Posts tagged ‘recipes’
Dinner with “The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen”
Ted Lee, Executive Chef Colin Bedford of Fearrington House, me, and Matt Lee, after the marvelous dinner Chef Bedford and his team prepared on March 14th, featuring Matt and Ted’s recipes from “The Lee Bros Charleston Kitchen”.
Ever since I first heard about the Lee Bros. Boiled Peanuts Catalogue in which Matt and Ted Lee offer an abundance of Southern ingredients and foods both by mail order and online, I have been a big fan of Matt and Ted Lee. (About that catalog: It’s simply wonderful. I adore it even though I live right here in the South. They actually welcome your phone call to talk about your order, and they’ve been shipping APO for 15 years, so if you have dear service members with a hankering for Southern delights, here’s a fine option.) But I digress. Next thing I knew they were hosting a food-centric radio program, writing for magazines, and working on their first book. The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook , published in 2006, brought Southern food and cooking out onto the national stage in new ways. Southern food hasnever gone backstage since, because it’s just that interesting and just that good.
Their second book, The Lee Bros. Simple Fresh Southern: Knockout Dishes with Downhome Flavor, came out in 2009, to wide acclaim, and I’ve enjoyed reading their words and recipes in publications including Bon Appetit, Fine Cooking, Food & Wine, the New York Times, and Travel + Leisure. They have been working on this latest book ever since, exploring and celebrating the food, cooking, people and traditions of Charleston. You could say that they have in fact been working on this one for decades, given that it shares their personal story of food, people, and life in Charleston, South Carolina. The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen opens the screen door and invites us all into their kitchen to explore, appreciate, and understand a little bit about the city they know deeply, love completely and proudly call home.
I like the way Matt and Ted Lee introduce their third book on their website HERE: ”The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen is our most personal book yet. With these stories and recipes, we show you what it was like to grow up here and how the food life of Charleston helped make us the cookbook authors we are today. We introduce you to our friends who make living in the Lowcountry so delicious, as well as important figures from the city’s culinary past, who inspire us to have fun in the kitchen.”
Heading in to the Lee Brothers’ Charleston dinner at Fearrington.
Matt and Ted Lee launched their book tour in Charleston, of course, but one of their very first stops was here in the Triangle, the portion of Piedmont North Carolina including Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Cary, Pittsboro, Hillsborough and everything in between. They did book-signings at some of our local indie bookstores (Quail Ridge/Raleigh and the Regulator/Durham, and a sold-out cooking class at Southern Season in Chapel Hill. I signed up for their Charleston dinner at Fearrington House, located south of Chapel Hill, about halfway to the town of Pittsboro, NC. Though it’s a mere eight miles from my home in Chapel Hill and the UNC campus, the big silo and grazing cows around what was originally a dairy farm convey a pleasing sense of leaving my everyday suburban life behind. Home to Fearrington House Restaurant and Inn, along with two other restaurants, it also includes McIntyre’s Books
Since last fall, Fearrington and McIntyre’s have been hosting Books & Cooks, a series of culinary events centered on a guest author who shares stories and signs books, while Chef Bedford cooks up a meal from the featured book. I’ve enjoyed Books & Cooks events with Jean Anderson, Nathalie Dupree, Rebecca Lang, and Frances Mayes. For April, the Cooks & Books guest author is me, celebrating my first book Real Thai: The Best of Thailand’s Regional Cooking.
The Lee Brothers’ Charleston Dinner on March 14th began with a lovely introduction of Matt and Ted Lee by my friend Marcie Cohen Ferris, assistant professor of American Studies at UNC Chapel Hill and the author of Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South. Fine wine pairings by Fearrington’s Wine Director Max Kast added great pleasure to the meal.
First Course: She-Crab Soup. Divine.
A fabulous little treat: Rice and Ham Croquettes with Tomato Sauce
Spectacular centerpiece of a most memorable meal: Smothered Pork Chops and Brussels Sprouts with Benne and Bacon
Sweet Potatoes with Sorghum Marshmallows, passed at each table, family style. So good.
Pineapple Cornbread Pudding with Vanilla Ice Cream. Lovely finish to our Charleston feast. What? Oh, the Take Home listed on the menu above? The Homemade Benne Wafers, packaged and ready to transport share with family? Well, let’s just say that I hope my family is not reading this post because no such delightful, crisp and elegant treat crossed our doorstep that evening.
Chef Colin Bedford came out to talk about the menu he had chosen and the particulars of preparing each dish, after which all three took questions.
Home with my signed copy, I started reading the very next day. The first thing I cooked was one of the desserts: Hugenot Torte. The recipe called for a 2 quart baking dish. Not having same, I went with a nine-inch square pan, causing my dessert to have more surface area and less depth. My family adored it, as did I. Ice cream was not required, but it did extend the delectable pleasures of this apple-pecan dessert.
The March meeting of CHOP NC (Culinary Historians of Piedmont North Carolina) a few days later gave me reason to return to the book for snacks. I made Hugenot Torte again, because it is so simple to cook and rewarding to share. People just love it, including me. This time I went for a whipped cream accompaniment — again, unnecessary, but ice cream would have melted and I wanted CHOP NC folks to have as much razzle-dazzle as possible.
The Lee Brothers’ Hugenot Torte, a Charleston classic dessert, batches one (oven and with ice cream) and two (with whipped cream and the feet of a CHOP NC member awaiting the opening of the CHOP NC Snacks Table on March 20, 2013). I took home an empty, shiny-scraped clean pan, and a lot of whipped cream. Nobody cared about it — they just wanted to eat Hugenot Torte, plain and simple and good.
I also took a platter of these fantastically good Pecan Cheese Wafers from Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen. These deliver the goodness of traditional Southern cheese straws. They are streamlined to be made up in food processor and then rolled out and cut like sugar cookies rather than the extruded from a…an extruder? A cookie press, which creates classic cheese straws’ beautifully detailed corrugated tile form. These were incredibly good and popular. These Cheese Pecan Wafers and a plate of deviled eggs? Perfect Portable Party Food, especially if you, like me, prefer not to bring anything back home.
American Shad, from US Fish and Wildlife Service
I also took great interest in Matt and Ted’s extensive coverage of shad, a Southern springtime culinary pleasure. These beautiful fish are anadromous, which I had to look up and learn that this means they move away and come back. Born in fresh water upstream from the Atlantic Ocean, they swim down to the ocean for a salt-water fish’s lifetime, and then swim back up to their homeplace for spawning, in springtime. This is when shad and shad roe are caught and savored for a few weeks, as in right now. I posted about shad roe last month, which you can see right HERE. After reading the Lee brothers’ handsomely illustrated section on shad and on salt-baking whole fish, I went back to Whole Foods where I had found the lovely roe, and there were beautiful whole shad, with roe inside. That post is coming soon. (It was some work and worth it and really good.)
On my list for future cooking after a good, leisurely perusal of the recipes in this excellent book: Frogmore Stew. Country Captain. Smoked Egg Salad on Toast (I think I can smoke things in my wok. My friend Grace Young, Poet Laureate of the Wok, will know about that…). Conch Fritters. Fish in Parchment, Edna Lewis’s way. From Fearrington’s Chef Colin Bedford’ Charleston menu, Smothered Pork Chops with Brussels Sprouts Bacon and Benne, and She Crab Soup. Forgot Shrimp Butter. There’s more, but this is a good start, I do believe.
While things are simmering and baking, I will keep reading about the people and history of Charleston, from the authors of a classic Charleston women’s club cookbook, a shad-master, and the queen of shrimp boats, to a legendary Italian composer, a waterman dedicated to sustainably harvesting stone crab, and the trio of longtime employees who have bought a beloved French cafe from its fixing-to-retire owners in 2010 and have kept it cooking everyday lunches. Then there are loquats, jerusalem artichokes, guinea squash and the guinea fowl of Lamboll Street, the latter a lively flock of guinea vagabonds who can be observed in a very cool short video right HERE. You might want to treat yourself to another short video, the trailer for this book, which is, again, three minutes plus of wonderfulness and an introduction to what the fuss is all about. That’s right HERE.
If you’d like to cook up a few Lee Brothers’ recipes from their first two books, check out the three on their website, which didn’t come together but would certainly go together, to make a wonderfully indulgent and memorable meal: Frogmore Stew (no frogs are ever harmed in the making of Frogmore Stew); A New Ambrosia, and Red Velvet Cake. Those three recipes are right HERE.
Two of my friends have written about Matt and Ted Lee on their excellent blogs, which I delight in following. Here are their posts:
“A Charleston Loquat Grows in Raleigh” by Jill Warren Lucas on “Eating My Words”
(This next post refers to Jay’s sold-out Lee Brothers dinner at Lucky 32 on March 28th; you can’t actually sign up cause it’s history.)
For the remainder of the spring and into the summer, Matt and Ted Lee will be rolling along the highways and byways sharing this heartfelt book on tour. To see where they’re headed, check their website for the latest details.
The Lee Bros Charleston Kitchen
My Apple Pie Recipe, Easy as Pie
My wonderful young cousin Erika Sue got in touch late last week, asking if I might have a recipe for making an apple pie. Matter of fact, I did, and I decided to make one and take pictures, so that I could pass along the closest thing to going over and sharing the pleasures of making an apple pie with her in her kitchen. (Only distance and time kept me from doing that right now, and I hope to be cooking with her and all my dear cousins out in beautiful Oregon some time in 2013.) Here’s what I did in words, and in pictures after the words are done.
Please note that the pie crusts, the sheets of pastry I’m using here, came not from my hands but from the grocery store refrigerator case. I know how to make piecrust, and I can make them using butter, shortening, lard, canola oil, or combinations of these. I learned how to do so over many repetitions, and I agree with people who say it is easy and that anyone can do it. I also agree with people who say that it is difficult, challenging, frustrating, and impossible. To me, both those statements are true. I love making piecrust from scratch, and I love setting out a prepared crust and jumping right in with the part that matters most to me: what goes inside and makes a pie a pie.
The question to ask is: What is your goal? If you want to learn how to make piecrust, here are three excellent places to learn how, the third one being a gluten-free piecrust.
http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/perfect_pie_crust/
http://www.nothinginthehouse.com/p/nothing-in-house-pie-crust-recipe.html
http://glutenfreegirl.com/gluten-free-pie-crust/
If your goal is to make a wonderful pie, and making piecrust seems difficult, scary, or time consuming in terms of this particular pie-making endeavor, you have my blessing to go get ahold of some piecrust from the grocery store fridge or freezer, or your pastry-making friend or relative, and then get started on making a wonderful pie.
This post is about making a wonderful, homemade, you-can-do-this apple pie. If you would like to do a most satisfying and rewarding baking project with young helpers, apple pie making is one of the very best. I love making apple pies, alone and with helpers, skilled and unskilled, my age, younger and older. I love eating them, and I hope you will, too. Here we go!
Nancie’s Old-School Everyday Apple Pie
I started out with 6 – 8 tart apples, which around here are usually granny smiths. I peeled them, and set out the ingredients and tools I needed in addition to apples and piecrust. Sugar, cinnamon, flour, salt, measuring spoons, and knives. About pie pans: They’re all good. If you have the option to be choosy: Ovenproof glass pie pans, are my favorite, since you can see whether the crust is browned and done on the bottom, and because they cook evenly. But any regular pie pan/pie plate will work fine.) Here’s the recipe in words. Photos follow in order. Happy baking, and let me know how your pie comes out!
2 sheets of pie crust, homemade or storebought
6 to 8 apples (green ones such as Granny smith), about 3 pounds, yielding 6 cups peeled, cored and sliced apples)
¾ cup sugar
3 tablespoons flour
½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg
¼ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons cold butter (plus more butter to rub on the crust after baking)
Heat the oven to 425 degrees F. Drape the bottom piecrust sheet into a pie plate and fit it evenly, so that the top edge is even and there are no air bubbles. Lift and position it – try not to stretch it to fit.
Peel the apples. Cut out the cores and slice them medium-to-thinly. Measure out a generous 6 cups of apples. Place them in a large mixing bowl.
In a medium bowl, combine the sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Stir with a fork to mix everything together evenly and well. Cut the cold butter into small bits.
Pour the sugar mixture over the apples, and use your hands or two big spoons to toss them and coat them evenly with the spiced sugar mixture. Scoop the apples into the piecrust. Place the bits of butter all over the apples. Mound the apples up high in the center and low on the sides, so that the crust is exposed on the sides.
Gently place the top crust over the apples and arrange it evenly. Tuck it in and press the two crust layers together well. Trim the edges so that the edges are fairly even all the way around. Tuck the crust under and press to seal it well. Use a fork or your fingers to press and pinch together the edges of the pie crust so that it is sealed.
Using a sharp knife, cut steam vents evenly around the top crust. Place the pie in the 425 degree oven for 20 minutes. Then reduce the heat to 350 degrees and continue baking for 30 to 45 minutes, or until the crust is evenly browned on top, browned on the bottom (try to check but don’t burn yourself doing this; carefully!), fragrant, and bubbling with syrup through the vents on top.
Remove gently rub cold butter over the top crust to enrich it a bit. Then let the pie cool a little. Serve hot, warm or at room temperature. Makes one pie.
The crust tends to brown quickly around the edges. I make a collar out of foil. Make 4 strips of foil, about 3 inches wide. Fold them together, end to end, to make one very long strip. Before baking, Fit this strip around the edges of the pie, curving and pressing so that it covers or tents the crust all around the edges, but leaves the top center exposed. Pinch to fit, loosely. Then set aside.
When you lower the temperature to 350, remove the pie and place it on the stove. Very carefully, with a potholder or dry kitchen towel handy, place it around the top edges of the pie and press the loose edges together. Return the pie with its loose foil collar to the oven and continue baking until done.
Apple Pie, fragrant and delicious, made from apples, sugar, flour, cinnamon, salt, butter, and two sheets of piecrust. Ice cream and or whipped cream are never required, but only add to the pleasures, should you be so inclined. I am so glad that my wonderful cousin Erika Sue asked me this question this particular week. I loved making this pie, and I will love it even more if you end up making one, too!
#Let’sLunch! Sandra Gutierrez’s Chili-Cheese Biscuits with Avocado Butter
When I heard that #LetsLunch ‘s May theme would be cross-cultural culinary creations, I beamed with delight, knowing exactly where to look. My dear friend Sandra Gutierrez’s excellent and powerful new cookbook compares and contrasts Southern and Latin American cuisines. With her deep roots in North Carolina as well as in Latin America, and her body of work as a food writer, editor, and cooking teacher, she brings insight, knowledge, and fantastically-good recipes to her book, The New Southern-Latino Table: Recipes That Bring Together the Bold and Beloved Flavors of Latin America and the American South. I love these biscuits with Sandra’s plush, gorgeous avocado butter, which has a burst of oregano and sparkles with fresh lime juice. Since ’too much’ doesn’t apply when considering options for enjoying treats like this one, I set out a little chunky tomato salsa for color, contrast and delightfulness. (Sandra’s book offers her recipe for pico de gallo, a fine go-to fresh tomato relish perfect for the up-coming tomato season. For a brunch spread, I plan to cut this dough into smaller two-bite biscuits and fill each one with either country ham or pimento cheese, making a snazzy little meat/meatless hand-held item. I found the poblano chili pepper as well as the ancho chili powder in my local Food Lion supermarket, and loved the color and sizzle it added to these biscuits. When I was posting the photo of this excellent book’s cover, I realized that what you see here is the beautiful Sandra in her North Carolina kitchen, cutting out a batch of these very biscuits! You’ll love the photo of this recipe in her book, and I love knowing that Sandra styled and photographed all the recipes. It’s a fascinating read, a cultural and culinary resource, and an abundance of marvellous which illuminate what Latin cuisine is, what its key ingredients are and how to use them, and how to cook great food. Sandra’s reputation as a fantastic cooking teacher is well deserved, and her voice transfers beautifully to the pages of this book. For #Let’sLunch and for cooking pleasures at the intersection of Southern sensibilities and vibrant Latin American flavors, spend some time with Sandra Gutierrez at The New Southern-Latino Table.
Sandra Gutierrez’s Chile-Cheese Biscuits with Avocado Butter
From The New Southern-Latino Table: Recipes that Bring Together the Bold and Beloved Flavors of Latin America and the American South. Copyright © 2011 by Sandra A. Gutierrez. Used by permission of the University of North Carolina Press. www.uncpress.unc.edu
“Moist and light, these new-Southern morsels deliver just the right combination of spice and comforting goodness. Self-rising flour is made from Southern soft wheat flour to which baking powder and salt have been added; it has less protein and gluten than all-purpose flour. The addition of just a little bit of fat and liquid yields fluffy, tender biscuits. Poblano chiles add a mild heat. Queso seco is a Mexican dry-aged cheese that tastes similar to Parmesan; you can find it in most grocery stores. I learned to make biscuits from my Southern friends, who taught me to handle the dough with respect and loving hands. Serve these mildly spiced biscuits with this creamy avocado spread that melts in the mouth.
For the biscuits
- 2 cups self-rising flour
- 1 cup grated queso seco (use Parmesan cheese in a bind)
- 1 teaspoon ancho (or pasilla) chile powder
- ¼ cup chilled lard, bacon fat, or shortening
- 1 poblano chile, roasted, peeled, seeded, deveined, and finely chopped
- 1–1 ¼ cups buttermilk
- 3 tablespoons heavy whipping cream
For the avocado butter
- 2 Hass avocados
- 2 teaspoons lime juice
- ½ teaspoon salt, or to taste
- Pinch freshly ground black pepper
- Pinch dried Mexican oregano (optional)
Preheat the oven to 475°F. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cheese, and chile powder. Using a pastry blender (or two knives), cut the lard into the flour mixture until it resembles coarse sand. Stir in the chiles. Gradually add the buttermilk, mixing the dough with a wooden spoon or your hands just until it holds together (you may not need all of the buttermilk). Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead it gently a couple of times. Pat it into an 8-inch circle (about ½ inch thick). Using a well-floured 2 ⅛-inch biscuit cutter, cut out 12 biscuits (you’ll need to gather up the dough and pat it down again lightly after the first biscuits are cut to get all 12). Place the biscuits, with sides touching, in a 10-inch springform or cake pan. With your knuckle, make a small indentation in the center of each biscuit; brush the tops of the biscuits with the cream. Bake for 18–22 minutes, or until the tops are golden brown.
To make the avocado butter:
Halve and pit the avocados; scoop out the flesh with a spoon into a medium bowl and mash into a smooth paste. Add the lime juice, salt, pepper, and oregano (if using) and stir until combined.
Serve the hot biscuits with avocado butter.
Makes 12 biscuits and 1 ½ cups avocado butter”
For more #LetsLunch festivities, check out these posts from my brilliant blogging buddies:
Cheryl’s Goan Pork Curry Tacos on A Tiger in the Kitchen
Lisa’s Jewish-Chinese Brisket on Monday Morning Cooking Club
Lucy’s Coconut Rice Pudding with Mango on A Cook and Her Books
Emma‘s Kimchi Bulgogi Nachos at Dreaming of Pots And Pans
Grace‘s Taiwanese Fried Chicken at HapaMama
Jill‘s Southern Pimento-Stuffed Knishes at Eating My Words
Joe‘s Grilled KimCheese Sandwich at Joe Yonan
Linda‘s Project Runway Pelau: Rice & Beans Trinidad-Style at Spicebox Travels
Lisa‘s Sunday Night Jewish-Chinese Brisket at Monday Morning Cooking Club
Rashda‘s Mango Cobbler at Hot Curries & Cold Beer
Renee‘s Asian-Spiced Quick Pickles at My Kitchen And I
Steff‘s Chicken Fried Steak at The Kitchen Trials
Vivian‘s Funky Fusion Linguini at Vivian Pei
….and check back for more additions: It’s not even nearly LUNCH-time yet…
Chef Stephanie Tyson’s Sweet Potato Biscuits from “Well, Shut My Mouth!”
Chef Stephanie Tyson's Sweet Potato Biscuits with butter and honey: heavenly fare, morning, noon, and night.
I love biscuits, and sweet potatoes, and cooks, and stories, so how could I not fall in love with Well, Shut My Mouth! The Sweet Potatoes Restaurant Cookbook“? Written by Stephanie L. Tyson, chef of Winston-Salem’s celebrated “Sweet Potatoes Restaurant“, the book is a treasury of inviting recipes, with culinary chops and inspiration flowing from the author’s deep Southern roots. When the book was published early in the fall of 2011, NPR’s Andrea Seabrook interviewed Chef Tyson and co-owner Vivian Joiner for this feature on “All Things Considered.
Sweet Potatoes Restaurant (website HERE) opened in 2004, and quickly became a destination and anchor of Winston-Salem’s Downtown Arts District. Co-owner Vivian Joyner, a Washington, DC native, keeps the front of the house a warm, welcoming place for regulars and newcomers alike. Born and raised in Winston-Salem, Chef Tyson’s cookbook provides recipes for an abundance of satisfying dishes like these: Sweet Potato, Corn, and Country Ham Risotto; Green Tomato, Chicken and Sausage Gumbo; Quick and Easy Hoppin’ John Soup; Bluffton, South Carolina-Style Red Rice; and Miss Ora’s Best Fried Chicken in the Entire World.
Visit Sweet Potatoes Restaurant’s Facebook Page right HERE.
Stephanie Tyson’s Sweet Potato Biscuits
biscuits came out beautifully for me the very first time I made them. This is not because I am a biscuit queen; not even close. I have no head-start on this essential signature Southern baked good, despite my place of birth (Piedmont North Carolina) and my many years working the oven. If I can make them, you can too. They look beautiful, and they are marvelously good; and as chef/author Stephanie Tyson puts it: “…just Southern, plain and simple”. Cook’s note: The dough is quite soft and moist. I found using a generous hand with the additional flour used for gently kneading, shaping, and cutting out the biscuits made them easy to handle. They were still tender and not tough.
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup shortening, chilled
1/4 cup cold butter, cubed
3/4 cup buttermilk
3/4 cup cooked, mashed sweet potato
In a medium mixing bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and salt. Cut in the shortening and butter with a fork until the mixture resembles coarse meal. In a separate bowl, combine the buttermilk and mashed sweet potato. Add this to the flour mixture and stir until combined. The dough will be very wet. Turn the dough onto a well-floured surface. Knead the dough until it starts to come together. Roll the dough to about 1/2 –inch thickness. Cut the dough with a 2-inch biscuit cutter and place in a parchment-lined baking pan. For biscuits with soft sides, place the biscuits close together, almost touching. Otherwise, place them 2 inches apart. Bake at 400 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes until the biscuits are golden brown. Brush with the melted butter.
From Well, Shut My Mouth! The Sweet Potatoes Restaurant Cookbook, by Stephanie L. Tyson, John F. Blair Publishing Co., 2011. Order a copy for your kitchen right HERE or HERE , or ask for it at your favorite indie bookshop!
Magic Coconut Pie for October 4th
Yes, folks, this sweet and luscious little pie makes its very own crust, right there in the pan, like magic! And it's, like, so so good...
One of two recipes in Southern Pies with no crust to keep it all together, this makes a homemade dessert within reach even when time is short and attention to detail isn’t an option. Not that every pie in the book is quick and simple; that’s just where we’re starting off Pie-a-Day Month, like the warm-up before that 5-K run I haven’t been doing the last few years. Meringue, cooked fillings, and layered grandeur will be in the mix by the time we’re in the double-digits of October, so stay with me and you’ll find Butterscotch Pie, Coconut Custard Pie, and Black Bottom Pie taking center stage, each one well worth the investment of time they need. But this here pie, named in the book as “Amazing Coconut Pie” and widely known as “Impossible Pie”, takes the cake (sorry, irresistible pun there) in terms of do-it-now cooking. If you keep a supply of shredded coconut on your pantry shelf, and stay stocked up with eggs, butter, milk, and vanilla, you will always be under an hour away from a lovely little sweet finale, one which travels well if a covered dish/potluck is in your plans. If you have an ovenproof pie pan, such as a Pyrex pie plate, that is the ideal vessel for this pie, as it allows for browning all around the pie, and makes it easy for you to see how things are coming along even on the bottom and sides. If you don’t have one, and you love baking pies (or think you might — having the tools you need can help pie-baking-love blossom), consider adding one to your kitchenware supply. I have a sturdy and beautiful blue ceramic pie plate, an ovenproof glass pie plate, several sturdy dark-metal pie pans, and a teetering stack of aluminum pie pans, all of which you will see as Pie Month unfolds in this October of 2010. Expect this pie to puff up as it nears baked-status, from the outer edges into the middle, and then fret not when that handsome grandness disappears with nary a sigh of farewell. It’s the nature of custard pies, and it’s one of your clues that things are progressing as they should and that doneness is near and to be monitored more closely from then on. But the state of almost every pie (every one I can think of, but I could be missing some so I shall qualify) is to be flat and sensible and plain, excepting of course those lovelies whose lot it is to carry crowns of meringue or whipped cream, and as I said, we’ll get to that. But for today, it’s sweet and crunchy coconut in plush custard, easily and speedily made; and as for those of us here in Pie Month Headquarters, what with the milk and eggs taking center stage, those last 2 slices on the kitchen counter could make a special occasion cereal-free breakfast, just for today.
Nancie’s Magic Coconut Pie
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 cups milk
1/2 cup butter, melted
3 eggs, beaten well
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups shredded and sweetened coconut
Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9-inch pie pan (a deep-dish pie pan is ideal), with butter, vegetable oil, or shortening. Combine the sugar and flour in a medium bowl, and stir them together well, using a fork or a whisk. Add the milk, melted butter, beaten eggs, and vanilla, and stir to mix everything together well. Add the sweetened coconut, and stir until all the ingredients are evenly combined. Pour the coconut pie filling into the prepared pie pan and set it on the bottom rack of your 350 degree oven. Bake until the pie is golden brown, puffed up, and firm throughout, (the center may jiggle just a bit); this should take between 35 and 45 minutes. Set the pie on a cooling rack, or on a folded kitchen towel, and let it cool to room temperature.
