Poorhouse Pies

When most of my bills are a month over due, my husband has developed a tubercular quality cough and we can't afford his asthma medication* or flea medicine for the animals or new pants for the kid it feels a little Irish around here.

It puts me in the mood for cabbage. It makes me want to get earthy and reminds me that the answer to all my problems comes from the same source I did and if I embrace this experience and stop fighting it I will find something soul satisfying in it. Perhaps I'm feeling philosophical because I know that some significant relief will be on its way by the end of the month (in the form of a first pay check from my new job). But I think there's more to it.

Although my family was pretty solidly middle class by the time I came along, my maternal grandparents both grew up very poor. My grandfather was one of thirteen children and as he tells it his home life was pretty dreary and he left home at the age of fourteen to go work. My grandmother (pictured here with my mother) came from very poor people who were (as my grandfather liked to remind us) largely illiterate.

I feel my roots tug at my limbs like hungry children rising from an empty table. I feel it when I dig my own potatoes out of the ground. I feel it when I knife a cabbage into quarters. I feel it when every meal begins with the humble familiar aroma of sauteing onions. I remember reading somewhere a condemnation of the smell of cabbage and onions being the smell of poverty.

To me it's like raw memory. I am the culmination of all the people who came before me in my family and I have their taste in my veins, their scent memories in my cells, their hollering in my head. I love the taste of butter and soil, the smell of damp compost, and the noise of chickens outside my door.

I remember the afternoon when I realized that my grandfather had the soul of a peasant too. I remember drinking wine with him while he read Homer to me and we inhaled the smell of evening coming on. We are simple in our love for books, food, and drink. Perhaps to our detriment.

Then let it be to our detriment.

I've had this idea in my mind for a couple of days. Poorhouse pies. It kept creeping into my mind. Poorhouse pies. The kind of food that you can make for cheap and send with your man to the mines or the fields for later. The kind of food that is rustic and simple but nourishing. Cabbage has 34 mg of calcium per cup. It has 33 mg of vitamin C which isn't bad when you consider that an orange has 54. Cabbage also has 160 mg of potassium. There's good reason why this vegetable has been valued for so long, by common people if not restauranteurs.

Poorhouse Pies pair cabbage and mushrooms together with marjoram, feta, and mustard. It's like a Russian style calzone. It is tangy and satisfying. I used a batch of pita dough because it's what I had ready when I finally decided to make these. I recommend using a calzone dough or making them like empanadas using a pie dough. Though depending on what dough you use your yield will vary.

Is a Poorhouse pie really actually cheap to make? I hear people say all the time that it's cheaper for them to go out to eat (such as at fast food places) than it is to cook at home. This is rubbish. So I costed my ingredients. While prices for things do vary from place to place I rounded up on everything to cover inconsistencies and I came up with a price of $1.66 per pie. These are enough for a light meal on their own or paired with roasted vegetables or salad would make a filling dinner. I think that price puts them at the same price level as fast food.

Except That it will have a lot less sodium, fat, and crap. It has better nutrients to offer and the quality is unsurpassed.

The biggest difference is that you actually have to make them yourself. I made my dough the night before and then put it in the fridge over night. I punched it down in the morning and kept it in the fridge until about an hour before I needed to use it. So these were quick to put together today.

I recommend using a calzone dough because my pita dough was too tender and after the pies sat for a while the juices from the filling made the bottoms a little soft. Otherwise it tasted great. I used feta cheese because it's what I had on hand. My original thought was to use yogurt cheese but I didn't have any prepared. Using yogurt cheese would have cut close to two dollars off the price of making them.

The filling is enough for 8 regular sized calzones.

In a large saute pan heat up the olive oil on med/high heat; then add the onion and cook until it begins to sweat. Add the mushrooms and cook for about five minutes. Add the cabbage, salt, pepper, and marjoram. Cook until the cabbage is cooked all the way through. About ten minutes.

Cut your dough into 8 pieces. Roll each one out and on one half of it spread out a table spoon of the mustard. Add the cheese on top of the mustard. Then heap about a half a cup of the cabbage mushroom mixture on top of the cheese. Now pull the other half of the dough over the filing and seal the edges of the dough together. You may need to slightly wet the edges of the dough to make it stick well. Take the edges and tuck them up so that the filling won't ooze out during cooking. Place on a baking sheet and proceed the same way to fill the rest.

Sprinkle some cornmeal on the baking sheet if you have some handy. It helps to keep the dough from sticking. Cook the pies for ten minutes (if you use a pita dough like I did, if not, cook for as long as your calzone dough recipe calls for).

If anyone actually makes these, would you mind telling me what you think?


*If it weren't for credit cards it would have been Angela's Ashes for us a long time ago. Philip is waiting to get free asthma supplies from the companies that make them. If you're poor enough they'll sometimes give them out.