Grains for Every Season: The "Damrosch" Buckwheat Crust p 83 and David Lebovitz's Salted Honey Pie p 82
The buckwheat crust is credited in the header notes to Barbara Damrosch who published the recipe in a cookbook she wrote with her husband, Eliot Coleman, The Four Season Farm Gardner's Cookbook. It's just uncooked buckwheat groats pressed into a buttered pie pan and pre-baked to lightly toast them. The recipe says that you can bake the filling directly in the crust without the pre-bake but it adds a toasty flavor and crispness that I think is important so I wouldn't skip it. It does, however, mean the buckwheat groats are rather loosely attached to the plate rather than being stuck in the butter so it would be wise to use caution in handling and pouring in the filling.
As indicated, the filling is from a David Lebovitz recipe and is one he adapted from The Four and Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book. I used buckwheat honey to go along with the crust and the flavor comes through nicely. It gets sprinkled with sea salt before serving which helps temper the sweetness but it's still a very sweet pie so I'm glad I made a 1/3 scale recipe in this 6-inch pie pan - a very small slice is enough for me!
The buckwheat groats have a nice crunch, even on the bottom of the pie. We'll see if that holds up after sitting overnight.
The header notes say that the crust is also good for quiche so I made a small one with mushrooms, dandelion greens and leek, in an even smaller pie dish - a one-egg quiche!
In this one, the buckwheat groats softened to more of the consistency of graham cracker crumbs, except for around the top edge where they stayed crisp. I might try sprinkling a thin layer of finely grated parm over the crust and popping it back into the oven a bit before filling to see if that might help "seal" out the moisture from the custard and add a bit of salt and flavor.
