The Pie's The Thing... (with apologies to W. Shakespear) - 3

If there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that you have to bake while the oven is hot.

Yes, I went there!

Corny twists of phrases aside, I thought it would be best if I didn't wait too long for the next egg custard pie attempt because I wanted to serve it for dessert at Christmas dinner with Michele's family. So, as soon as the pie plate was drying in the rack, I assembled ingredients for version 2.0. Monique (a.k.a. Mony, a.k.a. Monica, a.k.a. My Beloved Little Sister) told me she thought the milk needed to be "condensed" instead of whole. This was going to cause me to adjust the amount of sugar, because condensed milk is sweet! I also found another recipe on-line that gave me a couple of useful techniques: coating the inside of the pie crust with egg white, to prevent it from getting soggy, and scalding the milk before adding it to the egg mixture. Wait. Scalding the milk?


Brief explanation: In the days before pasteurization, people would heat milk to the boiling point, about 185º F, to kill harmful bacteria. It was sometimes tricky business because if you didn't pay attention you burned it or, worse, burned it and scorched the inside of your pot to boot. Diligence was the order of the day because who back then could afford to just run out and buy another pot?
Brief explanation ends.

Despite the risk to milk and pot, and ignoring how completely archaic the procedure was, I thought I'd try it anyway because I had a feeling it would help the filling cook and set better. Besides, I really love configuring my Revere Ware pots in double-boiler mode! Besides-besides, I'm a traditionalist – except, of course, when I'm not.

With ingredients and tools assembled, I made my next attempt. Everything went very well, even scalding the condensed milk. Except for some reason I forgot to sprinkle the nutmeg on top before I put the pie in the oven. I'd done the same thing the first time, too. Fortunately for me, I've got a pretty good "hasty add forgotten topping" technique and it came out looking good. But it was way too sweet. Dang you, condensed milk! This overabundance of sweetness didn't deter my chosen group of guinea pigs, Michele's office cohorts, from enjoying the pie, though. They've been so appreciative of everything I've sent their way that I've designated them as my primary taste "focus group".

So. Egg Custard Pie v2.0 was a bust for recreating Nana's pie. It was, however, a success in three other ways: 1) the egg white prevented the crust from getting soggy, 2) adding scalded milk did indeed help the filling cook and set much better, and c) I had a grand time scalding the milk! I love learning a new baking technique!

I had to get serious, though, because time and Christmas dinner wait for no baker. Another phone conference with my little sister yielded a correction on the milk: "unsweetened condensed milk." I'm going to have to ask her where she got that term because it took me a bit of digging through cookbooks and the Internet to learn that "unsweetened condensed milk" is plain-old evaporated milk. I use it in my sweet potato pie. My mother often put it in her coffee. My Hispanic friends back in high school called it "leche Pet". Nothing exotic about it at all. And it turned out to be the ingredient that turned the corner for me on this pie.

Version 3.0, turned out very nicely and was devoured at Christmas dinner. Version 3.1, pictured below, helped me refine my crust technique and my popping-into-oven technique (splash potential for this pie is through the roof).

Egg Custard Pie, Version 3.1

Version 3.1 with appropriate companion beverage!

Please note that I still forgot to sprinkle the nutmeg before popping it into the oven. Arrgh! What's that all about? I mean, the pattern looks cool but the nutmeg is supposed to be sprinkled evenly. Oh, well. It still tasted great!

Believe it or not, I did one more round of this pie last month. I'd promised a friend who was visiting with us I'd bake it for her birthday. Instead, baked two simultaneously because I wanted to test a version using one less egg. That one, I'll call it Version 3.1.2, actually had a texture that was more like what I remember of Nana's pies, but it was, again, overly sweet. Having that extra egg seems to work best with the amount of sugar in the recipe, and it delivers what I'll now consider the taste I'm going for.

I'm finished tweaking this recipe, for now. What I've discovered is that this isn't my grandmother's egg custard pie and it never will be. I'm going to stop trying to recreate what she did. My memory of the pies Nana lovingly baked for us will suffice and bring many smiles to my face when I think back on them. Those were her pies. This pie is mine, with a heaping helping of inspiration from my her. I'm good with that.

*****

Oh, and how did I present Version 3.1.2 to my friend? Boxed it up with five paper plates, napkins and plastic forks and took it to the showing of The Avengers. The five of us sat there, watching Captain America, Iron Man, Black Widow, Thor, Hawkeye and The Hulk defend the very city we were in, while we devoured slices of pie. Now that's the way to see a movie in New York!

Currently listening to: Michael Henderson and Roberta Flack - At The Concert

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Cookie Interlude (What? Again?!?)

Yes, again with the ginger lemon creams! Remember, I said I wanted these to be my snack cookies, so I'll be baking them fairly often. That is not the reason for this post. The reason for this post is to mention the fact that I'm baking a new batch to take home to San Antonio with me next week. My oldest niece is graduating high school (boy she and her mother are getting old) and I wanted to have something to share at the celebratory bar-b-cue. What would be better than the ginger lemon creams?

To be honest, though, I'm tempted to try to bake something there as well. Nothing too involved – maybe an apple pie or something. That's the exhibitionist in me talking. The reality of the situation is that I haven't cooked in that kitchen in such a long time and I'm not sure how my older sister has it stocked for baking essentials. Plus it's an electric oven and I'm not a fan of electric ovens.Still, the temptation is great and I may give in regardless.

So, I've made some additions to a baking music play list I have on iTunes and it's time to get busy! Oh, and I've made some refinements to the recipe, so we'll see how they turn out.

Currently listening to: "High Gear" by Neil Larsen

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The Pie's The Thing... (with apologies to W. Shakespear) - 2

Due to circumstances beyond our control, this installment 
has been unavoidably delayed. We now return you to
the scheduled pie-filled melodrama already in progress . 

Cooking for family is always different for me than cooking for friends. Since I don't get to visit with my father or siblings very often, I rarely have the chance to show them that I've evolved from that kid who made pretty decent french fries (they're amazing now) and pretty decent fried eggs (I can do over-easy now with confidence and skill). So, when the opportunity arises, I put a lot of pressure on myself to turn out an amazing meal or baked dish. In the past said pressure has led to some disastrous results. (An apple pie that had a crust that baked up like the roof of the Astrodome comes to mind.)

Last December I had the chance to make a different impression on my big sister, Karla, since she was coming to NYC for a visit. As fate would have it, her time here would include my birthday and she'd get to have the experience of one of my not-quite-world-famous Birthday Teas.

Sidebar: I absolutely love celebrating my 
birthday! I'll blog about Birthday Tea some
other time, though. I just wanted to say that
I absolutely love celebrating my birthday!

I usually have a select group of friends over and I serve my version of an afternoon tea. I have a standard menu of baked goods and meats and cheeses but I always serve a "showstopper", something that's delicious and surprising and has a lot of "wow!" factor. With Karla attending, everything had to be as perfect as I could make it to erase the memory of the aforementioned "Astrodome Pie" from her brain. And mine.

Seriously! The pie looked like this...only it was brown.
And made of flour. And was almost as hard.
Almost.

I'd already decided what the basic menu was going to be – adding my first attempt at the ginger lemon cream cookies to that. As I was trying to come up with a true "showstopper", Karla made a suggestion: "Why don't you make Nana's egg custard pie?" "Sure! Why not?" I replied. The exchange was casual. The panic it instilled in me was not. I'd never attempted that pie before and now I'd committed myself to make it for not only my friends but also for my big sister, who knew what it should taste like! No pressure, right? Ack!

*****

I like to think I can rise to any baking challenge given the proper pans, the right recipe and a reliable oven. In this case I had one out of three: the pans. The oven was becoming temperamental and I didn't have a clue as to the recipe Nana used – because she no longer had a clue. I could have called her and asked, again, but I already knew the answer to that. I decided to pull a couple of recipes and combine them with my own pie memories to give myself a jumping-off point.

I consulted one of my "go-to" books, The New Good Housekeeping Cookbook.

I bought this in 1986 and I still turn to it whenever I'm starting a culinary adventure.

I've had it for twenty-six years and it's been a life saver. It certainly helped this time around. I that and another recipe I found on-line, and my standard pie crust recipe, for Egg Custard Pie 1.0. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of it; I just didn't have the time to take process shots or end result shots; I was way too busy baking...and fretting over getting ready for Tea. I will say that the pie looked pretty good and the guests liked it but both Karla and I knew that it couldn't compare with Nana's. In my opinion, it came out with a consistency and taste too close to flan. I'm not a fan of flan, so my rating on that pie attempt is "fail". It took forever to set, didn't taste right the internal texture was all wrong.

Overall, though, I'll put the experience of baking for my big sister in the "win" column. She had a great time and went back for thirds. She even took home a batch of ginger lemon creams to share!

The next day I called my little sister, Monique, to talk over the results of my labors. I asked her what she remembered of the recipe she got from Nana and the ingredients she rattled off were surprising in the only thing common to both our recipes was eggs! And not even the same number of eggs at that! On top of this, Nana had only given her a list of ingredients with absolutely no amounts of any kind. Not even a "pinch" of this and a "dab" of that. So, we really were on our own with this.

Part 2 Ends

**Cue wistfully sad musical riff.**

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Have Cookies, Will Travel!

Last month, Michele and I took short trip (darn you, nine-to-five job!) to Barbados to celebrate our one-year anniversary. I wanted something tasty to snack on for the flight, so I loaded up a bag of ginger lemon creams. It turns out that I'd actually bagged enough for the flight down, the entire stay and the flight back!

What can I say? I love traveling with snacks!

Just A Guy Who Bakes goes to Barbados! And brings some friends!

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The Pie's The Thing... (with apologies to W. Shakespear)

All legends are based on truth but the farther you get from the actual event, the more suspect the legend becomes. You need eye witnesses or participants to bring veracity to the story, to corroborate, verify and independently confirm what happened. This is the story of a pie – an egg custard pie – that became a legend.

Pretty much everyone who takes up baking and sticks with it through the inevitable failures, ends up with at least one dish that becomes their signature dish – the one everyone requests at family gatherings and holidays. For my father, it was the banana pudding. For my mother it became her cherry cheesecake. For me? I'll get back to you that because I've yet to figure it out. For my Nana, mother of my mother, daughter of my great grandmother, it was the egg custard pie. Hardly anything disappeared faster than Nana's egg custard pie. If you dallied too long after dinner, there was no way you were going to get a slice.

It's difficult to quantify the taste of Nana's pie. It wasn't too "eggy", nor was it too "custardy" (are those even words?). It was almost always just right, with just a hint of nutmeg to top it off. True there were times when things just didn't come together right for her and the pie didn't live up the the legend but for the majority of its holiday appearances, it was perfect.

A word about my early relationship to baking: magic. As I said previously, I didn't bird-dog the people in my family who baked when I was a kid, so the process was a bit mysterious to me. Baking actually came closest to what I thought magic was. Let me explain. No. There's too much. Let me sum up: Someone you loved dumped a bunch of stuff into a bowl, used a big spoon or an arcane instrument called a "mixer" to scramble it all up then they put that stuff into other containers, popped those containers into a giant crucible and an indeterminate time later, they pulled out something delicious that looked completely different from what they put in. Magic.

Of course now that I've been baking for many years I've learned that I was spot on! It's magic! Absolutely! It doesn't matter that I know how it's done or, rather, how I do it, what matters is how much everyone enjoys your finished product. (Please note the apparent recurring theme of this blog.) My Nana understood this when she baked the egg custard pies.

The thing about that pie is that no one in my family has ever successfully recreated it. Nana didn't write down the recipe. Wait. That's not true. I know for a fact that she wrote it out for my friend Steve way back when he was visiting one Thanksgiving when we were in college. He's never been able to duplicate what she did, though and he's since lost the paper she gave him. My beloved little sister, Monique, a.k.a. Monica, a.k.a. "Miss Kee", said she came close a couple of times. Personally, I'd never been tempted to attempt it and I'm sure that temptation would have remained tempered had not my big sister, Karla -- my very own "Special K" -- planned a visit last December right around my birthday.

Part 1 Ends

**Cue ominous, dramatic musical riff.**

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This just in!

I talked with my father about his banana pudding and he confirmed that the recipe for the pudding itself did indeed come from the Nabisco 'Nilla Wafers box, but the meringue technique came from his mother. Unfortunately he hasn't made it in about six years. Hopefully he'll break that dry spell soon.

Personally, though, I can't imagine anything made with Nabisco 'Nilla Wafers tasting good these days. Is it just me or has the taste completely changed? The last time I had any they were so awful I had to toss the box. When we were kids, our great grandmother used to give us a few when we would visit with her. 'Nilla Wafers and a glass of cold milk. Ahhhhh! There was nothing like it! (Unless, of course, it was ginger snaps and a glass of cold milk.)

In other news, the conversation my father and I had has inspired a new challenge for the summer. I can't talk about it just yet because, well, it's not summer! Despite the spate of much unseasonably warm days here in NYC, the season hasn't started. So mum's the word for now. Besides, I find that the more "I'm going to" creeps into my vocabulary about a project, the less likely said project will ever see the light of day or the inside of an oven. Suffice it to say that he put a great big smile on my face when we told me "Well, good luck!" and if I can pull this one off, I know I'll put a smile on his face!

I promise I won't leave you hanging for too long about this one.

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Inspiration Inspection Interlude: Like Father?

There are several people who have imprinted themselves on my baking memory. From time to time I'll post a little bit about them.

Most people who delve into cooking and baking usually trace their love and desire for the art to their mothers/grandmothers/aunts. I'm a little different because I can draw my baking lineage directly to my father. True, my mother, grandmother and at least a couple of aunts all contributed to my interest in cooking – directly and indirectly – and I'll definitely be writing about that later. However, the first memories of baking that struck me with a sense of a sense of awe came from my father.

Sidebar: I often rail that so many popular films have as their central theme the father/son relationship. Star Wars comes to mind. Although I love the original trilogy, it gives short-shrift to mothers, as though they aren't important. And don't get me started on the "Prequels"! At any rate, here I am writing a food blog and the first post exploring my inspirations is about my father. How ironic. End sidebar.

It was the banana pudding.

My father, whose namesake I am, made the best banana puddings. He used the recipe from the Nilla Wafer box, I'm sure (I'll have to ask him). I always loved to hear the cookies hit the Pyrex pie plate when he started working on it; there was something about that sound and the smell of the cookies that just filled the air with promise. I rarely stuck around for the intermediate steps; I didn't watch him prep the bananas, whip the egg whites or combine it all in the plate. I didn't trail behind him to learn his baking secrets. I was an end-product kid, so I loved to watch him pull the finished pudding out of the oven. The meringue never failed to thrill me; it was always a perfectly browned and sculptured thing of beauty. It was always awesome.

And it took about ten years to cool enough to eat!

We had a conversation not too long ago in which he told me that not even his sisters could make better banana pudding than he could -- and they're good cooks. He had a knack for it.

There is a memory that will always stand front and center in my mind regarding my father's baking. I was at home for Christmas break during my first year of college. It was late on Christmas Eve and my mother had already prepped the bird and ham for the next day's meal. I was in our living room being entranced by Ahmad Jamal's "Poinciana", from the album "At The Pershing - But Not For Me". This was from my father's collection and I just simply fell in love with that song. My father was in the kitchen preparing to bake cookies and I managed to snap this picture – one of my favorites (please note the pastry blender in his right hand and the cookbook on the table - I spend a lot of time like that):

Between the sound of the music and the smells from the kitchen, it was a kind of magical moment. Thinking back on it, I've since come to realize a thing or two about my father and baking: following a recipe does not a great dessert make...being able to imbue it with love and passion each time is what does it. And that was what my father did, each and every time he baked for us (or made S.O.S. for us – he was in the Army, after all). Every pudding and every cookie was a way of showing his love. For that I'm truly grateful and I try to do the same for others with every dessert or meal I prepare. I think I've inherited his knack.

Thank you, Daddy.

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