…if you have the stomach for it!
One of the requests we get most often is for a recipe for the potato peel pie of Guernsey’s title. And we’re pleased to announce that you can now find that recipe, as written by author Annie Barrows herself, right here!
Enjoy!
Tags: Annie Barrows, Book club, GLAPPPS, potato peel pie, recipe
You should know that with some small liberties taken, potato peel pie can be quite tasty. Before I found the Barrows recipe, I created this pie for my book club, trying to be as authentic as possible (e.g., sea salt, goat’s milk cheese, thyme and other garden herbs a la Isola) but—alas— without consideration for the lack of cooking fuel. It was deemed delicious, and I had requests for the recipe. A member who once lived in London likened it to “pub food,” so apparently I succeeded with the English pedigree.
The pie looked quite lovely with the strained beets adding a decorative touch to the top—sorry I have no way to attach my photo.
This has nothing to do with pies, books or Guernsey, but it does deal with German soldiers. As a little girl, I worked alongside my grandmother in the garden, and she would often tell me stories about the “old country” to pass the time. [She came from a small village in the Italian Alps, where her family had a dairy farm.] Grandma told me she remembered when the German soldiers came to the farm. The men were so hungry, they dug up potatoes from the garden with their bare hands, and ate the tubers raw. Whether or not they bothered to brush the dirt away, I cannot recall. But fifty years later, that image remains in my head.
Imagine being so hungry & so desperate.
Having been born in the middle of the great depression I was only 5 when we planted our first “Victory Garden”. Dad was not yet drafted but he did work full time and Mom went to work in a company making war materials and so grandma Alta was chief cook and bottle washer at home. Long before you could buy fried potato skins in little plastic bags we enjoyed them from her kitchen and of course the nanny brigades of nutrition hadn’t yet descended upon us so they were deep fat fried and salted generously. Another dish she made that has always remained with me is her fried green tomatoes (no we are not southern, rather upstate New Yorkers). No dipping in crumbs or any of that but just a dusting of flour and frying in bacon fat or goose fat if my Aunt, the farm wife, had any to spare. It is such a shame that modern food is processed to within an inch of its life so that no natural flavor is left and then the nanny brigade (those persons who are going to save us from outselves whether we like it or not) descends to take away whatever is left that really tastes good. On a recent trip to Scotland and England I realized how much they even ruined our natural cheeses by the dumb and dumber law that cheese can only be made from pasturized milk which of course destroys the enzymes that make cheese, cheese. I so enjoyed the natural cheeses while I was there but unfortunately you cannot bring it home lest an errant bug should come along for the ride.
Karen,
Could you please share your recipe. I would love to make a potato peel pie that is “tasty”. Thanks
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The official website for The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a novel….