In honor of
Pi Day on Saturday, I decided to bake a Lemon Meringue pie on the ides of March. I was inspired by the posts on
the kitchn and
Serious Eats with pictures of pies. I asked my dad what kind of pie he would like, he had no suggestions, and thought "Pi Day" was odd.
A couple of hours later, I got a call back. "I've come up with a list," my dad told me. "Peach pie, or apple pie, or lemon meringue pie, or cheesecake pie. Are you really going to make a pie?"
I thought about his list. Apple pie - we make this most frequently. Peach pie - would be much better with fresh peaches. Cheesecake "pie"...not really a pie. So, I settled on Lemon Meringue.
And...Kemon Meringue pie is a pain! I went with the recipe in
The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: The Original Classics. BTW, if you've looked in the index of the New Classics version, and are now searching through the pages in 440's and 450's, give up - it's a holdover from the Original Classics version, someone forgot to edit it out.
Making Lemon Meringue pie, as I've said, is a pain. Blind baking a crust. Making a custard. Making the meringue. I looked through
Shirley Corriher's Bakewise for a recipe, but didn't find one, specifically. There was information on the crust, and custard recipes, and meringue recipes. I don't have a candy thermometer, so the meringue was out. I decided to stick go the Martha recipe. It called for a butter crust, mixed in the food processor. The dough was so easy to roll out! But it ended up tough - I think I'll stick with
hand mixing.I had gotten up rather early for a Sunday morning, put on my R-"Pi" shirt, and been to the grocery store for lemons for the custard. The recipe said 3 lemons for 1/2 cup liquid; I went with 4 for safety. It was a close call! In the future, I think I'll buy double the number the recipe suggests. And I forgot to zest them...so no zest in the custard. And the custard didn't set up as solidly as I would have liked.
And then, there's the meringue. Bakewise had a recipe with vanilla in it - Martha's recipe was egg whites, sugar, and salt, which turned out to be - bland. The Bakewise recipe called for putting the pie into a 375 degree oven for 10 minutes, which I found odd - could it melt the custard? So, I stuck with Martha's instructions to broil it. And almost burned the top. Yet the sides were still stark white.
In the end, my dad was very happy to have pie! And it wasn't bad, but I would look for a different recipe next time. The custard and the meringue were just lacking...something. Does anyone know of a way to fuse the meringue and the custard? It seems to me that the ones at bakeries are much more "one" - I was afraid my meringue was going to slide off!
A side note, just a thank you to Mr. Dandrew, my tenth grade English teacher. It was in his class that we read Julius Caesar, and I later picked up the useless knowledge that every month has ides. It was just
how the Romans kept their calendar.St. Patrick's Day is tomorrow. I'm not Irish, nor am I Catholic. Yet, I think I'll celebrate via a Reuben sandwich and french fries. (My friend from Ireland tells me that they don't eat corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's day, anyhow.)
PS - One other thing I realized in my adventures with pie was that I need a different pie plate for blind baking!
One with a ledge would be much better than
the one I used, which let the crust slide down in places.
Which reminds me of another thing I learned. Martha's recipe called for an egg wash on the edges of the crust. I used dried beans as pie weights, in aluminum foil... When I went to remove the beans/foil, the foil was cooked to the crust. That's not a good thing.
