At Thanksgiving, I am the bringer of pies.
I baked my first pie when I was a sophomore in high school. It was a peach pie with a homemade crust. My dad raved about it, said it was the best peach pie he had ever tasted. 'Course, everything he ate was the best thing he'd ever tasted. He was never frugal with the compliments when it came to good cooking.
I've been the pie maker in the family ever since.
The trick to good homemade pies? Two things: get a good crust recipe and purchase a pastry cutter. I swear by my recipe--have a relationship with it, even. There's just something wonderfully tactile and satisfying about making a good bit of pie dough.
Such a basic endeavor, and as old as the hills.
In fact, I've made so many pies I've got the recipe memorized: 3 cups of flour, 1 1/2 cups of shortening (I recommend Crisco shortening sticks because they cut down so much on the mess), and 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt. Using my pastry cutter, I cut in the shortening until the pie dough comes off it in ribbons. This takes a bit of effort, but I enjoy watching the mixture morph from separate, measured ingredients, to a texture that holds together enough that it can encase something as delicious as spiced apples or as fragile as pumpkin cream. It is rhythmic, it gets my blood flowing, and in each cut I feel connected to the bakers and farm wives and grandmothers who have been making pie dough on counters in their kitchens for hundreds of years before me.
Mix together one egg, 5 tablespoons of water, and a tablespoon of vinegar. When you stir together the lemon-colored mixture, your nose is assailed with the acridity of the vinegar, but I have come to associate that smell with the goodness, the pure perfection of this pie crust in the many tastings I have enjoyed. And while you can't quite put your finger on it, I believe that it is the vinegar and the salt in this recipe that give this crust its beauty. For a good pie crust is truly a beautiful thing.
Add this to the flour mixture and stir gently until the dough bonds together.
Then comes the rolling out of the dough. It took me years until I understood how blended yet not overworked the flour and shortening had to be to achieve a crust that would not tear when I transferred it to the pie plate. It is, perhaps, the most satisfying aspect of pie making aside from eating it. For when the pie pan recieves the dough as though it had been waiting for it its entire life, there is a certain sense of triumph that passes. But it is momentary, as there is work yet to be done. I press the dough deftly into the edges of the glass, trimming the excess with a butter knife, folding it under, turning the pan as I create a uniform lip at the top from which to pinch the edges, turning it still as my thumb and forefinger on one hand and my forefinger on the other pinch and turn, alternating one after the other, pinch, turn, until gradually, the pie crust takes its scalloped shape, fit for a photo op in a cookbook by Betty Crocker, whoever she is.
It is the most difficult part, and the most tenuous, but it is my favorite part, probably because it is so tactile. It is creating a house for something equally, but yet differently, delicious.
The fillings are many and varied. Today it is French apple and pumpkin. The last was cherry. The next is a mystery. But it will have a good, flaky, satisfying crust that will further solidify my role as the bringer of pies.
What are you the bringer of? Pies or otherwise, we all bring something to the table. Whether it's made from scratch or an absolute essential, if we were to share a Thanksgiving feast (and wouldn't that be a blast?), what would you be happy to bring?
