Corn & Crack Pie (almost)

About a month ago my wife's girlfriend, Leslie, called to tell us about a baking contest that was going to be held at the farmer’s market. It was sponsored by the Santa Fe Alliance as a way to promote local food production and the local economy. A key part of the challenge was to use as many locally sourced ingredients as possible. Since we already shop from our backyard I figured it wouldn’t be too hard and would make for some great content on our blog.

Eggs?- check
Honey?- check
Fresh fruit?- erm, well, not this year….

Surely we had something that could be teased into a confection? Beets were floated as an option so was corn. I had heard that the Crack pie at Momofuko was really good and for some reason Corn and Crack pie came to mind. I don’t know, it just had a certain ring to it. I had just harvested the last of our sweet corn. I imagined little crunchy bits of caramelized corn encased in a sweet almost toffee filling. I’d never had crack pie before but in my mind it was delicious. The contest was still 3 weeks off but as I rolled the recipe over in my head it just got better and better.

Step 1 Plan A

Make a practice pie a couple weeks before the contest and then a final ‘competition pie’ the day of. I’ve got this.

Oh silly grasshopper

Two weeks before the contest I had to make an emergency trip to Chicago to visit my uncle who had cancer and appeared to be turning for the worse. It seemed like a good idea to go see him while he was still fairly together. It turned out to be a very good idea because he died in his sleep four days after I saw him. He was an important person in my life and I’m so thankful that I got to spend some time with him before he passed. No pies got made that weekend though.

I’ve still got two weeks- no worries.

The weekend before the contest I found time to make my practice pie. I pulled up the crack pie recipe from the Internet and threw a pie together along with three other projects that afternoon. After the pie was done (mostly), Dumpling and I drove over to our friends Steve and Alessandra’s house to glaze some clay trivets that we’re working on over there. Pressed for time, I pulled the pie out of the oven before it had really set. For some reason Dumpling got a little uptight about holding a plate full of 350 degree molten sugar in her lap on the ride over.

In addition to being an amazing ceramicist, Alessandra is a fantastic cook. Steve and Alessandra both are, in fact they have a unique tag team approach to preparing meals. She does all the menu planning and sources the food then he implements her ideas (cooks it) finally, she details the plate. The result is always stunning and delicious. Alessandra is a whiz with garnishes so I had an ulterior motive for bringing the pie to their house. I needed some aesthetic ideas to spruce up the presentation. Her first comment when I walked with my (literally) half baked pie was “looks like you need to work on the curb appeal” We tossed ideas around and came up with candied sage and nasturtiums as a garnish. Luckily, they had both in their garden (yes, she’s a great gardener too!) and the Internet knew how to candy flowers.

The pie? It actually wasn’t all that good. The crack pie filling was too sweet and goopy for the corn. It had potential but I clearly had some recipe testing to do.

Comments

[Chicken Girl]

Sounds like in the end you had fun!

[Penolopy Bulnick]

Sounds like that was quite an experience! I'm glad you were able to come out with a prize winning recipe in the end; it sounds really good :)