By August 2034. Something had been shifting in the way the vocational center programs functioned and in August it came into focus: the traditional foods curriculum had produced enough graduates over four years that there was now a network. Not a formal organization, but a web of people who knew each other and who cooked together and consulted each other and who in several cases had started informal teaching of their own—in their homes, in their churches, in their community centers. The knowledge that I'd received from Danny and had put into the curriculum had now moved into seventy or eighty people at various stages of practice, and some of those people were passing it on.
That's the point at which something becomes truly distributed. Not when one person knows it, not even when twenty people know it, but when it has enough nodes in a network that the loss of any one node doesn't break the whole thing. Danny dying had broken a node—a major one—and the network had been thin enough that his loss was felt as a real loss of knowledge, not just a loss of person. What I'd been building for fourteen years was a network robust enough that it wouldn't break the same way.
I wrote about this in the journal. Then I made soup and ate it and went to bed at a reasonable hour. That's the correct proportion: some time to think about what you're building, then back to the building itself. You don't need to know what it means while you're doing it. The doing is its own argument.
After writing that entry, I didn’t want anything fussy or clever — I wanted something that rewarded the work of making it, something layered and filling and worth the time. A deep dish ham pie felt exactly right: the kind of recipe that has enough going on that you have to pay attention, but that ends with something solid on the table. The doing is its own argument, and so is this pie.
Deep Dish Ham Pie
Prep Time: 25 minutes | Cook Time: 45 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour 10 minutes | Servings: 6
Ingredients
- 2 cups cooked ham, diced
- 1 cup frozen peas, thawed
- 1 cup diced potatoes, par-cooked
- 1/2 cup diced onion
- 1/2 cup diced celery
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 cups whole milk
- 1/2 cup low-sodium chicken broth
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
- 1/4 teaspoon salt, or to taste
- 1 package (14 oz) refrigerated pie crust (2 sheets), or homemade double crust
- 1 egg, beaten (for egg wash)
Instructions
- Preheat oven. Heat oven to 400°F. Lightly grease a deep 9-inch pie dish and set aside.
- Sauté vegetables. In a large skillet over medium heat, melt butter. Add onion and celery and cook 4–5 minutes until softened. Add garlic and cook 1 minute more.
- Make the filling sauce. Whisk flour into the skillet and cook 1 minute, stirring constantly. Gradually pour in milk and chicken broth, whisking to prevent lumps. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the sauce thickens, about 5 minutes.
- Add remaining filling ingredients. Stir in ham, peas, par-cooked potatoes, black pepper, thyme, and salt. Taste and adjust seasoning. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.
- Assemble the pie. Fit one sheet of pie crust into the deep dish, pressing gently into the bottom and sides. Pour in the ham filling. Lay the second crust over the top, trim any excess, and crimp the edges to seal. Cut 4–5 small slits in the top crust to allow steam to escape.
- Apply egg wash. Brush the top crust evenly with the beaten egg for a golden finish.
- Bake. Place the pie on a baking sheet and bake at 400°F for 40–45 minutes, until the crust is deep golden brown and the filling is bubbling through the slits. If the crust edges brown too quickly, cover them loosely with foil.
- Rest before slicing. Remove from oven and let the pie rest for 10 minutes before cutting. This helps the filling set so slices hold together cleanly.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 420 | Protein: 18g | Fat: 22g | Carbs: 38g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 780mg