Perfect apple pie
Along with all those deviled eggs I also baked up an apple pie this weekend. I used apples from the tree in our backyard*, so I have no idea what kind they were, but they did bake up nice and soft while still keeping their shape – and that is, of course, an important element of an awesome apple pie.
Just as important, obviously, is the crust. I’ve recently written about my love of the part-butter part-lard crust (see a recipe-style recipe for the crust at Local Foods), so I’ll refrain from going on about it again – but it was amazingly flaky and flavorful.
Perfect apple pie, in my assessment, also tastes like apples. Sure a bit of cinnamon and nutmeg and other warm spices should be in there, but I prefer apple pies in which they highlight rather than overwhelm the apple flavor. With that in mind, I made the filling using 5 apples (quartered, cored, peeled, and chopped and tossed with 1 Tbsp. lemon juice), 1/4 cup each brown and white sugar, 2 Tbsp. flour, 1/2 tsp. cinnamon, 1/4 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg, 1/8 tsp. salt. I poured that in the bottom crust, dotted it with about 2 Tbsp. butter, covered the whole thing with a second crust, and baked it at 450 for 15 minutes and 350 for well over an hour. But then, I like my pie crust really, really cooked.
* Our apple tree is the bane of my backyard experience. My grudges against the tree are many. First and foremost the tree itself is ugly. It is one of those multi-variety grafted numbers with three varieties growing on one tree which, as a fact by itself, is awesome but which, in practice on this particular tree, has led – along with very poor pruning at some point – to a very ugly shape. Second, it stands right in the middle of a small yard. Since it is a dwarf variety, it blocks the visual line from any spot in the yard to any other. Third, the apples attract rats. I know the rats would be there anyway – we live in the middle of a city and there are rats outside. That is an unpleasant fact. We are happy to not have them in the house at the moment. But I find half-gnawed apples still hanging on the tree, sitting on the ground under the tree, and dragged to sundry spots around our tiny yard and that is nasty. Fourth, it isn’t the tree’s fault, but I just don’t like apples enough to put up with the first three reasons. If I’m going to have a tree that attracts rats, I want cherries or pears in exchange. So this is the last fall we’ll have apples in our backyard. As soon as we get all the fruit we’re going to get this year, that sucker is coming down. I have an ax and everything.
