I often think about pie. Not in terms of idioms, like that “shoot for the pie in the sky” nonsense or how something can taste as sweet as pie. I consider few people, save the odd toddler, to be cutie pies. And while I often wish jabbering idiots would just shut their pie holes, let’s face it–nothing is as easy as pie, because pie is really hard to make.
It used to be, back in medieval times, that pies were just a way to cook meat stew over an open flame without a pot. The crust was nothing more than a hard paste of flour and water, so thick, it had to be chiselled open to get to the actual meal. These “coffyns,” as they were called, were filled with different combinations of animal flesh, vegetables, dried fruit, and even birds. The term, “eat crow,” comes from a time when flighted birds were a popular centrepiece. One boy king was served peacock pie at his coronation, the cooked bird mounted on top in its own skin to identify the contents.
The crust didn’t become part of the meal until much later. Although there have been endless variations on ingredients, the best crusts are simply an amalgamation of fat, flour, salt, and water, combined together with the least amount of mixing and allowed to rest and cool before being rolled out into a sheet. When baked at the right temperature for just the right amount of time, the melted pockets of fat separate the gluten into flaky layers, creating a texture that is a fusion of impossible states of being. The tiny click of molars against salt granules. The chew of toasted flour. It’s like biting into succulent air.
My days are pies. From the outside, each has immense possibility–a self-contained, singular moment, sealed within a golden epidermis, and filled with a surprise that can only be comprehended by biting into it. On good days, I wake to find myself eating a cherry pie–sweet and tart and not afraid to get messy. Other days, I dive into something hearty and rich, like a steak and stout, that sticks to your ribs and feels like an internal hug. Some defy reason, like sour cream raisin or prune chiffon. The trickiest are rhubarb: so sour they require an excess of sugar that threatens diabetes. But I still have to eat them, so down the gullet they go.
Today I awoke to a pie I hadn’t eaten since childhood. It was a humble pie. Unlike the kind made from deer innards, mine was a fine study in acid, salt, and cayenne gelatin, and, when sliced open, squirted out warm defeat. It tasted of oxymorons–rageful remorse, defiant relenting, triumphant disaster–and had an aftertaste not unlike the glycyrrhiza glabra of licorice, which was just as likely to give me lead poisoning as it was to be medicinal.