Holiday 2015
Flour, fat, water, and a pinch of salt. You wouldn’t think that is so hard, but I have never gotten the knack of making pie crust. I often joke that I didn’t love anyone enough to make a pie for them. It’s not for lack of trying. Believe me, I’ve really tried to learn how to make pies. Lord knows, I love to eat them. It’s not the filling, it’s the dough. Maybe I don’t have “the touch.” I’ve tried all kinds of recipes—I’ve used all butter, all Crisco, half butter, half Crisco. I’ve even used lard. Once I even tried a recipe that used vodka instead of ice water. Getting the dough to come together and then rolling it out without it sticking to the rolling pin has always been way too much of a challenge for me. They say that cooking is an art, baking is a science. Maybe that’s why my brother, Harry, is so good at making pies. He was a chemical engineer and started baking when he went into retirement. His pies are amazing, and he swears by his Cuisinart food processor. Whenever I go down and visit him, the first thing I do is look on top of the refrigerator to see if one of his pie masterpieces is sitting up there. I know I’ll never be up to his skill level, so I’ve decided to leave the pie baking up to him. Back in high school, my best friend, Mark Bersen, and I used to get together just about every day after school. He’d help me with my chores and then we’d have some kind of culinary adventure, cooking or baking something. My mother, Gertrude, was happy for our enthusiasm and gave us free reign to try anything, as long as we promised to clean up afterwards. Mark and I tested and improved recipes for everything from lasagna to chocolate chip cookies. At one point, we went through an apple strudel-making phase. My mother found a recipe for apple strudel in one of her ancient German cookbooks (“Das Hauswesen” by M.S. Kübler)—I still have the cookbook—that instructed you to forcefully throw the dough onto the kitchen table 100 times before stretching it and filling it with sliced apples, butter and breadcrumbs. We had a lot of fun making Apfelstrudel, and it proved to be a great upper-body workout. But back to pies…once Mark and I figured out that making the pie dough was a giant pain in the neck, we started to experiment with apple crisp recipes. Apple crisp fulfills the autumn requirement for a cinnamon-y apple dessert and is way less work than making pie or strudel. The most labor-intensive part of the recipe is peeling and slicing the apples. A combination of Granny Smith and Macintosh has proved to be the best combination. The Granny Smiths have to be sliced pretty thin, but have quite a bit of naturally occurring pectin, which helps the filling firm up. They also retain a lot of texture. The Macs, cut into largish chunks, bake down to a nice soft consistency and fill in the gaps among the rest of the ingredients. We came upon a combination of cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and a dash of cardamom in both the filling and the topping. Cardamom is a beautifully fragrant spice that the Swedes use in a lot of their baked goods. It can be omitted if you can’t find it, but it does add a lovely fragrance and flavor to this recipe. Large chunks of walnuts add great texture to the topping, but you can substitute pecans or almonds if you like. One last note—you can add a handful of fresh cranberries to the filling for a festive holiday touch.
Apple Crisp 4 pounds apples: half Granny Smiths and half Macintosh 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice 2 tablespoons cornstarch ½ cup brown sugar ½ cup white sugar 1 teaspoon cinnamon ¼ teaspoon cloves ¼ teaspoon allspice ½ teaspoon cardamom a grating of fresh nutmeg a pinch of salt
Topping ¾ cup flour 1 cup old fashioned rolled oats ½ cup white sugar ½ cup brown sugar 1 teaspoon cinnamon ¼ teaspoon cloves ¼ teaspoon allspice ½ teaspoon cardamom a grating of fresh nutmeg a pinch of salt 1 stick (1/4 pound) butter ¾ cup walnuts, pecans or slivered almonds
1. Preheat oven to 350° 2. Peel and core the apples. Thinly slice the Granny Smiths and cut the Macintoshes into large chunks. Place in a large bowl. 3. Sprinkle with the lemon juice, and add in the sugars, spices and cornstarch. Toss well to combine and pour into a 2 qt. baking dish. 4. Add the topping ingredients into a large bowl and knead together by hand until the mixture starts to come together. 5. Press the topping mixture over the apple mixture in the baking dish. 6. Bake for 40 minutes to an hour, or until the filling starts to bubble out from under the crumbs. 7. It is tempting to serve right out of the oven, but the apples set up nicely and the juices reabsorb if you let the crisp cool on a rack for a half an hour or so, then serve with vanilla ice cream.