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.

To the Lighthouse

I set out to visit the Grosse Point lighthouse in Evanston today. Kate went a few days ago with her husband and posted pictures on her blog. Her pictures display a place grand, remote, and shrouded in love. Their smiles cover up their secret, which is whatever it is that makes them so happy to be together and in love.

I was going to bake an apple pie, but I found myself putting on my coat and scarf. I had to go to the lighthouse first.

It takes an hour on public transit to get to the lighthouse. I bought a coffee and brought my book, Milan Kundera's Identity. It is an intelligent, erotic story about a couple as they grow distant and unfamiliar to each other, misunderstanding the other's intentions at nearly every step.

I finished Jane Eyre yesterday. It made me wonder if Charlotte Bronte ever married. At the end, Jane says:

"I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest--blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am; ever more absolutely bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh."

Kundera's protagonist provides a sharp contrast:

"Love as an exaltation of two individuals, love as fidelity, passionate attachment to a single person--no, that doesn't exist. And if it does exist, it is only as self-punishment, willful blindness, escape into a monastery. She tells herself that even if it does exist, love ought not to exist."

On the walk from the el stop to the beach I felt oppressed by the largeness and the beauty of the Evanston homes on either side of me. I felt acutely that I would not end up in a place like that, and it made me depressed. I imagined living out my days in a tiny apartment in a city. I missed my family, and Kentucky.

When I wasn't expecting it, the lighthouse was there in front of me. Once there, I found I didn't care to look at it for long. I walked around and towards the lake, immense, crashing, and beautiful through the twisted black branches of the bare trees. I walked out on the sand and stared at the water. Being on the lake reminded me of my first summer in Chicago. Once, during a terrible storm, I walked out to the edge of a barrier and stood there as the waves crashed around me, reckless, alone, and free. The next day we heard about a Northwestern student who had been swept into the lake and drowned, and I wondered if he had gone out like me, to push his limits, to dare himself.

Standing on the dirty sand, blocks of ice to my left and the blue-gray water before me, I started laughing. I was so happy to be here, alone. I laughed like a crazy person, without real mirth but loving the sensation. I faced the lake and I started singing an old disco song about picking up the pieces and standing up, strong and defiant.

I walked back to the el, not feeling oppressed by the houses anymore. I remembered: My uncle at the lake after his son's graduation; Christopher's story of his baptismal dip in Lake Erie after his last breakup; and my dad and me having lobster bisque at a tavern--he was telling me that life is like water, and sometimes you're up at the crest of a wave and sometimes you're just even, but there are always times when it rises up again.

I went home. The feeling of freedom and elation didn't last once inside, and I made the pie with fury and bitterness. As I rolled out the dough and the butter kept sticking to the rolling pin and I just couldn't get it right, I felt like I was going to have a nervous breakdown. But when I finally got it and was sprinkling the sugar and spice mixture onto the apples, the smell rose up and suddenly I was in my grandmother's house. It was unbidden and I couldn't think where or when the memory was coming from. I imagined her making pies. I imagine to her it was more a matter of routine. Of course, somewhere inside her she did it out of love for her family, but it was because it was just the thing one did. You were a grandmother, you were a woman, so you made pies for your family. No big deal. It wasn't an event for her. It's just a pie.

The pie just came out of the oven, bubbling. It smells sweet and delicious, and I'm going to share it with people I care about.