It seems like just the other day I was writing about baskets of beautiful August tomatoes, and now suddenly it's fall. The boxes of berries, piles of tomatoes and crates of peaches at the greenmarket have been replaced by mountains of apples, bunches of dark greens and stacks of squash. And although I don't particularly like squash, it's every bit as inspiring and happy-making to ogle on my lunch break as summer fruits.
Fall is my absolute favorite season, not least because my birthday is in September (for which Nick gave me a new digital camera, which should significantly improve the quality of the photography here.) And one of the real joys of the season is apple pie - which is Nick's favorite, and definitely one of my top five, if not two. So, despite the fact that I have no food processor (my usual pie crust tool) I was determined to make an apple pie before the season escaped me, as peach pie season did. I figured that would entail investing in a $100 food processor, and was just about ready to pony up the cash. Then last week I decided to make empanadas (I need more practice before they become blog-worthy) mostly because I wanted to eat them. Well, the first step in empanada-making is dough-making and, as it turns out, empanada dough is a whole lot like pie dough. Except the empanada dough recipe I was using said to simply pinch the butter into the flour with your fingers. Which I did. And it was while my floury fingers were pinching butter (and begining to get tired) that I realized the technique was equally applicable to pie dough. Now, it wasn't the first time I'd considered making pie dough by hand, but it was the confirmation I needed that it would probably, most likely, work.
So with that knowledge in mind, I went to the greenmarket last Friday and bought as many apples as I could carry. I usually use Granny Smith for pie - the tartness and texture are both perfect and they don't turn mealy or into sauce in the oven - but apprently Granny Smith are not one of the several dozen apple varietes grown in the greater (much greater) New York City area. So I went for a mix of giant Mutsus and some red-and-green ones I forget the name of, unfortunately. The Mutsus tasted a little too much like Golden Delicious for my taste, but it didn't seem to negatively affect the taste of the pie. The red-and-green ones tasted a lot like Macintosh, which have a great flavor but tend to get a little too mushy in pie. I figured combining the perfect-texture apples and the perfect-taste apples would yield a happy-medium delicious pie, and I think I lucked out.
But of course, before apples even enter the apple-pie picture, you must make the dough. I've made strawberry-rhubarb pie here before, and the recipe is the same. The only thing I did differently this time was mixing everything by hand. So, if you don't have a food processor, here's what you do:
Whisk the dry ingredients together to blend. Cut the butter into small pieces, about 1/4 inch on each side, by standing it on its end and slicing twice, at right angles, lengthwise (so you have 4 long, skinny sticks of butter). Hold the sticks together and cut into 1/4 inch slices. The smaller you make them, the less tired your fingers will be later. I would also advise using a very sharp knife - cutting cold butter with a butter knife makes it break and takes more work, which warms up the butter. You want to keep you butter as cold as possible.
Dump all the little butter pieces into the bowl of dry ingredients and start pinching and squeezing it into the flour. It's an imprecise process, but you'll figure it out. Just keep breaking up the butter until the dough resembles coarse meal. The only piece of advice I have is to keep your hands in the bowl at all times, so the butter gets coated in flour as you squeeze it. When you've got your coarse meal, slowly pour in the ice water while mixing with a fork. When the dough is uniformly moistened, turn it out onto a clean counter and proceed as usual.
I use my mother's recipe for the apple filling, which is very simple and mostly apples. Peel the apples and cut them up into large chunks. I like to keep the pieces nice and big so they stay together in the pie. Toss the apple chunks in a VERY LARGE bowl with:
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup flour
the juice of 1/2 a lemon
and 2 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon.
Then back to the dough, which has been chilling in the fridge (or freezer if you only have an hour or so.) Roll it out like in the strawberry rhubarb pie recipe, then fill with apples. I like to mound the apples up as high as humanly possible (see photo). My pie was at least 6 inches tall before cooking. I had to take the top rack out of the oven. Don't worry, they cook down a lot.
On top of your mountain of apples, slice 1 tablespoon of butter. Then cover with the second crust. I usually just do a regular solid crust for apple pie. Trim and crimp the edges. And don't forget to poke some holes in it! My mom likes five slits with a small knife, in a circle around the top (so of course I do too.) Then coat lightly with a mix of one egg white and a little bit of cream, beaten together (this was where my lack of kitchen tools became a real problem, I'm lacking a pastry brush and had to use my fingers, awkwardly.) Sprinkle with coarse non-melting sugar, and pop it in the oven! Bake for 15 minutes at 400º, then turn the heat down to 350º and bake for another hour, or until brown.
Enjoy warm, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream if you like. Then go jump in a pile of leaves for me! (I miss real trees.)
