Peasant Pies

Okay, so. Peasant Pies. A self-contained meal. Inexpensive. Highly nutritious -- high in fiber, low in fat, lots of vegetarian and vegan options. Bursting with fresh ingredients and full-bodied flavors from tangy feta to earthy Moroccan lentils to clams in a spicy tomato broth. A pillowy crust, almost sweet, that surrenders easily to your molars. Freshly baked every day in Noe Valley.

Mr. Food Musing's favorite food.

My nemesis.

See, Mr. FM has this friend, Ali Keshavarz. They’ve known each other since long before I came onto the scene, back in Mr. FM’s bachelor days. Ali, one of the owners of Peasant Pies, introduced Mr. FM to these wonderful savory treats. And Mr. FM promptly got himself addicted. (What is a Peasant Pie, if not the ultimate bachelor foodie food? No muss, no fuss, no plate or fork or clean up required, unless you count brushing the crumbs off your shirtfront.)

On our second date, Mr. FM served up a few plump pies to me. (He also cooked for me on our first date, a dish he’d had in a café in France and learned to recreate. Isn’t that romantic? Notwithstanding the fact that he was in France with another woman when he first ate it. I’ve never met her but I feel certain she is far less pretty than me. Right? RIGHT???)

Ahem. Pardon the aside. So anyway, he had been telling me all about his beloved Peasant Pies and how scrummy they are and how he really couldn’t wait to make some for me. “Make” some. So I came over, this time without a bottle of wine (the last one ended up in the trash. Unopened. He has champagne tastes and it was a lowly bottle of BV merlot. Like Miles from Sideways, Mr. FM won’t go near merlot with a ten-foot pole.)

And so, we feasted on peasant pies. They were good. They were delicious, in fact. (My favorite was the spinach feta, or maybe the zucchini mushroom cheese, although later I would come to love the chicken potato veg and the Moroccan lentil with equal gusto.) And I told Mr. FM I liked them – gushed might not be the right word - but I was delighted to have eaten them and I let him know that.

I didn’t realize what I had done.

As our relationship progressed and we began having more and more meals together, the Peasant Pie began to take on a less welcome role. Whenever I would ask Mr. FM what he wanted for dinner, or when he knew I was tired and didn’t want to cook, he’d have one answer at the ready: “We could get a few Peasant Pies from Mollie Stone’s.”

Now I like the Peasant Pie as much as the next guy, but after a while some variety is nice. And so is hearing the person you love most in the world request your own personal recipe for spaghetti carbonara by name. But, more often than not, what I heard was Peasant Pie.

And one day, having asked what Mr. FM wanted for dinner and yet again hearing that he wanted a Peasant Pie, I did what any even-tempered, hot-blooded cook would do.

I mocked The Beloved Peasant Pie.

“Peasant Pie, shmeasant shmie. Can’t we ever eat anything that requires cooking? At least boiling some water?”

Mr. FM just looked at me. (Maybe he was admiring my newly “mussed” hairdo.)

“But Peasant Pies are really good, and they’re healthy. Don’t you like them?” he asked, bewildered.

And in a fit of pique, I might have – might have – said that I did not, in fact, like Peasant Pies. I might even have thrown a spatula across the room (hey, it was so long ago, who’s to say what really happened?)

Unfortunately, the next time we saw Ali and his wife, at a bonfire for a friend’s birthday, my proclamation came out. And I was very, very ashamed.

You see, I love the Peasant Pie. I really do. I just felt like my cooking and, by extension, myself, had to compete with the Peasant Pie for love. And all I wanted was a fair slice – okay, the biggest slice - of Mr. FM’s adoration.

Thankfully, we’ve mended fences over the Peasant Pie. Ali just laughed when I explained what led Mr. FM to think I didn’t like his pies, and then hand-delivered an entire box of ten of them to our apartment not long after.

I think I ate more of them than Mr. FM did.

Peasant Pies, San Francisco, 4108 24th Street @ Castro, 415-642-1316

Comments

[Mom]

We MUST have peasant pies next time we're there! Really!

[June Norse]

Did you try the recipe I sent you on peanut butter and ritz crackers dipped in chocolate? I love to cook but am and cripped up to do much cooking now. Send me a recipe for Peasant Pie sounds intriging. Enjoy sending E-mail to your Dad. Love,
Great Aunt June