Apple Pie

I realized one of my bad cooking habits this week. When looking for a recipe I tend to look at the ingredients and not read the instructions. It's a habit I need to get out of because it sometimes gets me in trouble, such as with the apple pie recipe.

My main criteria when looking for this recipe were simple ingredients. I didn't want to half a dozen obscure spices or liquids (Sorry Alton, your apple pie recipe looked great, but I didn't feel like buying Apple Jack, four different type of apples and other ingredients I would have a hard time using in the future).

So when I saw the recipe at Savuer I was psyched, seemed pretty simple, and since I was making my first pie simple is what I wanted. I went out and bought all the ingredients and was exited at the prospect of putting it all together.

Saturday morning I look at the recipe and realize that I'm making a hell of a big pie. instead of using your typical pie plate I was using a 9 by 13 inch pan. Don't ask me why the dozen apples and six lemons didn't tip me off, but they didn't. I can be a bit slow sometimes. The main problem being that I was cooking this for five and thought it would mostly be gone and now I still half a pan of apple pie.

So I started out making the pie dough and it went well at the start. I cut the shortening into the dough and added the milk. All seemed well as I put it in the fridge to rest.

Next up were the apples. Since I am forbidden to buy any kitchen gear until after the wedding I was on my own peeling, slicing and coring the apples. This was quite a bit of work.

I let the dough rest for about 90 minutes. I started rolling it out and had some issued, it was too dry and crumbly. Rory suggested adding milk, which worked perfectly. Since I don't own a rolling pin I used a wine bottle to roll the dough. Again, kind of a pain in the ass. Also, getting the dough into the big pan was a challenge, but with Rory's help we got through it.

The end result was good, a bit too lemony, so the vanilla ice cream worked well at cutting the acidity. I will make this recipe again, but not until after I have the proper equipment. A real rolling pin and apple corer/slicer would have cut the prep time in half.