Cherry-Chocolate Pudgy Pie

Hot week. Ninety-four to ninety-six all five working days and the air dry enough that the dust lifts off the road behind the truck like a slow-motion smoke and the cattle have moved to the cottonwoods by nine and stayed there till seven in the evening. The reservoirs are still good. The well is still good. The grass in the south pasture has gone fully golden which is normal for August in Montana and not a problem because the cattle have grass in the home pasture and water everywhere they need it. The trick of August is not to panic about August. Patrick taught me this when I was sixteen. I remember him saying it from the seat of the tractor on a day not unlike this one. The hot is the hot. You do not fight it. You make sure your animals have shade and water. The grass will come back.

The ranch insurance came up for renewal Monday. I sat with the broker on the phone for an hour and we adjusted some coverages and dropped some old riders and added one for the beef boxes I have been thinking about for two years and have not yet done. Adding the rider was Mom's idea. She said you do not adjust insurance for things you might do. You adjust insurance for things you are going to do, and adjusting it is a way of telling yourself you are going to do it. She is right. I added the rider. The beef boxes are going to be a thing. Maybe next year. Maybe in two. But I have started to talk about them like they are real, and the insurance is now configured for them being real, and so eventually they will be real.

The book sold through its second printing this week. Sarah called Wednesday. They are going to a third. Five thousand copies total now in print, which Sarah says is doing well for what we are. I do not know what we are. Sarah says we are a regional press doing better than expected with a quiet book by a first-time author. I will accept that description. The royalty checks have started to come — modest, monthly now — and they are buying Patrick's medications, which run twelve hundred a month even with insurance. The book paying the medications is a kind of symmetry I did not anticipate. I would have written the book for free. I would have written the book to pay the medications. Both are true and the second is what is happening.

Mom turned sixty-six Friday. We did not make a big deal of it because Mom does not like big deals, but I made the cake — chocolate, three layers, with raspberry filling from the patch behind the garden, and a cream cheese frosting I have been working on for a year and have, this time, gotten right. Patrick had a piece. Cole and Tara drove down for dinner. Tara is twelve weeks now and starting to show, just barely, the way you can see if you know to look. Mom kept looking at her stomach across the table and Tara caught her once and they both laughed and Mom said, I am sorry, you cannot fault a grandmother, and Tara said, You can fault me to look as much as you want, and Patrick said one of his rare unprovoked sentences. He said, A girl. He said, It is a girl. We all looked at him. He said, I am calling it. He smiled. We left it. He may be wrong. He may be right. The Gallagher streak of correct calling is, statistically, fifty percent. It works because Patrick remembers the right ones.

I made the AA guys a brisket Saturday. Twelve-pound packer, salt and pepper only, smoked at two-twenty for fourteen hours over post oak I had cut and dried last spring. It came off the smoker at six in the evening, rested two hours wrapped in butcher paper and a blanket inside a cooler, sliced at eight by lantern light to nine men around the firepit. The bark was right. The fat had rendered. The point was tender enough to pull apart. The flat was sliced thick and against the grain. Marcus said, You are going to ruin me for restaurants, and I said, You are already ruined, and he said, Yeah, I know, and the men laughed and the fire burned down and we sat past midnight under stars and I went to bed at one and slept seven hours and the brisket was the work of fourteen hours and the eating was the work of two hours and the medicine was the work of all of it together. The fire helps. The brisket helps. The friends around the fire help most of all.

The brisket was done and the fire had burned to coals and nobody was leaving, which is the best thing a fire can do — just keep men in their chairs past the hour they meant to stay. I had a can of cherry pie filling in the truck box and a loaf of white bread and a pudgy pie iron I have carried to every fire for a decade, and that is all it took. You make one, you pass it around, someone says make another, and you do, and the coals do the work and the night does the rest.

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 5–8 minutes per pie | Total Time: 15 minutes | Servings: 1 pie per iron (scale as needed)

Ingredients

2 slices white sandwich bread
1 tablespoon butter, softened
3 tablespoons cherry pie filling
1 tablespoon semi-sweet chocolate chips
Powdered sugar, for dusting (optional)

Instructions

Prepare the iron. Grease both sides of a cast iron pudgy pie iron with a light coat of butter or cooking spray. Heat the iron briefly over campfire coals to warm it through.
Butter the bread. Spread softened butter on one side of each bread slice. This is the side that will face outward against the iron.
Fill the pie. Place one slice of bread butter-side down into the iron. Spoon the cherry pie filling into the center, leaving a 1/2-inch border around the edges. Scatter the chocolate chips evenly over the filling.
Close and seal. Lay the second slice of bread butter-side up over the filling. Close the iron and press the handles together firmly to seal the edges and trim the crust.
Cook over coals. Hold the iron over medium campfire coals (not direct flame) for 3–4 minutes per side, until the bread is deep golden brown and the filling is bubbling. Rotate occasionally for even heat.
Cool briefly and serve. Open the iron carefully — steam will escape. Let the pudgy pie cool for 1–2 minutes before eating. Dust with powdered sugar if you have it. Pass it around and make another.

Nutrition (per serving)

Cherry-Chocolate Pudgy Pie — Something Sweet for the Men Around the Fire