoes: make a pie. Pie, you say? Yes. Tomato Pies are a Southern specialty, as far as I can tell, the recipe originated from the Lowcountry, or coastal region, of South Carolina—and they are amazing. I have only been able to find a recipe for this delicacy in a few cookbooks – and both of them were from the Lowcountry area.

Being from South Carolina myself, I have my own variation on this recipe (see below). Two of my sisters and my stepmother have their own variations, too, and they are all to die for.

We recently started selling Tomato Pies at the Montavilla Farmer’s Market in our neighborhood (see photo), and the response has been incredible. Most people that walk by our booth and ask, “What’s a Tomato Pie?”

Our answer: Tomato pie is made with a traditional pie crust filled with tomatoes and basil, then topped with a mixture of cheese and mayonnaise, topped with caramelized onions.

Using the local ingredients of the season is not only satisfying, but cheaper and healthier, too. What a great way to use up all those extra tomatoes!

Tomato Pie Recipe
-5 large tomatoes, peeled, cored and sliced 1/4 inch thick
-1 10-inch pie crust
-1/4 Teaspoon dried basil
-1 Cup medium cheddar cheese, shredded
-1/4 Cup mayonnaise
-2 Tablespoons butter
-1 1/2 Large sweet onions, sliced in 1/4 inch rings (Vidalia or Walla Walla sweets work best)
-1 Teaspoon sugar
-1 Tablespoon spice mix (Italian herbs or other favorite seasoning)
-1/2 Teaspoon cracked pepper
-Salt to taste

Directions:
1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2) Melt butter in a saute pan and add onions. Cook at medium low for about 30 minutes until carmelized, stirring every few minutes to avoid burning.
3) Lightly salt tomatoes and drain in colander for 20 minutes.
4) Mix cheddar with mayonnaise and 1/4 Teaspoon of the cracked pepper and set aside.
5) Pre-bake pie shell for 10 minutes in 350 degree oven with pie weights to avoid bubbles.
6) Add one layer of tomatoes to pie shell and cover with dash of salt, pepper, sugar and basil. Add the rest of the tomato slices and seasonings in layers.
7) Spread cheese mixture evenly on top of tomatoes.
8) Sprinkle dressing mix on top of cheese.
9) Add carmelized onions to the top of the pie in an even layer.
10) Bake pie at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Cover with foil if the crust begins to burn.
Makes 6-8 servings.