I
should have gone for the easy recipe. I should
have listened to Ina Garten’s signature quip —
“store bought is fine.” Had I added the adjective,
“beginner,” in the google search bar, my Sunday would
have likely been much less involved.
But I couldn’t seem to help myself. When I opened
my browser, I wasn’t thinking about my technical
ability, or the fact that every time I make mac and
cheese, the pot of water bubbles over.
Perhaps my overconfidence was a consequence of
watching one too many YouTube episodes of Clare
Saffitz’s, “Gourmet Makes.” Saffitz’s candid approach
to reverse engineering Sour Patch Kids or Twinkies
make cooking seem meditative. A sort of “anything
goes” outlook where when you add too much milk to
that bechamel, you just whisk in more cream. Oh, how
naïve I was.
I
t was one of those drizzly September afternoons
described by local weatherman as “scattered
showers.” The type of forecast that offers no
insight whatsoever and subsequently makes you
question the usefulness of anchormen waving their
arms in front of a radar map.
The brisk air had flipped the page to the season of
burning your tongue on hot tea and cringing from the
sensation of slipping on jeans again.
An unexpected urge to bake a pie simmered inside
of me. Once my eyes devoured the golden crackle of
Bon Appetit “Best Apple
Pie,” I knew I could stop my
recipe search. I had found
the pie. All it took was that
cover photo. It was the sort
of pie whose crust looked
like it was kissed by mother
nature.
I wandered downstairs
to recruit a sous-chef … my
mom. I knew her years of
peeling apples for my school
lunchbox would be essential
to my success. It had taken
me so long to peel a golden
delicious apple the night
before, that my dad had
boiled a tea kettle before I
finished.
When my mom nodded
her head and granted me
access to the kitchen, I was
giddy. What could be more
quintessential than a mother
and daughter baking a pie?
It was a moment cut straight
from
the
Mrs.
March’s
kitchen
in
the
“Little
Women” playbook.
A
scan of our pantry
confirmed
my
suspicions
—
we
are not a baking family. No
mason jars clouded with
flour ready for measuring
when an inclination to bake
strikes. It seemed the only
head start I was getting were
the expired sugar crystals at
the bottom of the Domino
tub from last year’s holiday sugar cookies.
A trip to the grocery store was necessary. While
strolling the aisles, I came to realize the complexity
of the recipe I had selected. This should have been
obvious with the first item on the ingredient list —
vanilla bean pods. Not vanilla extract, the actual pods.
A 10-minute scavenger hunt through the produce
section led me to the vanilla bean pods — located
right above shitake mushrooms priced at $6.99 for
two pods. That was the only sign I needed to tell me I
am going to skip the step of scraping the seeds of the
vanilla pod to infuse apple cider.
And then came the next item, cardamom. My fifth-
grade history class interactive activity about the Silk
Road and the spice trade had not prepared for me for
the sticker shock, nearly $11. I was beginning to think
that homemade was not necessarily cheaper in the
realm of baked goods. I decided to pursue my backup
plan and head to the bulk foods aisle where I scooped
a spoonful of spices into a plastic bag and sheepishly
headed to the cashier. I am pretty sure I paid more for
the plastic baggy than the spice itself. It was time to
head back to the kitchen.
W
e decided to divide and conquer — my
mom would make the apple filling and I
would make the pie crust. In all honesty,
this decision was driven more by poor apple-peeling
skills than cooking efficiency. As I began to combine
the butter and flour, it became clear to me why people
buy the neat Pillsbury pie crust instead. I was staring
at a bowl of crumbles; the dough was not dough. It
was a pebbly bowl that, no matter how much I mixed,
refused to form. My mom was humming along, and I
started to worry that we were going to end up making
applesauce instead of pie. No dough meant no pie.
So, I mashed the bits of dough rounds together
and prayed that the carefully timed choreography of
chilling the dough in the fridge, then the freezer, the
room temperature would yield something rollable.
T
he pie took much longer than anticipated. I
credit this to my failure to read through the
recipe before deciding to commit. Vanilla
beans? Cardamon? Three hours of chilling? I guess
this is the life of an apple pie baker.
But, in the whirlwind of expensive ingredients,
pebbled dough and a carefully timed dance of setting,
heating and cooling, a pie came out of the oven. After a
week of exams, there was something satisfying about
spending an entire afternoon doing something that
could be gone in a couple bites.
While I should have probably heeded my mom’s
advice and added that adjective “beginner” to my
recipe search, there is something to be said for going
for the romance of an oozy, delicious, crystallized pie.
Apple crumble just wasn’t going to cut it that rainy
afternoon.
3B
Wednesday, October 23, 2019 // The Statement
3B
BY SHANNON ORS, DEPUTY STATEMENT EDITOR
A story about pie
ILLUSTRATION BY MAGGIE WIEBE