Hello, friends! I trust all of you spent your long Thanksgiving weekend eating excessive amounts of food (as is one’s patriotic duty on the last Thursday of November). I made five dishes — three of which were potato-based — and spent it at home alone marathon watching The Great British Baking Show. And yes, I planned it that way, and yes, it was relaxing and glorious and no one was around to say anything about the fact that I chose to drink my wine out of a tumbler with a bendy straw.
But now, it’s time to get cracking because the holiday season insanity has begun! If you’ve got many a potluck to attend, consider making pie as your contribution. You can make it ahead of time, transporting them isn’t as precarious as transporting a crock pot full of scalding hot brisket, and there are as many varieties of delicious pies to choose from as the day is long.
Confession: I am not very good at making pies. Or rather, I am not very good at making pie crusts. But I am a firm believer of homemade pie crusts no matter how rubbish they may end up looking (and trust me, I’ve made some pretty rubbish-looking ones) because they will always, always taste better than the premade, store-bought kind. Trust me. You can do this.
This is a chess pie. I don’t know why it’s called that and am far too lazy to Google it myself, so you’ll have to do that investigation on your own. But I do know that it’s something I’ve had a few times when I lived in Texas, where non-fruit pies are commonplace year-round. The filling is a sweet golden custard, with just a little bit of crunch on the top. All of this is cradled inside a thin buttery crust. Yum.
Now, a note about the crust. I have tried many things to make my pie crusts behave, including chilling my prep bowls and whisks and freezing tiny cubes of butter, and a bunch of other annoyingly fussy things. But after all of that, the most effective method I’ve found is to just make your prep station a bit chilly. In the winter, this means I turn the heat off and wait until my apartment is plenty pie crust-friendly cold before I get to it. In the summer, I shut all the shades and run a bunch of tower fans in the kitchen to cool the prep area down. But however you do it, just make sure you’re not trying to make an all-butter pie crust in a warm environment because you’ll end up hating your life.
Chess Pie
From Serious Eats
Yields: 1 nine-inch pie
Total Time: 3 hours, 40 minutes (including crust chilling/cooling times)
For the crust:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
8 tbs unsalted butter, cut into small cubes and chilled
cold ice water
For the filling:
4 large eggs, room temperature
5 tbs whole milk
1 tbs vanilla extract
2 cups sugar
8 tbs unsalted butter, melted and cooled (1 stick)
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbs medium or finely ground cornmeal
1 tbs all-purpose flour
1 tbs white vinegar
Assembled the crust:
In a large bowl, combine the flour, salt, and sugar. Scatter the cubed butter in the flour.
Gently use your fingers to rub the flour into the butter. The heat from your hands will soften the butter (but if it’s straight-up melting because you run hot, pop the bowl into the fridge once in a while to keep the butter solid). Be steady and methodical with this, scooping the flour from the bottom of the bowl and rubbing it into the butter until all the flour looks a bit yellow and like damp sand. It’ll clump a bit too, and that’s fine!
Get the water and carefully drizzle in 2 tablespoons of it into the flour. Mix it with your hands, but don’t attack your dough too much — just work it enough to get the water distributed into it. You’ll likely need to add more water, so just add it one tablespoon at a time until the dough holds together and is slightly tacky. You definitely do not want to add too much water! Once it reaches the “holding together and slightly tacky” stage, pat it into a disc and wrap it in cling wrap. Pop it in the fridge to firm up for at least an hour.
After that’s done, heat the oven to 425*F and move the rack to the lowest setting.
Pound out your dough and roll it to no more than 1/4-inch thickness. Line your pie pan with it however you please. Then line that with foil or parchment and fill it with pie weights (I use dried beans).
Bake it for 5 minutes, then lower the temperature to 325*F. Bake for another 5 minutes, and then remove the liner and weights and bake again for another 3-ish minutes until the crust is a nice light color.
Cool completely before filling.
Assemble the pie:
Preheat to 325*F and move the oven rack to the second-from-bottom position.
Whisk together the eggs, milk, and vanilla in a large bowl. Whisk the sugar in until it is thoroughly incorporated and slightly foamy. Add the milk, butter, vinegar, flour, cornmeal, and salt and whisk until the mixture is completely smooth.
Pour this into the cooled pie crust and bake for 45-55 minutes, or until the filling has set (but it should still be a little wobbly in the center) and has puffed up around the sides. The top should also look flaky and golden brown.
Cool the pie on a wire rack completely, and serve either at room temperature or chilled.
2 Comments
OMG, why is the Great British Baking Show (or Great British Bake Off as my Brit-born boyfriend knows it as) so addictive? Describe it to someone and they’re like, uh, why would you watch that? I just started watching it and I’m hooked.
December 1, 2015 at 3:08 pmrachel — It IS addictive, and I just wish there was more to watch! The way those people bake so intuitively is beyond impressive.
February 25, 2016 at 3:35 pm