Meat Pies: An Emerging American Craft

Book excerpt: Chef Brian Polycn and Michael Ruhlman, authors of the landmark cookbook Charcuterie, reunite to teach home cooks and professional chefs the craft of savory pies with 90 new recipes and step-by-step how-to photographs. Learn the secrets of a good dough, explore classic meat preparations, and discover how fish and vegetable pie traditions can be adapted for today’s tastes. When it comes to American cooking, no chef-writer duo is more revered than Chef Brian Polcyn and Michael Ruhlman. In their new cookbook, Meat Pies, they cover the fundamentals of meat, seafood, and vegetable concoctions topped with, enclosed in, or wrapped in dough. After teaching readers the basics of what they need to get started, including necessary equipment and the all-important moisture barrier (to avoid soggy crusts), Polcyn and Ruhlman divide their pies into neat categories: + Pot Pies + Hand-Raised Pies, designed to be eaten at room temperature + Rolled Raised Pies, in which the dough is wrapped around a filling and simply baked + Tarts and Galettes + Double-Crusted Pies + Turnovers + Vol-au-Vents, or mini tarts with filling added after baking This structure allows the home cook to master the dough and form required for the recipes as written—and also encourages invention, creativity, and discovery. Most pies will pair well with a sauce; others will work with the recipes for all-purpose sides and condiments. Featured recipes range from a deeply comforting Beef Short Rib and Vegetable Pot Pie to an elegant Mediterranean Vegetable Pie wrapped in crispy dough to a Cumberland-Style Sausage Roll with origins that date back five hundred years. Modern preparations play with flavor without piling on the fat, as in The Best Mushroom Tart; a Fish Pot Pie topped with a potato crust; and the dramatic Chicken Sheet Pan Pie with bacon, roasted garlic, and fresh herbs. Informed by Polcyn’s decades of award-winning cooking and teaching, and brought to life by Ruhlman’s engaging prose, Meat Pies presents an innovative and exciting guide to an ancient craft.