Meat Pies

When it comes to American cooking, no chef-writer duo is more revered than Chef Brian Polcyn and Michael Ruhlman. In their new cookbook, Meat Pies, they cover the fundamentals of meat, seafood, and vegetable concoctions topped with, enclosed in, or wrapped in dough. After teaching readers the basics of what they need to get started, including necessary equipment and the all-important moisture barrier (to avoid soggy crusts), Polcyn and Ruhlman divide their pies into neat categories:

+ Pot Pies

+ Hand-Raised Pies, designed to be eaten at room temperature

+ Rolled Raised Pies, in which the dough is wrapped around a filling and simply baked

+ Tarts and Galettes

+ Double-Crusted Pies

+ Turnovers

+ Vol-au-Vents, or mini tarts with filling added after baking

This structure allows the…