Eyes on the Pies Award-winning cook on quest for premium Maine apples

Kristina King has a new challenge.

Actually, she has two. The top pie maker in the statewide apple pie contest held in January by the Maine Department of Agriculture now must bake another prizewinning pie for the 20th annual New England Apple Pie Championship in April. But first she has to find good Maine pie apples to put into it.

The Rockland woman entered Maine’s apple pie fray at the Great Maine Apple Day held jointly last fall at the Common Ground Country Fair grounds in Unity by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association and the Maine Pomological Society. An organizer of the Maine chapter of Slow Food (an international movement promoting a healthful, slower-paced lifestyle), she attended the event to display membership information and brought along a pie in order to be supportive of Apple Day festivities.

King’s entry, one of about 30, was made with foraged Maine apples and a butter and white flour crust. Other pies at the event were what she described as “real MOFGA pies – wholesome, with whole-wheat crusts, and organic apples, and some varied the apple pie theme by containing cranberries or nuts.”

King’s pie landed a second place, qualifying her to enter the statewide apple pie contest sponsored in January by the Maine Department of Agriculture. She almost didn’t go; she had had a frantic week and only at the last minute decided to give it a try.

No one could have been more surprised at winning than King. She was a fairly detached participant until she heard: “First place … Kristina King.” She recalls thinking, “‘What? What!’ I jumped up and rushed to get my flower bouquet. I pumped the poor flower schlepper’s hand. I spun, I grinned from ear to ear. I think I even hooted, ‘All right!'”

Describing how to come up with a recipe for a winning pie is a real stumper for King. “I am an optimizer, I tinker with things,” she says. “I look at five cookbooks, get the consensus, and then wing it.”

She has a few unswerving standards. She peels “lots” of apples, slices them thinly so they stack densely. This way, when the pie bakes, the apples do not collapse, leaving the crust stranded above the filling to crumble in a heap when it is cut.

“I taste the filling, because I don’t use the same mix of apples for every pie,” she said. “I like it to be zippy when it goes into the crust, so I adjust with spice and lemon juice.”

Then she makes “a real crust with butter. No butter-flavored shortening.” She bakes the pie in “a good old Pyrex pie plate.”

What makes her pie distinctive is that she always draws a picture on the crust.

“The picture represents the apples I use and the experience I’ve had making the pie,” she said. “Sometimes the sun will be out, sometimes the snow is high on the ground around the apple trees.”

Using several varieties of apples is key, King says, to a good pie filling, and her friend and “sweetheart” Kerry Hardy is key to the apple foraging. Hardy directs Merryspring Park in Camden, and is a champion spotter of old apple trees. The pair has “collected” old trees all around the Rockland area. Hardy rides his bike eight miles to work and has plenty of opportunity to see the profile of old, often abandoned apple trees.

“The apples in the prizewinning pies,” King said, “came from one place with two ancient trees, fully mature, 30 feet tall. Each one has seven or eight varieties grafted onto it. There are apples ready to pick from August through early December.”

For her latest contest entry, King used apples she and Hardy picked from “that lovely tree with all the grafted varieties, definitely four kinds of apples, the Northern Spy, the Black Oxford type, a late McIntosh type, and one we call the doughnut apple, a small round one with the two ends squashed together.”

It is clear to King that she has an award-winning filling, but for the next contest she aims to have a better crust.

“I grew up on a lard crust, but I have been using a butter crust,” she said, “but it has to go into a freezer awhile. I may use lard if I can’t make the butter one with freezer time.” This poses a problem for the optimizer, who does not know exactly what facilities she will have at the contest venue at Salem Cross Inn in West Brookfield, Mass.

The inn provides a wood-fired brick oven where the pies are baked. The first round will be April 6-7, and the championship is held April 14.

King is excited about going and thinks it will be great fun even if she doesn’t win.

“You have to make the crust there. We get one hour to prepare the pie, then they are baked en masse in a large wood-heated beehive oven. I get to check my pie only once.”

Her tinkering opportunities will be minimal. But the real challenge will be to find apples.

“Of course, now there is nothing on our old trees. I want good Maine apples,” she said. “I plan to call commercial orchards to see what they have in storage. I really would like something besides Cortlands, and I would like to mix apples to get a good flavor.”