Happy Pi(e) Day

March 14th: sandwiched between Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day, my favorite holiday of the year, Pi Day.

Pi Day has had special meaning for me since AP US History in my junior year of high school. This is when I first encountered the nineteenth century movement referred to as the "cult of domesticity." Its proponents argued that a woman's place is in the home, and that domestic virtues were superior to all others. Struck by the ridiculousness of the idea and the very catchy name, my friends and I formed our own branch, a society loosely dedicated to the protection and preservation of the domestic arts. "Meetings," which we still have whenever enough of us are in the same place, mostly involve getting together to make pie and the "prostitute pasta" (pasta puttanesca) from TBS' Dinner and a Movie for Pretty Woman. Our Cult of Domesticity has had a long and storied life so far, and Pi Day is its anniversary of sorts.

Over the last eight years, some things have changed - our members have been scattered across the country in med school, law school, and various forms of gainful employment, and we can use real wine in the pasta sauce instead of sour-tasting Heinz cooking wine - but some things have not. My grandma's key lime pie, the pie that started it all, is still my favorite in the world. And good friends are still the best people to share it with.

So as an anniversary present for us all, here is the pie recipe that always makes an appearance at our gatherings. It's simple, straightforward, and can be made in about five minutes flat, including washing the dishes. You do have to let the filled pie chill for a few hours to set up, but if you get impatient or are in a hurry, you can always pop it in the freezer to accelerate the process.

At home I usually made this with a store-bought graham cracker crust, but you can easily make your own with some crushed up graham crackers and a bit of melted butter - just mix and press into a pie dish, then bake at 350 or so for about 10 minutes to set. Cool before pouring in your filling.

Grandma's Key Lime Pie

1 9" graham cracker crust, storebought or homemade

8 oz./ 1 c. sour cream

1 can sweetened condensed milk (my grandma's recipe specifies Eagle Brand, but substitutions should be fine)

1/2 c. key lime juice, fresh or bottled (fresh is more tangy, but allow a LOT of time to juice all the little key limes)

2 heaping tbsp. Cool Whip - I tend to interpret "heaping" very liberally, but I like Cool Whip.

Combine all ingredients, mixing until smooth. Don't worry if it looks curdled or weepy at any point, just keep mixing and it will all come together nicely. Pour filling into crust, chill for several hours, enjoy!

Leftovers (if there are any!) are best within the next 48 hours; the crust tends to get soggy after that.

pick-me-up

Some desserts have names that make no sense - the mendiant (French for beggar) is a rich frozen mousse, mud pie is made of much better stuff than mud, and a milkshake is always stirred, not shaken. Tiramisu, however, is perfectly named. In translation it means "pick-me-up," which is exactly what this dessert can do. No matter how bad things get, it is almost impossible not to be cheered by the generous amounts of alcohol, caffeine, and deliciously rich mascarpone mousse in this Italian favorite.

My friend Brian is a tiramisu freak. When he found out I was going to pastry school, he insisted that when we made the dessert in class, he wanted to try the result. We made tiramisu in class last week, but to be honest, I didn't love it. So when I went over to Brian's to share the results of my tiramisu education, I made a few small changes, and was much happier with the final product.

Some of the changes were made out of necessity - Brian, despite cooking often and well, prides himself on owning a minimum of kitchen gadgets and being a culinary MacGyver, to the point of not even owning a set of measuring cups. I think it's a guy thing. So making the pate a bombe (eggs whipped with softball syrup) called for in the tiramisu recipe was out. I altered the recipe to make a sabayon-based mousse instead, which could be done without an electric mixer.

Sabayons are egg yolks whipped with sugar and alcohol over a double boiler. Heating and stirring this custard whips air into the mixture as the eggs stabilize, creating a voluminous foam that will be folded with whipped cream and mascarpone cheese to create the filling. The classic tiramisu recipe calls for marsala wine to be the alcohol whipped with the egg yolks. I substituted a mixture of dry white wine (a nice Chateau St. Michelle Riesling) and brandy for the marsala when I made it on my own, and liked the end result much better.

Assembling the tiramisu is a snap - the mascarpone mousse is layered with ladyfinger cookies that have been soaked in a tasty (and potent!) alcohol and citrus-spiked espresso syrup, and a light dusting of cocoa powder sprinkled over the top. We sampled some of the tiramisu that evening, and Brian pronounced my version excellent. I consider that a meaningful honor, coming from one who is a connoisseur of the art form. I was so touched I left him most of a pan in his fridge, so he should be a pretty happy guy. Tiramisu can taste just as good or even better on the second or third day after its made, as the flavors have a chance to mellow and meld.

I've posted my version of the recipe below - at school we made these in cute little individual rings, but for the home baker I've tripled it, which fits nicely in a 9x13" baking pan or glass dish, as seen above. Hope you get a chance to make it, and let me know if you have any questions!

Tiramisu (adapted from the French Culinary Institute)

6 egg yolks

150 grams sugar

150 mL marsala, or a mixture of dry white wine and brandy

3 sheets gelatin

360 mL heavy cream

360 gr mascarpone cheese

approx. 36 ladyfinger cookies

approx. 400 mL of soaking syrup - I used a combination of fresh-brewed coffee, espresso powder, rum, Cointreau, and orange juice. I think it tastes best when the coffee flavor really comes through, so don't be shy with the espresso powder

cocoa powder for dusting

Whip your heavy cream to soft peak stage and chill. Place your gelatin in ice-cold water to let it bloom (soften up). To make the sabayon, combine egg yolks, sugar, and alcohol in a heatproof bowl (stainless steel or glass work well)an and set over a pot of boiling water. Cook, whisking vigorously, until the mixture has volume and definition - when you scrape the bottom of the bowl you should be able to see metal before the mixture rushes back in, and your whisk should leave a trail behind it. At this point remove the mixture from the heat, take your gelatin out of its ice bath, and add it to your sabayon. Mix til gelatin dissolves then cool sabayon on the counter or over an ice bath. When it is no longer warm, you can fold it together with your mascarpone cheese and whipped cream.

To assemble the tiramisu, dip each ladyfinger in the soaking syrup briefly (enough to get some flavor, not so much that it falls apart) and place in the bottom of your dish. Spread a layer of mousse on top. Repeat. If you have a very tall container, you may put 3 or more layers in; my shallow baking dish only had room for two. When you've spread your last layer of mousse, dust the top lightly with cocoa powder, and refrigerate to chill/set. Tiramisu also freezes very well. Once it's set, the fun part begins - buon appetito!

afternoon of desserts

thanks to those of you who made it out for this - I know the timing wasn't terribly convenient, occurring as it did during the middle of the afternoon, but hopefully the free (and delicious!) desserts were worth it. As some of you may know, the culinary students at my school work in the school's (highly rated, well-reviewed, bargain prix-fixe) restaurant during the last months of their program, gaining real-world experience on the line. For a variety of reasons, that format doesn't work with the pastry program. We have, instead, the "Afternoon of Desserts." Today approximately forty-five of our class' nearest and dearest descended upon the school in two shifts to enjoy the fruits of our dessert-plating labors and give us some experience putting desserts together to order. The menu for the occasion consisted of the frozen desserts we worked on earlier this week, fruit soups we learned how to make this morning, and a creme brulee and bread pudding chosen by students. My partner and I ended up manning the creme brulee station, a situation which greatly pleased my inner pyromaniac. Professional pastry chefs get to use some pretty serious blowtorches.

From what I've seen so far, about 98% of creating a great plated dessert happens before the customer even gets to the restaurant or sees a menu. It's all about planning and preparation. For us, that process began Tuesday with choosing our menu items. Upon drawing creme brulee, my partner and I decided to make a pistachio creme brulee with a chocolate ganache layer on the bottom, accompanied by chocolate cookies on the side. Yesterday we prepared the ganache, lined the creme brulee molds, made the pistachio custard, and baked the creme brulees. This morning we mixed and baked the cookies, selected plates, counted doilies and decided on a presentation.

Creme brulee is usually served in a simple manner, accompanied only by seasonal fruit or a cookie (or three), which made our job relatively easy. Half an hour before our "customers" arrived, we put together our station, assembly-line fashion, working left to right for maximum efficiency. Plates, doilies, a tray of cookies, demerara sugar and our trusty giant blowtorch awaited the first order, a sample plate for our chef. After he sampled it and pronounced it "very nice," we breathed a little easier. Just before service began, we had a short meeting to go over the process of expediting and calling out orders when they came in - one student would get the information from the waiter and pass it onto each station in a call and response fashion. "Ordering - one fruit soup, two panna cotta, zero mint dome, five creme brulee" and so on.

I've been externing in a restaurant, but the pastry team there doesn't do service, so this was my first experience plating desserts to order. I have to confess I had a few butterflies before we started - what if no one orders our dessert, what if I accidentally light myself or something else on fire, etc - but the first shift ironed those out. We posted a respectable five total orders, didn't ignite anything besides the sugar, and got our plates out in fine time.

The second shift, once we'd gotten the hang of it, was more fun. We served seven plates before we ran out of creme brulee, and got to read the comments from our diners. I'm willing to admit that some of the reviewers may have been a bit biased in our favor, but it was still fun to hear what they had to say. My personal favorite was a toss-up between the reviewer who said the description would "need Shakespeare to live up to the wonderful eating experience" and wrote "best creme brulee EVER" under "Additional Comments" and the one who just wrote "Amazing" in every category (at least that's what we think it said). Picture below, but I'm not sure it does the dessert justice - pistachio green doesn't photograph terribly well under institutional flourescent lights and a blanket of caramelized sugar.