Pi Day: The Snozzberries Taste Like Snozzberries!

by the amazing Ryan North

I don't love π Day just because I teach math. I mean, that helps, offering an opportunity to highlight and celebrate the playfulness that math can offer, but there's also some degree to which celebrating a transcendental number such as π is an interesting examination of our quest for knowledge. Humans have been aware of π, the constant ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, for about 4000 years, since the time of the Ancient Babylonians (who approximated π at 3.125). Since then, a remarkable amount of time and energy has gone into extending and refining how accurately we can describe π, even though the most common approximations — 3.14 and 22/7 — haven't changed in nearly 2500 years, since at least the time of Archimedes, in the 3rd century BCE and even though we've understood that it's irrational and won't end since 1761. There's a somewhat apocryphal claim that it would only take 40 digits of π to measure the circumference of the known universe with a minute margin of error. Regardless of the veracity of that, it does highlight the degree to which the vast majority of the calculated digits of π, patternless, endless and infinitesimally small, are unnecessary for any practical purpose. And yet, we keep calculating further. There is a certain poetry in seeking knowledge purely for its own sake; this is another piece of what we're really celebrating by celebrating π Day.

Also, it's a good excuse for pie: pie and scores of terrible, terrible puns.

I make two pies each π day, because two pie are enough to go around (I warned you about the terrible puns). I like to try a new pie every year for π Day, usually a somewhat fanciful one that I invent, if only so that it's unique among pies. Last year, I decided it was time to take on Snozzberry Pie. Unfortunately, snozzberries aren't in season this time of year (or any other), so what to do in their absence? Examining the answer to that question has much in common with humanity's quest for pi: fundamentally unanswerable, but bears eternal examination, revealing more and subtler nuance over time. Alternately, you can just go with whatever fruit looks good and on sale. The below pie got rave reviews from tastebuds young and old last year. The taste blends into something not entirely placeable, yet pleasantly fruity with a surprise twist, and the filling has just enough starch to hold a soft gel.
Excuse the terrible photo quality.

Snozzberry Pi(e)

• 2 pie crusts (for top & bottom, your own recipe or the one below)
for filling:
• 1 c. formerly frozen raspberries (they'll be pretty mushy)
• 1 c. fresh blueberries
• 4 kiwis, quartered, peeled and sliced
• zest and juice of one lemon
• ½ c sugar
• ¼ c. flour
• ¼ c. cornstarch
• pinch cayenne (good snozzberries have a little piquancy to them)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix all filling ingredients in a small bowl. Roll out one pie crust and lay in pie pan. Pour filling in, cover with other crust and crimp edges. Bake for 50-60 minutes or until crust is browned and filling is bubbly.

Pie crust

makes 1 pie crust (you'll need 2 for the recipe above)

• 1 stick cold butter
• 1 cup flour
• ½ tsp salt
• no more than ¼ c. cold water

You can use whatever crust recipe you like for this pie, but this is the recipe that stays in my head, so it's the one I use.

The food processor helped me conquer my timidity of pie crust as it helps avoid getting the butter too warm, working the flour too much and developing the gluten, or taking forever. Cut each stick of butter into 10-20 pieces of roughly equal size. Put that and the flour in the food processor and pulse until the butter is a somewhat gravelly texture. Pour water in a thin stream while on until the dough starts to come together. Dump out onto waxed paper. Gather and squeeze into a ball, then flatten into a rough disk and wrap in its own piece of waxed paper. Refrigerate for at least an hour.

When making more than one crust, you should wrap and chill each individually. I like to do each in a separate batch to keep the amount consistent. If using a food processor, it's not necessary to wash the bowl between each crust. If you're doing multiple crusts old school with a pastry cutter, you may want to cut all the butter into all the flour at once, but I'd still recommend mixing each crust with water individually. After cutting the butter into the flour and salt, take 1½ c. of that mixture and trickle in the water while bringing the dough together with a spoon or your hands. Wrap and and chill individually as for food processor directions.

Chocolate Magic Cookies (gluten & dairy-free)

One of my early jobs in education was as a paraprofessional in an intensive special needs program. A number of the students with autism were on the gluten- and dairy-free Autism Diet, which purportedly ameliorated some of the regressive behaviors associated with the Autism Spectrum. I had—and continue to have—reservations about the effectiveness of this approach, but I'm neither an autism specialist nor a nutritionist, so it's not really up to me, and I don't think it's going to exacerbate the issue. However, I had one co-worker who insisted on calling it

the "fun-free" diet in a way that I found aggravating. The "fun-free" description seemed to riff on the infuriating, pervasive illusion that if something is good for you, there's no way it will taste good and its equally problematic corollary that if food tastes good, then there's no way it's good for you.

Similarly, there's this illusion about teachers that they can either be nice or demanding, and that only one of these qualities is effective. I remember reading one article which contrasted "the kind of teacher who brings in brownies" with "the kind of teacher that demands results." Seriously, who comes up with this festering load of flapdoodle? I bet it's the same people that think tasty and healthy are mutually exclusive. This isn't to say that there aren't teachers who mistake being liked for being respected, and end up foregoing academic rigor for fear of not being liked, but let me tell you this: brownies—or any other kind of food—have nothing to do with it. On the other side of it, there are also teachers who mistake being disliked for being respected, and brownies have nothing to do with that either.

Any time you share food with someone, it's an acknowledgement of your shared humanity. Even if it's just passing around a tin of Altoids, as a couple teachers I've had were fond of doing, you are demonstrating a simple need and enjoyment that you have in common. Beyond demonstrating that you're not a robot who sleeps standing up in the broom closet, you are breaking down the perceived otherness that keeps students from becoming invested in a subject. Even in a fairly concrete, objective topic like math, a student's ability to invest themselves in a topic, to work hard and internalize it is linked to their sense of being seen as a person. So yes, I am one of those teachers who brings edible treats in for my students on occasion. I am also one of those teachers who demands a lot of hard work. I see no conflict between these.

This year, I have several students with dietary restrictions, so most of my go-to treats leave someone out. Enter these mouthwatering, crackly-topped, fudgy cookies, which happen, by my old co-worker's definition, to be totally "fun-free." No dairy, no gluten, no flour at all in fact. No need: the sugar, cocoa and egg whites around which they're built contain none of those things.

My sister's been making this one where she works, and scrawled down the recipe for me. As long as I leave the nuts out, this addresses all of the dietary restrictions I face at school, without any weird ingredient replacements. Even better, it is an incredibly simple recipe. A little Googling tracks this recipe back to one by François Payard in Gourmet's April 2002 issue, as digitized by Molly Wizenburg at Orangette, though I'm not sure where specifically my sister got hold of it. Wizenburg calls them "Featherweight Cookies"; a very similar recipe circulates as "Chocolate Puddle Cookies." I'm going with "Magic Cookies" because they are pretty damn magical. Besides, who needs "fun" when you have magic?

Chocolate Magic Cookies

gluten-free, dairy-free, nuts optional
25 minutes, start to finish, makes about 32 three-inch cookies


Dry Mix:

• 3 cups (12 oz) confectioner's sugar
• ¾ c. cocoa powder
• ¼ tsp. salt
• 2 c. mix-ins (toasted nuts, chocolate chips, cacao nibs, etc)



Wet mix

• 4 large egg whites (~1/2 cup), preferably at room temperature
• 1 tsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 350°. Mix dry ingredients together until well blended. Separate eggs and add vanilla. Add egg and vanilla to dry mix and stir until well-blended. Scoop about a tablespoon at a time onto parchment-lined sheet pans with plenty of room to spread (which they will start to do immediately) and bake for 12-15 minutes, or until cookies are puffed up and cracked on top. It possibly goes without saying that to keep these gluten and dairy free, your mix-ins must also be, and that label reading is up to you (especially on chocolate chips!). You also may not care. I actually wonder how salted pretzel bits would work in here.

Raw-Pack Canning Blueberries in Juice

Yesterday marked the 6th annual Boston Skillshare, and the third that I have been involved with. The last two years, I facilitated workshops on reclaiming yarn, basic auto maintenance, and beginning ukulele. Apparently, I can't stop teaching, even on weekends and vacations. This year, I facilitated a workshop on canning and pickling, by request. I had originally wanted to walk through canning tomatoes, but we have not quite reached the deluge of tomatoes that will be here in a week or two, so I went with blueberries instead. Blueberries are a particularly easy food to can: they don't need to be cooked or cut up ahead of time, and are sufficiently acidic that they don't need to be processed under pressure. I also had the privilege of being introduced to the League of Urban Canners, a group operating in the Boston area (primarily Somerville and Cambridge) to make the most of backyard fruit. If you invite them, they will come to your house, pick the fruit before it falls all over your yard, can it, and give you 10% of what they can. It's a really interesting model that I would love to be involved with if they weren't 2 hours away.

Before we start in with the blueberries, a few words about the role of heat and acidity in safe canning. The whole deal with preserving is to arrest, avoid or carefully control the bacterial and enzymatic breakdown of fresh food. These include such options as freezing, drying, fermenting and canning. Canning preserves food by sealing it away from the air under vacuum and killing any bacteria trapped inside through heat, which works for the vast majority of bacterial species. Clostridium botulinum is a more complicated story. While live C. botulinum are killed at boiling water temperatures, they produce spores which aren't. The spores remain active at that temperature and thrive in an oxygen-deprived environment at between 40°-140°F, (like, say, a can at room temperature) happily producing deadly neurotoxins. The spores can be destroyed at temperatures of 240°F. However, an acidic environment with a pH of <4.6 inhibits these spores, so that the live-bacteria killing 212°F is sufficient. This pH of 4.6 marks the dividing line between high-acid foods, which can be safely processed in a 212°F boiling water bath and low-acid foods, which must be processed using a pressure canner, which can reach temperatures of 240°F.

Blueberries, along with all other berries and the majority of fruits (by the common rather than botanical definition) are classified as high-acid foods, and can be processed in a boiling water bath. The general process for canning berries is as follows:

1. Obtain berries.
2. Wash berries.
3. Load berries into sterilized jars.
4. Cover with hot juice, syrup or water.
5. Seal with lid.
6. Process in a hot water bath for 15-20 minutes.

Last Minute Gift Idea: DIY Hot Cocoa Mix

Window decor by my 8th graders. Tis the season for geometry!

How do I always end up with such an extensive list of things to do on Christmas Eve? I mean aside from the working flat-out until the day before, inevitable last-minute inspirations for the perfect handmade gift that cannot be made at the last minute, the fact that Christmas Eve is the big celebration in our family, all with a side of being easily distracted?

All to-do list anxiety aside, this twofold revelation crossed a few things off my list in one fell swoop:

1. Hot cocoa mix, even custom hot cocoa mix, is really easy to make.
2. Most people really like hot cocoa.

The hardest decision to make here is whether you want to put together a mix-with-milk or a mix-with-water variety. As much as I'm happy to heat up milk at home, it's not going to happen at work since it's not practical for me to keep milk there. I actually used to keep a tub of cheap cocoa mix at work to add to my coffee in lieu of sugar and milk. I also know that some of the folks to whom I am giving this cocoa mix are not as well-inclined to heat up milk for cocoa. So, I decided to opt for a variety that would work mixed only with hot water.

Art in and of the Orchard: Baked Apple Pancake with Bourbon Caramel Sauce

Photo: Michael Leuchtenburg

Art is never far from hand here in the Valley. Park Hill Orchard, here in Easthampton, is currently hosting a sculpture exhibit, which I finally got around to checking out this weekend. It features a variety of sculpted pieces from mostly local artists, ranging from abstract collections of wood and metal to found-object metal insects to a tree studded with plaster lips. Also, they were handing out a tart Paula Red apple to everyone who showed up to walk the exhibit path. As one of the owners explained, “We're not so much farmers who go into art as artists who got into farming.” The exhibit's been up for almost a month now, but it's almost a more rewarding trip the farther into fall we go, as there's more apple opportunities to take advantage of at this point. The advertising of the free apple worked well enough for me to take a ¼-peck home, and they had cold, fresh cider for sale at the stand as well.

Sawflower Chris Woodman	Emergence Robert Markey
View of Mt. Tom from the orchard

As much as I try to avoid snobbish attitudes around food, I haven't been able to completely avoid being a bit of a cider snob. I grew up with Vermont's largest contiguous apple orchard in my backyard, and spent falls in high school making fresh cider, many gallons at a time, to be served in the school dining hall. I'd take home a half-gallon from the cider house and drink it almost to the point of causing intestinal unrest. When you've drunk enough cider that way, bright, fresh and right off the press, it's almost impossible to tolerate the pasteurized apple juice that passes for cider in most supermarkets (which can make decent mulled cider, so I guess it's not a total waste of space). It even seems like a waste to heat it up with mulling spices or save it to make hard cider because that would mean not drinking it fresh. I can get good hard cider all year round and lesser ciders will do for mulling, but there's only a few months' window for good, fresh cider. It's my annual torrid fall love affair.

I'm not quite so passionate in my opinions where it comes to apples (except in my repudiation of so-called Red Delicious "apples," which is probably stronger than my opinion on cider, but doesn't come up as often). If I'm having a torrid seasonal love affair with cider, apples and I are like friends from summer camp: you hang out a lot more for a short part of the year, but you keep up on and off the rest of the year, too. You probably know them better than you know tall, dark and thirst-quenching. My favorite apples are still pretty bold and tart, varieties many consider to be pie apples: Northern Spy, Cortland and Empire are some favorites. The Paula Reds that I brought home are an evolved version of the McIntosh that have a bright sweetness when very fresh that mellows the more time they're off the tree. I mostly eat them fresh this time of year, sticking a few a day in my lunchbag.

However, we turned up with several people for brunch this Sunday, and turned some of the apples into an apple pancake baked in a cast iron skillet and dusted with cinnamon sugar. It tastes a little like a warm cider donut. This is a recipe we came up with a while ago, and is notable partially because it represents Maria and I equally contributing to a recipe without feeling the need to squash each other for territorial reasons. It has a delicate, spongy texture, different from the other baked pancakes and Pfannkuchen to which it's related, due to volume of whipped egg whites, which take on the whole leavening job. We also happened to have some bourbon caramel sauce lying around, like you do, which we drizzled over the top of each slice to dramatic effect. If you don't regularly happen to have bourbon caramel sauce lying around, but would like to, the recipe for that follows as well. Additionally, one of our brunch guests took some gorgeous photos of the finished dish while we were busy, putting our usual photo stylings to shame.

Photo: Michael Leuchtenburg

Baked Apple Pancake

vegetarian, optionally dairy-free
serves 4-6, start to finish in 30 minutes or less
Dry Mix:
• ½ c. flour
• 3 Tblsp. sugar (+ 1 Tblsp. for dusting)
• ¼ tsp. salt
• ¼ tsp. nutmeg
• ½ tsp. cinnamon (+½ tsp. for dusting)
• ¾ med. apple (about 1/2 lb apple – I used a Paula Red), cut into ½” chunks (the last ¼ will be used for decorative slices on top)
Wet Mix:
• 2 Tblsp apple cider (you can omit the yogurt/milk and use ¼ c. cider to make this dairy-free)
• 2 Tblsp plain or vanilla yogurt OR 2 Tblsp. milk plus about ¼ tsp. vinegar
• 1 whole egg*
Whip to stiff peaks:
• 3 egg whites*
• 1 Tblsp. butter or margarine
*We often have spare egg whites hanging around. You can get away with 3 whole eggs, separated. Mix the yolks in with the wet mix and whip the whites separately. You could even try it with just 2 eggs divided this way.

Preheat oven to 400°F.

Put together dry mix ingredients in a 2 qt. bowl. Make sure apple pieces get well coated with dry mix, as it well help them from clumping in the final product. The wet mix ingredients (which do not include whipped egg whites) should fit in something 1-2 c. in size. Mixing them in a measuring cup with spout makes the whole deal very easy to add. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks. Add wet mix to dry mix and stir to combine, then fold in the egg whites.

Melt 1 T butter in a 9” cast iron skillet, then pour in the batter and spread out evenly. Arrange apple slices on top, then put it in the oven for 15-20 minutes, until it gets toasty-brown on top and a toothpick comes out of the center clean.

Combine reserved tablespoon of sugar and ½ tsp. of cinnamon, then use to dust the top. Let sit for 5-10 minutes (or as long as you can stand it). It should slide out of the pan with minimal coaxing. Slice as you see fit and serve, with or without caramel sauce.

Bourbon Caramel Sauce

Recipe adapted from David Lebovitz's Ready for Dessert
Lebovitz's blog, Living the Sweet Life in Paris is always a good read as well.
• ½ c. (1 stick) butter (salted or not, up to you), cut into pieces
• 1 c. sugar
• 1-2 Tblsp. water
• 1 c. heavy cream
• ¼ c. bourbon (a little more than a shot)
• ¼ tsp. salt, or to taste

In a large heavy-bottomed saucepan (deep is important because it will bubble up pretty aggressively after the cream is added), melt the butter over medium heat. Add the sugar and water to cover. Stir occasionally until the sugar begins to caramelize. When it reaches a dark amber color and smells on the verge of burning, remove from heat and immediately add the cream. Stir until smooth, then stir in salt and bourbon. Sauce can be stored for up to 2 weeks if refrigerated, but let it come to room temperature before using.

Photo: Michael Leuchtenburg

Making the Most of Melon: Watermelon Rind Pickles

A melon – especially a watermelon – often seems like a mountainous task. Even before it's cut open, the plotting to use it up begins: How much melon can I eat on my own? Who can I get to help me eat it? Can I do anything else with it? Really, how much melon can I eat?

If you're asking that question nutritionally, the answer is quite a lot. Not only is it roughly 90% water, but, per pound (~3 cups, several slices), it contains about 130 calories, 60% of the RDA of Vitamin C, 50% of Vitamin A, and a wealth of antioxidant and anticancer compounds (read more about watermelon nutrition). Cantaloupe is even more of a nutritional powerhouse. Also, they're tasty and refreshing and go down real smooth.

Most of the time, they're really big though.

What do you do after the first 3 slices? Increasingly, I'm seeing more varied uses of it as an ingredient, from grilled watermelon dishes to savory cold salads to its inclusion in stir-fries, SE Asia-style, and it's really exciting! If I get a chance to photograph it, I will post my recipe for black bean and watermelon salad, one of my favorite uses for old watermelon that's picked up some weird fridge taste.

But here's one more incentive to finish eating the beast: you get to make watermelon rind pickles.

I'd been thinking about it when a friend said she had designs on making them, inspired by a favorite memory of a boarder her family had in the summers when she was younger. Every watermelon was accompanied by the ritual of passing back the rinds to be trimmed and stored for pickling. Before you're grossed out by the use of chomped-down rinds, remember that not only is that part trimmed off, but it is subsequently salted, boiled and soaked in vinegar. It will be as free of germs as the surface of the moon, and significantly tastier. I won't be offended if you prefer to cut the melon off the rinds first, though. A big bowl of melon chunks in the fridge is a great snack.

Which brings us to the process, in 5 easy steps, including eating the watermelon on both ends:

1. Eat watermelon (save rind).
2. Salt rind.
3. Boil rind.
4. Brine rind.
5. Eat watermelon.

As an extra added bonus, we found that the leftover brine made a killer drink, just this side of a Dark & Stormy, when paired with dark rum and seltzer, which has yet to be named.

Watermelon Rind Pickles

Vegan, grain/gluten-free
Makes ~3 pints of pickles
Salt Soak:
• 2 qts watermelon rinds, trimmed and cut into 1" chunks
• 1½ qts water
• ½ c. salt

The Brine:
• 5 c. sugar (we split 3 c. white, 2 c. brown)
• 3 c. water
• 3 c. white or cider vinegar
• 6-8 sticks cinnamon
• 1 Tblsp. whole cloves
• 1 Tblsp. whole allspice berries
• Thumb-sized piece of ginger, cut into thin sticks.

The Rest:
• 1 lemon, halved, thinly sliced and seeded
• 1 orange, prepared as lemon
• 3 one-pint glass canning jars with lids

Trim rinds by cutting off green edge and chomped-down rim and cut into 1" chunks. Soak the watermelon in saltwater overnight or at least 6-8 hours in a 2+ gal. stockpot.

Drain through colander and rinse well in cool water. Return to stockpot, add water to cover and set to boil for ~15 min, or until fork-tender.

Meanwhile, prepare brine in a 4 qt or larger saucepan. Drain the rind pieces, then return to stockpot and add brine and citrus slices. Cover and let stand overnight, or at least 6-8 hours.

Pickles are now ready for canning. Bring them back up to a simmer, and boil a water bath to sterilize jars. Into each sterilized jar, scoop the rind/citrus with a slotted spoon until mostly full, then top up with brine to the base of the mouth. When all pickles are scooped out, process jars in a water bath for 10-15 minutes. Don't forget to stick something like a vegetable steamer in the bottom of the pot so the glass doesn't touch the bottom. Otherwise you run the risk of cracking the bottom out. If this happens, those jars make neat candle-holders. Not that I've ever done that before.

As Promised, a related drink recipe

• 2 oz. watermelon rind pickle juice
• 2 oz. dark rum, such as Gosling's or Kraken
• ½ c. seltzer