Somehow I’m always happy to make a standard American pie crust, slightly flaky and crumbly and crisp all at once. I occasionally veer toward a rough puff pastry but I’m usually just not that committed, and I do like a nice American pie crust, so I tend to just take the shorter way out…
Hiromi, on the other hand, refuses to produce anything shorter than a rough puff. It’s often just shy of a true puff pastry. So when she makes an apple pie, the edges erupt dramatically, and the top crust and edges have hundreds of little layers.
Hiromi’s After-Christmas Apple Pie
If memory serves me correctly, we warmed up the last two slices just minutes before the New Year’s Eve countdown, served with a little sweet potato ice cream, just after the fireworks ended… We were too tired to go out to a New Year’s party or even to stand in the cold in front of the Space Needle, so we just looked out toward Queen Anne from our balcony window and occasionally glanced at the 7–second delayed TV broadcast.
The pie was very nice… Although I suppose it was a little strange to be polishing off a bottle of Washington sparkling wine at roughly the same time…