Nana's Kitchen

There's one place to start when it comes to recipes for me...my grandmother's apple pie. Yes, we called her "Nana" and so, yes, I'll be calling her that here.

Nana was known for her cooking and especially her baking -- pies, cakes, breads. She easily prepared any dessert you can think of and she largely did it without referring to recipes. I'm not like that. When it comes to baking, I need a recipe and I need to concentrate at least a little. Not Nana. She carried on conversations, rolled out dough and called out answers to game shows that played on the tiny TV on the shelf in the far corner of the kitchen. What's more, she not only would bake a pie for you...she would bake 5. She didn't believe in baking only one of anything. As she would say, "if you're going to go through the trouble of baking something...you might as well bake more than one." Truth is, it never seemed like trouble for her. It was like breathing.

So, I asked her to show me how to bake a pie and instead she showed me how to bake 5. Not what I had wanted but... We measured flour, sugar, butter (every family recipe I have has plenty of butter in it) and peeled and sliced apples until I thought the orchards were bare.

Her recipe for pie crust is here...from the Crisco jar. I could type it out but it's not the same as seeing the recipe she gave me with the added mention of 2 additional tablespoons of sugar which you need to sprinkle on the top of your pie crust when the pie is assembled.

Now, anyone can assemble a pie crust from a list of ingredients. The trick is getting the pie crust to behave...to roll out evenly...to not stick to the rolling pin...to not fall apart. This takes practice and patience and in all these years I still haven't mastered it although I'm pretty good. Flour your countertop and flour your rolling pin. Then, don't overwork the dough but let it know you're not afraid of it. Things should work out fine. Consider it an adventure and try to have fun.

The filling is officially "cooking apples"...I love it. Until recently, I barely ate apples at all...so figuring out what a "cooking apple" is was like unravelling a riddle. I use three kinds of apples -- Granny Smiths, Golden Delicious and Macs although Braeburn and Empire are also good choices. Experiment with the flavors and textures you prefer. Sometimes you'll be limited by the kinds of apples available in the store (or at the Farmer's Market) so you need to be flexible and understand what the apples taste like and how they bake (do they break down when baked? do they keep their shape? are they tart?). As you prepare and slice the apples, don't worry about keeping the slices a uniform size...you're not making an industrial, machine-made pie. Leave uniformity for the mass produced pies.

When mixing up the sliced apples for the filling, remember to be generous with the spices. There's nothing as wonderful as the aroma of an apple pie baking in the oven with the rich scent of cinnamon mingled in. My family tradition is to add pats of butter among the apple slices inside the pie for good measure.

Build the inside of your apple pie as high as you dare...but place a baking sheet on the level under the rack that holds your pie plate just to be safe. My mother and I didn't do this step once and found out what a mistake that was! As the cloud of smoke filled the kitchen and set off the smoke dector we still managed to laugh about it anyway and salvaged the pie.