Book Report: I Strudel With Cathy Barrow & When Pies Fly

Prime Time With Flying Pies

I have never moderated anything. Not even moderation.  So it was not without trepidation that I accepted the invitation from Ally Kirkpatrick, proprietor of Old Town Books, our newest indie bookstore, to launch the third cookbook from Cathy Barrow, When Pies Fly. The event took place in the Athenaeum, built in 1851 and  restored to showcase art exhibitions, live performances, workshops  and author introductions such as this one. You should get acquainted with Old Town Books. Ally and her staff create quite an array of  book-related events, from writing workshops, to author signings, themed story times for children, and some truly unusual book clubs. Bad Romance is one that caught my attention! Their book-ordering service is exceptional, and I use it all the time. Ally Kirkpatrick and her Old Town Books staff created a delicious backdrop with several types of pies featured in Barrow’s new book, and the Wine Gallery 108 provided wines that made great pie friends. Cathy regaled her full-house audience, which included  quite a few KD subscribers, with her stories and advice. She is touring the country at a number of venues, so if you are near any on her schedule, take advantage of the event and pick up a copy of the book. Have worries about your pastry ability? I can only paraphrase the Barrow mantra that pastry-making is not a talent but a skill and that you should embrace imperfection. 

A Primer on Freehand Pies

Reading through her cookbooks, you can envision the landscape design skills Cathy brings to the counter, including Laying out pastry parameters with a ruler and painter tape and precisely calibrating the filling of different pie forms so that there is no gooey spillage. Not to mention the imaginative use of pastry cutouts. Long before this volume, Cathy  used her cooking expertise  to create not only a website  but also classes in her home around the craft of preserving everything from peaches to pastrami. This led to publishing a most thorough tome on preserving, Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Practical Pantry, followed by  writing instructive food columns for both The New York Times and The Washington Post. When Cathy felt that she had written all that she could about preserving, she was given the opportunity to develop recipes for something portable that could feed a crowd… slab pies.  After the success of  Pie Squared, Cathy’s inventive pastry mind envisioned how you could take a free-form pastry envelope to another level.  Hence she produced  this very precise and yet imaginative book on pastries without a baking form – galettes, empanadas, knishes, hand pies, and yes, strudel.  

Strudel Skirmishes

We’re not talking the faux strudel using filo sheets (that has its place but it ain’t the real thing). I had struggled with strudel for years and had a distracted  hiatus during my daughters’ adolescence.  There were some vague American baking books on strudel and some very humorless German cookbooks, and I did have a couple successful outcomes. But nothing like when I completed one following directions from When Pies Fly.  The section on strudel is short, but the directions, recipes, and the thoughtful coaching from Cathy made this delicious, and for me, nostalgic treat actually almost easy.  It is a project.  Best to make the dough, which is a snap, the night before.  The 100 slaps on the counter was great (view it as an extension of Orange Theory Fitness). Then, the next day prep your filling. Find a tablecloth (not vinyl) or very large kitchen towel (not terry) that may have seen better days, flour it as directed and then read through the instructions several times and look at her photos.  It really does come together as written. I also looked at some Austrian videos and enjoyed the variations.  Sometimes the stretched dough was painted with melted butter before laying in the filling. In a few, the filling is spread across the dough and then rolled.  I was entranced with one baker, who had a dry filling of sliced apples, sugar and cinnamon, with a touch of rum sprinkled over, and then he took a siphon of Schlag (whipped cream to us) and ran a healthy dose down the center of the filling! Apparently the cream bakes into the apples and moistens them a bit. I am definitely going to try this next!