I used to call this the Mrs Walker Pastry. Once upon a time Mrs Marybell Walker and her friend Evelyn Jackson went to Seattle and there they both had great pie. Since they were from Canada, the owner of the coffee shop gave them his pastry recipe. It was good, but over the years I made it even better. The amount of water in the recipe was left to the imagination. Then one day I started adding eggs to the water, and I do mean eggs, because when you make a dozen of these pies you will need a lot of eggs. The last time I made pies I made nineteen.
So it’s a lardy recipe, but you needn’t to fall over. Instead consider for a moment that people used to cook with lard all the time and yet they were skinny. But these days we are health conscious and we exercise and we wouldn’t touch lard with a ten foot pole and yet most of us are overweight. Certainly, this is not because of lard, because Crisco stopped us from eating lard long time ago. In truth lard is healthier than artificial fats, like margarine and shortening.
One other different thing about this pastry is it is not chilled. How this works is irrelevant, it just works. Try it, you never had a flakier, lighter and better tasting pastry before mine. I for one find shortening based pastries heavy, no matter how much people chill the stuff.
PIE PASTRY
1 cup lard, soft
1/4 cup butter, soft3 cups flour
salt to taste
2 eggs + cold water
• Beat the lard and the butter until very fluffy.
• With a wooden spoon gently stir in the flour and the salt. Do not beat.
• In a measuring cup, beat the eggs slightly and add ice water to make 2/3 cup liquid.
• With a wooden spoon combine the egg mixture with the flour mix.
• Recipe can make up to 5 pie crusts. For lattice pies, large, decorative pie plates and fluted edging you will need considerably more pastry.
