This week's pie began as last week's ended. As the blueberry nectarine ginger pie was being eaten, an enormous crop of lemons was being harvested from our families beautiful, thorny tree. I returned home from Sacramento with 16 lemons and a Southern Pies Cookbook in my mailbox. The cherry tree at work was also being very productive, so I went into a weekend of pie making with...a lot of fruit and a knot of curiosity around my new cookbook's recipe for "Shaker Lemon Pie." The recipe demanded the entire lemon be used. It seemed like the perfect way to exhaust some of my lemon stash (it has just now been depleted, in an Italian almond strawberry cake). Happily, Tess and Fiona were willing to help me with the weekend's multiple pie production. We decided to make one pure lemon pie and one cherry lemon pie. The cherry pie crust was made with self-rising flour and thus was PUFFY but in a fun, endearing way. A great thing about making pies all the time is that you never have to show up to events empty-handed. The shaker lemon pie was exactly as intriguing in flavor as it was in concept and recipe. Shaker Lemon Pie
Adapted from the Southern Pies Cookbook Yield: 1 Pie | Total Time: 1 day + 15 minutes prep Ingredients 2 lemons, sliced paper thin (rind and all) 2 cups granulated sugar 4 large eggs Directions Preheat oven to 400°. Combine lemon slices and sugar in a shallow bowl; let stand until lemon slices are juicy, 4 hours or overnight. Line a 9-inch pie plate with your piecrust. Stir eggs into lemon mixture and pour into shell. Cover with top crust, crimp, and cut steam vents. Bake at 400°F for 15 minutes. Without removing pie from oven, reduce temperature to 350°F. Bake until a knife inserted in center comes out clean, about 25 minutes. Serve warm!
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I knew, when I began to work last week, that the first pie of the project was only going to be a starting point. I wanted to begin with a crust recipe, a cook time, a corn starch amount, and then spend the rest of the project perfecting those numbers. But I also knew that I wanted the first pie to be delicious. After graduating and saying goodbye to my life at Brown and a year of popsicles, my family took a trip to Maine. I had never been to Maine, and, save a children’s book I had loved as a child and a hazy vision of rocky coasts and the possibility of moose spotting (thanks for asking - no, we did not see a moose), I didn’t have a firm idea of what to expect from the state. In response to this lack of knowledge, I consumed a fair amount of Maine food content in the weeks preceding the trip. I set out in our rental car expecting a week of eating fiddleheads, oysters, and lobster (the one lobster roll we had was...exquisite and not to be repeated). What I didn’t expect was the culturally-crushing devotion of the people of Maine to the not-even-in-season blueberry. I shouldn’t have been surprised. In the weeks following my sister’s graduation we explored Vermont and were offered a maple creme brulee on every single dessert menu, regardless of the type of restaurant we were at. On that same trip, in a weak, emotional, and decidedly delicious moment I, and I will not apologize for this, downed an entire bottle of whiskey-barreled Vermont maple syrup that the hotel had left on our pillows (The bottle wasn’t that big. The size was to a typical bottle of maple syrup what a hotel shampoo is to a typical bottle of pantene). My surprise was also foolish because the one concrete representation of Maine that I had previously been given - the afore-mentioned book from my childhood -Blueberries For Sal-’s entire narrative structure revolves around a mother and daughter and a bear mama and cub going blueberry picking. Finally, I shouldn’t have been surprised by Maine’s devotion to blueberries because if I learned one thing in four years of living on the east coast it is that the people there live life with food-opinion-conviction that the soft, loose people of California rarely smack themselves to. Whether it was being gently forced to eat a New York bagel a few weeks into freshman fall by a recently returned-from-the-city Anna, or hearing a furious late night explanation of why Tom Brady's diet is not strange from Griffin, or receiving an excited email from Katie demanding that I make Vermont maple syrup popsicles for the project (Sorry, Katie), my time at Brown taught me that east-coasters are devoted to their regional foods. Maine and blueberries were no exception. I was an immediate and eager participant to this blueberry-craze (much like my allegiance to the fine maple syrup of Whistle Pig Farm). We had blueberry soft serve, blueberry soda, blueberry kombucha, and blueberry donuts. I returned home with a fire in my heart for the blueberry. This is how this week’s pie began. I chose to use bon appetit’s blueberry ginger pie as a starting recipe. I swapped out some of the blueberries for white nectarines, as a recent Times food email suggesting a blueberry nectarine galette had caught my attention. Due to this addition, I switched the lime in the recipe with lemon. I used the Williams Sonoma baking book’s pie crust as my beginning and immediately knew that it Needed More Salt. Besides needing more salt, other notes I would give would be letting it thicken for the full four hours. I made the pie a day in advance and brought it to our families house in Sacramento, where it was quickly and rightly overshadowed by my aunt's sticky rice and mango dessert but enjoyed nonetheless. We will be ranking vanilla ice cream brand's this summer, so stay tuned for more opinions on that soon. Blueberry Nectarine Ginger Pie
Adapted from Bon Appétit Yield: 1 Pie | Prep Time: 30 minutes | Total Time: 2 hours + 4 hours rest Ingredients 1¼ cups granulated sugar ¼ cup cornstarch 1 tablespoon finely grated lemon zest 1 tablespoon finely grated peeled ginger Pinch of kosher salt 4 cups fresh blueberries 2 cups chopped white nectarine ¼ cup fresh lemon juice 1 large egg 2 tablespoons demerara sugar Vanilla ice cream Directions Preheat oven to 350°. Chill two rounds of crust - one in the pie dish and one separate - while you prepare the filling. Combine granulated sugar, cornstarch, lemon zest, ginger, and salt in a large bowl, rubbing together with your fingertips to release oils in zest and evenly distribute ingredients. Add blueberries, nectarines and lemon juice and toss to coat. Scrape blueberry filling along with any accumulated juices in bowl into pie crust. Place second round of crust over filling. Working your way around the circumference, press edges of dough together to seal. Crimp with a fork. Trim excess dough with kitchen shears so there is no overhang. Cut several about 3"-long slits into top of pie, avoiding edge. Beat egg with 1 tsp. water in a small bowl just to blend. Brush dough with egg wash; sprinkle with demerara sugar. Place pie pan on a foil-lined rimmed baking sheet (juices may bubble over—this is what the foil is for). Bake until crust is deep golden brown on top and bottom and juices are bubbling, about 1 ½ hours. Transfer pie to a wire rack and let sit at least 4 hours before slicing. |