Bush to Bucket to Pie. Blueberries in Summer.

The summer road trip is getting to be a tradition in our family. Near the end of June, we pile everyone in the car and head in whatever direction my corporate apartment happens to be. For a glorious couple of months, I get to read bedtime stories to my kiddos on weekdays, avoid airports entirely, and sleep past 4AM on Monday Mornings. For the last few years, my client was in Tallahassee FL, so we encamped there, with weekend jaunts to Disney or St. George Island. This year: Lansing, MI, and our weekend jaunts are both more pedestrian, and, frankly, more fun.

Last weekend, we stayed out in Spring Lake with my mom, right up the street from Blueberry Hill U-Pick farm. Farm may be a bit of an overstatement – Blueberry Hill is maybe an acre of bushes tucked behind a neatly manicured ranch house, on the edge of a residential neighborhood. It’s an idyllic setting, and when we showed up on Saturday morning we had the run of the lush blueberry bushes, which were drooping with enormous blue spheres of sweet juicy goodness.  We snacked profusely, thinking of Sal and his plink-plank-plunk, and stopped when we got to a bucket full – about 2 gallons – costing us all of $10. For those keeping track at home, this is about what it costs to cast a sidelong glance at Disney.

That afternoon, we headed back across the state to Lansing and got busy in my little kitchen.

First thing to note. A bucket is a mountain of blueberries. It doesn’t seem like a lot when you’re surrounded by a near infinite supply hanging off of summer-green bushes, but put it on the counter, and it’s a little shocking. Enough for a pie? Yes, I’d say so.

I don’t have any cookbooks here, but I do have my trusty Bittman To Go app, and on it was something close to this:

The Crust. 

- 2 sticks of butter, cut into about 16 cubes each.

- 2 cups white flour

- 2 tablespoons sugar

- 1/2 tsp salt

- A little icewater (about 3 tbs)

That’s it. I dropped the butter in the flour, sugar and salt, and then went at it. No tabletop appliances here, so I tried it with a pair of knives, but the better approach was just to break up the pieces of butter with my fingers. I worked for a few minutes, stuck the whole bowl in the freezer to cool off, and then worked it again. Main goal is to keep the butter pieces small, but distinct, so things stay flaky and delish. Once it seemed well enough integrated, I added a couple of tablespoons of ice water, and worked it into a ball. Wax paper and washi tape was decent substitute for plastic wrap, and I popped the whole kit and caboodle in the fridge for about an hour to cool down again.

While the crust was chilling, into another bowl wen

- 5 cups fresh-picked blueberries

- 1 cup sugar

- 1 teaspoon of lemon zest

- 1 tablespoon of lemon juice

- 2 tablespoons corn starch (should have used 4, more about that below)

And by “worked”, I mean combined everything and tossed, again, with fingers.

We rolled out the top and bottom crusts, saving enough for my daughters to make their own mini pastries to bake alongside the main attraction. With the oven up at 450, we laid the first crust into a nine inch pie pan, piled in our blueberry mix, dotted with butter, crimped on the top crust and cut a few holes (I used Sugar Mama's Triple Berry pattern as an inspiration). It sat for a @morningblue photo op for a few minutes, received a quick butter brush and sprinkle of sugar, and then we popped it into the middle of the oven, dropping the temp back down to 350 as soon as the oven door was shut.

An hour later we were rewarded with a bubbling gooey mess of a blueberry pie. We tried to wait, honest, we did, but we didn’t wait long enough and were content eating a rather soupy mess of sweet luscious blueberry pie and Hudsonville vanilla ice cream.

For the next two days, we hacked away at it, relishing the way the summertime in Michigan tastes.

The side note regarding the corn starch: After the pie cooled it stayed pretty soupy. This was not all bad (with ice cream, it was actually kind of nice), but a pie of a more traditional consistency would have required about twice the thickener.

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The Best Pie in Austin

The Pie Society - Buttermilk

Pie is a scrappy, American staple. It's a recession dessert, simple, flexible and celebratory. It also looks like it's mounting an impressive comeback.

Recently I helped pull together a Pie Tasting for about 50 Austin colleagues. We collected in our biggest conference room (the one that's about to get new carpet. Oops), and lined up a dozen of the best pies going in Austin: The Pie Society, Sweetish Hill, Texas Pie Company, and Sugar Mama's Bakeshop. Coffee came courtesy of our friends at Chameleon Cold Brew, and Amy's provided the Mexican Vanilla. Killer sugar rush, #ATX style.

A couple of general findings before I get into the real results.

1. Crust is king - Basic pie crust has essentially two ingredients - flour and butter. Flourishes may add an item or two. But how crust is handled, how the butter is integrated, how long it's chilled before baking, how thinly it's rolled - is key to making a great pie. Also good - whatever voodoo Sugar Mama's does to make the crispy butter dream that is the Triple Berry crust.
   
2. Fruit wins - This is a fact. We voted. It may just be the string of triple-digit days, but given the choice of pie style, fruit beat cream by a 6 to 1 margin. Not many folks I know are going to turn down a coconut cream if it's the only thing on the table, but given the choice, looks like they'll opt for the oozing berries with a scoop of vanilla ice cream over mounds of whipped cream.
   
3. The prettiest ones give a little peek - We did an informal poll on the prettiest pies, and first, second and third place were the pies with lattice top crusts (Sweetish Hill blueberry, Pie Society cherry, Pie Society strawberry-rhubarb). I'm kind of a crumble guy, myself, but looking at everything lined up, it was hard to deny the visual supremacy of the near iconic Pie Socieity Cherry.

The Pie Society - Cherry 

So there's the findings. On to the results.

Third place

Tie: Sweetish Hill Chocolate Rum Pecan and The Pie Society Strawberry rhubarb. These couldn't be more different pies. Each has it's roots in a classic, but where Sweetish Hill veers to the innovative side of things, The Pie Society is keeping it classic. Strawberry Rhubarb was stunning and had a lovely rhubarb tang against the sweet strawberries. Filling consistency is always tricky with pies - and the only point that this one lost ground was on that front, a little runnier than most of us would have liked. Chocolate Pecan was also beautiful, and pulled in the chocolate fanatics in the group. I thought it rocked, but in the end, I was unsold on the drizzle of chocolate. It's like nuts in chocolate chip cookies or raisins in bread pudding. Some people love it. It's just not the way I roll.

Second Place 

The Texas Pie Company Chocolate Fudge. No question that this was a tasty desert, that it rocked the Mexican Vanilla, that it sliced as easy as a, well, brownie. Because, truth be told, that's what it was. A giant brownie in a pie crust. At first, I dismissed it as gimmick, but this was a damn good brownie in a damn good crust. Populist win for second place.

First Place

Best Pie in Austin

Sugar Mama's Triple Berry. There were a lot of really good pies for the taking, but the top spot was pretty lonely for the Triple Berry, which took nearly 70% of the votes for best pie, and 80% of the votes for best crust. No argument from me on this one. I'm a die hard triple berry fan, have been for ages, and this full size pie took all the jammy cobbler-like goodness of the mini one Sugar Mama's has in the case, multiplied it by 50, topped it with ice cream and made an entire room of corporate denizens a little weak in the knees. People who didn't like pie loved this pie. People who had given up sugar, given up gluten loved this pie. This is crazy pie.

I have no idea if Pie is a trend that's going to stick, no idea if Sugar Mama's mini-pies or The Pie Society's Crimps will streak past cakeballs to steal the mighty cupcake thunder, but I hope they do. I love that some of the best bakers in town are turning their prodigious talents to the humble pie. If there's a time to think about our history, Independence Day is a good one. And if there's a food to eat while thinking about it, it's a slice of pie.

Sugar Mama's - Triple Berry w/Amy's Mexican Vanilla

Side note: Our friends (and rock-star talented bakers) at The Pie Society were recently selected to provide pies for "A Christmas Affair" in Austin. Big show. Lots of pie. As a startup, this kind of volume doesn't come easy. They've turned to innovative micro-funding site KickStarter to raise funds for the big effort. Go ahead and check it out. Tell 'em Grubbus sent you.

More pictures are up on the Grubbus Facebook page

Caffe Medici Builds Temple to Coffee in the Heart of Austin

My first cup of coffee was at a dinner party at our house in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I was 10 years old, and I remember not so much the way it tasted, but the way it felt to be in grown up conversations with this deep rich coffee smell all around and a plate of Italian cookies on the table. I remember the warmth of the cup in my hands, the inky cold blackness outside the dining room windows, and the sophistication of the whole experience. Coffee was special-occasion-only until high school and a regular daily ritual after that. By the time I finished college and moved to DC, I’d figured out the importance of fresh ground beans, had the epiphany of espresso, and had started hanging out at Quartermaine, my local coffee shop, rather than staying holed up in my apartment.

It took until 2007, 24 years after that first cup, to discover really good coffee, at Caffe Medici, on West Lynn. Medici opened up a whole new level of coffee in town, and served as Austin’s gateway drug to some pretty extraordinary highs: Once Over, Houndstooth and half a dozen other top-level shops are turning out amazing drinks, Austin baristas are placing at the top of US Barista Guild national competitions, latte art has become commonplace, and Mike McKim has taken Cuvee Coffee Roasters to national relevance.

The only thing left was to build a space sleek and sophisticated enough to hold this sleek, sophisticated Austin coffee experience. And Medici has now done it, on the ground floor of the Austonian. We now not only have good coffee, we have erected a temple to it.

The space is light and airy – two stories of glass with loft seating and warm colors. There is a clean modern aesthetic to it all, but the basic design is all about theater. After entering the front door you walk past a massive square espresso bar housing two complete espresso work stations to the back of the store to order. You place your order and pay up, and then head back up front, where shots are pulled on a pair of gleaming red 3-group La Marzoccos. It made for a good show when Starbucks first tried layout this in the 80s at Pikes Place, and it makes for a good show now.

There are seats outside, on the wide sidewalk next to Congress Avenue, inside along the windows, and upstairs in a gorgeously engineered loft. A benevolent Medici looks down from a mural on the back wall.

The space is fantastic, but the key to what Medici is doing now is in the cup. Medici has been using the same Espresso Medici blend from Cuvee Coffee since the get go. Every Barista there knows exactly how these beans want to be treated, and they have dialed in the temperature and the grind to impossible precision. The resulting espresso is rich and winey, with a chocolaty first taste and a long, lingering almost tart bite at the finish. Alone, it’s fantastic, though ristrettos can pack a puckering wallop.

With milk it’s out of this world. I would happily drink anything they make, but my go-to drink is the Espresso Macchiato, where just a few ounces of perfectly steamed milk tops the espresso. If I’m there for a little longer, I’ll get the small latte and linger on the silky roasted marshmallow flavors that come out when the milk is taken to just the right temperature. They have food, and it’s good enough, but the action is universally and unapologetically the coffee.

I came to coffee for the smell and the taste, but mostly for the experience. This most recent Medici outpost has brought that back home more directly, and more elegantly than any place else I’ve been.

More pictures are up on the Grubbus Facebook page

For a historical trip back in time: My original review of Medici, back in 2007 is here.

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