Pie is a constant in my life

For the 2010 Pi day bakeoff, I baked a Swiss chard-Gruyere pie.

Shown here is the backdrop to our garden:a mural on the side of our barn, painted with California poppies, rice plants, sunflowers and (look closely) a red double helix. Artist: Jim McCall, Elastic Media.

Here is the recipe:

First, gather as many ingredients as you can from your garden. In our garden, I found multi-colored swiss chard, Kale, chives, thyme and parsley.

Next, prepare the crust:

1 cup barley flour
2 cups white flour
1 tsp salt
1 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup unsalted margarine, frozen
grated rind of 1 lemon
1/2-3/4 c iced water

Measure flours and salt into a Cuisinart fitted with a steel blade. Mix briefly. Add in diced butter and margarine. Chop until mixture resembles consistency of cornmeal. Remove from cuisinart and mix in the water an lemon rind with a fork. Shape into one large ball and one small ball. Refrigerate for 20 minutes or so.

Roll out chilled dough on floured surface, in between 2 floured sheets of waxed paper. Place larger crust into a pie pan with a circumference of 28.3 inches (r=4.5 inches). Layer the rest of the cheese on the base. Trim away extra crust. Flute the edges.

Next prepare the filling:

2 TB olive oil
2 Tb butter
1/2 c onion, finely chopped
2 TB fresh chives, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, smashed and then finely chopped
 6 cups multi-colored swiss chard, chopped
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper

5 eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup half and half
3 TB fresh parsley
1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
pinch of thyme
1.5 cups grated gruyere

Melt butter and oil in skillet. Add in onion, chives and garlic. Cook over medium heat until browned. Add in chard and cook until tasty. Add salt and pepper to taste.

In a separate bowl, blend eggs together. Stir in milk, half and half, parsley, thyme and 1/2 of the gruyere. Mix in cooled vegetable mixture.

Add filling to prepared crust. Decorate the top with a strip of dough representing the radius and the symbol for pi.

Bake in a preheated oven (425 degree F) for 25 minutes. Then cover with foil, reduce heat to 350 and cook until filling is cooked through (another 30 minutes or so).

Remove from oven, cool slightly and serve up your pi.

Variation: use milk instead of Half and Half. use other vegetables from your garden instead of chard and kale. Broccoli is good, too!

This post is dedicated to the memory of my uncle Emil Grosswald, a Romanian-American mathematician who worked primarily in number theory.