Terrible getting older and watching out for cholesterol and sugar. I have not been baking pies the way I used to, several for every fruit throughout the seasons. This year our wild apple trees had some, but not many, apples though enough so that very morning on our walks this Fall, Honey and I have eaten a fresh picked apple as we headed for home. This morning I picked one for Honey, then all the remaining apples from one of the more prolific trees for a pie. It seemed the right thing to do. Yesterday the leaves were at their most vivid, the magnificent glow-from-inside stage. Then this morning I noticed the trees were duller and many leaves had been blown from the trees, so with the falling leaves I was afraid the last of the apples would also fall and become food for foxes and slugs when I wanted to eat them.
Years ago I read a wonderful article where the writer was on a search for the best pie. One pie maker told him you don't bake a pie, you build a pie, and as a pie maker I understood that right away. So I'm posting pictures of the construction of my wild apple pie. Mind you it is only a partial construction because I forgot to take pictures of the pie crust as I assembled it. Another time...
I make a pie inspired by the sour cream and sugar topped German/Mennonite Kitchener Farmer's Market pies with a splash of Murdena Eldridge. The Murdena Eldrige part goes like this: In 1972 I worked at the Tartan Village Restaurant, a gem of an eatery along the St. Ann's Bay Loop of the Cabot Trail, owned and run by Murdena Eldridge. Murdena did all of the main cooking and she used whole and fresh and as much as she could, local ingredients -- a woman before her time. She made a melt-in-your-mouth four inch high tea biscuit that she served with soups, or homemade jam but most spectacularly, as the shortcake in fresh strawberry shortcake. She (and we) whipped massive amounts of cream for the shortcakes and stored the whipped cream in large jars in the fridge. Once a week there would be a jar that had soured, and I don't mean gone bad or moldy, I mean the whipped cream turned to thick-as-you-please sour cream that was beyond delicious but had to be thrown out until it dawned on me, who was weaned onto cream and sour cream after leaving my mother's breast, that I could make my mother's famous cole slaw and iceberg lettuce and onion salad dressings with that soured cream, and I could use it for coffee cake recipes, in quick breads, in pancakes and I could use it to make a pie topping to die for (and from). And that's what I did, and though I miss Murdena's soured cream, that's what I continue to do. My apple pie is topped with a mixture of sour cream, brown sugar and cinnamon and a wee bit of flour to help it all thicken. When baked it forms a glistening, sweet-tangy topping that cooks down into the apples as well.
OK, so now that I've made myself hungry, I'm going to make a cup of tea and have a slice of wild apple pie, supper be damned!
