IN THE KITCHEN : The Anti-Pie

So there we were again. With only an hour left before guests were to arrive, I was just getting around to fixing dessert. I started digging around in the cabinet, muttering not-so-quietly about whomever it was who had hidden my tart tin, again.

“You’re not really thinking about making a pie crust, are you?” asked my wife.

Right. What was I thinking of?

For someone who had railed at some length about pastry making just a few short weeks ago, my memory was short. When it comes to pie crusts, I seem to have neither the touch nor the temperament. The last time I tried it, I ended up tearing off chunks of dough and patching them into a rough crust. It tasted good, but the aesthetics were, shall we say, challenged (or, in the preferred language of the times, rustic). Come to think of it, even when I am in practice, my pie crusts end up looking more like an amoeba than a perfect circle.

Nevertheless, I love pies . . . or at least the idea of them. In the first place, they are usually filled with fruit, which I prefer above all other dessert substances. By and large, on those rare occasions when I want to eat chocolate, I’m much happier with a piece of a well-made candy than one of those death-by-chocolate-seduction flour-less tortes. I prefer my truffles a bite at a time, thank you.

My approach to fruit is just as simple. Given a choice between an elaborate pastry cream-filled pear tart (even one somebody else is making) and a perfectly ripe Comice pear with some fresh-crop walnuts and a bit of blue cheese, it’s no choice. The problem is serving it to other people. It’s bad enough writing about “gourmet” food; if I tried to pull some Chez Panisse-y stunt like that, well, they’d kick me out of the bowling league.

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The thing I like best about fruit desserts is the complexity of the taste. While chocolate gives you a kind of loud one-note blast, the taste of fruit is subtle and layered. Cooking amplifies that, especially if you combine a couple of complementary fruits, or add a little spicing. What it also does, though, is reduce everything to the same texture--soft.

Which brings us back to pastry making. While it is undoubtedly true that some crusts taste better than others, they all share the same reason for being: To give some kind of textural contrast to the filling they contain. It’s no coincidence that pastries are judged mostly by their flakiness or their “shortness.” That’s their role.

So how do you get the crunch that makes a fruit dessert work? One way is to serve the fruit as a compote with a separate cookie alongside. The other is to serve the fruit as a compote with the cookie baked right on top--in other words, a crisp.

In a crisp--as aptly named a dish as ever there was--the basic ingredients of a cookie (cold butter, sugar, flour and nuts and/or spices if you like) are loosely combined and scattered over the top of some barely sweetened fruit. The whole is then baked until the fruit softens and the crisp crisps. If you cut the fruit the right size and don’t lay on the topping too thick, the two should happen at the same time.

One of the best things about crisps is that you can play with the topping ingredients to fit your whim. Just remember the basic framework: 2 parts sugar, 2 parts flour, 1 part butter. A little salt helps bring out a bit of savory sparkle and if you want to add some cinnamon or nutmeg, feel free. If, as in the recipe below, you’d like something more in the topping, replace up to half of the flour with a similar measure of finely ground nuts.

In a food processor, crisps come together almost instantly. You can even process together the nuts and flour for the topping first, then add the sugar and butter . . . and there you have it, in about as much time as it took to read this paragraph.

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And what’s even better, you don’t need to roll anything out, or even find a tart tin beforehand.

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Because of the fat content of the nuts, in this recipe the last bits of butter are added only if necessary to make the correct “wet sand” or “cornmeal” texture. Do NOT process until the mixture clumps--then you have a pastry crust, what you’ve been trying to avoid all along.

APPLE CRISP

4 medium apples (preferably Granny Smiths), peeled, cored and cut into eights

1 quince, quartered, cored and coarsely grated

1/4 cup raisins, plumped in brandy or warm water and drained

Sugar

1/4 cup finely ground walnuts

1/4 cup flour

Dash salt

1/4 cup cold butter, cut in tablespoons

Combine apples, quince and raisins in stainless steel mixing bowl. There should be about 8 cups fruit. Add sugar to taste, 1/4 to 1/2 cup, depending on sweetness of fruit. Do not over-sweeten.

To make topping, combine in work bowl of food processor--or in separate stainless-steel mixing bowl--1/2 cup sugar, walnuts, flour and salt. Stir to mix well. If using processor, add 2 tablespoons butter and pulse briefly to mix. Add another tablespoon and pulse again. If combination takes on consistency of moist sand, stop processing. If not, add remaining tablespoon butter and pulse again. If making by hand, follow same procedure, rubbing flour mixture and butter between fingertips rather than in processor.

Pour fruit into buttered 13x9-inch baking dish and spread evenly. Distribute topping by hand over top, breaking up large clumps. Bake at 350 degrees 45 to 50 minutes or until fruit is tender and topping is browned. Makes 8 servings.

Each serving contains about:

147 calories; 90 mg sodium; 16 mg cholesterol; 8 grams fat; 19 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram protein; 0.79 gram fiber.