The remains of the dough: apricot pie

Those of you who know Annalena well, know of her struggles with pie crust. Well, as I have written here, once I had Rose Levy Birnbaum's book, pie crust was no longer a mystery or a source of never ending frustration. Whilst the expression "easy as pie" still lacks meaning to me, "pie in the sky" is no longer the ruling expression in the pastry kitchen.

Some time ago, I made a double crust blueberry pie for a dinner. It was a very bigt success, and part of this was in fact the crust. Flaky, buttery, it was absolutely terrific.

When you roll out pie crust, inevitably you have extra. You cut away the excess on the edges, and then you do SOMETHING with it. I remember folks putting sugar on it and making "pie crust cookies," and I've done that too. And thrown away the cookies. So, now, I gather up the crust and save it. I had done that for the blueberry pie, with full intentions of making a quiche.

Well... we sort of got waylaid along the way, and the apricot pie resulted. See, I had another pie planned, and I just figured a double crust pie, so I would be making more crust. EVERY SOURCE I looked at asked the question: "why are you covering the gorgeous apricots with crust?" OK, so we turn to Rose and find a winner. The picture above is the pie that followed, using her book and making a few changes. Here we go.

First, the crust, which makes enough for THREE single crusts. You need 2.25 cups of all purpose flour, and half a teaspoon of salt, which you "fluff" up, either by hand, or with your food processor, using a few pulses. Next, you need fourteen tablespoons of unsalted butter. This is two sticks, less two tablespoons. Use six of them , cut into cubes, and pulse to a very fine meal (or work your fingers to get the same result). Then, the final 8 go in, and this time, go for things that are about the size of small peas. Add a tablespoon of cider vinegar, and then add ice cold water . This is important. When I make pie crust, I start by putting water in a cup with some cubes, for this stage. Add four tablespoons, and stir everything together with a fork, or pulse it. Then keep on adding water, by the tablespoon, until the dough just begins to get cohesive. Gather it together with your hands, and divide it into three equal masses. Flatten it, and either refrigerate it, or freeze it. IF you freeze it, just make sure you thaw it before you're ready to bake.

To bake this pie, you're going to do a "blind" crust. That means you're going to bake the crust, empty, with a "cover" on it, to keep it crispy. Since you don't see it baking, it's "blind." When the crust dough is somewhat soft, but not TRULY soft, it's ready to roll out. I use lots of flour and then brush it off at the end. Use a very firm stroke, and keep on rotating the crust to keep it as circular as possible. Don't kill yourself though. DO have your pie pan handy so that you can see if you have enough dough. You want it to spread out over the pan by about an inch. When you're there, press it down into the pan, and run your rolling pin over the edges, to smooth it out and get rid of excess. Then, prick little holes all over it, cover the bottom with some parchment paper, and either pile in pie weights if you have them, or dried beans, or rice, and bake this at 425 for eight minutes. While it's baking, separate an egg. Save the yolk for making ice cream, you'll be using the white here.

Protect your hands and move the crust out of the oven. Keep it at 425 and let it cool for three minutes. Then, brush the egg white all over the pie. It will "cook" immediately, and then get your filling together.

It's hard to set up these posts, so "per favore." While the crust has been baking, you set up your apricots by cutting about a pound and a half of them into segments: small ones into fours, big ones into sixes, REALLY big ones into eights. Mix them with 1/3 cup of sugar, and a couple of tablespoons of corn starch. Apricots don't put off much liquid, so you don't need much thickener. And, because their skins are soft, you don't need to peel them (some do. More power to them).

Be creative in how you layer the slices in the crust. See what I did above? But use your imagination, and if, as Ms. Birnbaum does, you prefer halves, use that (that's better, though, with smaller apricots. There's a gorgeous picture of a pie done this way in her book). Put the pie back in the oven, and bake it for about 50 minutes. The tips of the apricots will brown, and the pie will thicken some.

When you bring it out of the oven, get about half a cup of good quality apricot jam. Heat it gently, and then put it through a colander . I thought this step was not necessary, but it really is. It will make you a nice, smooth glaze, which you dab on the fruit until you've touched all of the surface.

And when you're done: VOILA. See what you've got above?

Yes, it's a lot of work, but the result is impressive. Apricots are not in season forever, and in NY they are at their peak now. So, roll up your sleeves, and get the pie going. I think you'll be happy you committed to this one.