Pie For Everyone | Petra "Petee" Paredez
Pie For Everyone
By Petra “Petee” Paredez
Intro: Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York city sitting at her dining room table, talking to cookbook authors.
Petra Paredez: I am Petra Paredez and my cookbook is called Pie For Everyone, Recipes and Stories From Petee's Pie, New York's Best Pie Shop.
Suzy Chase: If you liked this podcast, please be sure to tell a friend I'm always looking for new people to enjoy Cookery by the Book. Now on with the show. Pie is the secret of our strength as a nation and the foundation of our industrial supremacy. Pie is the American synonym of prosperity. Pie is the food of the heroic, no pie, eating people can be permanently vanquished. I thought you'd get a kick out of that cause that's out of, The New York Times in 1902.
Petra Paredez: Oh amazing.
Suzy Chase: Isn't that funny?
Petra Paredez: Yeah. I mean, I'm a pie lover. I might not go that far, but I love it.
Suzy Chase: Well I know you did a lot of research at the New York Public Library, right?
Petra Paredez: It's actually something you can do online. They have a lot of menus available online. So you can look at all these big, beautiful menus PDFs of antique and vintage menus from, decades past from New York City and beyond and see what people were eating. One thing that pretty much all over those menus from past decades is pie for dessert and also pie for main meals as well. But when you check out the New York Public Library database, the menu database that's a really strong common thread in all of these menus.
Suzy Chase: I've heard. It's amazing.
Petra Paredez: It's so much fun to look at. I mean, if you just look up pie and then you see all of of these different tags for different menus and they're constantly being uploaded, just pies you've never heard of or fruits, you might not have heard of as well.
Suzy Chase: So Americans really seem to think that pie is ours. The first known written recipe for Apple Pie dates back to an English cookbook published in 1381. Now, how is pie a culinary vehicle that can travel across millennia and seasons?
Petra Paredez: I think to address that you kind of have to think about what makes the pie and what your definition of a pie is. If we think of it as a filling that is baked in a crust, there's so many different examples of that across cultures and across huge swaths of the human timeline. But, you know if it's some sort of grain crust and a filling, people have been making that for millennia way back to the Greeks, the Egyptians, and you can be a little loose with your definition. I mean, what people often cite as first pies sound to me an awful lot like cheesecake, um, maybe like a sheep's cheese in an ancient grain crust and that's part of why I think cheesecake is pie too, by the way,
Suzy Chase: I was going to ask you that is cheesecake cake or pie. I think of it as cake.
Petra Paredez: Some versions strike me much more as a cake-like dessert. And then some versions I think are more tart, like are or pie like in the sense that they have a much more clearly defined crust and then an egg and cheese based custard or filling that is baked inside of it. I think of cake is something more with leavener, and a crumb to it. Some cheesecakes have that. I like it fluffy, but not necessarily with a crumb, but yeah, I mean, I think pie in general is such like an amazing vehicle because you can kind of take whatever your spices and fruits or even savory elements that are part of your cultural cuisine and stuff 'em in a crust and bake them.
Suzy Chase: I'm curious to hear about how you grew up in a pie business that your parents started in 1981. That was a long time ago.
Petra Paredez: Yea. It's sounding farther and farther away. That's for sure. Yeah. My parents started their pie business sort of out of desperation. They had been farming for a while. Their small farm operation went under and they noticed that there was a dearth of good pies at the farmer's market. And my dad being the sort of analytical guy with strong opinions that, "Oh I can probably do that" not having been a professional baker in the past. He and my mom, they started making pies in their house and selling them at the farmer's market. And before they knew it, it was popular enough that they had to define themselves as a brand and a company. And they decided to call it Mom's Apple Pie Company, thinking that it sort of conveyed this sense of, I don't know, sort of like an Americana, some sort of, you know, wholesome family values, Mom and Apple Pie, but really, they were just like pretty destitute hippies without stable housing who didn't know what else to do. And, you know, my Dad was guided by his strong opinions of what a good pie should taste like and he was able to use that to guide him towards his goal of making those pies. And people responded really well. But I would say that my upbringing was quite different from, you know, my peers and that I, I knew exactly what my parents did for a living. They made pies. Every Thanksgiving I would take the week off of school and work alongside my parents at the bakery. And it wasn't that we were valuable workers when we were, you know, 8, 10, 14 it's more that they didn't have the time to take us to school. So they were doing a lot of, you know, all nighters and probably wasn't even safe for them to drive around at that point. And so we were alongside them, wrapping up pies, taking them to customers, doing all of the little odd jobs, but feeling very important about it too.
Suzy Chase: Okay. So when you used to go to the restaurants, your dad would critique the crust of other pies.
Petra Paredez: We still do it.
Suzy Chase: Oh my gosh.
Petra Paredez: Yeah. It's a really funny habit. I mean you know, it's one way of taking your work with you wherever you go. If you're a cook or a baker, um, you can't help, but observe these things. If you go out to eat at a restaurant, but he was pretty funny about it. His brow gets really furrowed and it looks super serious and he's like looking at the crust up close and feeling it with his fingers. It can be a little bit embarrassing except we're all kind of into it. So it's not that he's judgemental it's just that he gets puzzled because he knows how good pie can be, but you're just so much more often able to find mediocre pie than really excellent pie. So he's just wondering why put it on the menu if it's not going to be really great. And he's of course always looking for a super flaky crust and super juicy and flavorful filling. And for him, I think it comes down to like the quality of the fruit. He's super picky about those things. So those are all things that I took with me to, to my business when I started my own thing in New York City with my husband, just those super high standards and wanting to get local fruit that's in season, rather than just, you know, have everything available year round. You know, I'm looking for certain things that in my relationship with those farms and it's mostly just I'll take the ugly fruit as long as it's really nice and bright, rather than all the stuff that looks really good, but might not taste as good.
Suzy Chase: Well, that leads us to your high pie standards and your five tenants of a good pie. Let's start with the crust. You say it should be flavorful and plastic fork tender.
Petra Paredez: Yeah. That means that if you are eating it on a plate, you should be able to eat it with a plastic fork and have no problem getting right through the crust. Crust used to be more of a vehicle for the pie and a vessel for the pie, for the filling of the pie. But we don't have to carry pies on long journeys overseas or in a pocket or whatever we can just make a really good crust that we want to eat. I mean, to me, the best crust is butter crust. It should be tender and flaky, like so flaky that it shatters. That's what I'm going for.
Suzy Chase: You have 7 types of pie crust in this cookbook. I didn't think there were seven types of pie crust.
Petra Paredez: Yeah. I wanted it to be accessible to people with different diets. So most of the filling recipes are gluten free. So there's a gluten free crust option and there's a vegan option as well because all of the fruit pies with the exception of like one or two fillings, all of the fruit pies in there are also vegan. So when I say pie for everyone, I really do want it to be accessible for everybody. And I also think that while the butter crust works great with savory pies, it's definitely the most versatile crust out of all of them. It's nice to have a whole grain crust. Sometimes it makes it feel like a much heartier meal if you're having a whole wheat crust or a rye crust, for example, with a savory pie.
Suzy Chase: So you touched on this just a little bit just now, but what should we be looking for in fruit?
Petra Paredez: You just want to be the fullest expression of itself. So fruit at the height of its season is really what you should want or fruit that's been frozen at the height of its ripeness. You know, if you were to freeze fruit in the summer and use it in the winter, that's going to be so much better than buying that same fruit in the winter. If it's out of season where you live and what I want in a fruit filling is just for those natural flavors to be amplified. And if you just add sugar, you're not really going to amplify it. You have to add sweetness and acidity in good measures. Something that is missing often in fruit fillings is sufficient acidity. To me, lemon juice is always just the best, best source of acidity to add to a fruit pie.
Suzy Chase: Talk a little bit about the historic precedence of spices in pies.
Petra Paredez: Yeah, well, I've been noticing some pie filling choices that, you know, I might not always agree with. And I would have these like knee jerk reactions to spices with berries, for example, for some reason that never really, that idea never really appealed to me. And then I was reading, um, Amelia Simmons, I'm sure you're familiar with American Cookery, like the first American cookbook, right and I noticed that she is equally as opinionated as I am about this, and she advises cinnamon and mace other sort of warm spices to treat fruit like apples. But she says that every species of fruits such as plums, raspberries, blackberries may only be sweetened without spices. And I thought that was really interesting just to lay it down like a hard and fast rule. That's how I feel about it. I mean, ultimately to each her own but I liked that she laid that down so that I didn't have to.
Suzy Chase: What should we be thinking about when making chess, nut and custard pies,
Petra Paredez: Those pies are so heavily based on like nice fatty ingredients, like chess and nut pies are based on eggs, butter, and sugar. And then you have custard pies, which are based on a variety of dairy, usually like cream and milk and, and eggs and sugar. And so to balance out those flavors, I think that you need a nice amount of salt, but they also just need to be made out of really quality ingredients. So just really good butter. And I also think that nut pies, like in a pecan pie, for example, using something other than corn syrup, I know that it's a traditional ingredient and pecan pie, but it's also sort of a bizarre invented food that doesn't really exist in nature at all and it doesn't exist by any natural means. It's made by a sort of treating sort of a cornstarch slurry with enzymes that they get from bacteria and fungi. It's just all too weird for me. So I like to use a nice natural sweetener with more character than corn syrup. The only character that corn syrup has is his character that's added through vanilla or molasses. So if you like those things, then you might as well use sweeteners that have molasses in them naturally like a cane sugar and molasses or use use honey use maple syrup. Those things will add so much more depth and character to a nut pie.
Suzy Chase: And last, what are the do's and don'ts with filling flavors,
Petra Paredez: I've noticed a lot more sort of herbs being added to fruit pies and spices added to Berry pies and I think that sometimes those things might sound more appealing than the end result. I just think that you should let your palate be your guide rather than driving to make something unique or, or going for a sort of..what ends up being sort of a gimmick you know, a classic pie done right will always sort of beat a bizarre combination any day. And so don't combine things based on how they sound more based on how they might look aesthetically, think about how their flavors balance each other out and contribute to a more balanced filling of a nice amount of acidity and sweetness and touch of salt. Those are better considerations when you're putting together ideas for a filling.
Suzy Chase: So how is your pie technique different from your Dad's?
Petra Paredez: I learned so much from my Dad and I think his butter crust is phenomenal, but when I started making my pies here in New York City, I was making them with local ingredients and I found that I was learning little things along the way and modifying the crust recipe along the way in ways that suit my ingredients better. But ultimately the biggest change was I was just like adding more and more butter. I was seeing how, how far I could push it. So in the crust, I have even more butter and my butter that I get up here, I get mostly from Kriemhild Dairy, which is upstate and Ronnybrook Dairy also upstate. So I get super high fat content butter, and that makes the crust really excellent. For the longest time, my lemon chess and almond chess recipes didn't diverge from my Dad's at all and then I thought, maybe I can see if there's a way to have this nice chess pie texture with less sugar, because I know that the palate of people in New York city is a lot less inclined towards sweetness as compared to in Virginia. So that's one thing that I changed. It meant that I had to sort of add more egg yolk as an emulsifier and keep that filling nice and solid. But I was able to reduce sugar and let some of those other flavors come through in the chess pies and maintain that really lovely chess pie texture.
Suzy Chase: Okay. Here's the hundred thousand dollar question. Okay. Here we go. What is your favorite pie?
Petra Paredez: Oh gosh. Okay. I mean, I have two favorites for different occasions. Is that all right?
Suzy Chase: I mean like today, like right now.
Petra Paredez: I just actually, Coconut Custard I've loved since I was a kid and I just love coconut desserts. I always loved coconut desserts. My step-grandmother was from Thailand and I spent so much time with her when I was little and I ate so much coconut stuff with her. So you know going to my parent's bakery after spending the day with her I really liked Coconut Custard Pie. And that, to me, it's sort of an underdog. Although I think I talk about it enough that it's gotten more popular at our bakery over the years. And I think that the very best pie that we make is the Berry Dream Pie. Like that's the one that when people try it, it just consistently knocks their socks off. It's just a Berry explosion. It's so super fresh, super vibrant. Like the tartness is just like at that sort of maximum where it's still like really tasty and dessert, like, but it just really lights up your palate.
Suzy Chase: I got the Coconut Custard over the weekend, which is my favorite kind of pie too. I love anything coconut.
Petra Paredez: Yea, oh cool. Just the nice flan-like quality, my Dad, they make it with that more easy to find like angel flake type coconut which I love, I love that stuff, but it kind of tastes a little far removed from coconut now that I'm an adult. And so I like using unsweetened coconut cause then like unsweetened, organic coconut is in tinier pieces. It dries out a little more but it's a little easier to slice and more of that pure coconut flavor comes through.
Suzy Chase: Now to my segment called Last Night's Dinner where I ask you what you had last night for dinner.
Petra Paredez: So last night my husband makes the most amazing carnitas and they're so good. And we've realized lately that the only way our 2 year old will finish his dinner is if he's eating Mexican food. So now we have to just constantly have tortillas available, constantly have beans cooking. I'll do beans in the pressure cooker when I forget that I haven't made dinner yet I'll just do beans in the pressure cooker real quick. And so we'll just do tacos with carnitas and it's so good.
Suzy Chase: Oh man. I'm with your son. I'll be right over tonight!
Petra Paredez: Yea it's like Taco Tuesday every day now because they never get sick of it and it's not worth making a meal that my husband and I will enjoy and then like trying to feed it to the kids. And then your ego is shattered because you're like, everybody loves my cooking except you. So yeah, taco Tuesday every night.
Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web social media and in New York City? So @peteespie on Instagram, if you are in New York City on the Lower East Side, we're on Delancey Street we've been there coming up on 6 years at Thanksgiving time. And we have a beautiful cafe in Clinton Hill on Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn as well now.
Suzy Chase: Well, this was so awesome. Thank you so much, Petra for coming on Cookery by the Book Podcast.
Petra Paredez: Thank you so much, Suzy. I had a lot of fun
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