Despite being a
Pennsylvania-raised Yank, I was born in Virginia and deem that close enough to
claim Southern citizenship. It’s not a very well kept secret that Sarah and I
could join the Daughter’s of the Confederation, if we ever felt crazy enough.
My grandmother, a born and raised Tennessee woman, would be happy enough with
our becoming Kappa Deltas in college – my mother affectionately calls them the
“crappa deltas” because “it takes one to know one”.
One does not
truly understand life below the Mason-Dixon line until one has fully grasped
the love of pie. Tarts are for sissies; pies mean business. Pecan pie is not
the same without Karo syrup and you never chince Lemon Chess on sugar. Humans
with aversions to anything full-fat, sugared and rich, be gone!
A blender is an odd thing to use for pie making. I have had this
thought every Christmas Eve-eve for as long as I can remember. Big holidays
equal Grandmother Frances’ Fudge Pie. I should correct the name, considering
she was my great-grandmother, but I am my mother’s daughter when it comes to
terms of address. Besides, Frances always seemed more like a grandmother than
my own with her long silver hair perpetually tucked into a French twist and her
Sunday-morning robin’s egg blue bathrobe. Fudge Pie is a time honored
tradition. If one does not fulfill this one simple task at each year’s Eleventh
Hour, expect both daughters to rain holy-hell and rebel-yells upon the kitchen.
Our family
rarely travels for extended-family Christmases; mostly because we have realized
how insane our cousins, aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters are. Eddy crazy is
a lot different than Dunlap or Johnson crazy; they don’t mix very well either.
My grandmother is primarily skilled in the arts of homemaking and knows how to
put people to work. Mom knows that I can’t stand any of them – my aunts that
only ever talk about clothes and makeup, my uncles who won’t converse with a
teenage girl because “what do you know?” -
so she brings me to our kitchen safe-haven.
Making chocolate
pie in an eggshell-white kitchen is a scary endeavor. Grandmere was an interior
designer at one point and fell in love with china blue and white Ming dynasty
pottery. She’s very proud of her collection, so I refrain from divulging the
birdhouse and a few vases’ secret origins (that is, a reproduction factory on the outskirts of
Hong Kong. National Geographic did a spread in 2009). It is an honor to be
trusted with Grandmother Frances’ sacred pie. The ingredients stack on one
another in the blender vessel in the adult culinary version of bottled sand
art; dull Dutch-processed cocoa congealing by the creamy yellow egg yolks about
to seep down into the crumbling sugar wall protecting the sleepy layer of
baking powder, cream of tartar and a pinch of cayenne. The cayenne is an
illegal addition, but only if Grandmere and Mom find out.
“Good night
nurse!” Grandmere exclaims as the blades whir to life. The brown and white
stripes twirl into Mississippi mud sludge. Two pale pie skins sit in twin
porcelain molds. The mud fills each two-thirds of the way up. When the pies are
unloaded from the oven (a solid hour and fifteen minutes later at this
altitude), Grandmere will use another one of her nutty expletives to express
her amazement.
“Day-law!”
“Well, I’ll be
hopping!”
People of a
certain generation have strange things to say when they are amazed. Grandmere
doesn’t swear and could write a dictionary of her substitutes. They come out at
the dinner table during dessert, where all fourteen of us plus her nasty little
dog will sit in too-close quarters. My sister and I have an unspoken claim on
the two chairs at the farthest corner of the dining room table. Miraculously,
we can still hear Grandmere complementing her daughter on the crust and cream
and filling.
“Kristen, you
are a master!”
Apparently the “pie incident” in The Help hadn’t ruined her love of the brown pie.
Brown Butter Pecan Pie
¾ cups light corn syrup
¾ cups sugar
3 eggs
1/8 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons honey
½ cup unsalted butter
1 cups pecan pieces (plus extra whole nuts for top)
Your favorite pie pastry
- · Roll out pie crust in an 11 inch circle and lay it in a 10 inch pie pan. Crimp the edges and preheat the issues to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Melt butter and let cook until the color of toffee. It should smell vaguely like roasted nuts.
- · In a large bowl, combine corn syrup, sugar, salt, eggs, vanilla and honey. Mix well. Stir in melted butter and pecans. Pour the mixture into the pie crust.
- · Arrange the whole pecans in concentric circles on the top of the filling. Bake the pie for 1 hour and 15 minutes, rotating halfway through cooking. Crust should be brown and pie filling bubbly. If the nuts on top start to get too dark, cover with aluminum foil.\
- · Serve pie warm with vanilla ice cream. This is not the place for whipped cream, sorry.
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