Apple Pie

In honor of Thanksgiving, I brought home the Recipe Book so as to contribute the Apple Pie to the feast. Thanksgiving is routinely held at my parents' house, which I am all for as my mother does a great job with Thanksgiving. As I have said before, cooking isn't exactly her favorite thing, but Thanksgiving is something she does absolutely right.

I actually came home a couple of days early and Megan came up from New York so we could do some script research. Megan was making conversation and asked my mother what she made for Thanksgiving dinner. 'Everything,' my mother said. 'Anything unusual?' Megan asked. 'Nope, just the traditional stuff,' my mother confidently replied.

Megan: Turkey?
Mom: Yes.
Megan: Green bean casserole?
Mom: No.
Megan: Sweet potatoes?
Mom: No.
Megan: Brussels sprouts?
Mom: No.
Megan: Okay.
Mom: And chopped liver and knishes.
Megan: Of course. But nothing weird.
Mom: No.

Pretty amusing. This was, mind you, while my mother was (graciously) serving us dinner at like 11 PM because we had both caught late flights/buses into town and Megan was discovering the mind-blowing amounts of food that will be put in front of you by a Jewish mother. But that's another story.

In any event, Thanksgiving came and I was ready to take on my mother's Apple Pie recipe in the Recipe Book. She no longer makes pies for Thanksgiving, really--but like all good Jewish mothers she knows where to buy the best ones. So this would be the first home-made one to grace the table in a while.

My mother was pretty excited about it. She went out and bought me all the supplies I could dream of, including my choice of pie pans and a new apron. Mind you, I'm pretty sure she already had the pie pans and ingredients in the house, but she was pretty psyched to buy me new versions of them.

When Thanksgiving morning rolled around, Josh and I headed downstairs for the pie making. This was going to be slightly scary--my mother was thick in the throes of the final Thanksgiving cooking countdown, and she doesn't much like anyone in her kitchen at the best of times, let alone during T-minus 3 hours stress. But we tucked in and went for it.

New apron, Recipe Book, hair looking like a banana head.
It must be pie time.

Josh put the Macy's parade on the kitchen TV and started cutting the apples while I mixed the rest of the ingredients, periodically confiscating an apple part from him to chop it up more quickly/messily. My mother got us a lovely apple slicer/corer, which was a great help. I have one at home and love it (obviously). However, we determined that the old fashioned apple peeler/corer might have been nice, too. The magic of Yankee ingenuity, as Josh says.

Macy's Parade on TV and apples cut by the best helper ever

Anyhow, once the apples were done I did the pastry, which was easy enough. For some reason making your own pastry always blows people's minds, which I don't quite understand because in this Recipe Book process I have made several pastries/doughs/pastry doughs and they have almost always come out fine. Which leads me to believe:

A. I have an innate talent at pastry.
B. Pastries/doughs aren't actually that hard to make.

The oddly busty pastry queen. Those slippers Sara brought me from
Iceland that I'm wearing must be good luck.

I'm going with option B. Anyhow, what more is there to say, really? I rolled out the pastry with my mom's new rolling pin (which I have to note rolls better than mine at home, so I let her give it to me to bring home. Good thing I was checking a bag), dumped the giant pile of apples into it, and then rolled out the top and slapped that on, too.

Okay, maybe I'm a little pleased with myself

The recipe says to cut some slashes or a pattern into the top of the pie, so obviously I put the best possible pattern into the pie. Personally, I'm a sucker for that woven basket pie top look, but A. this recipe doesn't tell me to do that and B. I find it quite daunting, especially for maybe my second ever proper baked pie and first ever apple pie. Nonetheless, I think we can all agree this one obviously has superior qualities:

Just in case you wonder which pie I made

When dessert time rolled around my entire family, God love them, was so excited for this pie. And when I say, 'my entire family,' I mean there were 13 of us there, many of whom were by anyone else's definition extended family. And also let me point out that my mother gets tons of pies. I think there were like 3 or 4 others to choose from, but they - despite looking fancy as all get out - were roundly shunned. There was one slice out of the pumpkin pie and that was it - and you can't blame Paul; if you need pumpkin you need pumpkin, and apple ain't gonna cut it.

Cousin Steven was the first and pronounced the pie 'good.' At which point his son, Justin, announced, 'Oh, because that's a discerning palette.' Justin was obviously just bitter because he evidently wanted me to make his grandmother's (my Aunt Ellen's) Cheese Dreams (that we now know weren't actually her Cheese Dreams, but are are a close enough approximation to have had me fooled), but as he never told me that, and just psychically thought it at me very hard, this did not happen. I told him I'd make him the Cheese Dreams the next time I saw him, and he ate the apple pie and also gave it the thumbs up--with the extra caveat that it rivaled his grandmother's pies, mostly because evidently sometimes hers had some core in them and mine did not (thank you Josh).

Anyhow, the family verdict was a hearty and unified thumbs up. And as a table-full of Jews, I expect someone would have told me if it needed something. Or maybe I'm not giving them enough credit, but in short everyone was really, really enthusiastic about it and I appreciated it a lot. They were all very sweet. Everyone was excited to not only try it, but also to tell me it was good and finish it. Josh got the one serving of seconds that survived dinner and polished it off for breakfast with the, 'I ate the rest of the pie. Hope you didn't want anymore, but it was good.'

As for me, I was pretty impressed with how delightfully apple-pie-y the innards were. It really was tasty. I would consider maybe dotting the top of the pie with some sugar or something to make the top part of the crust have some extra pop, but I'm not exactly sure how to do that. Do you just put on some sugar? Which kind? Do you have to shellac it with egg first? I have no idea.

H marks the spot

Mom's Jew-Approved Thanksgiving Apple Pie

7 medium cooking apples (Cortland), peeled, cored, and thinly sliced (but not too thin); ~ 8 cups
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 tbsp all-purpose flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp grated lemon peel*
1/4 tsp salt (Kosher! which mom was excited to buy for me because she never uses it!)
2 tsp lemon juice*
Flaky Pastry (see below)
1 tbsp butter, margarine or lard

Turn on TV to parade and ask Josh to be in charge of slicing the apples. Help periodically with some apple slicing on the premise that, 'I should have the experience.' Allow Josh to slip in one Fuji apple that we got at the Hollywood farmer's market, which Josh claims is the 'secret ingredient.'

In a large bowl with rubber spatula, lightly toss first eight ingredients, i.e. everything down to the pastry. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, stir 2 cups all-purpose flour and 1 tsp salt. With pastry blender, cut 3/4 cup shortening (i.e., butter [yes], margarine [no], or lard [no]) into flour to resemble coarse crumbs, all the while being pleased you are finally learning to use a pastry blender. You have a pastry blender, but are afraid of it. This is fun.

Sprinkle 5-6 tbsp cold water, a tbsp at a time, into mixture, mixing lightly after each addition until pastry is moist enough to hold together. It's moist enough. It's pretty gross and sticky, if you want to know the truth. Shape pastry into two balls, one slightly larger. Isn't that always the way?

On floured surface with floured rolling pin, roll larger pastry ball into a circle 1/8" thick and 2" larger than a 9" pie plate, or just, you know, roll it out so you'll have enough to to put it on the bottom of the pie plate because who the Hell knows what 1/8" thick looks like and all that crap. Think, 'I wonder how long it is going to take mom to freak out about the flour you have to use to roll this getting all over the place.'

Notice the instructions don't tell you to grease the pan, but after your graham cracker crust pie cutting issues, decide to go rogue and grease it anyhow. Who's it going to hurt?

Line plate with pastry; trim edge (with knife?), leaving 1" overhang, or something thereabouts. Spoon apple mixture into plate, which you realize makes an enormous mound of apples and this is going to be a huge heaping pie. Wonder what would have happened if you'd used a Cortland instead of that last Fuji. Dot with butter or margarine; set aside. Is this what that last tbsp of margarine on the ingredients list was for? Probably.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees, which involves figuring out which of your mother's ovens to use. She sure has a lot of ovens for someone who doesn't like cooking.

Roll remaining pastry. Cut a few slashes or a design in center of pastry. Obviously you know which awesome design goes here.

Place over filling; trim edge, leaving overhang. Fold overhang under, bring up over pie to form a high stand-up edge; flute. Realize you wish you had left more for this mysterious overhang, possibly not trimming it before. Determine that what this means is: squeeze edges together into a fancy little rim around the edge of the pie as best you can. Whatevs.

Bake pie at 425 degrees for 40-50 minutes until crust is golden and apples are tender. Think, 'I don't know how the Hell you find out if they are tender since they are covered in a pie crust, but since they are oozing out the holes and burning me through the oven mitts, I'll take that as a good sign.' Remove to wire rack. Serve warm or cool with ice cream. Makes 8 servings, or more, actually. I'd say we did more than 8 servings out of this thing.

*Mom got the pre-done store kind of lemon peel spice and bottled lemon juice. At home, I would likely juice and grate an actual lemon. Do you care? Probably not.