Fig and Nectarine Slab Pie

My dentist *loves* hearing about baking. He loves hearing about dessert. He has a habit of asking me what my favorite treat of late is, a question that requires far more than a nod or a thumbs up, or a muffled “mmmhmmm, just about the same time that he’s cleaning my teeth with both hands in my mouth. It’s hilarious. And predictable. When he asked me this week, this Stone Fruit Slab Pie was my answer. Flaky, buttery crust, filled with an abundance of summer fruits, baked until golden then drizzled with a cream cheese icing, I explained. Overwhelmed with an enthusiasm that *may* have led to him overcleaning my teeth, he kept on polishing and then said, “and, it’s HEALTHY?”

 

Another question requiring him to take his hands out of my mouth. But I did my best to answer and this week I’ll tell you exactly what I told him” YES.

A healthy pastry chef

I wouldn’t blame you at all if you weren’t yet aware that I’m a classically trained, diploma-holding pastry chef. That I enrolled in culinary school to study patisserie + baking a few years into my career as a professional endurance athlete, and that the inspiration behind doing so was so that I could learn the science and technique to make “healthy” pastries and treats; all the things that I was craving while training 30 hours a week for ultra-marathons, triathlons and adventure races.

 

It turns out I was pretty good at this new craft, and managed to land myself a job in a two-star Michelin restaurant in Los Angeles, developing + executing multi-course tasting menus comprised of fancy ice creams, decadent desserts and spending hours spent in a room of chocolate, baking bread for the day’s service. I learned a LOT about how to create gorgeous desserts from nature’s incredible bounty. I learned how to substitute ingredients depending on the nutritional or textural outcomes I am looking for.

 

And, I learned that there’s more to “healthy” than meets the eye. 

Expressing, experiencing and receiving joy and pleasure is a great marker of health. And if we fixate too long on the other factors that create a vibrant body and mind, we can miss out on this ingredient all together (if not negate it entirely.)

I had been convinced that if I could change the ingredients in what I was making, that they would be “healthier” for me and my body would thrive. But I quickly came to see that swapping out simple, easily recognizable ingredients that had been vilified to some degree by society wasn’t healthy and sometimes, it was even more harmful to the environment, or to my body.  I saw that I needed to shift my perspective on what my body needed to fuel it whole in the first place. I didn’t need healthier ingredients. I needed a healthier outlook on food, and how it played a role in my life.

There is a place for virtuous ingredients, for mindful ingredient swaps. But there’s also a place for dessert. A very important, joyful place. And this Fig + Nectarine Slab Pie AND its Cream Cheese Icing fit right in that spot.

The nutritional benefits of making (+ eating) pie

The first thing I wanted to do when I got home from all of my recent travels was bake. A coconut rum cake with berries that I’d been dreaming about. Crumb buns for Pete’s birthday. Did I have time to make homemade Oreos for Cookies n’ Cream ice cream? I wasn’t sure, but I did have time to make a slab pie for much-anticipated dinner guests, and so I started there.

 

The sheer joy of working with my hands in the kitchen is a healthy outlet. Working butter into flour, smelling the way the fat blooms the grains, mingling with a tiny bit of sugar. Watching the gluten of the dough stretch under the gentle pressure of my rolling pin. The feeling of cutting peaches against my thumb and allowing the juices to drip down my arm and into the bowl – primal. Nothing can replace these sensory pleasures in my life. Taking ingredients that I carefully procured from the dairy, from the Millner, from the farm where the fruits grow.

And then smelling the pie baking in the oven, feeling the way the scents envelop the house. Carrying fat slices of it out to my dinner guests, sitting under the stars and soaking up the sounds of the crickets by candlelight, all of us digging in voraciously, soothed by each bite and a little extra drizzle of sweet icing that melts on our tongues and melts us into the conversation as we catch up well into the night. 

Eating the leftovers, wrapped in a bit of beeswax paper, on a big bike ride for the days after our gathering. Perfection.

 

All of these are nutritional, soulful benefits of spending the afternoon making a pie, and the benefits of digging into a slice for yourself. There isn’t anything better in the world. And none of us had to do any kind of workout or good deed to deserve such profound nourishment. I can’t reiterate enough – the simple joy of making and eating the thing is really important.

And so let’s do that, eh?

Slab happy

So! To make a slab pie. It’s basically like a big-ass pop tart. A party sized pop tart. Basically like making a pie, only in a more fun shape that’s fun to eat, or wrap up and take in your pockets for an adventure of some kind.

 

To make a slab pie, you’re going to need a few baking pans, a rolling pin and a bit of time to make the dough and the filling. Neither takes very long in itself, but you’ll be most happy with the outcome if you have ample time to put it all together, maybe turn on music and just enjoy instead of feeling rushed. I know I do.

 

While many of the recipes I share here are of the quick and easy variety, this one isn’t. This is a cooking project of sorts, one that is worth each ounce of effort and so rewarding to complete. A few things to remember for best results:

• Keep your butter cold: at all costs, you want to avoid warming the butter before you put it in the crust, and after it’s worked into the crust too. Keep your crusts as cool as possible, and refrigerate them when they start to get warm. Put your phone on the other side of the kitchen while you roll out your dough and assemble your pie so you aren’t tempted to answer a call from your mom or your bf, or to scroll IG in the middle of your making. This is the kind of behavior that renders a floppy crust that gets chewy instead of flaky.
• Use fruits of now: plums, peaches, berries, figs – they’re all at the market right now and they’re dying to be used in your slab pie. Save the frozen ones for when the bounty is all frozen…in the winter.
• Egg wash: to get that good golden, you’re going to want to brush your pie with an egg, lightly beaten. Don’t skip this step.
• Icing: don’t skip this step either. The icing is worth it. Remember, it’s all about the joy folx.