This is how you make a pie

First Step: Preheat the oven.

On the day I scheduled to make a pear pie with my friend Casey, Chris decided to pack up the kitchen. Now, Elise and I hadn't lived on our own before the three of us moved in together, and since it didn't make sense for us to get three sets of everything, all the kitchen equipment came from Chris. So when he packed, we were left with no skillet, no spatulas, no saucepans, etc. Gloria Wood's "Hey, Bellboy!" rose to a frenzied crescendo of shriek-like singing while I scrubbed the stove top and he packed away our only mixing bowl. Gloria's needling insinuations were perfectly irritating as he rendered the next five weeks just a bit more difficult for all of us.

Second Step: Mix together the filling.

Casey came over with his own Mary Poppins bag of necessities. He brought all the ingredients and a few of the supplies. Best of all, he brought pears from his family's virile tree in Indiana. His father cans the pears himself, tons of them, Casey says, and they still have bags of fresh pears to give away. We had two beautiful mason jars to work with. Casey has his Polish grandmother's recipe by heart, and has been making this pie since he was a child. There aren't many ingredients, it's a simple, delicious family recipe. He did it almost by feel, which made me apprehensive since all I've known about baking so far is that you have to be very precise. Draining the pears with our hands and the lids of the jars, since the colanders were packed, we then improvised with different soup bowls in order to mix together the pears with sugar and cinnamon.

Third Step: Make the crust.

The dough had sifted flour, milk, and lots of oil. My favorite part of making the pie was shaking the oil and milk together using the rinsed-out pear jar. While I crumbled the dough together between my fingers, Casey urged me to add more oil, which I did hesitatingly, cautiously, making him laugh as he urged me on. I formed the oily dough into a firm ball with no crumbs. We broke it in two and he smashed half of it down onto a sheet of waxed paper, and placed another sheet over the dough patty before I rolled it out. Casey is playful when giving directions, and I can imagine him at the head of his classroom, with the little kids listening to him. They must like him: He talks to you like he believes you can do wonderful things.

Our pie dishes are identical, and they are both slightly larger than what any recipe calls for. The dough, though rolled out paper-thin, didn't quite make it to the top, so we patched it together as best we could. It was cracked and patchy, but we figured it would do.

Fourth Step: Pour the mixture into the crust and cover with a top crust. Bake for forty-five minutes, or until golden-brown.

As we had rolled out the dough, the sugar had started breaking down the pears, and there was more liquid in the mixture. We poured that into the crust and covered it with a top crust. At that point, Kyle rang the bell. I love being around Kyle (who steals the show in a great production you must see!). He's always making me laugh, befriending servers, and telling stories. Kyle cracked jokes while Casey and I padded down the top crust with milk and sprinkled it with sugar. We put the pie in the oven, set the timer for forty-five minutes, and we went out to get Cokes and ice cream.

When we came back, the pie still had twenty minutes to go. We made rum-and-coke floats and had just a deliriously good time waiting for the pie to finish. I told them about the kitchen stuff being packed away, and Kyle looked me up and down with pursed lips and said, "Gurl, it seems you've been busy relying on other people when you should've been believing in yourself."

Fifth Step: When it comes out, sprinkle with sugar and serve with vanilla ice cream!

This is Kyle all over

They showed me the proper way to cut a pie--not into quarters right away, because you don't want to expose the sides to air. The pie was delicious, but Casey and Kyle agreed it should have more sugar. I had misunderstood Casey when measuring out the sugar, and added too little, but I liked it just the way it was. The crust was flaky and the pears were perfect. We ate quickly and jumped into a cab to go to a cabaret show in Wicker Park. The show was in the back of Davenport's (which is the perfect name for a bulldog!) and the audience was made up of intoxicated performers. The singer had a beautiful tenor voice and a very straight collection of songs--Maroon 5, JT, and Allen Stone. It was called "Mixtapes for an Ex-Girlfriend," and whenever he almost made you feel something, he made a joke about it. Like how my grandmother hugged us--she embraced you with one arm, but then put an iron hand against your chest to prevent you from getting too close.

As you can imagine, some of the songs were angry, some were bewildered and broken-hearted, but then he ended with Jason Mraz's "You and I Both." I hadn't heard that song since sophomore year of college. The words came back to me as he sang, but fresh and new. It's a song about splitting up, but it's full of tenderness and forgiveness, and was a lovely ending to the show. It's a pop song, so it's made to manipulate emotion, I know that, but maybe because of all the drinks I'd had...I closed my eyes and they burned and there was Vanessa. There was Andie, and also Elaine. And then Wil and Eric and Dan and Paget and...this procession of people who I loved so much for such a brief time, before we plummeted away from each other into our different narratives.

So this is how you make a pie: You take something you have and something he has, you make it into something new and better, and then you share it with whoever is around you. If you can afford it, you have a couple drinks and a scoop of ice cream. Your friends will go their way eventually, but you'll have that evening to talk about when you run into them again, whenever that may be.

Nesselrode Pie

I had a late start to my baking today, and I forgot to take the pie dough out of the freezer last night, so I had to scramble to see what I could do today. I have no proper cake tins (and I still feel burned by my last attempt), so that narrowed it down to pie, but it had to be one with an unbaked crumb crust. There were only a few of those, and many of them you had to do at least a day ahead of time.

Which is how I ended up making a Nesselrode pie. I think it is an awesome name. It calls to mind Nessarose, the evangelistic witch of the east in Gregory Maguire's Wicked. Apparently, it is a pie that is named after a Russian count (pictured above), and has been out of fashion for decades (unlike his hairstyle, unfortunately). But for those who know of it, it is thought of fondly as a delicious, quintessential New York dessert.

Here are just three of the ingredients: unflavored gelatin, four eggs, and dried fruit. Make a pie out of that in your mind. Sounds kinda gross, right? I figured I could buy all of those things at the corner convenience store, but no. You can't get it at the health food store, either, but I guessed that.

I didn't mind walking to the grocery store because it's a beautiful day. There were lots of flowers blooming in the Andersonville yards today. The gheys had their deep vees on, showing off their tacky chest tattoos ("Born this Way!"). Monday it snowed, and the sadistic band at Kopi played Christmas music. "Jingle Bells" in spring is just depressing.

Once at the grocery store, I was lost. I had no idea where to find anything I was looking for. Mixed candied fruit = fruit cocktail??? Thank goodness my mom picked up when I called! Saved the pie from a watery fate. I had to ask an associate to help me find something, and he was gone for almost ten minutes (or maybe five, standing still in a grocery store stretches out time) while I stood in place, peering down aisles, wondering where they kept the unflavored gelatin. When he came back, he told me what I wanted was seasonal. Was Nesselrode pie a holiday dessert? I wondered.

It isn't.

The real pleasure to this pie is that it calls for rum. I splurged and bought two beautiful glass bottles of Coca-Cola.

my pussy tastes his pepsi-cola

I poured myself a cool, tall rum-'n'-Coca-Cola and made my pie.

Songs for the day:

"You Are My Sunshine" - Johnny Cash

"Cola" - Lana Del Rey

"Rum 'n' Coca Cola" - Tim Tim mix

Each song led me onto others of the same, so I ended up listening to a lot of religious Johnny Cash. I was getting into it, thinking of my Grandma Ginny, and then Noreen (Strega Nona) decided she'd had enough and walked across the keyboard, shutting the music off.

One night Elise and I were sitting in the living room. Chris was asleep, or so she said, but then there was music playing. "Shouldn't you turn your music down?" Elise asked. "I don't have music on," I said. When I walked by my room, however, the Puppini Sisters were blaring from behind my door. I walked in to see Strega Nona-Noreen crouched on the keyboard.

She's becoming a real bad-ass cat. Today I saw her chase Twinkle Toes out the room. He is considerably larger and younger than she is. When she gets on the kitchen table, I try to sweep her off like I do with the other cats, but she sits like a gargoyle.

what are you gonna do about it, son?

The pie is now chilling in the fridge (just chillin'). I had to add the rum and lemon after the fact, because I forgot it. I think it will be fine.

The next step, right before serving, is spreading whipped cream and adding candied pineapple. I will take a picture of it and post it later. Now I have to get ready to go to a birthday party.

4/27/2014:
Here is the picture of the pie:

It was lovely, and really not too bad. But I only ate two pieces and ended up throwing most of it away at the end of the week. I just couldn't get my stomach excited about custard dry-fruit pie. 

With a little help from a friend

Today I found myself the lucky receiver of industry tips when my friend the pastry chef came by to help me make an apple pie. He took pity on me when he saw the picture of last week's work. "Kinda looks like a pile of potatoes," someone said.

If I wrote this blog for unequivocal support I would be a fool. 

When he arrived, he had bags of equipment. "I didn't know how much you would have," he said. "Well, I have pots and pans," I thought, but realized it was probably better that he brought extra supplies, considering my track record. I thought I was prepared, putting out a mixing bowl and a grater we didn't even use. A grater?! Like Mary Poppins and her carpetbag, he pulled out knives, a rolling pin with no handles, and a slick mat from France that is pretty much magic. We started by rolling out dough that he had prepared the night before. 

this mat refuses to let anything stick to it, also, it wears a beret

I learned that dough should be cold and rested, and is much more difficult to work with if not. His dough was a thick disk, and totally unlike mine. 

He rolled one out like the professional he is, then told me to do one. I could barely get it to move, it was so heavy and cold. "Don't be afraid of the dough," he said. When I started getting the hang of it, my dough was uneven and breaking into pieces, like my mind. I think it was then he truly realized what he was up against (this was about fifteen minutes into the two and a half hours we spent baking). "So just, um, try and even it out here...ok, just give me that, no, let go, give that to me..."

"Well, what should I be doing?"

"Make the cherry pie filling," he said. 

"Ok, and you flute the edges," I said, as if it were an even trade-off. And flute the edges he did, easily, and looking disconcertingly like that picture I posted last week. I took a video of him pinching the crust, but the best part of it was that you can hear "MacArthur Park" in the background. 

We had two crusts, so we made two pies. The "good one" was the apple, which was the more difficult of the two. The cherry pie filling (which I was in charge of!) involved opening a can of cherry filling and mixing in cinnamon, vanilla, and salt. I made it a lot more difficult than it needed to be a few months ago. Like, I strained the cherry pie filling and then put it back together. WHY?!

While the pie crusts re-cooled in the fridge, we peeled apples and spooned out the cores, keeping them in a big bowl of lemon water. Some of them he cubed, others I sliced into tiny slivers with a knife so sharp you wouldn't feel it cut off your finger. 

We boiled the cubed apples into a delicious-smelling compote with ginger and cinnamon, and he made a gorgeous lattice for the cherry pie. He wove them on a cutting board and we put it in the freezer. 

"The trick is to keep the dough cold. You can't work with warm dough," he said. 

We filled the pie crusts with their respective mixtures, and arranged the apple slices in a layered circle. We transferred the lattice over the pie and he deftly cut away the extra dough and folded over the crust. My goodness, they were beautiful.

And then we put them in the oven and things got hot and fun. By which I mean, I got distracted and went into my bedroom where this picture awaited me:

Gah!

And when I walked back into the kitchen I noticed it was smokey. 

"It's smokey," I observed, to which he said it must be something that had previously dripped in the oven. I put a baking sheet under the pies and then it got RUHL smokey and the fire alarm went off. Turns out I had smoldered the cherry filling that had oozed out when I put the baking sheet over it. I went around the house, throwing open windows and doors and wondering how fast smoke inhalation could kill an elderly cat with cancer. As he cleaned out the hot oven with mitts and two towels, the second fire alarm went off. I couldn't help laughing--of course I couldn't have a peaceful, easy baking experience, even with a professional helping me. 

We aired out the apartment and the rest of the baking went without incident. The pies look beautiful, and the apple pie is amazing! So good. 

I am very lucky! 

Open-Face Apple Pie

I had enough apples left over from last week to make another iteration of an apple pie. The next recipe in Good Housekeeping is an open-face apple pie, so that is what I made today. Also, the friend I invited over for pie has a preference for fruit pies. Or at least, it seems like he would. I'm not actually sure.

I put on the Andrews Sisters (don't sit under the apple tree!) and got to work. An open-face pie is very simple. First, you make the crust, then you fill with your apple mixture, and bake!

Rolling out the pie crust is something I still can't do in one go--the butter always sticks to the table and it falls apart the first time I try to roll it out. This recipe calls for a "fluted edge," which I think involves pinching the crust so it looks wavy. See my example below:

jk, this is from the internet

Oh my! Look at that perfect, even-looking crust (no holes! no chunks of butter!) look at those clean white hands, no flour around the nails. And check out that fluting. Damn, gurl. You can just imagine that person's kitchen, full of sunlight and shiny new appliances, like something out of a Crate and Barrel ad.

By the time I finally got the crust into the pie pan without falling into three pieces, I realized the crust didn't reach all the way up, so I patched it up with extra dough. Now, when your crust is made that way, how do you imagine fluting goes? I tried for a quarter of the way around, and my attempts just ripped off the crust. I do not have the patience for fluting. I dumped the apple mixture into the crust and called it a day.

Eventually I would like to make a crust that isn't so charmingly "rustic." I would like to be able to make a passable decorative edge, frost a cake smoothly with minimal crumbs, and make a pie crust without looking at the recipe (I'm almost there on that one!). I'd also like to have a pie recipe I can do by heart, and elaborate on.

I'm getting to know a man from the Gay Men's Chorus (buy tickets for our upcoming show here!!) who is a pastry chef. He was my go-to when I was making this pie. "Do I really need to drizzle corn syrup like Good Housekeeping says?" I text. "Ew, no," was his response. "All you need is apples, spices, maybe vanilla, and..." but I deleted the text to make room for incoming texts so I don't remember what the last part was. So, no corn syrup, but I added vanilla (which wasn't in my recipe!). How naughty.

My pie! (Also, cat) It looks like a pile of apples in a crust.