Anti-Oxidant Pie

Another first today: the first blueberry pie of the season is in the works.

I'm not much of a traditional blueberry pie fan. Fully baked blueberry pies are too cloyingly sweet for my taste. And if it's made with canned filling, I usually think I can taste the tin. Ick.

A couple of summers ago I noticed a recipe in a cookbook I own (The Pie and Pastry Bible, by Rose Levy Beranbaum) that was different. This recipe was for an open-faced blueberry pie, and only a quarter of the blueberries were cooked then folded into the remaining fresh blueberries which were then poured into a precooked shell. Blueberries were on special at the grocery store that week, so I decided to take a chance.

One bite of that pie and I was hooked. Ditto my husband and children. I think I made that pie once a week for the rest of the summer. All those antioxidants in the blueberries, after all. Only C claimed to be sick of it by September.

With this pie, the burst of fresh blueberries rules the palate. Just enough sweet, but not too much. It's a treat. When I saw blueberries on special at the grocery store yesterday, I knew that I would make this pie today.

So if you can get your hands on the recipe for "Open Faced Blueberry Pie" from The Pie and Pastry Bible, try it.

And if you need a good pie crust recipe, "Basic Pie Crust 1" from Judy Rosenberg's Rosie's Bakery All-Butter, Fresh Cream, Sugar-Packed, No-Holds-Barred Baking Book has never let me down. You can even do most of it in a food processor.