Page 141 - United States of Pie

At the Hut they use the Montmorency variety of sour cherries. This
cherry is, of course, local and processed minimally. The fruit arrives
mechanically pitted (the most taxing and staining part of the entire

pie-making process) at the Cherry Hut. The pitted cherries are mixed
with sugar and then flash-frozen. Sour cherry season is brief—the
Hut has just two weeks to obtain all of their cherries for a year. From
May through October, the kitchen averages about three hundred
cherry pies a day. Each pie contains about one pound of pitted
cherries.
Before the Cherry Hut bakers make a pie, they thaw the frozen

cherry-sugar mixture and—here’s the clincher—drain it. When I first
hear this, it strikes me as deeply counter-intuitive, wasteful even. But
Andy explains that the Cherry Hut uses the sweet ruby nectar to
make jelly and the delicious cherry ade I’ve been gulping down.
Nothing is wasted. Macerating the fruit softens it—the key to the
Cherry Hut’s pie. I learn that before baking, I don’t want the fruit too

firm. Firmness equals juiciness. In my own cherry-pie-making
travails, my aim was to keep the fruit intact, when what I really
needed was relaxed, almost sleepy fruit. Andy reassured me that if I
tried this method, my pie would still be bursting with flavor, the
cherries still plump. Sour cherries are such an assertive fruit that the
pie I made would still taste strongly of cherries. One bite of a Cherry
Hut pie assured me that this was the case. Sitting there at the

restaurant, with Andy’s tutelage under my belt and an almost clean