My Reputation Precedes Me

This past weekend, I went out to the midwest to visit some of my extended family (grandparents, aunts, uncles, and some of my cousins). I hadn't seen them in a long while, and my mom has been feeling really homesick, so as a birthday gift to her we flew out crazy early Saturday and returned crazy early today.

Somehow, "we'll help with dinner, Grandpa, since everyone who can is descending on your house the Saturday we arrive" turned into "Ms. Hermit and her intrepid mother with fix dinner for the gang- and Ms. Hermit will make one of her famous pies!" On three hours sleep. And it was two pies, since I had to feed eleven people. (I could go on a rant about why it is that the women do all the cooking, and the blatant sexism I encountered in the midwest, but that's going to have to be it's own entry)

And when did my pies get famous, anyway? The last one in this family to have really amazing baked goods was my great-grandmother Atha (yes, that's her real name), who won all kinds of county fair ribbons back in the day. I was maybe ten or twelve when she passed on, and I remember her pies and cookies. How can I live up to that?

But somehow, my pies, and especially my pie crusts, have become reknowned in my family. I'll admit, pie crust takes a certain amount of finesse, but it's deceptively easy. Here, I'll write it out. This makes two crusts, by the way.

You need:
2 cups flour
10 tablespoons cold shortening or butter (or a mix of both)
a pinch of salt (like 1/4 t or less)
between 2 and 5 tablespoons ice cold water

Put the flour in a big mixing bowl. Bigger than you think you need. Add half the shortening, and either use a pastry tool to incorporate to the stage of looking like cornmeal, or two knives (the two knives method: hold a butter knife in each hand. Start with your fists together, then pull them apart. Continue to run them through the flour and shortening so that the sides of the blades touch or almost touch as they pass each other for what will feel like a very long time. Consider it your upper arm workout for the day.)

Add the other half of the shortening, and incorporate "until it looks like little peas." Or that's what the recipe I use says. I can usually get most of it down to the size of dried lentils. What you're doing is trying to get the smallest unmelted little globs of fat possible coated in flour.

Now add the water, one tablespoon at a time, to bind it together. It should still look grainy. But when you pick up some of it and squeeze it together in your fist, it should mostly hold its shape.

Wrap it in a ball in wax paper if you will use it right away and stick it in the fridge or freezer (freezer for what I call "mix and dump" pies like pumpkin and pecan, fridge for things like apple where you have some chopping and peeling to do for the filling). Wrap your wax paper ball in lots of plastic wrap if you're going to freeze it for later (if it gets frostbite, it's gone bad).

Honestly, you can put just about anything in a pie, and fillings are surprisingly flexible. The ones where I went "oh no, I fucked up" are inevitably everyone's favorite (who knew people would like an apple pie that was over-flavored to the point of tasting like a spice cake? Or a cherry where I added so much cornstarch that it didn't run at all?)

Warning! This pie dough will not easily stand up to things like making a lattice. You can do it, but be prepared for lots of breaking and patching. but lattices are really too much work anyway. you want pretty, I recommend just cutting some diamonds out of the top crust in an artistic sort of way or something.

next entry: rolling pie dough and a couple of filling ideas. With photos, I promise!

P.S. the funniest part? I got my pie dough recipe out of a cookbook that I promise you every single member of my family already owns.

Blog-keeping Note

I've been flitting about the internet, reading other food blogs. It is typical of me to jump into doing something before actually doing the research into the thing first. I have a talent for getting myself in over my head. So I've made some decisions regarding this blog:

1. I need to start taking photos as I cook. This means I need to get batteries for my digital camera.

2. I will continue to ramble on in the process of sharing recipes, and will actually try to censor those ramblings less. I've been thinking about the things that had early influence on my love of food, and the thing is, my love of food and my love of stories are intertwined. There are recipes that can only be shared with the story that goes with them. And there are stories that require food. And blogs that don't do both wind up boring me. So I'm not your food-porn site. Suck it. Do not get off on my descriptions. Make the food, eat it, and feel peace with the world.

3. At some point I need to talk about the preponderance of female food-bloggers and how they go about claiming, adapting, or refuting the domesticity assumed in preparing food. In fact, that may become a running theme here.

4. I need to actually post. At least once a week.

Considering it's February, I'm a solid month behind on making these resolutions. Forget Douglas Adams and the whooshing sound deadlines make as they go flying by, I'm not even on schedule when it comes to creating the job.