How to Grill a Pie

When I took the pictures for this post, I didn't know if the title would be How to Grill a Pie or How Not to Grill a Pie.  As you can tell, there's a happy ending to today's blog post!

There has been a giant bag of rhubarb burning a hole in my freezer for about a month now.  I've been dying for an excuse to make a rhubarb pie, the most delicious dessert on the planet.  With temperatures over 105 for the last several weeks and the air conditioner laboring to keep the house under 80, I haven't turned on the oven, dishwasher or dryer since the heat wave started.  And yet, there was the rhubarb.  And it was our turn to host dinner club.  And nothing is better than rhubarb pie.  Maybe the flavor of rhubarb would compensate for our guests having to blot sweat from their faces all during dinner.

Heat-dispersing platform for baking a pie in the grill.

I called Mom to remind me about the perfect ratio of sugar to rhubarb, and she suggested opening a window to vent the kitchen if I must make the pie.  Then I got to thinking about our grill.  It's really just an outdoor gas oven, right?  If I could figure out how to cook the pie out there, the house would still be cool for dinner.  So this time I called Dad, and he thought it would work, but I should put a heat-deflector under the pie dish with some air between the heat-deflector and the pie to allow air and heat to circulate.  The above picture shows my system for evening out the heat from the burners, with the metal grill for elevating the pie off the cast iron pan.  I think any baking sheet would work in place of the cast iron pan for a heat-deflector. 

Pie with edge protector for protecting the crust edge from burning.

To the left of the pan, you see a crucial element for the success of grilling a pie: an oven thermometer.   I preheated the grill to 400 degrees, the temperature required by my pie recipe.  My grill doesn't have any sort of temperature gauge besides purely decorative 'low' and 'high' markings, but after some playing, I discovered that keeping both burners on low would keep the temperature somewhere between 375 and 450 - close enough! 

Success!  One rhubarb pie baked in the grill.

The pie was supposed to bake for 50 minutes.  I checked it every 15 minutes or so, and ended up letting it cook for about an hour and 15 minutes.  It cooked perfectly - no burnt crust and no grill taste - just delicious, tart, heavenly rhubarb.

Some tips:

• Clean the grill really well before you start, especially if your grill is full of meat fat that might burn and smoke your pie with carcinogenic meat fat smoke.
• Use metal pans so they don't crack from uneven heat.
• Elevate your pie dish off of the pan underneath it - this is a must.  I also cooked cornbread in the grill, and I made the first batch straight on the pan and burned the bottom.
• Put foil under the pie to catch any juice dripping out of it - you don't want smoke from burning sugar to flavor your pie.
• Check frequently until you trust your temperature, but just barely crack open the grill to keep the heat inside.
• Maybe try some cornbread or something easy first to learn the process before you use expensive and time-consuming ingredients.

Buds of Spring

A few weeks ago, I explained how to tell the age of a twig, and last week, I showed you the amazing colors of photosynthesizing spring twigs.  Well, it's apparently twig month.  But don't worry, twigs are fascinating, and we haven't wrung all the goodie out of them yet.   

Buckeye leaf buds.

Today we'll focus in on buds, since that is what seems to be the most active biological phenomenon in Chicago at the moment.  Buds of many trees and shrubs are starting to grow, and I have become fearful of checking the weather report since we're well before the last frost date for this growth region (April 20).  I know we're going to see lots of branches with melty, drippy dead leaves one of these days.

As you can see from the picture above, I finally found a buckeye, the best twigs for learning twig structures.  Even with the mediocre picture quality, you can see the giant bud scales and leaf scars.  The terminal bud has almost doubled in size and is about ready to pop out some leaves.

Shrub buds leafing out.

In the photo above, of a mystery shrub I have not yet identified, the double terminal buds have expanded so much that you can see individual leaves.  I didn't stop to get a better picture because the house owner came home while I was photographing his buds, and we had an awkward moment.  In a better picture from buds at the Lincoln Park Zoo, below, you can see miniature leaves, and the terminal bud scales are still present at the base of the leaves.  No doubt zoo patrons were wondering why I was taking pictures of a shrub and not the demonstrating chimpanzees right behind me.  They'll just have to start subscribing to my blog to find out.  Loyal readers (hi Mom and Dad), any guesses why these new leaves are reddish?

Shrub buds leafing out.

The picture below introduces you to a new plant structure, the flower bud.  There are a cluster of tiny dogwood flower buds between my fingers, surrounded by four flower bud scales.  Any plant bud is just a beginning of a new plant structure.  So you can have leaf buds, flower buds and even root buds.  Inside each bud is a small cluster of the plant equivalent of stem cells.  Plants' stem cells are called meristematic tissue, and a cluster of these cells are called a meristem.  Meristems are the specific cells capable of growing new plant tissue.  Most plants have meristems in their tips, like in buds.  Plants like grasses have meristems near their bases, which means they can easily grow back after you run the lawnmower over them.

Dogwood shrub flower buds.

Below is a gorgeous magnolia flower bud.  You can see hairy bud scales and light pink flower petals beginning to emerge.

Saucer magnolia flower buds.

Next are the flower buds of a plant so famous for buds that it is named after them: the redbud tree.  Redbud buds are a little strange - they can grow out of a mature twig or even out of the tree trunk.  This phenomenon of flowers emerging from the mature wood instead of from new green growing tips is called cauliflory, and it's quite unusual.

Redbud buds.

I've saved the best picture for last.  I found these strange objects on the ground in the perennial garden section of the Chicago Botanical Garden.  There are red, papery bud scales and bunched up green leaf babies crammed inside the red buds emerging straight from the ground.  I had to ask, since I've never seen these before, and it turns out they are rhubarb buds!  The leaves will expand and grow remarkably quickly, since they are so fully formed inside the buds.  Then I will turn the stems into a pie.

Rhubarb buds.