Problems with Pie

I constantly feel like I walk out of the Coop (Italian grocery stores) with nothing checked off my shopping list. I go in with elaborate lists, with dreams of roasted vegetables, of homemade Pommes Frites, of Boeuf Bourguignon, of Pesto Pea Soup. But, unsurprisingly, the stores seemed ill equipped for the American taste buds, the impoverished college bellies.

But I did manage to satiate my longing for autumnal charms by making a pie. The recipe comes from Gourmet (shit, do I have to now say “came from”? Sorry Ruth!) and was a Pear and Butterscotch Pie. In all honesty, the pie was relatively easy to make, even in the kitchen from hell, and it tasted very similar to apple pie.

When making anything I’ve never made before, I tend to get a little over zealous and misread the directions. Over the years I’ve added 3 tablespoons of baking soda as opposed to 3 teaspoons, or baked for 2 hours instead of 1. In this case, the case of the Pear and Butterscotch Pie, I needed to make a pie dough and opted for my favorite lady in cooking, INA. The recipe calls for 6-8 teaspoons of water and of course, being the culinary novitiate that I am, I read 6-8 cups.

For those of you that know pie dough—there really isn’t much water involved (thanks Mom for the clarification). I immediately felt skeptical about the copious amount of water after the third cup (it had started to look like the gruel from Oliver Twist) and reached for my phone to call my Alison Bennie.

“Honey no! It’s not 6 to 8 cups. It’s 6 to eight tablespoons.”—Oh. Oops. So, I remade the pie dough—possibly with a little more intensity, now that I felt foolish for thinking I could breeze through a recipe I’ve never made on my own. The pie turned out well—beautiful toasted and tasting of Shelburne Farms, my favorite apple orchard in Vermont.

Anyways—back to the barren grocery store. I can’t find anything. It must be that most of the vegetables that I am craving are seasonal (avacados, broccoli and carrots?) and that I still can’t read any of the names that are, of course, in Italian. So—I’ve decided to try and test my skills (as if trying to make a pie dough out of 6 cups of water wasn’t stimulating enough). The next time and every time after I go into the Coop, I will select four ingredients and make something out of them.

When I say four ingredients I’m excluding spices, butter, oil, etc. It seems impossible and honestly unappetizing to make something out of solely four ingredients (I’m not thinking sandwiches and appetizers). Although—I do remember seeing a book in some dirty college student house that boasted the fact that all the recipes were made with only four ingredients. Gross.

So yes. That’s the challenge for the next few weeks.