Hello and a happy holiday season to all! Apologies for the delay on this, we’ve had a whirlwind few weeks/ had to fly back to New York for some family stuff. We’ve had our hands full, to say the least. Now we’ve finally settled back into our Paris routine and are trying our best to lean into the “holiday spirit”. It is incredibly charming in our neighborhood this time of year. Wreaths, Christmas lights and a general good spiritedness everywhere, it’s Sadie’s (famously a Christmas enthusiast) dream come true! Think we’ll even play the tourist card and head to the holiday market near the Louvre- drink some “vin chaud”, eat some raclette etc etc. Today’s newsletter, fittingly, will be all about pie- a very festive thing!- and something which has become increasingly central to the “Ha’s identity”. Perfect for your New Years or post-Christmas celebrations.
Both of us started working in the “food service industry” when we were teenagers in the suburbs- Anthony at a Dunkin’ Donuts and Sadie at a local pie shop called The Pie Lady and Son. We often talk about how much these first jobs informed so much of our work ethic and how much we carried what we learned there into our first “real” restaurant jobs. Anthony accredits his ability to work an assembly line system swiftly to his Dunkin’ days. The drive through rush makes you quick on your feet! For Sadie, The Pie Lady, naturally, is where a fascination with pie first began.
{Sorry about the photo quality, these were not the high res facebook days…}
{THE ACTUAL DUNKIN, West Long Branch, NJ}
There is something about pie which, when good, can hit an incredibly nostalgic chord. It harkens images of grandmas in kitchens, wearing floral aprons, covered in flour, wooden rolling pin in hand. Growing up, Sadie’s dad became known for his strawberry rhubarb pie, which he’d lovingly make every summer. Still a tried and true favorite. The Pie Lady was a tiny bakery conveniently located 5 minutes away from Sadie’s high school. It was extremely precious, really leaning into the farmstead nostalgia: checkered curtains, a display of tin pie dishes and 50’s memorabilia, the smell of butter and sugar literally wafting in the air. The story goes that there was a woman named Deborah- the Pie Lady- who started selling pies out of her home kitchen. She developed somewhat of a local cult following and, years later, her son Will, using his mom’s recipes, opened up an official storefront. Sadly, they have since closed, but wow what a story!
There have been many iterations of Ha’s Pies over the years- once, in the midst of covid, we stayed up (literally) all night baking pies in our apartment, packing them into small white boxes, then piling them into our Volvo and hand delivering them across the city. This was a nightmare we hope to never experience again. Apologies once again to those that waited four hours for their pie. Whoops.
Nowadays, pate chaud has become the bridge that ties all this together. It’s one of our favorite things to make, a favorite in the Ha Household. Through years of trial and error, we’ve even earned the approval of Anthony’s mom, who deems our pate chaud dough to be “better than the original”. It’s recently become a mainstay on the menu at 6 Paul Bert, where we have upgraded to a shiny and highly functional kitchen, one that allows us to hone in on things without the drama of a home kitchen catastrophe. Having it on the menu here is especially exciting, we’ve been serving it with veg (some favorites have been spinach, black trumpet mushrooms and leeks) and jus, a nod to the French meat pie, pithivier. It looks very chic, if we do say so ourselves.
The base dough recipe is sourced from a British baker named Nicola Lamb- if you are interested in pastry at all, her newsletter Kitchen Recipes is in an incredible resource- she does a full deep dive and we have learned so much from her! Mixing the butter and flour together in a kitchen aid has been a game changer. Most recipes online call either for a food processor, which we’ve always found leads to a tougher, overworked dough or your hands (cumbersome for the scale we’re working at, but great for small batches!) The kitchen aid gently breaks down the butter without overheating or overworking and has been practically fool proof for us. Of course, if you don’t have, you can use your hands. We’ve added the additional step of stacking and layering the dough twice; this mimics the “puff” and the building of layers like puff pastry, which is commonly used for pate chaud. We keep the filling very traditional, heavy on the raw scallion, black pepper and cooked down shallots. A few weeks ago, we brought an incredibly large one to a winemaker’s house for dinner. It was a showstopper! Each week, watching the rounds of raw dough filled with raw pork puff up and become golden brown in the oven….literally feels like magic….the layers! They get us every time.