Bye bye Miss American Pie, drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry...

I have been reading Pascale de Draoulec’s American Pie: Slices of Life (and Pie) from America’s Back Roads. Now I am more pie-obsessed than ever. I love pie, in pretty much any form, any flavor. If it’s good pie, I’ll eat any type. Pie is not, however, like pizza: if pie is bad, it can be very, very bad indeed. (And store-bought crusts can ruin a perfectly nice filling. If you must use store-bought, for God’s sake, spring for the Pillsbury ones in the refrigerator case, not the pre-panned ones in the freezer section. You might as well use cardboard.)

I started thinking about pie last night while lying in bed trying to get me and the fetus comfortable enough to sleep. What I really wanted to do was get up and bake some pie. Sense prevailed. I had to work today. But I had a perfectly delectable piece of coconut cream pie at lunch today. My co-worker came back from lunch raving about the pie in the faculty dining room. So I girded up my courage, made sure I had my staff ID, and went and bought a slice of fluffy, creamy, crunchy coconut cream pie for a dollar and a quarter.

I make a good apple pie; it’s such an easy pie to make, and it’s good with almost any kind of apple. I also learned to make a pretty kickass blueberry pie this summer: with Jersey blueberries it’s hard to go wrong. I have also tried my hand at pecan pie, Toll House pie (pecan and chocolate), pumpkin chiffon pie (what my mom always made for Thanksgiving), coconut custard (easy as – yes, pie, you make it in the blender, but since I am one of only three people I know who love it, I very rarely make it) and once even mincemeat pie, for a boy I loved -- who loved mincemeat pie (I often wonder if my mincemeat pie was what prompted him to propose?). I have found the pretty-much-perfect pie crust recipe, cobbled together after experiments with Fanny Farmer’s recipe (she is the authority on how to BAKE pie, and yes, it matters!), James Beard’s recipe, and a clipping from the newspaper so old it’s yellow and falling apart (finally the perfect proportion of Crisco to butter). If not for my food processor, I still would be struggling with pie crust but my trusty KitchenAid makes my pie crust life much simpler. Also, the purchase of a long, tapered French rolling pin, instead of one of those ones with the roll-y handles, helped immensely. I even confess to occasionally using one of those plastic circles with the zipper closure to get nice, even circles.

I once tried to duplicate a pie - billed as a Mounds-bar type pie - I’d had in a restaurant that is among one of the most decadent things I have ever eaten. It was the only time in my life when I asked to speak to the chef; I wanted his recipe. He wouldn’t give it to me but he did give me several tips including using coconut milk instead of straight milk in the mousse. My duplicate started with homemade crust, a coconut macaroon layer topped with chocolate mousse, and whipped cream with more coconut on top. It wasn’t bad – not quite as good as the restaurant version but pretty darn passable.

At the old house we had a sour cherry tree. Besides the almond-cherry tart and pickling them in vodka, I used to throw together cherry pies and put them in the freezer. They were nice to have on hand for funerals and for gifts – has anyone ever turned their noses up at homemade cherry pie?

However, on that note: The first Thanksgiving I spent with my now-husband’s family, I baked an apple pie to take as a hostess gift. Not only did I get called by the ex-girlfriend’s name all night, but no one ate my pie because they were eating Dan’s sister’s fiance’s mother’s store-bought apple pie, “to be polite and welcoming,” Dan said. Yeah well, so much for welcoming me; should’ve tipped me off then. Any family that declines homemade apple pie truly does not deserve me and my pies in it : )

Famous pie passages in books I have read and loved:
The country fair scene in Farmer Boy in which Almanzo Wilder seems to eat his weight in pie of all sorts.
The scene in Karen Stolz’s World of Pie when Roxanne’s mother teaches her to make pie crust.
The chapter in Michael Lee West’s glorious Consuming Passions on funeral food, including the appropriate pies to take to the grieving.
The Apple Pie chapter in John Thorne’s Simple Cooking, in which he suggests grating cheddar cheese over apple pie for a hearty breakfast (anyone who eats pie for breakfast deserves admiration; my next-door neighbor says her favorite breakfast is cold blueberry pie).

Pie snippets:

My husband and I, pre-children, used to road trip to camping sites for vacation and we’d stop at any little dive-y roadside café to try pie. He prefers fruit pie, especially blackberry; I’ll try whatever tickles my fancy. I am partial to anything coconut, and I am admittedly in love with lemon meringue. I am not crazed about peach pie or strawberry pie, and I’ve never had raisin or rhubarb pie, but I’d be willing to give them a shot.

I have been known to eat and enjoy TastyKake lemon pies, the little rectangular ones that come in cardboard sleeves. My dad liked the Dutch apple ones with icing, but we both found the thought of the pineapple ones positively revolting. Somehow, even in such processed excess, they manage to make a nice, flaky, if a bit greasy, crust.

I used to go to Max and Erma’s just for their version of Derby pie; warmed up with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, it was bliss and often served as dinner.

The boy who used to eat Derby pie with me also once accosted the caterer on a movie set for her sweet potato pie recipe. He promptly handed it over to me to try to make, but the Chantilly cream topping defeated me.

There’s a little bakery in Squirrel Hill that makes lovely, tart, creamy, lemon and lime mini-pies.

My mother rarely baked pie, except for Thanksgiving. But sometimes she’d buy a Pet-Ritz chocolate pudding pie. They were good. Especially still frozen. Sometimes we’d have those for our birthdays instead of cake.

National Pie Day is celebrated on January 23. The best lemon meringue pie I’ve had was baked by a friend who joined with me to provide the office with pie on this happy holiday. She was distraught because the meringue had slid off the lemon filling but I managed to choke it down anyway. It was delicious, if messy.

And just read this list of pies from the winners of the American Pie Council’s 2005 National Pie Championships. Is your mouth watering yet?

“Can she bake a cherry pie, Billy boy, Billy boy? Can she bake a cherry pie, charming Billy? She can bake a cherry pie Quick as a cat can wink its eye. She’s a young thing and cannot leave her mother.”