wow, those are utterly gorgeous.

A stunning assortment. What did you settle on for the final pecan pie recipe? Did whipped cream accompany the key lime pie? Was it frozen?

Cathy2 wrote:On Sunday, I made 9 pies to accompany a talk I did....

I am immediately reminded of "Defending Your Life" with Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep:

"I'm gonna make-a you nine pies!"

(Beautiful pic)

Best,
EC

Steve Z wrote:What did you settle on for the final pecan pie recipe? Did whipped cream accompany the key lime pie? Was it frozen?

Hi,

I have not settled on a pecan pie recipe, I thought someday you would offer your critical opinion.

When I did this talk for Culinary Historians recently, I met a lady who was raised in the Keys. She never used meringue nor whipped cream. Though I love whipped cream, it was more convenient on this occasion to skip it. This key lime pie is simply key lime juice, condensed milk and egg yolks, no cooking. I chilled it overnight and did not freeze it. I know you advocate freezing, which I may do when I don't have to transport it. Additionally, my freezer is for long term storage so it goes for the low temperatures.

I'm glad everyone appreciates these pies. It was considerable work. I just was so pleased with that photograph. Quite dramatic for a pie.

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:

Steve Z wrote:What did you settle on for the final pecan pie recipe? Did whipped cream accompany the key lime pie? Was it frozen?

Hi,

I have not settled on a pecan pie recipe, I thought someday you would offer your critical opinion.

When I did this talk for Culinary Historians recently, I met a lady who was raised in the Keys. She never used meringue nor whipped cream. Though I love whipped cream, it was more convenient on this occasion to skip it. This key lime pie is simply key lime juice, condensed milk and egg yolks, no cooking. I chilled it overnight and did not freeze it. I know you advocate freezing, which I may do when I don't have to transport it. Additionally, my freezer is for long term storage so it goes for the low temperatures.

I'm glad everyone appreciates these pies. It was considerable work. I just was so pleased with that photograph. Quite dramatic for a pie.

Regards,

I am available for pecan pie opinionization anytime after Thanksgiving. The deep freeze is not a bad way to go for the KLP. Just be sure to take it out enough in advance to come to soft ice cream consistancy before serving and you have a winner.

Hi,

A few weeks ago, Leesh was kind to alert us to an article on Lost Pies in the Chicago Tribune.

This wintery weekend was pleasantly slow paced where staying home didn't seem like a bother. Since Sunday was National Pie Day, I celebrated by teaching my niece and her friend how to make Pumpkin Pies. After the girls left with their prizes, I settled down to make something interesting for me. I looked up the Tribune article and decided to make two of the antique pie recipes: Marlborough and Floral Flavored Pies. Both are custard pies whose filling looked roughly the same, but baked up to look quite different.

Marlborough Pie:


Floral Flavored Pie:


The Marlborough Pie included apple sauce and the Floral Flavored pie had orange and rose waters for flavoring; allowing both pies to release wonderful scents as they were baking.

The Floral Flavored pie had an unexpected ingrediant: 1/2 cup of fresh bread crumbs. When I read this recipe, I really didn't understand the function of the bread crumbs. Only after baking did I realize the bread crumbs mixed into the filling rose to the surface and browned during baking.

The Floral Flavored pie did not taste like soap as I was personally predicting. Neither rose nor orange dominated, rather they blended very pleasantly together for a taste and odor I do not regularly encounter. The Marlborough pie for all the applesauce in it, tasted more lemony than of apples. I wasn't really overwhelmed. However, the Floral Flavored I would be inclined to make again.

I will endeavor to make the third 'lost pie' Almond with Raspberry Jam sometime later this week.

Regards,

Beautiful job, Cathy! Pies, prose and pics!

Nice pies! I made the Cranberry Chess pie from the Willliams Sonoma Pies and Tarts book at Christmas. It was an excellent variation.

HI!

Apple - thank you for the compliments, I really do appreciate it.

Marmish - Chess Pie has so many variations, I have found it kind of challenging to identify THE Chess Pie from which all the variations are derived from. I have a Cranberry pie recipe where you cook the filling before putting it into a partially baked shelled and baked for 30 minutes. It has apples, walnuts, raisins and cranberries. I have some cranberries frozen just for this pie. I will check out the Williams and Sonoma variation as well, because you can never have enough pie!

I canned at least 30 pints of cranberry sauce to keep my family happy.

Regards,

It’s been a while since I updated this thread on pies. Whenever you think you know something well, a new challenge is offered. A few weeks ago, poster and moderator Bruce gave me some leaf lard to experiment with he rendered himself. Leaf lard is a fine, silky fat, which wraps around the kidney of a pig and highly prized for making pastries. I was unaware of it until Erik M pointed out the leaf lard article in Saveur followed shortly by Mike G actually locating leaf lard and making pies from Saveur’s recipe. I might have gravitated quickly to this idea except the mention there was a porky taste to the crust.

I guess I am someone who doesn’t expect much taste from crust except maybe a bit sweet or somewhat neutral. Since I am usually a Crisco girl and will occasionally make an all-butter pastry, I am tolerant of neutral to buttery but nowhere does porky enter my pastry vocabulary. Earlier this year, I did make a crust for Cornish Pasties using beef lard, which came out very well. I couldn’t taste the crust’s beefiness, then again the filling was a savory beef, potato and turnip mixture where a hint of beef fat in the crust may be considered complimentary. Forgive me my somewhat narrow mindedness on this topic, I just don’t usually associate a porky taste as complimentary to a peach pie filling. Well, I have been to a pie culture re-education camp and have a new attitude on leaf lard pork fat for making pastry.

I had an occasion this weekend where I promised to make pies using leaf lard. Since I would need to make several batches of dough, I decided to vary the pie dough recipes: 1) I used the original leaf lard and butter piecrust MikeG used to initiate this thread, which made enough pastry dough to make three single-crusts, 2) My regular Crisco piecrust, which makes two single-crusts or one double crust, and 3) An all leaf lard crust made in the same proportions as the Crisco pie crust. The Crisco crust was in the plan to act as a reference point for me and to use on the more subtly flavored pies where pork may be a distraction. The all leaf lard crust I decided would be suitable for the strongest flavored pies like strawberry rhubarb and Mike’s butter-leaf lard crust for those in between. Those were my ideas until I actually made the dough and tasted them raw.

The pie in the center is Apple Crumb Pie. Clockwise starting from the strawberry rhubarb, there is Buttermilk or Chess Pie, Floral Flavored Pie, Pecan Pie and Peach Pie.


I made Mike’s butter-leaf lard according to the original recipe first since it needed chilling due to the butter. Unlike the other two crusts, this one did have sugar, which I think diverts the mind further from the underlying pork flavor, which is there somewhere. I then decided to use this crust for the Floral Flavored and Apple pies. I knew the apples had a strong and yet familiar flavor profile; where an off taste might be detected. The gamble or real test was on the Floral Flavored pie, which is custard delicately flavored with rose water, orange water and orange rind. If there was a filling, which could be dominated by any porkiness, this was it. There was another special quality to Mike’s crust, it also contain a small quantity of baking power, which gave it a puffier quality.

I made two batches of the all leaf lard piecrust, which I used for peach, pecan and buttermilk pies. Ironically, to me anyway, I ended up using the Crisco crust for the strawberry-rhubarb. In this case, it was a matter of timing and oven capacity that drove this selection process. I had two pies to finish, one needing a 400-degree kick-off and the other a steady 350-degrees, plus a third pie in mid-cook at 350-degrees. Since rhubarb was compatible to the 350-degree scenario and the pork crust needed a little more time chilling, the strawberry rhubarb got the Crisco nod.

Unless I am mistaken, nobody commented on any porky after tastes on any of the pies. If they didn’t notice, I did make a point to ask and received no porky taste feedback. In the flaky crust category, the leaf larded crusts seemed flakier than the Crisco. Of course, I am not going to use a social occasion to put the squeeze for a serious side-by-side evaluation, which can always be another day. It was just great on a casual basis when everyone found the pies to their liking. I did leave a 7th pie at home for my family, which was an apple crumb with Mike’s crust. They did notice it was a flakier crust than what I normally make, no comment of pork and it was history by the time I arrived home.

Thanks everyone for your contributions to my working pie knowledge. My porky prejudices are behind me, which is certainly easy enough if the taste is not there.

Best regards,

I'm not a fan of regular pecan pie -- too gloppy and sweet. But I found a great recipe, which everyone really loves. For some reason it doesn't seem as sweet, although I think there's the same amount of sugar in it. It's in David Rosengarten's cookbook, Taste, which calls for toasting the pecans first, then grinding half of them into tiny pieces, and leaving the rest of them rough chopped. No pecan halves. In this pie, the pecans are distributed throughout the filing, so there's no pecan crust floating on top.

It is really very good, and people go crazy for it. It would have won my family reunion's annual pie contest, but I didn't enter it, since I had donated the prize!

If anyone is interested, I'll post the recipe here.

Cathy2 and Mike, your pie experiments are really wonderful! Very inspirational.

Each summer for the past few years, I have made a pie a week or so, rotating through the Evanston Farmer's Market produce as it comes in (strawberries ending right now, blueberries coming in, a few sour pie cherries available now but more expected this week and next).

But I have always cheated and used the Pillsbury pie crusts you can find in the supermarket dairy case by the tube biscuit dough. These pie crusts are reasonable and for our family it seemed that the fruit filling is really the point of the exercise -- even to the point of overstuffing the pies with filling. Yum.

But lately I have really been thinking about what would be involved in making my own crusts. Just to kick the quality up a knotch. You all have really provided a wonderful tutorial!

Cathy2, I made my first buttermilk pie last winter and it was a big hit with the troops here. The recipe has gone into the "How to Use Up a Quart of Buttermilk" file.

Anyway, just had to comment. Wonderful discussion and great pictures! Very inspirational. --Joy

I'm not much for making pastry. But I've been a judge in a number of pie-baking contests, and lard crust was always the winner, hands down.

I suspect that pies using regular packaged lard rather than leaf lard may have some porky flavor. That may be acceptable for empanadas and other savory pies.

The leaf lard I rendered myself, per the Saveur instructions and purchased (in its sliced-off-the-kidney form) at Paulina, did have a noticeable pork flavor. Rendered leaf lard I was given by somebody, from a baking mail order source, did not; neither did the Bruce-rendered/Bob in Georgia lard. Don't know why, but I mention it.

Mike G wrote:The leaf lard I rendered myself, per the Saveur instructions and purchased (in its sliced-off-the-kidney form) at Paulina, did have a noticeable pork flavor. Rendered leaf lard I was given by somebody, from a baking mail order source, did not; neither did the Bruce-rendered/Bob in Georgia lard. Don't know why, but I mention it.

I can guarantee the lard came off the kidney because I took it off. One possibility of a pork flavor is the lard being rendered at too high of a temperature or too long. There is a short window of perfection when rendering, especially with leaf lard.

I did have the opportunity to taste Cathy's pies. Her reports of the crusts are dead on. The crusts were as she describes. Pecan, Peach, and Buttermilk are my favorite pies when having a choice. All three are at or near the top of my list of best pies I've eaten.

Hi!

tcdup: we would be pleased to have another pecan pie recipe, which I hope you will add to the pecan pie thread. If it is Mr. Steingarten's recipe, then note the ingredient list is not copyrighted but the instructions are, so please write them in your own words giving credit to the author.

The pecan pie I made this weekend was my friend Edgar Rose's which is in the pecan pie thread. SteveZ is particularly sensitive to pecan pies and how they should taste. Last summer, I made two pecan pies with the only difference a 1/2 cup of brown sugar. After Steve tasted both, his comments were straight out of a fairy tale: "One pie was too sweet and the other not sweet enough" or something to that effect. The pie I made this weekend had only 1/4 cup of additional brown sugar, which SteveZ pronounced was just right.

Joy - Buttermilk or Chess Pie has the unexpected quality, to me anyway, of tasting like cheesecake. I'm slowly starting to make older recipes to discover for myself what made them old favorites of a bygone era. I've made Molasses Pie, which I admit is an acquired taste and a relic of the triangular trade (slaves, molasses, rum).

I did receive one e-mail today from one taster who said they did sense a slight porky taste though it wasn't unpleasant. In any case, I was certainly impressed by the leaf lard crusts.

Thanks again Bruce for encouraging this learning experience by lending me your home rendered leaf lard.

Regards,

Hi,

Today I had another opportunity to practice being an itinerate judge of pies at Pioneer Days at Elk Grove Village. I was only contacted last week, the last judge selected for a trio of judges. Otherwise I would have asked my friends to join me for another round of judging pies.

In advance of the competition, I sent a link to a score sheet used by 4-H in Nebraska. I also asked them to disguise the names of the contestants though to label each pie by the recipe's name or some description of the fruit used. From the McHenry County contest earlier this summer with Mike G and SteveZ, it was not always clear from tasting what a pie may be.

I arrived just after 2 PM to find eight pies to judge, which was a relief. The organizers estimated they may have 20 pies to be judged and allotted only 30 minutes for the judging. At McHenry County, it took us almost 90 minutes to work through 21 pies with an impatient audience wishing us to speed it up! In 30 minutes, we could comfortably work through eight pies.



By default, I found myself the lead judge simply by experience as well as provider of the score sheets. One judge commented sweetly, "I thought we had to simply taste if we liked it or not. You're really taking this seriously," pointing to the score sheets. I estimate each person spent at least an hour working on their pie, we could at least give their effort a full consideration.

The beauty of the score sheet used, it gave three solid areas to consider: exterior characteristics, interior characteristics and taste. This allowed my fellow judges and I to evaluate each pie individually, then a criteria to rank them and compare afterwards. The first time using this score sheet was in McHenry, where we used a number system for each criteria which was a hassle to deal with after the initial judging. This time with a little more experience I suggested they read the judging criteria for every area then decide: 1) If they met all criteria, then check off excellent; 2) If they met most of the criteria, then check off good; and 3) If they missed these goals by a wide margin and needed improvement, then check off needs improvement. This system was also a lot easier to tally and rank. I took my score sheets and totalled each column, which only one pie had 3:0:0, two pies had 2:1:0 -- so very quickly the best pies rose to the top for a bit of tweaking and negotiating by the judges for the 3rd place pie. Just to keep Monday morning quarterbacking to a minimum, the judges and I each took our score sheets home to disapeer in our recycling bins.

On the edge of our judging territory were two contestants loudly describing to each other which pies were theirs and their special efforts. If anyone truly believes they are offering additional information to sway the judges, they are sadly mistaken. It is also irritating and really counterproductive to inquire loudly if there were ways to bribe the judges. Naturally, we ignored these souls though you could not escape not knowing which pies were theirs. Better contestant behavior is to be confident you did your best, get something to eat, check out the other events and return when the results are scheduled to be announced. If its running late, shrug your shoulders and find something else to do.

As Mike G observed in McHenry, the same could be said for Elk Grove Village: "Overall the good folks ... know their pies." The three pies which placed at Pioneer Days in Elk Grove Village: 1) Apple Pie, 2) Plum Pie and 3) Chocolate Walnut Pie. Since these pies were all open class, unlike McHenry which had apple, cherry and open class, there was no Best of Show.

While at McHenry, the Best of Show pie was whisked off and auctioned. The remaining pies were sent over to the bake sale and sold by the slice. This is really a great idea especially people are curious about how these pies taste. While Pioneer Day pies were destined to be returned to their owners. One Pioneer Day contest brought her pie to the bake sale to be sold by the slice to support Katrina funding.

Overall it was a great experience and I enjoyed a much needed nap when I returned home.

This is a recipe I received from Bruce:

Tennessee Highlands Buttermilk Pie a.k.a. Chess Pie

2 large eggs
1 cup sugar
2 T soft butter
2 T flour
½ t salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 t vanilla
1 T lemon zest, grated.
1 pie shell

Combine eggs and sugar. Add butter melted butter cooled to room temperature, flour, salt, buttermilk, vanilla and grated lemon zest. Stir together and pour into an unbaked pie shell. You can put a couple of dashes of nutmeg on the top if you want. Bake at 400 for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat and bake at 350 for 30 more minutes or until it is firm.

This has a chess pie has a cheesecake type quality to it.

Regards,

2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup Crisco or lard
5 Tablespoons chilled water (I drop some ice cubes in)

I mix the flour and salt together with my pastry cutter. I add the shortening to the flour, then use my pastry cutter to cut the shortening into the flour-salt mixture until it has the consistency of cornmeal. I used to use my food processor for this job but I have found it was just as convenient to do it by hand.

I add 3 tablespoons of water initially and begin to gently stir the water into the flour-salt-shortening mixture until it begins to ball up. I add 1-2 tablespoons more water to until it all pulls together into a ball. I do not overmix to avoid activating the gluten. We are making pie crust, not bread, not cake, it needs a very light touch.

HI,

I got a phone call from a friend the other day. She had used my pie crust recipe and found it was flaky and dry despite 5 tablespoons of water. I told her to add more water if it doesn't feel right.

A day later, I found myself making an apple pie to fulfill a silent auction donation. I also ran into problems of a dry dough. I believe I added maybe 2 tablespoons additional water or a total of 7 tablespoons.

I called up my friend to advise I had run into the same problem. We decided the dry air in our homes had affected the flour's moisture content. Please keep this in mind when making a pie crust in winter. I would advise against automatically adding additional water but to rely on your feel of the dough. I liken it to the cool feel of play dough, if that helps.

Regards,

First pie of the season:



Rhubarb from Green City Market, strawberries the commercial kind alas, and leaf lard and butter in the crust.

Update: this was served with vanilla custard from Scooter's and I just have to say, it may not seem like anything could improve on one of the greatest inventions in human history, ice cream, but custard does it. The creamy richness of Scooter's vanilla makes so many vanilla ice creams seem bland, one-dimensional, even (what else?) plain-vanilla. A scoop of Scooter's on the side really made the pie stand up and sing.

Do you guys know that great song on Patty Griffin's album 1000 Kisses, "Making Pies'?

It's like the theme music to this thread....


s

Mike G wrote:...strawberries the commercial kind alas...

Strawberry-rhubarb is so much its own flavor that I think people tend to neglect a bit rhubarb on its own. At least, this was my theory a couple weeks ago when I picked up a few huge stalks of rhubarb from Henry's at the Evanston market. And later that evening, I turned out a pretty terrific rhubarb crisp, not missing the strawberries a bit. No Scooter's though, which would have undoubtedly been a better complement than Breyer's.

Aaron Deacon wrote:

Mike G wrote:...strawberries the commercial kind alas...

Strawberry-rhubarb is so much its own flavor that I think people tend to neglect a bit rhubarb on its own. At least, this was my theory a couple weeks ago when I picked up a few huge stalks of rhubarb from Henry's at the Evanston market. And later that evening, I turned out a pretty terrific rhubarb crisp, not missing the strawberries a bit.

You know, Aaron I was thinking the same thing last week with the rhubarb that I bought at the Federal Plaza market. Unfortunately, my crisp was far from "pretty terrific". I overcooked it to the point of "rhubarb pudding"

Best,
Michael

I just gotta say, if you've been tempted to make a pie...

now would be an awfully good time to make a blueberry pie.

Made one for the family tonight, using two pints of Michigan blueberries I bought at Green City yesterday. Just blueberry, sugar and starch in a leaf lard lattice crust, couldn't be simpler, but those blueberries were sooooo good, the pie was just bursting with sweet-tart blueberry flavor. I may have to get some more next week and do it all over again.

This topic seems to have been dormant for all too long, especially with all of the discussions of late on where to purchase pies. I have been on a bit of a pie-making kick lately and I think that a homemade pie beats a purchased pie every day of the week -- the pride of having built an attractive crust and the wonderful aroma in the kitchen.

Apple pies: I took a big risk by baking a couple of double-crust apple pies over the weekend for Labor Day bbqs, but my explanation to family and friends that it's just not time for apple pie didn't seem to fly -- "they sell them at every store" I was told. Oh well.

I wasn't too thrilled with the Cortland's I found at the Daley Plaza farmer's market Thursday, so I decided to wait and look around. Sadly, I ended up with quite average Granny Smiths from New Zealand purchased at Whole Foods. I knew better but I was desperate. When I bit into one, it lacked that zing that a good Granny Smith has. The pies ended up tasting good, but I knew they lacked the flavor that good tart apples import -- i.e. the apples that we should start seeing in the next few weeks. Stay away from these apples at Whole Foods unless you are desperate like I was.

Peach pies: Today, I baked a couple of double crust peach pies with yellow peaches a friend just brought me from Michigan -- ten pounds of peaches to be exact! The peaches were fantastic and the pies delicious. Peach is always one of my favorites . . . blueberry makes a nice addition, but today only peaches.

Butter vs. leaf lard: I also experimented with different crusts: for the apple pies, my usual, all butter (I used Plugra). For the peach pies, in one of the pies I used 75% butter, 25% leaf lard that a friend of mine rendered and gifted to me, and for the other peach pie, 100% leaf lard. This was the first time I ever used leaf lard.

My thoughts: I now understand the attraction to leaf lard. First, it is far superior to the lards you would typically find in that the flavor is much less "meaty" and did not import any strange flavors (which I often find with store-purchased lard. Nonetheless, for the 100% leaf lard pie, I thought the flavor was a bit too strong for the peach filling. But no question, the leaf lard resulted in a flakier crust and it also held its shape much better. The 25% leaf lard produced a nice, flaky crust, but I must say that the 100% Plugra butter crust resulted in a pretty flaky and better flavored crust. I absolutely love the flavor of the all butter crust and I think I will keep using it.

I certainly understand the love of leaf lard though -- the one with 100% leaf lard was by far the flakiest crust I have ever made. I will definitely try leaf lard again, but the next time I will limit the use to savory tarts (I love making Alsatian onion tarts and a there's a shiitake-goat cheese tart which I found by searching Epicurious).

But make no mistake, you can get a pretty flaky crust with the higher fat European butters. Make sure the ingredients are ice cold, work quickly cutting in the butter, work quickly rolling and refrigerating as necessary and the effort will pay off.

Soon, I hope to have a new camera so I can actually show how the different pies turned out.

Hi,

My ESP indicates you did yourself proud!

Regards,

As far as the leaf lard goes, it makes a huge difference using naturally-raised pork. That first batch I made, from commercial pork, stank up my house and I had to kind of ignore the flavor in pies. But recently I rendered some natural pork fat from the same folks I get my bacon pork bellies from and it didn't make the house smell like a taqueria and it doesn't give the fruit pies a porky flavor.

Mike G wrote:As far as the leaf lard goes, it makes a huge difference using naturally-raised pork. That first batch I made, from commercial pork, stank up my house and I had to kind of ignore the flavor in pies. But recently I rendered some natural pork fat from the same folks I get my bacon pork bellies from and it didn't make the house smell like a taqueria and it doesn't give the fruit pies a porky flavor.

My friend who rendered it is from Pennsylvania and told me that he purchased it from a farm on his way back to Chicago (although I think he might have picked it up in Ohio) and I don't know how this farm's leaf lard compares to others'. The "porky" flavor it imported was pretty mild I thought, but still noticeable (and only in the 100% leaf lard pie) . . . better IMO for a savory pie. I'm very happy I tried it though as so many swear by it and I see why.

I recently came across this description of an old-fashioned farmstead method of rendering suet and lard for baking....

Edith M. Thomas in "Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled During Her Visit Among the 'Pennsylvania Germans,'" 1915, wrote:Mary laughingly told the Professor's wife (when speaking of pies) of the brilliant remark she made about lard, on first coming to the farm. Her Aunt Sarah, when baking pies one day, said to her, "Look, Mary, see this can of snowy lard, rendered from pork, obtained from our fat pigs last winter!"

"Why, Aunt Sarah!" exclaimed Mary, "is lard made from pork fat? I always thought lard was made from milk and butter was made from cream."

* * *

Aunt Sarah frequently used a mixture of butter and lard when baking on account of its being more economical, and for the reason that a lesser quantity of lard may be used; the shortening qualities being greater than that of butter. The taste of lard was never detected in her bread or cakes, they being noted for their excellence, as the lard she used was home-rendered, almost as sweet as dairy butter, free from taste or odor of pork.

* * *

The suet cut in small pieces was put in a large boiler of water, boiled until all was melted, and the fat extracted from the suet. It was then all poured through a fine sieve into a vessel containing hot water (the larger the quantity of hot water the finer the fat will be). Stand aside to become cold and solid. The boiling process prevents the peculiar taste which fried lard and suet usually possess. Treat the pork fat in a similar manner. Allow the suet and pork fat to stand until the following morning, when remove the solid fat from the boiler of water, wipe off all moisture....

This might be the key to eliminating porkiness from leaf lard. I'd think it would at least cut down on the household odor. Of course, you also need to be sure you have actual leaf lard (the pure fat from around the kidneys) and not just any old pork fat.

That's actually not very different from what I've done both times-- although the water is also used because it keeps the fat from burning or smoking as it renders. Cooling it in water is also supposed to separate out the last particles of dark matter though I found that only partly effective.