King of the Road - September 2009
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A Winning Recipe
Find the secret to life—and pie—in Pie Town
Story and Photography by Lesley S. King
My father makes my favorite pie, so he’s the perfect companion for my trip to the Pie Festival in Pie Town. As we cruise across the Plains of San Agustín, climbing slowly toward the Continental Divide at nearly 8,000 feet, we discuss pie strategy. His is simple: He grows his own Fuji apples, which he combines in a crust with butter, cinnamon, and sugar, and bakes. The luscious result reflects the way he’s lived his long and prosperous life: focus and simplicity. Ah, I think, the secret of both—life and pie. But as we enter Pie Town and encounter the festival’s vast piescape, I realize it may not be quite so simple.
Pie Town began in 1922, when miner Clyde Norman set up a store along U.S. 60, 160 miles southwest of Albuquerque, and began baking. Word of his delectable pies soon spread, and when locals petitioned for a post office, they insisted on the name Pie Town. Thus the town’s pie legacy was established, such that even Smithsonian Magazine graced the pages of its February 2005 issue with a story about it. In 1940, as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal, photographer Russell Lee documented how the Great Depression had ravaged rural America here. Today, 600 touching photos of the town and surrounding area are archived in the Library of Congress.
Unfortunately, for many years, Pie Town was without a formal pie presence in the form of any local bakery. But in 1995, Kathy Knapp and her mother, Mary, cruised through, bought an old trading post, and began baking. Today, Kathy and her partner, Stan King, carry on the legacy at the Pie-O-Neer Café, her creations garnering praise in such publications as Travel + Leisure and Sunset. However, Knapp doesn’t even enter her pies in the Pie Festival’s annual baking competition—on this day, she’s too busy baking some 100 of them for her customers. “I’ve questioned my sanity on more than one occasion,” she says, “but nothing good in life comes without sacrifice.”
DAY-TRIP TIPS Where to Dine: Pie-O-Neer Café Where to Stay: Where to Stay & Dine: What to Read:
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Knapp’s strategy is all in the combining. Her crust contains half butter and half lard: “The butter adds flavor and the lard makes it flakey.” Her signature pie is a chocolate-cream confection aptly named Sex on a Plate. And for her classic apple pie, she uses both sweet and tart apples. “You put a little sugar, cinnamon, and butter, and you’ve got a pie!” Naturally, Knapp and my father quickly become pals. However, participants in the baking-competition might disagree with their simplistic strategy. At the judging building we find the competing pies lined up on tables, their names reflecting both elaborate recipes and the occasion’s playful tone: Peach-cicle, Mango Tango, Nuttier than a Fruitcake, and the most daring: Heirloom Tomato, adorned with petunia petals.
Contestant Keith “Butters” Thomas sets his apple-raspberry creation among them and tells us his strategy. He’s been baking for two months, one to three pies a day. An engineering student at New Mexico Tech, in Socorro, he took the scientific approach, beginning by reading all the pie literature he could find—books such as Pascale Le Draoulec’s American Pie: Slices of Life (And Pie) from American Back Roads. Next, he experimented, using what he calls “controlled variables.” To get it to bake right, he took advantage of the “heat transfer.” “Convection, conduction, and radiation!” he adds with a flourish of his hand.
Wishing Keith luck, we next meet 11-year-old Tamara Hutton, of Quemado, a past Grand Prize winner, who mixes and bakes her grandmother’s recipes; then, “I hold my mother’s hand and pray.” Still later we meet 20-something Adrian Morris, whose strategy has won him awards, including First Place at the New Mexico State Fair. Hailing from Socorro, he uses the recipe on the Karo Syrup bottle to make his pecan pie. “It’s fun to be judged,” he says of the competition.
And thus begins that process, with some 50 entries. The judges consider the pie’s appearance, how well it holds together once cut, and the taste. “If it’s a fruit pie, it should taste like fruit,” one explains.
While they make their rounds, Dad and I explore the richness of pie culture in this town of some 200 residents. Exiting the judging building, we make our way through the surrounding park, passing an array of vendors selling watermelons and blackberry jam, crocheted hair bands, and cowboy art. Already underway are such activities as a pie-eating contest and a horned-toad race.
Farther down “Pieway 60,” at the Daily Pie Café, we find the “World’s Only True Pie Chart,” each segment representing a type of pie offered that day. Proclaiming that “Pie is a food group,” the Daily Pie is home to the famed New Mexican Apple Pie, which, in addition to its signature ingredient, includes green chile and piñon nuts.
Back at the park, New Mexico Lieutenant Governor Diane Denish announces the bake-off winners. Keith Thomas’s scientifically engineered creation wins the Fruit Pie division, but the Grand Prize of $100 is earned by a woman named Turtle, for her coconut-macaroon pie. Unexpectedly, it’s a vegan pie. Containing no animal ingredients, it’s made with tofu, soymilk, and the special ingredient: coconut. “That’s what makes it so rich,” Turtle says.
It turns out that Turtle has a winning strategy for life as well as for pie. She and two of her friends—the “Tucson Team Pie”— arrived from Arizona days before the festival to help create 200 pies for the Community Booth, which supports the event. Last night, they baked their pies together, then entered one creation each, including that unusual Heirloom Tomato pie. “We made them at a friend’s home,” Turtle says. “We were baking pies, and they were having a party. It was this exciting Pie Festival atmosphere!” Her friends will share the prize, Turtle explains, hugging them close. “It was a group effort.”
The 29th Annual Pie Town Pie Festival takes place September 12, from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.
For info: (575) 772-2525; www.pietownfestival.com, www.pietown.com
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"King of the Road" columnist Lesley S. King visits another little-known community in New Mexico each month.
