No Buy Valentine's Day

The universe, or at least American society, conspires against a "no-buy" pledge. The car needed a new drive belt. Otherwise, that's it. I have the same $40 in my wallet today that I had on Feb. 2.

No buy Valentine's Day is actually a breeze, comparatively. I made pie.

I used this recipe for the filling (although I cut the sugar in half), and a standard lard-based crust, using honey liqueur instead of water.

This is also a Dark Days recipe-- the only non-local ingredient was the sugar, which I purchase at a locally-owned mom-and-pop.

Reconstructing a memory

My mother used to make pineapple-apricot pie using whole fruit. Given that this was the 60s and 70s, she probably used canned fruit; I'm pretty sure I never saw a fresh apricot until I was an adult, but still, this was a whole fruit pie.

Mom kept all her recipes in a little wooden box; after she died I always knew the recipes were in there, but didn't have the heart to open the box. Crispy, crumbly cheese crackers; spice cake with caramel icing; pineapple upsdie-down cake. And this pie.

I've written before about opening the box finally, more than a decade after she died, only to discover that the box was empty. Wrenching.

The pineapple pie is one I've always wanted to make, so I started hunting around the web for recipes, and I can't find one that uses whole, let alone fresh, fruit. One calls for dried apricots, another for frozen pineapple concentrate. All use canned fruit in heavy (!) syrup.  So I'm making it up folks. Call it hubris.

Fresh Pineapple-apricot pie
Crust:
2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/4 cup finely ground walnuts
2/3 cup shortening (yes, I use lard)
1/2 teaspoon salt
2-3 T apricot liqueur

Filling:
1 fresh pineapple, cut into bite-sized chunks
2-3 T crystal sugar

1 quart halved, pitted whole apricots
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1/3 cup honey
1/4 cup wheat pastry flour
1 T corn starch
1/4 teaspoon salt

1 large egg white, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces


Preheat oven to 425

Crust:
Toss the ground nuts, flour and salt, cut in the shortening until crumbly. Add the liqueur one tablespoon at a time, and work it in with a fork, using only enough to wet the dough until it sticks together. Divide into two equal pieces and chill. (You can roll them into thick disks first if you like.)

Butter or spray a 9-inch pie plate. Remove half the dough from the refrigerator. Roll it out on a lightly floured surface to form a disc, 1/8-inch thick and 2 inches larger than the pie plate. If it's a weird shape, as mine always is, trim it and puzzle-piece it into a disc, lightly rolling again to make the extra pieces stick.  Use a spatula to help lift the dough and transfer it to the pie plate. Press it lightly in the plate to fit.  Trim, leaving a 1-inch overhang. Place in the refrigerator to keep cold. You'll use the rest of the dough to create a lattice top. Note: the nut crust is not quite as elastic as a traditional flour crust, so you have to handle it very gently.

For the filling, start by draining off some of the juice from the pineapples: macerate the pieces in the sugar for one hour. Because this recipe uses honey instead of sugar to sweeten, there's a lot of liquid, so don't skip this step. Drain and conserve the juice.*

Once you've drained the pineapple, place all fruit in a large bowl. Toss with the vanilla, honey, cornstarch and flour; mix thoroughly.

Lightly brush the bottom crust all over with the lightly whipped egg white; spoon in the filling and dot with butter.

Roll out the remaining dough and cut nto strips 3/4-inch wide to make a lattice cover over the filling. Trim the overhang to 1 inch. Moisten the edges of the crusts where they meet with a little water, then press them together lightly and turn them under. Crimp the edges.

Brush the lattice crust and the rim with the cream. Optional: sprinkle the surface with 2 tablespoons of turbinato sugar.

Bake 15 minutes. Reduce the heat to 375°F and bake until it is golden and the juices are bubbling, about 50 to 60 minutes.  Let the pie cool on a wire rack before serving. 

*Pineapple syrup
Use the rinds and conserved juice to make a simple syrup: Boil the rinds all in 5 cups of water until the fruit starts falling off the rind. Drain and continue to boil, adding juice of 1/2 lemon, and 1 1/2 cups sugar, until volume is reduced to 2 to 3 cups (depending on how syrupy a syrup you want). Drain thoroughly. Keeps about 2 weeks.

Playing with pie crust

I did a lot of baking this week and didn't want to make a dessert pie, so I made a quiche instead.

 I always avoided pies because I was afraid of the crust. Well, it turns out the crust is the easy part. I make quiche a lot, but only recently started using my own crust once I realized this. Today I added green tea powder and dried mint (about 1/4 teaspoon each) to the flour, and mixed it with some green mint tea still sitting in the pot from this morning.

After a couple of false starts, I seem to have developed a bit of a knack for a tender and flaky crust.  I've been playing around with the basic recipe; here are some of my variations.

Basic pie crust
2 cups flour (I use a wheat pastry flour)
2/3 cup shortening (yes, I've been using lard, from humanely-raised local pigs)
1/4 teaspoon salt
4-6 teaspoons water

Whisk the flour and salt, then cut in the shortening until it's mixed to pea-sized bits. Add the liquid a tablespoonful at a time, mixing it with a fork, and being careful not to overwork any single portion of the the dough. The more you handle it, the tougher it will be. I've found because lard is so moist, I usually need only 3-4 tablespoons of liquid.

Finish the last bit of combining with your hands, divide dough into two equal pieces and flatten into disks. Put one away while you roll out the other, it's easier to handle when it's slightly chilled.

Some variations:

You can alter the flour. I've substituted

1/4 cup oats + 1/4 cup ground walnuts

1/4 rice flour

mixed white and wheat flour

used only whole wheat (nice for a quiche)

I've add the following to the crust (not all at once):

dried orange zest

a tablespoon of raw sugar (this is nice for dessert pies)

various sweet or savory spices including 

ground coriander, pumpkin pie spice, cinnamon, ground clove

green tea powder

dried mint

You can mess with the liquid you use too. I've substituted

tea (including a green mint)

apple cider

orange juice

liqueur

Thanksgiving

It’s a long line of 390 American meals, from that first mythical Thanksgiving in 1621 to today. Thanksgiving is our secular Yom Kippur, shared in the Americas by everyone across cultures and religions, no matter where you were born or how you will die, a day of thanks and atonement, when you greet your family with love and food (are they different?) and join to think about what’s good in your life, what’s real, what matters.

Thanksgiving is unique in that it celebrates not military victory, or religious myth, or how our culture and way of life is best, but a simple meal. It’s a holiday not just with food traditions, but, at its heart, about food. With no historical or religious basis other than a meal that someone decided to write about, it is unique in the world as holiday created for and sustained by households, about house holding.

Thanksgiving serves faith over religion, ordinary people rather than heros, and, ironically, production and creation rather than purchase and consumption. It remains unique in American culture as a holiday that has resisted commercialization, if not escaping it entirely. As our media and politics try to rend us into competing tribes, Thanksgiving reminds us how we are alike, and that America is strong because of our e pluribus unum ethos. Sensitized in my lifetime to what Thanksgiving augured for Native peoples, even this tragic history can serve to alert us to our need to come together, even if just once a year, to remember how vulnerable all are to blind faith, unchecked consumption, military overreach, and the worship of heroes over neighbors.

When you emigrate to America you bring your culture with you. But we give you Thanksgiving once you get here, and the gift makes you an American.

I hope you are surrounded today by your loved ones, even the ones that set your teeth on edge the rest of the year. I hope you are sharing the pie from your great-grandmother’s recipe, and the Mexican chutney that your granddaughter found on line. Remember how food and tradition bind us, from the sister of your blood, to the sister of your heart, to the sisters you will never meet, but who connect you nonetheless.


Apple pie with candied wintermelon
Use your favorite apple pie recipe (mine came from my mother's ancient Woman's Home Companion Cook Book). Substitute about 1/3 of the apples with candied wintermelon. Here's how to preserve it:

Preserving wintermelon (or any firm melon like cantelope or honeydew. This will not work with watermelon)

• Remove the outer green skin of the wintermelon and cut approximately 1 lb winter melon into finger length sticks just like french fries.
• Blanch melon by putting into a pot of fresh water with 1 tsp of baking soda, and bring to a rapid boil for 3 minutes. Transfer the melon to a colander to drain.
• Heat 2 cups of sugar with 1 pint of water in a shallow pan until dissolved. Bring the syrup to the boil. Turn down heat to low.
• Transfer the drained melon to the pot of syrup. Press a plate on top of the melon to immerse the fruit in the syrup. Bring the syrup slowly to a simmer and simmer for 5 to 10 minutes; do not let it boil.
• Take the pan from the heat and allow cooling. Do not drain. Leave it in the syrup for 24 hours whilst leaving the fruit undisturbed. Carefully lift the fruit from the syrup and leave to drain for 30 minutes.
• Transfer the fruit to wax paper or parchment and leave until dry,and store in an airtight container.