The Local Food Report: work up the zeal

My mother makes creamed onions once a year. Every year, on Thanksgiving, she boils a big pot of little pearls, burns her fingers slipping them from their skins, and coats them with a glorious sauce of cream, flour, pepper, and salt. It takes forever, and by the time she finishes, she needs a good 365 days of rest before she's able to work up the zeal to do it again.

It's how I feel about Concord grape pie.

I've only made it twice—there was one last fall and another is cooling on the counter as we speak—but I have a feeling the tradition is going to stick around. There's quite a bit of work that goes into the thing—just to start, you have to wash the grapes and pick the good ones from their vines. Then you have to pop the inner pulp from the skins, boil the pulps all together, and once they're soft, crank them through a food processor to get rid of the seeds. Finally, you have to mix the skins back in with the hot pulp, and leave the two to sit together for five hours, until everything takes on a lollipop purple sort of hue.

All that is beyond actually adding the other ingredients for the filling, not to mention making the pie crust and all the work that goes into rolling it out. It takes a solid hour and a half of hands on time, with a five hour wait in between. You can understand why it's hard to muster up the excitement more than once every 365 days.

But the thing is, on that one day, it's so worth it. The stained fingers and floured counter and grape seeds dotting the sink are nothing compared to the taste of this pie. If you can imagine the best of a Concord grape—all of the sweetness and flavor and intensity it holds—if you can imagine all that exceptionalism, imagine cooking it down. Imagine concentrating that flavor into an even sweeter, even more intense, even more exceptional filling, and then wrapping it with buttery, flaky pie crust. It is sheer delight.

The grapes are here—they're at their peak this week and next—and they're for sale at markets all over. Andy Pollock has them for sure, from his vines at Silverbrook Farms and also from a friend, Bob Matty, of Matty Orchards in Dartmouth. He sells in Provincetown and Falmouth and Dartmouth and even Boston, so whatever corner you come from, there's a good chance you can find enough bunches for a pie.

CONCORD GRAPE PIE

Adapted from a recipe by Irene Bouchard of Naples, New York published in the Naples Record, Volume 134, Number 27, on Wednesday, June 30, 2004.

Grape pie isn't one of the fruit pies most of us grow up with. It might sound like a strange idea, but I promise you, it's worth a try. What isn't worth it is substituting red or green seedless grapes from the grocery store—they offer nothing near the flavor of a Concord, and they don't have the right texture, either.

dough for one 9-inch pie crust, top and bottom
5 and 1/2 cups Concord grapes
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon tapioca

Remove the skins from the grapes by pinching them over a bowl. Collect the pulp in that bowl, and save the skins in another. Put the pulp into a saucepan (you do not need to add any water) and bring it to a rolling boil. Turn down the heat and let it simmer for five minutes. Crank the hot pulp through a food mill or rub it through a strainer to remove the seeds. Mix the hot, strained pulp with the skins, and let the two stand together for five hours. (This gives the filling a deep purple color.)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Roll out half of the pie crust and drape it across the bottom of a 9-inch pie plate. Add the sugar and tapioca to the grapes, stir well, and pour into the plate. Roll out the remaining pie crust so that it is big enough to center the pie plate on top of it. Use a small knife to cut a "floating" top crust, tracing a circle roughly 1/2-inch bigger than the base of the pie plate. Place this crust on top of the filling and cut a design in the top to allow steam to escape. (The floating crust gives the pie a very pretty look, making a purple ring around the outside, and also helps prevent disaster as the grape filling tends to boil over. I like to cut a small hole in the center and rays coming out for an even prettier effect.)

Bake the pie for 20 minutes. Turn the oven down to 350 and bake for 20 minutes longer, or until the crust is golden brown and the filling is set. Let the pie cool for one hour before serving.

Not one drop

Do you see that bottle right there? The one with the silver shell stopper peeking out? [Hi Nancy! Thank you! We use it every day!] The dark green bottle, with no label. Right beside the pickles, and beneath the horseradish. That's the wine I'd like to talk about today.

That's because I finally received my very first taste of Truro Vineyard's estate-bottled chardonnay. I talked about it here, a while ago, because I was pretty enthralled by the idea that we could grow enough grapes to make our very own wine, even on sandy Cape Cod. Well, I had to be patient, but finally my friend Kristen, whose family owns the vineyard, brought it over for me to try the other day.

I'm proud to say I drank the whole thing myself.

[No! Not all at once. It took several evenings, at least two bathtubs, and exactly 192 pages of a very good book.] But I didn't share. Not. One. Drop.

That's why you need to go on and get your own. If you like chardonnay, I have a feeling you'll like this. Not to mention the special little tingle you'll get from raising your glass to a Cape grown grape. The vineyard doesn't open until April 3, but that day, I recommend you make a trip. Oh! and if there's any chance you could be forced to share, get two. Trust me on this. I had to rule mine with an iron fist.

Concord grape crisp

If you haven't yet picked up a tartlet pan, honestly, I don't know what you're waiting for. They are so cunning—fitting the most perfectly sized desserts for a hungry one or a generous two—and they can't cost more than a few stacks of well-saved quarters.

Plus, they tend to inspire a lot more dessert making, which in my house, is always a welcome thing.

Last night, it was grape crisp that caught the pan's attention. We had only a few grapes, a half cup at best, but a vision of grape pie and an already dough-lined pan. We heated pulp and skins, added a bit of sugar and a dash of lemon juice, and sprinkled over-top a good heap of oats and sugar and butter and flour.

What I pulled out of the oven—a violet, steaming engine, bubbling with Concord juice and hot, streaming butter—surpassed even the highest of tartlet expectations. Don't wait too many nights to make your own; between the season and the birds, the blue grapes won't last many more.

CONCORD GRAPE CRISP

Makes 6 tartlets

Remove and save the skins from 5 cups grapes. Heat the grapes in a small saucepan until they come to a boil. Boil gently 5 minutes, then press through a colander or food mill to remove seeds. Add skins to pulp, and let stand several hours.

Line the bottom of 6 tartlet pans with a thin layer of pie crust. Add 2/3 cup sugar, the juice of 1 lemon, and 5 tablespoons flour to the grapes, stir well, and distribute the fruit mixture evenly between each tiny pan.

For the topping, stir together 1 cup rolled oats, 1/4 cup all-purpose flour, 1/2 cup whole wheat flour, and 3/4 cup white sugar. Cut in 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter with a pastry cutter. Grate the rind of 1 lemon and add zest. Stir topping well and spoon over top of fruit.

Bake with tartlet pans atop a cookie sheet at 350 for 15-20 minutes, or until crisp topping is golden brown. Enjoy hot, or cold the next day for a breakfast treat.

Nantucket grapes

They said there was a hurricane coming. We took the boat anyways; pulled on our wellies and oilskins in Hyannis and climbed aboard. The rain poured down and wind wailed across the waves, cresting heavy and crashing against engine and bow.

But by the time we reached the island, all signs of her were gone. Hannah was a distant memory, a laughable demon amidst cobbled streets and orderly gray clapboard.

The sun beamed down, and we passed mile after mile of uninterrupted blue as we motored away from Nantucket town and out towards 'Sconset.

Eventually, we reached an old dirt road that led into the only wilds left on this island enclave for the moneyed and malcontent. It led across the moor, past Altar Rock and Gibbs pond and the heather that shimmered purple in the light. Finally, we pulled up next to a cranberry bog and waded in to see the fruit. There wasn't much to see just yet: with harvest still a month away, the bogs sat dry, a waving sea of red and green.

But getting back towards the road, tucked under a canopy of broad, withered leaves, I saw the twisted vines of a Concord grape. I walked closer, peering under the green and into the woody thicket. Bunch upon bunch of purple fruit hung tart on the vine.

The grapes are wild, someone in town told us later. They call them "fox grapes," the vines creeping across sandy fields and roads and up the ready trellises of island homes. Fox grape jams and jelly's used to be the pride of every woman on the island, storerooms packed with jar upon jar tucked away for the long winter.

They're not quite ripe yet, and heavily seeded. I spit the seeds into the bushes as we drive out the sandy track, the sour fruit puckering my tongue. I hope someone still remembers to pick them come October.